The ongoing battle between copyright holders and pirates is often described as a cat and mouse game, especially when it comes to content protection.
Hollywood studios release their movies with copy protection. Pirates break it. New protection is released. Pirates break it again. And so forth.
With UHD Blu-rays, copyright holders have long had the upper hand in this game. The discs are protected with AACS 2.0 encryption which was long believed to unbreakable.
This changed late last year. While the encryption technically wasn’t ‘cracked,’ at least not publicly, various pirated UHD Blu-ray movies were released. After several years behind, the ‘pirates’ were in front again.
Not much later, another breakthrough came when a Russian company released a Windows tool called DeUHD that could rip UHD Blu-ray discs. While this was initially another win for pirates, bad news was on the horizon.
Last month, the UHD Bluray releases of the movies Fury and The Patriot came out with a new encryption version, labeled AACS 2.1. This addition made it impossible to rip the discs and some feared that bypassing the protection could take a long time.
Yesterday, however, Arusoft released a new version of its DeUHD ripping tool that is now able to rip AACS 2.1 discs.
DeUHD announcement
TorrentFreak reached out to Arusoft who informed us that the AACS 2.1 discs come with a crucial difference. The main file has a fmts extension, an encrypted m2ts format, which contains forensic information.
“[I]t’s extension is fmts instead of m2ts because it contains some extra info used by studios to track the player used for decryption, which is the major difference from aacs2.0 discs,” Arusoft notes.
“It is not too difficult to bypass this protection, just takes some time to do it,” they add.
While Arusoft doesn’t condone piracy, as MyCE notes, the new DeUHD release opens the door for pirates to share releases to a wider audience.
And indeed, a few hours ago several UHD Blu-ray rips of Fury have appeared online.
Interestingly, there is some concern among the broader public whether this would be ‘safe’ or not.
It’s obviously illegal, but the main worry is that AACS 2.1 presumably added forensic watermarks could help to identify the source of a leak. DeUHD’s developers, however, suggest that these data have been stripped.
“All redundant data has been cleared from the disc,” Arusoft tells TorrentFreak.
In a similarly worded statement, MyCE was informed that DeUHD “clears the garbage from the file” but other than that no definite claims were made.
TorrentFreak previously reached out to the licensing outfit AACS LA to find out more about the new encryption. The company said it would review our request but has yet to comment.
Last month we were the first to report that Justin Sun, the entrepreneur behind the popular cryptocurrency TRON, was in the process of acquiring BitTorrent Inc.
The San-Francisco based file-sharing company confirmed the interest from Sun but noted that the acquisition was not yet 100% finalized.
This position appears to have shifted in the weeks that followed. Last week Sun’s company Rainberry Aquisition filed paperwork related to a merger at California Secretary of State, Variety reports, and BitTorrent did the same.
BitTorrent changed its name to Rainberry last year, and new information suggests that the acquisition by Sun was recently finalized.
This is further backed up by Variety which learned that BitTorrent management informed employees about the deal last week. The staffers were told not to share any information with the press, but word got out eventually.
It’s unclear how much was paid for the acquisition. Sun’s plans for BitTorrent also remain a mystery.
In the short term, not much is expected to change. However, it could be that Sun will eventually use BitTorrent’s user base of over 100 million users to popularize TRON even further. With the acquisition, Sun will also own several BitTorrent patents, including one for P2P live streaming.
TRON is one of the hottest and most controversial cryptocurrencies. After a successful ICO, it now has a market cap of more than $3 billion, which is surpassed by few others.
The TRON mainnet, which went live two weeks ago, has the ultimate goal to “decentralize the web.” BitTorrent would fit well in this picture, especially since the TRON whitepaper mentions torrents as one of its pillars.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/worldfea.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-06-12 09:48:562018-06-12 09:48:56BitTorrent Sells to TRON Cryptocurrency Founder Justin Sun
Even though sports streaming services are widely available in most countries, people are not always willing to pay for them.
This applies to individuals, who turn to pirate sites or other unauthorized channels, but also to businesses such as bars and restaurants.
The latter group is seen as a thorn in the side by many rightsholders. This includes the Spanish soccer league “La Liga,” which broadcasts some of the most viewed matches in the world.
