Court Orders Tickbox to Keep Pirate Streaming Addons Out


Kodi-powered set-top boxes are a great way to to stream video content to a TV, but sellers who ship these devices with unauthorized add-ons give them a bad reputation.

According to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy partnership comprised of Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies, Tickbox TV is one of these bad actors.

Last year, ACE filed a lawsuit against the Georgia-based company, which sells Kodi-powered set-top boxes that stream a variety of popular media.

According to ACE, these devices are nothing more than pirate tools, allowing buyers to stream copyright-infringing content and being advertised as such. The coalition, therefore, asked the court for an injunction to prevent Tickbox from facilitating copyright infringement by removing all pirate add-ons from previously sold devices.

This week US District Court Judge Michael Fitzgerald issued a preliminary injunction, which largely sides with the movie companies. According to the Judge, there is sufficient reason to believe that Tickbox can be held liable for inducing copyright infringement.

One of the claims is that Tickbox promoted its service for piracy purposes, and according to the Judge the movie companies provided enough evidence to make this likely. This includes various advertising messages the box seller used.

“There is ample evidence that, at least prior to Plaintiffs’commencement of this action, TickBox explicitly advertised the Device as a means to accessing unauthorized versions of copyrighted audiovisual content,” Judge Fitzgerald writes.

In its defense, Tickbox argued that it merely offered a computer which users can then configure to their liking. However, the Judge points out that the company went further, as it actively directed its users to install certain themes (builds) to watch movies, TV and sports.

“Thus, the fact that the Device is just a ‘computer’ that can be used for infringing and noninfringing purposes does not insulate TickBox from liability if [..] the Device is actually used for infringing purposes and TickBox encourages such use.”

Taking these and several other factors into account, the Court ruled that a preliminary injunction is warranted at this stage. After the lawsuit was filed, Tickbox already voluntarily removed much of the inducing advertisements and addons, and this will remain so.

The preliminary injunction compels TickBox to the current version of the user interface, without easy access to pirate add-ons. The devices should no longer contain links to any of the themes and addons that the movie companies have flagged as copyright infringing.

Tickbox had argued that a broad injunction could shut down its business, but the court counters this. Customers will still be able to use the box for legitimate purposes. If they are no longer interested it suggests that piracy was the main draw.

“[A]n injunction of this scope will not ‘shut down Defendant’s business’ as TickBox contends. In the event that such an injunction does shut TickBox down, that will be indicative not of an unjustifiably burdensome injunction, but of a nonviable business model,” Judge Fitzgerald writes.

The preliminary injunction is not final yet as there are several questions still unanswered.

It’s unclear, for example, if and how Tickbox should remove addons from previously sold devices. The Court, therefore, instructs both parties to attempt to reach agreement on these outstanding issues, to include them in an updated injunction.

The above findings are preliminary and apply specifically to the injunction request and the case itself will continue. However, the Court’s early opinion suggests that Tickbox has plenty of work ahead to prove its innocence.

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A copy of the preliminary injunction is available here (pdf), and Judge Fitzgerald’s findings can be found here (pdf).

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Huge Rightsholder Coalition Calls on New EU Presidency to Remove Safe Harbors


While piracy of all kinds is often viewed as a threat to the creative industries, a new type of unauthorized content distribution has been gaining prominence over the past few years.

Sites like YouTube, that allow their users to upload all kinds of material – some of it infringing – are now seen as undermining a broad range of industries that rely on both video and audio to generate revenue.

The cries against such User Uploaded Content (UUC) sites are often led by the music industry, which complains that the safe harbor provisions of copyright law are being abused while UUC sites generate review from infringing content. In tandem, while that free content is made available, UUC sites have little or no incentive to pay for official content licenses, and certainly not at a rate considered fair by the industry.

This mismatch, between the price that content industries would like to achieve for licenses and what they actually achieve, is now known as the ‘Value Gap’.

Today, in advance of an EU meeting on the draft Copyright Directive, a huge coalition of rightsholder groups is calling on the new EU Presidency not to pass up an “unmissable opportunity” to find a solution to their problems.

In a letter addressed to the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which Bulgaria officially took over January 1, 2018, an army of rightsholders lay out their demands.

“We represent musical, audio-visual, literary, visual authors; performers; book, press, musical, scientific, technical and medical publishers; recorded music, film and TV producers; football leagues; broadcasters; distributors and photo agencies. These are at the very heart of Europe’s creative sector,” the groups write.

