At the start of the year the infamous hacking group Team Xecutor announced an ‘unstoppable’ Nintendo Switch hack.

This made it possible to load pirated games onto the popular console, an opportunity many people have taken advantage of.

Some have taken it a step further by offering Nintendo Switch “modifications” for sale, specifically mentioning the Team Xecuter hack. This is what California resident Mikel Euskaldunak did, according to Nintendo.

In a complaint filed at a federal court this week, Nintendo of America accuses the man and several unnamed accomplices of various counts of copyright and trademark infringement.

The defendants allegedly offered modification devices and physical chips for the Nintendo Switch which bypass Nintendo’s anti-piracy protections.

“This modification is installed in a user’s Nintendo Switch in the form of a circumvention tool along with unauthorized custom firmware. This exploit allows the playing of pirated Nintendo Console Games,” the company writes.

Euskaldunak sold the mods in public through a profile at OfferUp.com. According to the advert, the Team Xecuter mod would allow buyers to play any Switch games they want.

“Just load and play!” In connection with the purchase of “Nintendo Switch Mod Play Switch Games Team Xecuter”, Defendants will “give [the buyer] a free game of [his or her] choice,” it reads.

In addition, the defendant also offered a 64GB SD card containing pirated games which could be loaded through Team Xecuter’s dongle.

“These SD cards will come with any 4-6 (depending on the game size) released Nintendo Switch games of your choice. That is less than the price of a single Switch game.”

The defendant’s OfferUp offer

Nintendo believes that the defendants modified more than 100 Switch game systems. In addition, they are suspected of having access to a large library of Switch games, including dozens of titles that haven’t been released in the US yet.

Interestingly, the sellers are aware that pirating games does not come without challenges. They explicitly warn that games downloaded from the Internet might be tracked and banned by Nintendo.

“Defendants inform customers that Nintendo Console Games can be downloaded from the Internet, but that downloading from the Internet is not recommended because NOA can track the downloaded game and ban the user automatically when going online to play the game,” the complaint reads.

In addition to Nintendo Switch mods and games, the defendants are also accused of selling a modified version of Nintendo’s NES Classic Edition with over 800 games.

In its complaint, Nintendo of America asks the California federal court for an injunction to stop the infringing activity and destroy all pirates games and modded consoles.

On top, the game giant requests damages to compensate the company’s claimed losses.

A copy of Nintendo of America’s complaint, obtained by TorrentFreak, 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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Under President Trump, the United States has worked hard to put several new trade deals in place.

The administration is also working on a new trade agreement with the EU for which the US Trade Representative recently asked the public for input.

This week the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes Amazon, Cloudflare, Facebook, and Google as members, sent in its thoughts.

The submission includes a stark warning against the EU’s proposed copyright reform plans, including Article 13, which could open the door to upload filtering.

It’s no secret that the proposal is a topic of intense debate within the EU. The tech companies, however, warn the US Government that its effects may hurt the US economy as well.

The CCIA cautions that the proposed changes could increase liability for large Internet services by weakening the safe harbor protections provided by current EU law. At the same time, it will be at odds with the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions.

“The proposed Copyright Directive disrupts settled law protecting intermediaries by weakening established protections from U.S. Internet services in the 2000 EU E-Commerce Directive, and by imposing an unworkable filtering mandate on hosting providers that would require automated ‘notice-and-stay-down’ for a wide variety of copyrighted works.

“If adopted, the Directive would dramatically weaken these long-standing liability protections, which suggests that most modern service providers may be ineligible for its protections,” the CCIA says.

The tech companies note that EU officials have identified US companies as the intended targets of these proposals. They fear that the plans will result in implicit upload filter requirements.

“Under Article 13 of the proposal, the Directive now implies that online services must procure or develop and implement content recognition technology. The decision to compel affirmative filtering of all Internet content, including audiovisual works, images, and text, based on that content’s copyright status, is alarming and profoundly misguided.”

According to the latest proposals, Article 13 would not impose a general monitoring requirement. However, it may require Internet services to ensure that infringing content is not reuploaded, which is hard to achieve without automated filters.