In an effort to curb this type of piracy, “La Liga” has recently started to use modern technology, and its users, to its advantage. In an unprecedented move, the soccer league has turned its official Android app into a piracy spying machine.
The app in question, which has been installed by millions of users, will use the microphone and GPS readings of the devices its installed on to report possible instances of streaming piracy.
With consent from the user, the app will analyze the audio in its surroundings to check if one of La Liga’s matches is being played. It then pairs that with GPS data to see if that location is an authorized broadcaster.
“Protect your team,” users read when they are prompted to enable this type of data collection.
The unusual functionality is detailed in the privacy policy which mentions tackling piracy as one of the main purposes.
“The purposes for which this functionality will be used are: (i) to develop statistical patterns on soccer consumption and (ii) to detect fraudulent operations of the retransmissions of LaLiga football matches (piracy).”
The microphone will only be activated when La Liga is broadcasting its football matches, the policy further clarifies.
The spying tool was spotted by Eldiario.es, which reached out to “La Liga” for additional information.
The Spanish soccer league informed the publication that “nobody accesses the audio fragments captured by the microphone” as the audio “automatically becomes a signal, a binary code.” This happens only in Spain and “without storing any recording or content.”
The organization states that it has to resort to these kinds of measures since piracy is resulting in losses of up to 150 million euros. It doesn’t mention how the data will be used, but establishments who broadcast their matches without consent, are warned.
Users who’ve enabled the functionality but no longer want to operate as piracy spies can go into the settings of their phone to disable audio and location sharing.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/laligascreen.png2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-06-11 18:47:532018-06-11 18:47:53Soccer League Turns App Users Into Piracy Spies
Faced with a tsunami of pirated movies and TV shows being accessed at will through millions of piracy-enabled set-top boxes, entertainment industry groups have had to come up with a new anti-piracy strategy.
The main goal seems to demonize these devices in the press, creating the impression that anyone using them puts themselves in danger, either due to fire risk or exposure to the perils of viruses and malware.
These claims are perfect tabloid material. Newspapers, particularly in the UK, gobble up press releases and quickly spin them out, whether they have any substance to them or not. While there’s little evidence that the scare stories are working as a deterrent among the pirating masses, they are a continuous source of irritation for those who know better.
This week a new Kodi-related video appeared on YouTube. Filmed at the RSA conference and presented by CyberScoop editor Greg Otto, it consists of a short interview with Kurtis Minder, CEO of security company GroupSense. “How malware is growing on the Kodi/XMBC platform” was the topic.
After a brief introduction on so-called ‘Kodi boxes’, Otto put it to Minder that his company had been looking into the “malware that has been floating through these boxes” and asked him to elaborate.
Minder said his company started its research around two months ago, working with the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA). Of course, DCA has been one of the main sources of Kodi-related malware stories, ostensibly for the protection of consumers.
However, DCA is affiliated with the entertainment industries and there is little doubt they’re being used to promote an anti-piracy agenda. There is nothing inherently wrong with companies trying to protect their content, of course, but doing so in a way that has the potential to mislead the public is bound to raise questions.
Back to the video, Minder told interviewer Otto that his company had been looking at “what the attack footprint would be for malware on the media that would show up on any given Kodi box that would be in someone’s home.”
It’s a curious statement to talk about the streaming media itself providing an attack vector but Minder doubled down, stating that they’d discovered several places on the dark web “where people are selling malware-enabled media.”
Otto didn’t ask Minder to elaborate on these claims and Minder didn’t respond to TF’s request for comment, so we still have no idea what he’s referring to. However, Otto did pour fuel on the confusion by asking Minder about malware which requires capabilities that no ‘Kodi box’ has.
“What happens with [that malware]? Is it a RAT [Remote Access Trojan] that takes over a TV that hooks up to a camera and is almost like spyware? Is it ransomware? What are we seeing?” he asked the security expert.
“Some of that is [to be determined], we don’t know exactly what all of it does,” Minder responded. “But we do know there is a fair amount that enable DDoS capability from the boxes.”
We have no idea what constitutes a “fair amount” of malware but it sounds like multiple instances. Here on TF back in 2017, we broke the news that a single Kodi addon was programmed to repeatedly visit the websites of rivals.