“We have formed an alliance to campaign for a solution to a major problem which is holding back our sector and jeopardizing future sustainability – the Transfer of Value, otherwise known as the Value Gap.

“User uploaded content services have become vast distributors of our creative works e.g. film, music, photos, broadcasts, text and sport content – all while refusing to negotiate fair or any copyright licences with us as right holders.”

Value Gap Coalition

Featuring groups representing many thousands of rightsholders, the coalition is the broadest yet to call for action against the ‘Value Gap’. Or, to put it another way, to demand a change in the law to prevent sites like YouTube, Facebook and other hosting platforms from “hiding” behind provisions designed to protect them from the infringing activities of others.

“This problem is caused by a lack of clarity surrounding the application of copyright to certain online services and the abuse of European copyright ‘safe harbor’ rules in the e-Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) by those services,” the coalition writes.

Referencing the EU Copyright Directive proposal tabled by the European Commission in September 2016, the coalition says that UUC services communicating content to the public should be compelled to obtain licenses for that content. If they play an “active role” through promotion or optimization of content, UUC platforms should be denied ‘safe harbors’ under copyright law, they argue.

Noting that there is “no solution” to the problem without the above fixes, the coalition cites last year’s ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union which found that The Pirate Bay knowingly provide users with a platform to share copyright-infringing links.

“It is important to recall that the underlying policy objective of this legislation is to address the current unfairness in the online market due to the misapplication of copyright liability rules by UUC services. We would therefore like to stress that the focus should remain on finding effective solutions to tackle this issue.

“As an alliance, we look forward to working with your Presidency to achieve an effective solution to the Value Gap problem for the benefit of Europe,” the coalition concludes.

The letter, addressed to Prime Minister Borissov, Minister Pavlova and Minister Banov, arrives in the wake of an alert sounded by several Members of the European Parliament.

Earlier this month they warned that the EU’s proposed mandatory upload filters – which could see UUC sites pre-screen user-uploaded content for infringement – amount to “censorship machines” that will do more harm than good.

The full letter can be found here (pdf)

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T-Mobile Blocks Pirate Sites Then Reports Itself For Possible Net Neutrality Violation


For the past eight years, Austria has been struggling with the thorny issue of pirate site blocking. Local ISPs have put up quite a fight but site blocking is now a reality, albeit with a certain amount of confusion.

After a dizzying route through the legal system, last November the Supreme Court finally ruled that The Pirate Bay and other “structurally-infringing” sites including 1337x.to and isohunt.to can be blocked, if rightsholders have exhausted all other options.

The Court based its decision on the now-familiar BREIN v Filmspeler and BREIN v Ziggo and XS4All cases that received European Court of Justice rulings last year. However, there is now an additional complication, this time on the net neutrality front.

After being passed in October 2015 and coming into force in April 2016, the Telecom Single Market (TSM) Regulation established the principle of non-discriminatory traffic management in the EU. The regulation still allows for the blocking of copyright-infringing websites but only where supported by a clear administrative or judicial decision. This is where T-Mobile sees a problem.

In addition to blocking sites named specifically by the court, copyright holders also expect the ISP to block related platforms, such as clones and mirrors, that aren’t specified in the same manner.

So, last week, after blocking several obscure Pirate Bay clones such as proxydl.cf, the ISP reported itself to the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications (RTR) for a potential net neutrality breach.

“It sounds paradoxical, but this should finally bring legal certainty in a long-standing dispute over pirate sites. T-Mobile Austria has filed with regulatory authority RTR a kind of self-report, after blocking several sites on the basis of a warning by rights holders,” T-Mobile said in a statement.

“The background to the communication to the RTR, through which T-Mobile intends to obtain an assessment by the regulator, is a very unsatisfactory legal situation in which operators have no opportunity to behave in conformity with the law.

“The service provider is forced upon notification by the copyright owner to even judge about possible copyright infringements. At the same time, the provider is violating the principle of net neutrality by setting up a ban.”

T-Mobile says the problem is complicated by rightsholders who, after obtaining a blocking order forcing named ISPs to block named pirate sites (as required under EU law), send similar demands to other ISPs that were not party to court proceedings. The rightsholders also send blocking demands when blocked sites disappear and reappear under a new name, despite those new names not being part of the original order.