The CCIA points out the lack of specifics as another concern. It’s not clear what measures hosting providers and other services will have to implement in order to be safe, they argue.

This uncertainty and the incompatibility with US law is troublesome for the tech companies. They hope that the US Government will keep these concerns in mind while negotiating a new trade deal.

The final text of Article 13 is still being drafted. The latest trilogue meeting will take place later this week. The CCIA cautions the US to keep these developments in mind, noting that they have the potential to harm the US economy.

“The text is currently under negotiation in trilogue. If the final EU reform does include these provisions, there would likely be a corresponding increase in risk for U.S. platforms doing business in the EU, resulting in significant economic consequences for the U.S. digital economy, which depends on the EU market.

“Furthermore, there is likely to be a ripple effect on the rest of the world, given the EU’s international influence,” the CCIA submission adds.

This is only one side of the argument, of course. The RIAA also submitted comments to the US Trade Representative, presenting a different picture.

While the music group doesn’t mention Article 13, it does caution against “overbroad provisions on copyright safe harbors” and the “lack of online platform accountability,” two issues the EU’s copyright reforms aim to address.

A copy of the CCIA submission is available here (pdf), and the RIAA’s submission can be found 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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While regular torrent and streaming sites are still a big hit with online pirates, dedicated IPTV services are becoming increasingly popular with consumers.

These services, which can be difficult to tell apart from official offerings, typically supply access to hundreds of otherwise premium channels at a knockdown price. This disruption is something that broadcasters and rightsholders all over the world are keen to bring to an end.

In particular, there have been many raids around Europe but news is now surfacing of action in Canada, featuring two of the country’s most powerful media companies and what appears to be an unlicensed IPTV provider.

On an unspecified date, Bell and Videotron filed a criminal complaint against IPTV provider Cielo 4K. A website featuring that branding is available here, offering around 250 channels including PPV and adult content while recommending its offer “especially for the residents of the province of Quebec-Canada.”

On October 11, 2018, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) reportedly conducted a search at the residence of a former employee of a Videotron subcontractor in Boisbriand, Montreal. LaPresse reports that dozens of computers and modems plus Bell, Videotron, Roku and DirecTV receivers were seized, totaling some 150 items of hardware.

According to the news outlet, the four people listed as defendants in court documents are not yet facing criminal charges since the RCMP investigation is still ongoing. However, the quartet is suspected of using three Videotron and Bell accounts to receive, capture, and redistribute channels to the public.

“This kind of use makes us believe that the service installed at this residence is used to power an IPTV network broadcasting unauthorized television content,” the plaintiffs state in their claim.

It’s further alleged that the streams were sent to servers operated by OVH Hosting Services, from where they were distributed to the public.

“OVH is also recognized by the telecommunications industry for hosting the majority of IPTV services offering unauthorized television content,” the court documents note, citing a Videotron investigation.

When approached for comment, OVH said it does not discuss the activities of its customers, insisting that as a cloud infrastructure provider it does not have access to customers’ data.

This latest action against Cielo 4K comes as both Bell and Videotron remain embroiled in legal action against Kodi add-on repository TVAddons. It’s been almost 18 months since representatives of the company entered the home of operator Adam Lackman in a search for evidence to support their copyright infringement lawsuit.

This June, bailiffs for the company returned again, looking to seize goods to the value of CAD$50,000 to pay for attorney’s fees.

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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Last year, Russian introduced new legislation that can see search engines fined for offering links to VPNs and other anonymizers that have been banned in the country. Fines can also be issued to search engines that fail to connect to a resource offering up-to-date information on what domains should be rendered inaccessible.

This database (known as FGIS), should have been utilized by Google, but for reasons that remain unclear, the US-based search giant didn’t want to play ball.

Several weeks ago, local telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor contacted Google with a demand that it should immediately connect to the FGIS blacklist. Google still did not comply, placing the company in breach of federal law.

That left Google exposed to a potential administrative fine of between 500,000 and 700,000 rubles (US$7,545 to US$10,563). A further demand insisted that it should connect to the FGIS database by today.