In that single case, the architect of that addon quickly apologized for his actions, the whole thing was concluded inside a week, and we haven’t heard of any similar incident since. But Minder said there are additional risks too.
“There is malware that will actually take over some of the components. We don’t know to what extent, if it’s actually listening to the people in the room or not, that stuff hasn’t really been netted out,” he told Otto.
Indeed, such a thing has never been reported anywhere, not least since “Kodi boxes” don’t have microphones. But after more prompting from Otto, Minder then went on to talk about Kodi installed on platforms other than Android devices. His revelations about supposed ‘Kodi malware’ in this respect are also controversial.
“The delivery mechanism [for the malware] appears to be two primary ways. It’s the Kodi platform itself, which means whatever you load that on. For instance, if you did load that on an [Amazon] Firestick it could still be effective as an attack vector. The other one is the streaming media itself. Embedded in the media itself there are some malware variants,” he said.
As far as we know, malware embedded in streaming media that can be consumed via Kodi or indeed any regular media player is unheard of these days. Nathan Betzen, President of the XBMC Foundation, the group behind Kodi, told TorrentFreak that at least as far as he is aware, such a thing doesn’t exist.
“I’ve never heard of malware in a video stream. I guess anything is possible, but to my knowledge, there have been no reports to that effect,” Betzen said.
Bogdan Botezatu, Senior E-threat Analyst at BitDefender, also told TorrentFreak that he’d seen nothing like that in the wild.
“Malformed video could leverage vulnerabilities in the player itself, but I’m not aware of such attacks happening in the wild,” Botezatu told us.
“Actually, the last time I saw malicious videos distributed via torrent websites was years ago, back in the days when Trojan.Wimad was making the headlines.”
Trojan.Wimad was a trojan discovered in 2005 that was able to download remote files from websites by exploiting the Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology available in Windows. The trojan got onto users’ computers as a licensed-protected video file. Kodi users are certainly not interested in those and in any case, Android-based Kodi boxes are unaffected.
So, apart from the addon incident that lasted for a week in 2017, we’ve never heard of a live Kodi-related malware attack anywhere in the wild. Betzen told us that he’d heard of an instance where a coin miner had spread via third-party code but that’s an issue for thousands of mainstream websites too.
All that being said, we aren’t known as security experts, so we asked security firm AVAST if they could provide information on all Kodi-related malware incidents they have on record.
“Unfortunately, we have not observed any Kodi-related malware risks in the wild,” AVAST Communications Manager Stefanie Smith told TorrentFreak.
Bogdan Botezatu at BitDefender also had no specific instances to report.
“There has been a lot of attention towards Kodi in the past year and most of the ‘security risks’ go around the fact that some addons allow users to stream media directly from websites, so this is mostly a legal issue rather than a cyber-security one,” Botezatu said.
The BitDefender expert did, however, point us to a security advisory from CheckPoint which detailed a software vulnerability affecting Kodi, VLC, and other players using subtitles, which TF reported last year.
“Kodi 17.1 was known to have been vulnerable to a subtitle parsing bug that allowed an attacker to remotely control the Kodi box. This is one of the most serious threats I know of because third parties could rig subtitles uploaded to various repositories and this would go unnoticed for a while,” he said.
While this vulnerability could have been used for nefarious purposes, there is no evidence of it ever being exploited in the wild. And, in common with all responsible platforms, Kodi and all others involved fixed the issue before any damage could be done.
Moving through our list of vendors, TorrentFreak also asked Symantec if they had ever encountered any actual Kodi-related malware. The company told us they had nothing to report at this time but did highlight the same subtitle vulnerability pointed out by BitDefender.
To be clear, vulnerabilities can affect any software, including Windows, but that doesn’t make them inherently dangerous to the consumer as long as they’re disclosed and then fixed in a responsible and timely manner.
However, listening to the entertainment industries and those aligned with them, Kodi use presents an active and serious malware danger to the public, but one with almost zero evidence to support it.
Minder himself didn’t respond to our request for elaboration but we did manage to obtain a copy of a presentation his company prepared for the Conference of Western Attorneys General detailing supposed Kodi threats. The document, dated May 2018, makes for interesting reading.