According to industry body Internet Service Providers Austria (ISPA), there is a real need for clarification. It’s hoped that T-Mobile reporting itself for a potential net neutrality breach will have the desired effect.

“For more than two years, we have been trying to find a solution with the involved interest groups and the responsible ministry, which on the one hand protects the rights of the artists and on the other hand does not force the providers into the role of a judge,” complains Maximilian Schubert, Secretary General of the ISPA.

“The willingness of the rights holders to compromise had remained within manageable limits. Now they are massively increasing the pressure and demanding costly measures, which the service providers see as punishment for them providing legal security for their customers for many years.”

ISPA hopes that the telecoms regulator will now help to clear up this uncertainty.

“We now hope that the regulator will give a clear answer here. Because from our point of view, the assessment of legality cannot and should not be outsourced to companies,” Schubert concludes.

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New Anti-Piracy Coalition Calls For Canadian Website Blocking


In recent years pirate sites have been blocked around the world, from Europe, through Asia, and even Down Under.

While many of the large corporations backing these blockades have their roots in North America, blocking efforts have been noticeably absent there. This should change, according to a new anti-piracy coalition that was launched in Canada this week.

Fairplay Canada, which consists of a broad range of organizations with ties to the entertainment industry, calls on the local telecom regulator CRTC to institute a national website blocking program.

The coalition’s members include Bell, Cineplex, Directors Guild of Canada, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Movie Theatre Association of Canada, and Rogers Media, which all share the goal of addressing the country’s rampant piracy problem.

The Canadian blocklist should be maintained by a yet to be established non-profit organization called “Independent Piracy Review Agency” (IPRA) and both IPRA and the CRTC would be overseen by the Federal Court of Appeal, the organizations propose.

“What we are proposing has been effective in countries like the UK, France, and Australia,” says Dr. Shan Chandrasekar, President and CEO of Asian Television Network International Limited (ATN), who is filing Fairplay Canada’s application.

“We are ardent supporters of this incredible coalition that has been formed to propose a new tool to empower the CRTC to address online piracy in Canada. We have great faith in Canadian regulators to modernize the tools available to help creators protect the content they make for Canadians’ enjoyment.”

The proposal is unique in the sense that it’s the first of its kind in North America and also has support from major players in the Telco industry. Since most large ISPs also have ties to media companies of their own, the latter is less surprising as it may seem at first glance.

Bell, for example, is not only the largest Internet provider in Canada but also owns the television broadcasting and production company Bell Media, which applauds the new plan.

“Bell is pleased to work with our partners across the industry and the CRTC on this important step in ensuring the long-term viability of the Canadian creative sector,” says Randy Lennox, President of Bell Media.

“Digital rights holders need up-to-date tools to combat piracy where it’s happening, on the Internet, and the process proposed by the coalition will provide just that, fairly, openly and effectively,” he adds.

Thus far the Government’s response to the plan has been rather reserved. When an early version of the plans leaked last month, Canadaland quoted a spokesperson who said that the Government is committed to opening doors instead of building walls.

Digital rights group OpenMedia goes a step further and brands the proposal a censorship plan which will violate net neutrality and limit people’s right to freedom of expression.

“Everybody agrees that content creators deserved to be paid for their work. But the proposal from this censorship coalition goes too far,” Executive Director Laura Tribe says.

“FairPlay Canada’s proposal is like using a machine gun to kill a mosquito. It will undoubtedly lead to legitimate content and speech being censored online violating our right to free expression and the principles of net neutrality, which the federal government has consistently pledged support for.”

While CTRC is reviewing FairPlay Canada’s plans, OpenMedia has launched a petition to stop the effort in its tracks, which has been signed by more than 45,000 Canadians to date.

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Udemy Targets ‘Pirate’ Site Giving Away its Paid Courses For Free


While there’s no shortage of people who advocate free sharing of movies and music, passions are often raised when it comes to the availability of educational information.

Significant numbers of people believe that learning should be open to all and that texts and associated materials shouldn’t be locked away by copyright holders trying to monetize knowledge. Of course, people who make a living creating learning materials see the position rather differently.

A clash of these ideals is brewing in the United States where online learning platform Udemy has been trying to have some of its courses taken down from FreeTutorials.us, a site that makes available premium tutorials and other learning materials for free.