Despite a meeting between Deputy Head of Roscomnadzor Vadim Subbotin and Doron Avni, Google’s Director of Public Policy & Government Relations for Europe, Middle East & Africa Emerging Markets, which took place in Moscow last month, today’s deadline wasn’t met.

Roscomnadzor announced this morning that as a result of the continued breach, it had considered the merits of an administrative violation against Google. Since the company had not responded as required, despite having the rules “repeatedly explained”, a fine had been imposed.

“Failure to comply with these requirements constitutes an administrative offense (Part 1 of Article 13.40 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation). The sanction of this article provides for a legal fine in the amount of from 500 to 700 thousand rubles,” a Roscomnadzor statement reads.

While fines are never welcome, the watchdog fined Google just 500,000 rubles (US$7,545). This is the lowest amount that can be handed down under existing laws.

While the dispute was ongoing, Google said that it was in constant contact with Roscomnadzor and was ready for discussion and negotiation, including action to ensure it complies with Russian legal requirements moving forward. Why connecting to Russia’s FGIS database didn’t happen as required remains unclear.

Early November, major rightsholders and tech companies in Russia signed a memorandum of cooperation to deal with the issue of online piracy. Google was not a signatory although there are some suggestions that it could join at some point in the future.

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 week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Venom 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 (1) Venom 7.0 / trailer
2 (7) Smallfoot 6.7 / trailer
3 (2) The Predator 5.6 / trailer
4 (…) Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle 6.8 / trailer
5 (4) The Nun 5.5 / trailer
6 (3) The House with a Clock in Its Walls 6.1 / trailer
7 (5) Mission: Impossible – Fallout 8.0 / trailer
8 (6) Peppermint 6.5 / trailer
9 (8) The Equalizer 2 6.9 / trailer
10 (…) 2.0 7.5 / trailer

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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Four years ago, copyright indistry groups and Internet providers teamed up to fight online piracy in the UK.

Backed by the Government, they launched several educational campaigns under the “Get it Right” banner.

Under the program, ISPs send out piracy warnings to subscribers whose accounts are used to share copyright-infringing material. This started early last year and has been ongoing since.

There haven’t been any official updates in a while, nor is it known how many alerts are going out on a monthly basis. However, it appears that copyright holders and the UK Government are happy with the progress thus far.

Late last week the Government announced that it will continue its support for the ‘Get it Right’ campaign. It will allocate £2 million in funding as part of a £20 million boost to the UK’s creative industries.

“This package will take the sector from strength to strength by arming the next generation of creatives with the necessary skills and giving businesses in the sector the support they need to succeed,” says Margot James, Minister for the Creative Industries.

It’s unclear what the future plans are. The official ‘Get It Right’ page hasn’t changed much in recent years. However, it’s expected that the email warning program, targeted at alleged pirates, will continue.

We are not aware of any public reports on the effectiveness of the campaign. However, Ian Moss, Public Affairs director at the music industry group BPI, suggests that there is data suggesting that it works.

“The research into the campaign has shown it really makes a difference and that a positive campaign that is relevant to fans can help change the way people think about accessing content online,” Moss says.

“The Government’s continuing commitment to the successful campaign is warmly welcomed.”

This isn’t the first time that the UK Government has financially supported the ‘Get it Right’ campaign. It also contributed £3.5 million to the program at the start.

While it’s hard to measure a direct return on investment, the Government previously justified the spending with an expected increase in sales tax. This would be achieved by converting pirates into legitimate customers.

The Governments official announcement is available here. Via gamesindustry.

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Last weekend we reported how scammers were sending DMCA notices to downrank game piracy sites.

Presumably, this was done to give their malware-infested pirate sites a better ranking in search results.

While our previous article focused on the abuse of takedown notices, the problem is much broader. In addition to removing content, scammers are also spamming many sites with messages that link people to their dubious pirate sites.

We spoke to a source who has followed this activity for quite a while and actively reported spam he found on medium.com, change.org, wattpad.com, github.com, bitly.com, deviantart.com, zendesk.com, soundcloud.com, ghost.org, hashnode.com, and elsewhere.

Most of these sites were very cooperative and cleaned up the mess soon after they were alerted.