Perhaps referencing the claims that Kodi malware is available on the dark web, the presentation slides show an advert discovered on the hidden ‘Dream Market’ marketplace. The advert offers subscriptions to an illicit IPTV service but it’s actually one that’s easily accessible on the regular open web. Perhaps most importantly, there is no mention of malware anywhere on the slide.
Dark web IPTV but no malware
The next slide proved interesting since it covers a topic first published here on TorrentFreak at the start of 2018. We revealed how some Kodi setups can be accessed by outside parties if users aren’t careful about the settings for Kodi’s web interface. While this is a known issue, this has nothing to do with malware.
Finally, the last slide had this to say about Kodi and third-party Kodi addons.
“Unbeknownst to the consumer these third‐party add‐ons further introduces [users] to risks such as copyright violations, malware infection, disclosure of IP address and Internet behavior, and the loss of the confidentiality of their communications,” the slide reads (PDF).
While it can’t be disputed that copyright violations can take place, the ever-present malware claim isn’t backed up by any publicly-available information indicating that such an event has happened more than once or twice. To put that into perspective, the AV-TEST Institute says it registers over 250,000 new malicious programs every day.
Furthermore, IP addresses are always disclosed no matter what content users access online, so that point is moot too, along with the supposed issues with confidentiality of communications. However, GroupSense has more to add.
“Additionally, the communication between their Kodi application and the third‐party add‐ons are unencrypted and unauthenticated meaning that an attacker can introduce malicious code into the communication stream or compromise the third‐party add‐on before the recipient (consumer) receives the data; thereby, infecting their device to incorporate into a botnet or steal privileged information such as user credentials,” the slide reads.
We presented these claims to TVAddons, the world’s largest repository of third-party addons and the developer of many, past and present. They weren’t impressed with the claims.
“That argument is quite the stretch. Technically the same would apply to any website you visit that doesn’t use forced-HTTPS. Almost every unofficial add-on repository is hosted through GitHub, which forces encryption,” the site said.
“Kodi ‘boxes’ are used on home networks, not public Wi-Fi. By the time someone could perform a [Man-in-the-Middle] attack on your Kodi box, it would mean that they would have already had to compromise your router. If someone were to go through all that, they could likely do a lot more damage without even considering exploiting Kodi.
“Furthermore, most users use Kodi on their media boxes, where little to no privileged information would be present,” the site added.
Let’s be clear, every single piece of hardware and software, whether on or offline, can be exploited in some way by nefarious players or simply the curious. However, the persistent claim that Kodi users are somehow under constant malware attack isn’t borne out by any publicly available information.
Indeed, one of the world’s most popular anti-piracy vendors in AVAST says they have no record of ANY Kodi-related malware. And Marius Buterchi, PR Manager at the highly-respected BitDefender, couldn’t point us to any specific instances either.
“I just talked with the Lab guys and they told me that they actually haven’t seen any Kodi-related malware in the wild,” he told us Friday.
With that, it now seems the perfect time to either put up or shut up in respect of “Kodi malware.”
If there is malware out there affecting users of Kodi, security and entertainment industry companies making these claims should back them up with solid evidence because, as it stands, the horror stories seem designed to frighten the masses, rather than protect them.
The benefits of full disclosure, detailing the EXACT NAMES of the malware, WHEN they were discovered and by WHOM, and what EXACTLY THEY DO, would be two-fold.
Firstly, the aim of scaring people away from Kodi would have more impact, since the evidence of malware would be hard to ignore. That would be a big plus for the movie and TV industries who are quite rightly concerned about protecting their business.
Secondly, and just as importantly, Kodi users could take steps to protect themselves, which should be the number one priority of any group, organization, or company that claims to be acting in the best interests of consumers and the public in general.
With that in mind, we understand that the Digital Citizens Alliance will publish a new Kodi malware report in the coming weeks. Perhaps it will contain actual evidence of the malware being spoken of continuously in the media.
We would certainly welcome the publication of a specific and detailed list of all malware variants in the wild which specifically target Kodi users. At that point, we can alert the major anti-virus and malware vendors who currently appear to be strangely in the dark.
The interview [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRK13Xgt8c0&w=560&h=315]
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/warning-1.jpg2911200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-06-11 03:46:532018-06-11 03:46:53Rampant Kodi Malware? It’s Time to Either Put Up or Shut Up
Last summer saw the birth of a new anti-piracy initiative, which has already made quite a few headlines.