Early December 2017, counsel acting for Udemy and a number of its individual and corporate instructors (Maximilian Schwarzmüller, Academind GmbH, Peter Dalmaris, Futureshock Enterprises, Jose Marcial Portilla, and Pierian Data) wrote to FreeTutorials.us with DMCA takedown notice.

“Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’), this communication serves as a notice of infringement and request for removal of certain web content available on freetutorials.us,” the letter reads.

“I hereby request that you remove or disable access to the material listed in Exhibit A in as expedient a fashion as possible. This communication does not constitute a waiver of any right to recover damages incurred by virtue of any such unauthorized activities, and such rights as well as claims for other relief are expressly retained.”

A small sample of Exhibit A

On January 10, 2018, the same law firm wrote to Cloudflare, which provides services to FreeTutorials. The DMCA notice asked Cloudflare to disable access to the same set of infringing content listed above.

It seems likely that whatever happened next wasn’t to Udemy’s satisfaction. On January 16, an attorney from the same law firm filed a DMCA subpoena at a district court in California. A DMCA subpoena can enable a copyright holder to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer without having to file a lawsuit and without needing a signature from a judge.

The subpoena was directed at Cloudflare, which provides services to FreeTutorials. The company was ordered to hand over “all identifying information identifying the owner, operator and/or contact person(s) associated with the domain www.freetutorials.us, including but not limited to name(s), address(es), telephone number(s), email address(es), Internet protocol connection records, administrative records and billing records from the time the account was established to the present.”

On January 26, the date by which Cloudflare was ordered to hand over the information, Cloudflare wrote to FreeTutorials with a somewhat late-in-the-day notification.

“We received the attached subpoena regarding freetutorials.us, a domain managed through your Cloudflare account. The subpoena requires us to provide information in our systems related to this website,” the company wrote.

“We have determined that this is a valid subpoena, and we are required to provide the requested information. In accordance with our Privacy Policy, we are informing you before we provide any of the requested subscriber information. We plan to turn over documents in response to the subpoena on January 26th, 2018, unless you intervene in the case.”

With that deadline passing last Friday, it’s safe to say that Cloudflare has complied with the subpoena as the law requires. However, TorrentFreak spoke with FreeTutorials who told us that the company doesn’t hold anything useful on them.

“No, they have nothing,” the team explained.

Noting that they’ll soon dispense with the services of Cloudflare, the team confirmed that they had received emails from Udemy and its instructors but hadn’t done a lot in response.

“How about a ‘NO’? was our answer to all the DMCA takedown requests from Udemy and its Instructors,” they added.

FreeTutorials (FTU) are affiliated with FreeCoursesOnline (FCO) and seem passionate about what they do. In common with others who distribute learning materials online, they express a belief in free education for all, irrespective of financial resources.

“We, FTU and FCO, are a group of seven members assorted as a team from different countries and cities. We are JN, SRZ aka SunRiseZone, Letap, Lihua Google Drive, Kaya, Zinnia, Faiz MeemBazooka,” a spokesperson revealed.

“We’re all members and colleagues and we also have our own daily work and business stuff to do. We have been through that phase of life when we didn’t have enough money to buy books and get tuition or even apply for a good course that we always wanted to have, so FTU & FCO are just our vision to provide Free Education For Everyone.

“We would love to change our priorities towards our current and future projects, only if we manage to get some faithful FTU’ers to join in and help us to grow together and make FTU a place it should be.”

TorrentFreak requested comment from Udemy but at the time of publication, we were yet to hear back. However, we did manage to get in touch with Jonathan Levi, an Udemy instructor who sent this takedown notice to the site in October 2017:

“I’m writing to you on behalf of SuperHuman Enterprises, LLC. You are in violation of our copyright, using our images, and linking to pirated copies of our courses. Remove them IMMEDIATELY or face severe legal action….You have 48 hours to comply,” he wrote, adding:

“And in case you’re going to say I don’t have evidence that I own the files, it’s my fucking face in the videos.”

Levi says that the site had been non-responsive so now things are being taken to the next level.

“They don’t reply to takedowns, so we’ve joined a class action lawsuit against FTU lead by Udemy and a law firm specializing in this type of thing,” Levi concludes.

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Piracy Can Help Music Sales of Many Artists, Research Shows


The debate over whether online piracy helps or hurts music sales has been dragging on for several decades now.