“The list is really long, but what was great is that all these services immediately responded to my reports. Some of them implemented spam filters and medium.com even sent a t-shirt to thank me,” says our source, who prefers to remain anonymous.

Zendesk’s response

With any type of spam, it’s impossible to eliminate the problem completely. However, our source says that some platforms are more receptive to reports than others. At Facebook and Google, this didn’t go so easily.

For months, scammers have used Facebook events to promote their malware or trojan links out in the open, through numerous accounts. In some cases, these events have been online for months, such as with this Fix Problem account.

This account lists many hundreds of events, which presumably link to pirated software, games, and other content. There are no events of course, but these listings help to increase SEO and give the associated sites a boost in traffic as well.

Fix problem?

The problem is rather persistent. Our source says that he reported the issue in detail to Facebook, but that there’s been little improvement. Many of the reported events are still online today, and new ones keep appearing too.

A targeted search for “Just Cause” Facebook events created over the past week, shows dozens of results.

Targeted Google search

Initially, the Facebook posts linked directly to the sites where the malware-content could be downloaded, but more recently they switched to Google groups. Perhaps because these links are harder to detect automatically.

People who follow these links don’t get a copy of free software, games, or movies. Instead, they’re downloading malware-infested files, although the landing page suggests otherwise.

A Just Cause landing page

Facebook events appears to be one of the favorite spamming tools, but Google groups are also frequently used. This issue was brought to Google’s attention weeks ago, in a rather detailed post in the webmaster help forum.

For weeks, many of the reported groups remained online and some still are at the time of writing. New ones are still appearing too, as shown below.

Just Cause?

More recently, Google has flagged several postings but instead of removing them entirely, Google added a warning message.

TorrentFreak followed a few of the links that were provided in these spam posts and these indeed point to suspicious malware files, or worse. While this type of spamming activity is not new, Google, Facebook and others may want to take a closer look at how this can be dealt with properly.

Our source has made it somewhat of a personal crusade to go after the scammers. As he runs a pirate site of his own, he a has stake in the matter. Previousy his own links were taken down from Google and, as reported last week, he believes that this was a targeted action by the scammers.

A very detailed accounting of evidence and other information, shared with us, suggests that’s indeed the case, at least in some instances. It could of course be that there are more rogue actors.

In the background, this takedown issue has added fuel to a rivalry between ‘real’ pirate sites. Accusations were made back and forth, which resulted in one site shutting down and much more drama on top.

It’s impossible to verify any of the claims or accusations and there may be more things going on at once. What we can say, however, is that our source directly linked the takedown efforts to the type of scamming activity on Google, Facebook, and other sites.

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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The LibreELEC 9.0 Alpha cycle has continued and releases for Amlogic and Slice hardware have been added additionally to the test cycle. We officially support now Khadas VIM (AML S905X) and the LePotato (AML S905X) too. Since the 8.90.006 release we support a wide range of Rockchip devices. There are no plans to release LibreELEC 9.0 images for NXP/iMX6 hardware as support was removed from Kodi some months ago. Support will be reinstated in a future LibreELEC, we wrote an dedicated article about the future of LibreELEC.

Alpha releases are important to the team because we cannot test every scenario and sometimes sidestep issues without realising. The project needs a body of regular testers to go find the problems we miss. Testing will be particularly important for LibreELEC 9.0 as Kodi v18 includes substantial internal changes to VideoPlayer and introduces new retro-gaming capabilities.

** ROCKCHIP **

We added several Rockchip devices at this release. Please consider it as alpha quality and not yet as perfect. All kind of flavors of HDR, 4k and audio are supported already. These images are rather new and it is likely that you hit an problem sooner or later. Please report them at our issue tracker or at the dedicated Rockchip forum so that they can get fixed. Within the LE9 release cycle we are likely not able to finish the Rockchip devices to reach a perfect stable state – they stay in alpha status as long it is needed.

TEST NOTES

Our current focus is the OS core and we are more interested in hardware and driver bugs than Kodi problems. Please report the issues you find by starting a thread in the forums or use our bug tracker. Raspberry Pi users are reminded that dtoverlay=lirc-rpi has now been deprecated. Please read the infrared remotes wiki page  before updating.