A coalition of the major Hollywood studios, Amazon, Netflix and several other media properties teamed up, launching the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).
Their ultimate goal is to beat piracy, with pirate streaming boxes as the main target.
In the months that followed, several third-party Kodi-addon developers received threatening letters in the mail and on top of that ACE filed lawsuits against three vendors of alleged pirate streaming boxes.
Their show of force hasn’t gone unnoticed. It triggered some developers and sellers to lay low or move out of the game entirely. At the same time, fully-loaded pirate boxes are now harder to find at ACE member Amazon, which has removed tens of thousands of listings.
These boxes, which ship with a built-in media player as well as pirate addons, were not always hard to find though.
In fact, Dragon Box, which is now being sued by Amazon and the others, was previously sold on Amazon. This is perhaps what prompted the company to argue as a defense that it had “Amazon’s implied authorization to promote and sell the device.”
Clearly, these Dragon Boxes have now been stripped from Amazon’s inventory, but it’s still not hard to find several alleged piracy inducing items there today.
For starters, there are still hundreds if not thousands of cheap media players for sale. While these may be perfectly legal, reviews of Amazon members show, sometimes with screenshots, how these can be easily set up to run pirate addons.
Arguably, without 24/7 moderation this is hard to avoid. After all, people may also buy a PC on Amazon and recommend people to bookmark The Pirate Bay. Perhaps we’re nitpicking.
What may be more problematic for Amazon is the widespread availability of “Kodi tutorials.” While Kodi is perfectly legal, some of these books go into detail on how to add “pirate” addons. The same tools Amazon is suing Tickbox, Set TV, and Dragon Box over.
“Do you want to install Area 51 IPTV or Set TV on your Kodi and Amazon Fire TV Stick or Fire TV?” one guide mentions, referencing Set TV specifically. “Do you want to install Supremacy, Dogs Bollock, Covenant, Genesis Reborn and Neptune Rising?” it adds.
One of the many Kodi guides
Another book offers help on “How To Install Kodi And The Latest Downloads On Any Firestick” mentioning the addon Exodus, among others. Exodus was famously highlighted as a “pirate” addon by the MPA.
And then there are books discussing how to install a wide range of addons with a “pirate” reputation, including Covenant which is specifically highlighted in the ACE lawsuits as a bad actor.
None of these addons have been declared illegal in court, as far as we know, and writing about it isn’t illegal by definition. But, it is clear that Amazon itself sees these as pirate tools.
This leads to the awkward situation where, on the one hand, Amazon is suing vendors who sell devices that ship with the Covenant addon, while they sell books that show people how to set this up themselves.
We won’t make any judgments on whether these books or addons encourage infringement in any way, that’s not up to us. But for Amazon it’s not a good look, to say the least, especially since part of the profits for these titles go into its own pockets.
In years gone by, an event like the upcoming FIFA World Cup wouldn’t have been drastically affected by piracy.
Most people like to watch matches as they happen so systems like BitTorrent, that offer after-the-fact content, weren’t particularly useful.
These days, however, there are hundreds of unlicensed platforms fully capable of transmitting live content, meaning that the World Cup is within reach of anyone with a half decent Internet connection.
With this in mind, anti-piracy companies are likely to be working overtime during the World Cup in an effort to take down live streams as soon as matches get underway. Whether they will enjoy much success will remain to be seen but for the Sony Entertainment Network, the battle has already begun.
Through Indian anti-piracy outfit Markscan, Sony has this week been sending out preemptive warnings to pirate sites. A copy shared with TorrentFreak by a sports streaming platform reveals Sony claiming TV, radio, mobile and broadband broadcasting rights to the World Cup in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The company warns of serious consequences if sites don’t heed their warnings.
“[Our] Client will be showing the matches live and content related to FIFA 2018 in various languages across the following channels comprising of Sony Entertainment Network which are designated to the official broadcasters of FIFA 2018,” the letter from Markscan reads.
The company then lists 10 channels that will be broadcasting content, including Sony ESPN, a collaboration between the two companies in India.
“By way of the present caution notice issued to you, we caution you and your website, not to indulge in any broadcasting, rebroadcasting, making available for viewing and / or communicating to the public, the FIFA 2018 matches and any content associated thereof, without obtaining permission / authorization from our client,” it continues.