The issue has been researched extensively with both positive and negative effects being reported, often varying based on the type of artist, music genre and media, among other variables.

One of the more extensive studies was published this month in the peer-reviewed Information Economics and Policy journal, by Queen’s University economics researcher Jonathan Lee.

In a paper titled ‘Purchase, pirate, publicize: Private-network music sharing and market album sales’ he examined the effect of BitTorrent-based piracy on both digital and physical music sales.

We covered an earlier version of the study two years ago when it was still a work in progress. With updates to the research methods and a data sample, the results are now more clear.

The file-sharing data was obtained from an unnamed private BitTorrent tracker and covers a data set of 250,000 albums and more than five million downloads. These were matched to US sales data for thousands of albums provided by Nielsen SoundScan.

By refining the estimation approach and updating the matching technique, the final version of the paper shows some interesting results.

Based on the torrent tracker data, Lee finds that piracy can boost sales of mid-tier artists, both for physical CDs and digital downloads. For the most popular artists, this effect is reversed. In both cases, the impact is the largest for digital sales.

“I now find that top artists are harmed and mid-tier artists may be helped in both markets, but that these effects are larger for digital sales,” Lee tells TorrentFreak. “This is consistent with the idea that people are more willing to switch between digital piracy and digital sales than between digital piracy and physical CDs.”

The findings lead to the conclusion that there is no ideal ‘one-size-fits-all’ response to piracy. In fact, some unauthorized sharing may be a good thing.

This is in line with observations from musicians themselves over the past years. Several top artists have admitted the positive effects of piracy, including Ed Sheeran, who recently said that he owes his career to it.

“I know that’s a bad thing to say, because I’m part of a music industry that doesn’t like illegal file sharing,” Sheeran said in an interview with CBS. “Illegal file sharing was what made me. It was students in England going to university, sharing my songs with each other.”

Sheeran sharing on TPB

Today, Sheeran is in a totally different position of course. As one of the top artists, he would now be hurt by piracy. However, the new stars of tomorrow may still reap the benefits.

According to the researcher, the music industry should realize that shutting down pirate sites may not always be the best option. On the contrary, file-sharing sites may be useful as promotional platforms in some cases.

“Following above, a policy of total shutdown of private file sharing networks seems excessively costly (compared with their relatively small impact on sales) and unwise (as a one-size-fits-all policy). It would be better to make legal consumption more convenient, reducing the demand for piracy as an alternative to purchasing,” Lee tells us.

“It would also be smart to experiment with releasing music onto piracy networks themselves, especially for up-and-coming artists, similar to the free promotion afforded by commercial radio.”

The researcher makes another interesting extrapolation from the findings. In recent years, some labels and artists have signed exclusive deals with some streaming platforms. This means that content is not available everywhere, and this fragmentation may make piracy look more appealing.

“Here you can view piracy as a non-fragmented alternative platform to Spotify et al. Thus consumers will have a strong incentive to use a single non-fragmented platform (piracy) over having multiple subscriptions to fragmented platforms,” Lee says.

It would be better for the labels to publish their music on all platforms, and to make these more appealing and convenient than the pirate alternative.

The data used for the research was collected several years ago before the big streaming boom, so it might be that the results are different today. However, it is clear that the effect of piracy on sales is not as uniform as the music industry often portrays it.

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Arrr: Top Tips to Spot The Differences Between Pirate and Legal Sites


There’s a persistent theory that people exist who are using pirate sites but don’t realize that they’re unauthorized and/or illegal. While that seems likely, it’s hard to believe the volumes are particularly significant.

Nevertheless, numerous campaigns have attempted to enlighten consumers as to what is and isn’t legal and this week the Federation Against Copyright Theft raised the issue once again.

Tagging onto UK anti-fraud awareness campaign Take Five, the anti-piracy outfit asked people to take five minutes to consider the legality of the site or service they’re currently consuming.

<Take Five….

FACT’s advice above is basically sound. They ask people to do their research on the sites FindAnyFilm and GetItRight, both of which should give consumers an idea of where content can be obtained legally. Trouble is, neither resource is comprehensive, so five minutes of research could turn into ten or fifteen, by which time people could get bored of trying to do the right thing.

So, with this in mind, here are a few light-hearted tips to help people spot whether the site they’re using is authorized by the movie industry or a product of a swashbuckling mind.