** CAUTION **

Alpha builds exist for hands-on testing not a hands-off experience. If you run Alpha builds you must be willing to report issues and engage the LibreELEC and Kodi developers in hunting bugs. If you have no idea what a debug log is, or “wife acceptance factor” is critical, these builds are not for you. If you want to run Alpha builds please make a backup and store it somewhere off-box first. Your failure to make a backup is not our problem.

Updates since v8.90.008 ALPHA:

– updated to Kodi 18 RC2
– fixed shutdown at WeTek Play 1 and WeTek Core
– added AV1 decoder to Kodi
– a lot more updates and fixes, have a look at the full changelog

LibreELEC 9.0 Alpha 009 (Kodi 18 RC2)

To update an existing installation from within the Kodi GUI select manual update in the LibreELEC settings add-on and then check for updates; select the LibreELEC 9.0 channel and then the 8.90.009 release. To create new install media please use our simple USB/SD Creator App. The following .img.gz files can also be used to create install media or update the old fashioned way:

RPi 2/3 LibreELEC-RPi2.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

RPi 0/1 LibreELEC-RPi.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

Generic LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

Odroid_C2 LibreELEC-Odroid_C2.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

KVIM LibreELEC-KVIM.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

LePotato LibreELEC-LePotato.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

WeTek_Core LibreELEC-WeTek_Core.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

WeTek_Hub LibreELEC-WeTek_Hub.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

WeTek_Play LibreELEC-WeTek_Play.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)

WeTek_Play_2 LibreELEC-WeTek_Play_2.arm-8.90.009.img.gz (info)


RK3328

Firefly ROC-RK3328-CC LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-roc-cc.img.gz (info)

Generic Rockchip Box LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-box.img.gz (info)

PINE64 ROCK64 / Popcorn Hour Transformer LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-rock64.img.gz (info)

Popcorn Hour RockBox LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-rockbox.img.gz (info)

MVR9 LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-box-trn9.img.gz (info)

Z28 LibreELEC-RK3328.arm-8.90.009-box-z28.img.gz (info)

RK3399

96rocks ROCK960 LibreELEC-RK3399.arm-8.90.009-rock960.img.gz (info)

PINE64 RockPro64 LibreELEC-RK3399.arm-8.90.009-rockpro64.img.gz (info)

Rockchip Sapphire Board LibreELEC-RK3399.arm-8.90.009-sapphire.img.gz (info)


RK3288

ASUS Tinker Board LibreELEC-TinkerBoard.arm-8.90.009-rk3288.img.gz (info)

mqmaker MiQi LibreELEC-MiQi.arm-8.90.009-rk3288.img.gz (info)



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As first reported here on TorrentFreak, popular streaming application Showbox hit turbulent times recently.

In May we revealed that a group of independent movie studios (Dallas Buyers Club, Cobbler Nevada, Bodyguard Productions, and others) were targeting sites and individuals said to be behind or offering Showbox.

Back in September, a DMCA subpoena filed by the same companies ordered Cloudflare to expose the people linked to various sites offering the application.

It is important to know that the companies behind this request are known serial litigants and have been involved in many “copyright trolling” cases against BitTorrent users in the US and elsewhere.

Last month we reported that two websites connected to Showbox had settled their legal dispute with the companies previously mentioned. The terms of the settlement were not made public and the sites in question now display an ominous warning.

Showbox warning

While some will undoubtedly view these messages as scaremongering, it’s surprising that former Showbox users want anything to do with the application moving forward, given recent history. Nevertheless, dozens of threads online feature users asking whether new versions of Showbox popping up here and there are ‘safe’ to use.

It is a difficult – if not impossible – question for anyone to answer conclusively.

First of all, many of the individuals who previously used the app don’t even seem to know where they downloaded it from. This means they could’ve been using the original version or a modified variant from an unknown developer, with both options raising security issues but for different reasons.