Markscan states that the site in question will be monitored for any acts of infringement and if any take place it shall be compelled to “initiate legal proceedings (civil and/or criminal) should you engage in violation of our Client’s rights despite the present notice.”
The person who received the notice from Markscan asked for his identity and his site to remain anonymous. However, he confirmed that he streams sports and the warning won’t make any difference.
“No, that’s not gonna stop us,” he told TF. “We will stream the whole FIFA World Cup in our platform.”
Due to the sheer number of legal services the World Cup will be made available on, stopping all unauthorized streams will prove absolutely impossible. Indeed, due to the huge number of unlicensed sites around today, it’s likely to be one of the most-pirated live sports tournaments of all time.
This means that despite best and preemptive efforts, any takedowns will prove a drop in the ocean.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/grass-soccer.jpg00Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-06-09 21:44:522018-06-09 21:44:52Sony Sends Preemptive FIFA World Cup Copyright Warnings
Late last month, Internet provider Grande Communications requested assistance from U.S. Marshals to serve piracy tracking company IP-Echelon.
The unusual request is linked to the RIAA lawsuit, where Grande stands accused of failing to disconnect repeat infringers.
Specifically, the ISP wants to find out more about a DMCA notice scam where scammers tried to extract payments.
This phishing scam used fake piracy notifications, abusing IP-Echelon’s name. Since the RIAA lawsuit is partly based on evidence from IP-Echelon’s competitor Rightscorp, Grande believes that it has grounds to find out more about the scam.
After the ISP was unable to reach the piracy tracking company at its Hollywood office it requested help from the Marshals. However, this week the cavalry was called off, as IP-Echelon’s attorney came forward to accept service of the subpoena.
While assistance from US law enforcement is no longer needed, the legal paperwork makes clear that the RIAA is not happy with Grande’s efforts.
Earlier this week, before the call for Marshal assistance was retracted, the RIAA opposed the request. While the issue is moot now, it does reveal the music industry’s views on using the phishing scam as evidence in the lawsuit.
The RIAA told the court that the lawsuit against Grande is about copyright infringements of subscribers, who were put on notice by Rightscorp, not IP-Echelon.
“IP-Echelon appears to provide services similar to Rightscorp’s services. But IP-Echelon is not a party to this litigation. Plaintiffs have not retained IP-Echelon in connection with this litigation or in connection with Grande in any way,” the RIAA wrote.
“Instead, Grande seeks to serve its subpoena because IP-Echelon was apparently the victim of a ‘phishing’ scam in which certain ISPs, including Grande, received fake infringement notices related to copyrighted movies purporting to be from IP-Echelon.”
The RIAA doesn’t deny that Grande and others may have fallen prey to this scam. However, the music group doesn’t see how this is relevant in this case. Instead, they see the efforts to obtain additional evidence as a fishing expedition.
“Grande’s subpoena for evidence about this phishing scam is itself a fishing expedition,” the RIAA writes.
If Grande questions the authenticity of Rightcorp’s notices it can do so through discovery directed to Rightscorp, the RIAA stresses. The music group sees no justification for going after IP-Echelon.
Thus far Grande hasn’t provided any details about its intentions regarding the issue at hand. However, it is likely that they want to use the scam to argue that not all notices can be trusted.
The RIAA clearly doesn’t see the point in doing so and it informs the court that the ISP has already pursued a series of non-party subpoenas, claiming that Grande tries to shift the focus of the case away from its own conduct.
If IP-Echelon testifies, the RIAA expects that anything they’ll bring to the table will be inadmissible.
“The subpoena to IP-Echelon will not lead to the discovery of any admissible evidence; it will only cause the Court and the parties to waste time on pointless discovery that will not aid resolution of the issues in this case,” the RIAA concludes.
—
A copy of RIAA’s opposition to Grande’s motion is available here (pdf). Grande’s notice to withdraw its motion can be found here (pdf).
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/surge-feat.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-06-09 06:43:512018-06-09 06:43:51RIAA: ISP’s Interest in Piracy Phishing Scam Is a ‘Fishing Expedition’
For the past several years, Russia has been attempting to censor the Internet by restricting access to a large range of sites. With thousands blocked, pirate sites are some of the main targets but any site with content objectionable to the state can find itself in the crosshairs.