Does the site want your name, address and life history?

If the site you’re accessing looks really polished, has a positive Wikipedia page, but won’t give you anything more than a trailer without handing over your full identity and credit card details, this is probably a legal platform.

Since they have to license movies from Hollywood and other filmmakers, sites like these cost a lot of money to run. As a result, they want your money to pay the bills and they like to make sure you can pay up front.

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. No money, no access – capiche?

Does the site look polished but doesn’t ask for a dime?

If the site you’re looking at seems like the one mentioned above but doesn’t seem to care who you are, this is starting to look like a pirate site. If it then offers up thousands of movies and TV shows without accessing your wallet or dental records, you’re definitely on the high seas.

While this position is pleasurable for people with a penchant for piracy, there are plenty of points to ponder.

Is the site already starting to get on your nerves a bit?

You’re browsing a site, looking at all the beautiful movies and TV shows on offer, then one takes your fancy. You click it with both anticipation and excitement but instead of the video appearing, a new tab or popup appears in your browser.

If this unexpected visitor offers a penis extension, a night out with a girl in your area, or a get-rich-quick scheme you feel you need but don’t understand, this is probably a pirate site.

These stupid offers are the price you pay for not paying. This is how it works.

While movies and TV shows cost money to create and require financial support from the consumer, pirate sites use various techniques to obtain that content for free. Then, with a wave of a magic wand, they cover the costs of delivering it to pirates using advertising.

However, due to pressures put on them by the content industries, pirate sites generally have to serve up poor quality ads. Crappy ads everywhere = almost definitely a pirate site.

The movie site i’m using is really confusing, is it legal?

After obtaining your banking details, mother’s maiden name, and blood type, legal sites are generally very straightforward. Pleasurably content and feature-rich, services like Netflix and Spotify are simplicity itself to use. Their interfaces are clean, tidy, and don’t do anything unexpected. These are just some of the key features you get in return for handing over your money to a legal service.

On the other hand, however, if you’re on a site that has six different download buttons and none of them seem to actually download anything, this is probably a pirate site, and a low grade one at that.

Back away quickly, regroup, and never go back – unless you have an ad-blocker turned all the way up to 11, of course.

Wow! This site has all the latest movies! Is it legal?

Some of Hollywood’s greatest assets are its just-released movies. It holds these tightly, like a protective mother, restricting viewing only to those who pay large amounts of money for the privilege.

As a general rule, if you’re watching them for free on the Internet, chances are it’s not only unauthorized but probably illegal too. That being said, most people don’t give a damn due to all the excitement, free content, and tiny chances of being caught.

Note: If a movie came out today, last week, or even last month, and you’ve spent a large sum of money to watch it alongside hundreds of noisy others in a big room while eating over-priced taste-free snacks, CONGRATULATIONS! You’ve found the only way to watch the latest movies legally.

I really love this site, it has everything I want in one place. Is that legal?

STOP. This is definitely an illegal site. While it is the movie and TV industries’ job to entertain the masses, it also has a side mission to ensure that you will never – EVER – find all the content you want in one place.

Remember: to stay legal and have access to the broadest range of video content, you need to subscribe to several official services while handing over handfuls of cash every month.

If you find that after parting with large sums of cash you still can’t find all the content you want, then you can be sure you’re doing this by the book and entirely legally. Only people using pirate services find all the stuff they need in one or two places.

A service is offering me every TV channel for £10/$10/€10 per month. Legal?

If your local TV cable or satellite provider demands a pile of cash an inch thick to access every channel they have for a month, please be informed they have worked very hard to achieve that monopoly position.

There is no way on planet earth that another legal supplier will be able to undercut them by 90%. Yes, that includes fully-loaded Fire TV Sticks bought off Pete down the pub.

As a rule of thumb, if you’re delighted with the ‘special’ TV service you bought off Facebook yet still have enough money to take the family out for a meal at a half decent restaurant, alarm bells should be ringing.

Legal buyers can generally afford to gorge on either TV or food. If you’re full to bursting due to excessive consumption of both, you’re either using a pirate service or have enough money not to need one.

These tips are not exhaustive – feel free to add your own in the comments

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Attention to Addon Developers: Migration to Python 3!