It appears that the original app is in trouble and as for the clones, who knows what their motivations are? And, with known copyright trolls heavily in the mix here, alarm bells of all kinds should be going off. That said, people clearly want their movies and TV shows for free and are happy to carry on doing that as long as someone says “yeah, this version is safe.”

At this point, it might interest readers to learn that several times in the past few months we’ve been asked by random emailers to ‘update’ our old Showbox (and indeed TerrariumTV) articles with new links to what they claimed to be the original apps.

There seems little doubt that this was an attempt to misdirect, so unlike some other news outlets who did change their links, we ignored the requests. We don’t know whether this was simply an attempt to drive more traffic to ‘safe’ clones, websites offering the original, or whether something more sinister was at play. It is something to think about, however.

There are so many variables at play here (including what happens to data gathered from Showbox users’ machines, plus IP addresses etc) that to recommend a certain variant of Showbox as ‘safe’ would be pretty irresponsible. There’s also the fact that Showbox not only uses file-hosting links but also torrents, which are inherently ‘unsafe’ unless people use a VPN.

Admittedly, certain versions and updates of Showbox may be completely benign but short of having a detailed analysis done on each app, plus having access to what happens behind the scenes, it’s a potential minefield that users will have to walk through at their own risk.

Some seem very happy to do that, others are less keen. Only time will tell who made the ‘safe’ decision.

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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Over the past year there has been a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against alleged cheaters or cheat makers.

Take-Two Interactive Software, the company behind ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ (GTA V), is one of the major players involved. The company has filed several lawsuits in the US and abroad, targeting alleged cheaters.

In August the company filed a case against Florida resident Jhonny Perez, accusing him of copyright infringement by creating and distributing a cheating tool. The software, known as “Elusive,” could be used to cheat and grief, interfering with the gameplay of others.

“In essence, Defendant is free riding on TakeTwo’s intellectual property to sell a commercial product that interferes with the carefully orchestrated and balanced gameplay that Take-Two created for its players,” Take-Two notes in the court filing this week.

The defendant has a clear profit motive, according to the company, which notes that “Elusive” was sold at prices ranging from $10 to $30, depending on the package. Buyers could pay through PayPal, but Steam and Amazon gift cards were also accepted.

How much money was made in the process remains unknown. Prior to filing the lawsuit, Take-Two requested detailed financial records from Perez in an attempt to reach a settlement. However, the defendant didn’t hand over the requested information and eventually stopped responding.

This lack of response continued after the lawsuit was filed, which prompted Take-Two to move for a default judgment. According to the company, it’s clear that the cheat maker is guilty of both direct and contributory copyright infringement.

Take-Two submitted its proposed default judgment to a New York federal court this week, asking for the maximum statutory damages amount of $150,000.

Among other things, Take-Two says this is warranted because the cheating activity resulted in severe losses. According to an estimate provided by the company, the harm is at least $500,000. In addition, the maximum in damages should also act as a deterrent against other cheat developers.

“A maximum award would deter Defendant and other infringers from creating similar cheating tools that modify and alter GTAV,” the company argues.

“Indeed, Defendant is not alone in his effort to create, distribute, and maintain a program that alters and modifies Take Two’s game, which is then sold to users for profit. Take-Two already has been forced to bring several lawsuits in the United States and around the world against other infringers.”

On top of the $150,000 in damages, Take-Two also requests $69,686 in attorney’s fees, as well a permanent injunction prohibiting the defendant from continuing infringing activities moving forward.

Take-Two’s conclusion

As far as we know, Elusive hasn’t been available since earlier this year when the developer informed the public that activities were being discontinued.

“After discussions with Take-Two Interactive, we are immediately ceasing all maintenance, development, and distribution of our cheat menu services,” a public announcement read at the time.

“We will also be donating our proceeds to a charity designated by Take-Two. We apologize for any and all problems our software has caused to the Grand Theft Auto Online community,” it added.

That said, Take-Two has experience with developers who say one thing and do another, so the company would like to see details cemented in a court order. Given that the defendant has not responded in court, it is likely that the court will side with the gaming company.

Here are copies of Take-Two’s memorandum (pdf) and the proposed order (pdf), obtained by TorrentFreak.

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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