As more blocks have been introduced, the response by many Internet users has been to circumvent them. For pirate sites, proxies and mirrors have been a key mechanism but increasingly citizens have turned to VPNs and other anonymizers that are able to skirt around any ban.
As a result, VPNs and anonymizers themselves have come under scrutiny, with authorities demanding that those operating in Russia register themselves with the state. Of course, many do not, which has led to a cat-and-mouse game.
Historically it’s been easy to find a VPN or similar service using search engines but the Russian Government has a new tool to make that harder. This week, following a third and final reading, the State Duma adopted a bill introducing fines for search engines that provide links to outlawed sites, VPNs and anonymization tools.
According to the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, failure of online services to stop publishing links to blocked information resources will result in fines of 3,000 to 5,000 rubles ($48 to $80) for citizens, up to 50,000 rubles ($800) for officials, and between 500,000 to 700,000 ($8,019 to $11,227) for legal entities.
In order to advise which sites and services are banned in the country, the Federal State Information System (FGIS) will provide access to an up-to-date database of blocked domains. Search engines will be required to connect to this system within 30 days and those who fail to do so will face fines similar to those detailed above.
TASS reports that the amendments are concomitant with the law on anonymizers adopted at the end of the spring session of the State Duma in 2017. This legislation requires owners and operators of VPN and anonymization systems to first register their identities with the authorities and then connect to the blocked sites register.
Those who fail to comply with the requirements can find themselves fined and placed on the blocked sites register, which is maintained by Russian telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/network.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2018-06-08 15:42:532018-06-08 15:42:53Russian Govt Approves Fines For Search Engines Linking to Banned VPNs
On May 8, 2010, German citizen Michael Strotzer was the operator of an Internet connection from where an audiobook was made available on a peer-to-peer network.
Germany company Bastei Lübbe AG owned the copyrights to that content and had not given Strotzer permission to share it online. So, on October 28, 2010, Bastei Lübbe wrote to Strotzer with a demand for him to stop infringing their copyrights.
When the company’s letter failed to have the desired effect, Bastei Lübbe took Strotzer to court in Germany in an effort to obtain financial compensation for the alleged damages caused.
Strotzer denied that he had personally carried out the copyright infringement and said that his home network was secure. He also noted that his parents, who lived at the same address, had access to his network.
However, they did not have the audiobook on their computer and did not use file-sharing networks. In addition, he said that their computer had been turned off at the time when the audiobook was shared online.
The Court dismissed the action against Strotzer on the grounds that the copyright infringement could not be directly attributed to him since his parents could also have shared the audiobook. in response, Bastei Lübbe filed an appeal with the Regional Court of First Instance in Munich.
The Court said it was inclined to assume that Michael Strotzer was responsible for the infringement since it wasn’t clear from his statements that third parties had used his network and it was “highly likely” that the infringement was committed by him.
Case law, however, presented issues. The Federal Court previously ruled that it is for the copyright holder to prove the infringement. It also ruled that the Internet connection owner is likely to have committed the infringement if no-one else could have used his Internet connection at the time of the infringement.
That being said, if the internet connection was not sufficiently secure or was available to use by other people at the time of the infringement, the connection owner should disclose the identity of those people, effectively putting those people in the frame.
However, under Article 7 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which ensures the right to respect for a citizen’s private and family life, it was argued that the owner of the connection is not required to provide further information if a family member has had access to his network.
With this in mind, the Munich court referred the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for guidance. Advocate General Szpunar published his opinion yesterday in 21 different languages (except English) but thanks to lawyer Eleonora Rosati, we have his findings in a nutshell.
“[Advocate General Szpunar] advised the CJEU to rule that EU law does not require to provide, at the national level, a presumption of liability of the owner of an internet connection for copyright infringements committed through such connection,” Rosati writes.
“However, if national law envisages such presumption to ensure the protection of copyright, this shall be applied coherently to guarantee effective copyright protection.
“In this sense, the right to family and private life under Article 7 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights may not be interpreted in such as way as to deprive copyright owners of any possibility of effective protection of their own intellectual property, the protection of which is mandated by Article 17(2) of the EU Charter,” Rosati adds.
In other words, if a country (in this case Germany) has national laws that reduce the burdens of proof in order to help protect copyright law (something which is not mandatory under EU law), it should not be the case that rightsholders are unable to enforce their rights due to an apparent conflict with the right to respect for private family life.
“If one was able to invoke Article 7 of the Charter to avoid having to disclose the names of those who might have used the connection, then the copyright owner would be deprived of his IP right,” Rosati explains.
“In any case, should a national court deem such intrusion into one’s own right to family life inadmissible, then the owner of the internet connection should be presumed liable for the relevant infringement, insofar as the copyright owner has no other means to identify the actual infringers.”
When cases are referred to the CJEU, the opinions and subsequent decisions of the Court often contain language which aims to balance what are often seen as conflicting rights. In this case, it’s suggested that the right to family life should not be (ab)used in order to avoid liability in a matter where the rights of another party have been infringed.
The opinion of the Advocate General is not binding but the CJEU generally follows such advice.
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Online piracy is often portrayed as a simple problem. People download or stream something that’s not theirs because they don’t want to pay.
While this may apply in some cases, the reality is much more complex. In fact, over the years research has repeatedly shown that pirates are often the entertainment industry’s best customers.
Today, there are new findings to back this claim up. And to add some weight, they are released by the London-based anti-piracy company MUSO, which works closely with various copyright holders.
The company conducted a survey among 1,000 UK adults, through CitizenMe, to shed more light on how and why pirates consume content the way they do. The findings are noteworthy, to say the least.
Of all the people surveyed the vast majority, 60 percent, admitted that they illegally streamed or downloaded music, film or TV-shows in the past. This could have been yesterday or even two years ago.
Interestingly, the same pirates often try legal sources first. In fact, 83 percent say they usually try to find what they are looking for through official channels before trying anything else. This suggests that most pirates are also legal consumers.
“The entertainment industry tends to envisage piracy audiences as a criminal element, and writes them off as money lost – but they are wrong to do so,” says Paul Briley, CCO of MUSO, commenting on the findings.
“The reality is that the majority of people who have gone through the effort of finding and accessing such unlicensed content are, first and foremost, fans – fans who are more often than not trying to get content legally if they can.”
The problem appears to be that these pirates often can’t find what they’re looking for through their preferred legal channels. The top reasons for people to ‘pirate’ are that content is not available (34.9%), that it’s siloed or difficult to access (34.7%), or that they can’t afford it (35.2%).
MUSO notes that copyright holders should not dismiss the pirate audience as these people are actually engaged and valuable consumers. Instead, the entertainment industries should look for better ways to serve this crowd.
In recent years Hollywood has already made a lot of effort to make content available online. And while Netflix and other streaming services have made a positive impact, they’re not a silver bullet.
MUSO’s survey reveals that 91% of all pirates already have a streaming subscription, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify or Apple Music. That’s more than their non-pirating counterparts, of which less than 80% subscribe to one of these services.
The problem is that people sometimes need over a dozen separate subscriptions to access all the content they want. There’s no single service that offers everything in one place. This is one of the main reasons why piracy is still very relevant.
“There is a prevailing myth that streaming services have killed piracy, but unfortunately this just isn’t the case,” Briley notes.
“While streaming services have made huge amounts of content more readily available, it’s still siloed. The results of this survey demonstrate that if the show consumers are looking for isn’t available on their particular on-demand service, they will turn to unlicensed alternatives because it is too expensive to subscribe to every single service.”
MUSO’s previous research has shown that streaming piracy remains on the rise and this trend could continue going forward, for video at least.
It’s also worth mentioning that most pirates know very well that they are not supposed to do so. More than half, 53 percent, said that they think it is wrong to pirate, which is a higher percentage than those who never downloaded or streamed illegally.
While people’s reasons to pirate are clear, the solution is not as straightforward. Simply offering all content under one roof might solve the piracy problem, but it doesn’t automatically mean that more revenue will come in.
The film industry, in particular, relies heavily on complex rights deals, windowed releases, and exclusivity agreements. And with Disney launching its own streaming service, this may only get worse.
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Online piracy is often portrayed as a simple problem. People download or stream something that’s not theirs because they don’t want to pay. 