Currently, Kodi includes the Python 2.7 interpreter to run addons written in Python programming language. However, Python 3 was released almost 10 years ago and the matter of implementing the Python 3 interpreter in Kodi has been brought up on the Kodi forum several times. Now, thanks to a successful GSOC 2017 project, we have a working Python 3.6 interpreter for Kodi, and on the latest DevCon 2017 in Prague Team Kodi decided that it’s time to move on and migrate Python addon subsystem to Python 3.

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Playboy Brands Boing Boing a “Clickbait” Site With No Fair Use Defense


Late 2017, Boing Boing co-editor Xena Jardin posted an article in which he linked to an archive containing every Playboy centerfold image to date.

“Kind of amazing to see how our standards of hotness, and the art of commercial erotic photography, have changed over time,” Jardin noted.

While Boing Boing had nothing to do with the compilation, uploading, or storing of the Imgur-based archive, Playboy took exception to the popular blog linking to the album.

Noting that Jardin had referred to the archive uploader as a “wonderful person”, the adult publication responded with a lawsuit (pdf), claiming that Boing Boing had commercially exploited its copyrighted images.

Last week, with assistance from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Boing Boing parent company Happy Mutants filed a motion to dismiss in which it defended its right to comment on and link to copyrighted content without that constituting infringement.

“This lawsuit is frankly mystifying. Playboy’s theory of liability seems to be that it is illegal to link to material posted by others on the web — an act performed daily by hundreds of millions of users of Facebook and Twitter, and by journalists like the ones in Playboy’s crosshairs here,” the company wrote.

EFF Senior Staff Attorney Daniel Nazer weighed in too, arguing that since Boing Boing’s reporting and commenting is protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine, the “deeply flawed” lawsuit should be dismissed.

Now, just a week later, Playboy has fired back. Opposing Happy Mutants’ request for the Court to dismiss the case, the company cites the now-famous Perfect 10 v. Amazon/Google case from 2007, which tried to prevent Google from facilitating access to infringing images.

Playboy highlights the court’s finding that Google could have been held contributorily liable – if it had knowledge that Perfect 10 images were available using its search engine, could have taken simple measures to prevent further damage, but failed to do so.

Turning to Boing Boing’s conduct, Playboy says that the company knew it was linking to infringing content, could have taken steps to prevent that, but failed to do so. It then launches an attack on the site itself, offering disparaging comments concerning its activities and business model.

“This is an important case. At issue is whether clickbait sites like Happy Mutants’ Boing Boing weblog — a site designed to attract viewers and encourage them to click on links in order to generate advertising revenue — can knowingly find, promote, and profit from infringing content with impunity,” Playboy writes.

“Clickbait sites like Boing Boing are not known for creating original content. Rather, their business model is based on ‘collecting’ interesting content created by others. As such, they effectively profit off the work of others without actually creating anything original themselves.”

Playboy notes that while sites like Boing Boing are within their rights to leverage works created by others, courts in the US and overseas have ruled that knowingly linking to infringing content is unacceptable.

Even given these conditions, Playboy argues, Happy Mutants and the EFF now want the Court to dismiss the case so that sites are free to “not only encourage, facilitate, and induce infringement, but to profit from those harmful activities.”

Claiming that Boing Boing’s only reason for linking to the infringing album was to “monetize the web traffic that over fifty years of Playboy photographs would generate”, Playboy insists that the site and parent company Happy Mutants was properly charged with copyright infringement.

Playboy also dismisses Boing Boing’s argument that a link to infringing content cannot result in liability due to the link having both infringing and substantial non-infringing uses.

First citing the Betamax case, which found that maker Sony could not be held liable for infringement because its video recorders had substantial non-infringing uses, Playboy counters with the Grokster decision, which held that a distributor of a product could be liable for infringement, if there was an intent to encourage or support infringement.

“In this case, Happy Mutants’ offending link — which does nothing more than support infringing content — is good for nothing but promoting infringement and there is no legitimate public interest in its unlicensed availability,” Playboy notes.

In its motion to dismiss, Happy Mutants also argued that unless Playboy could identify users who “in fact downloaded — rather than simply viewing — the material in question,” the case should be dismissed. However, Playboy rejects the argument, claiming it is based on an erroneous interpretation of the law.

Citing the Grokster decision once more, the adult publisher notes that the Supreme Court found that someone infringes contributorily when they intentionally induce or encourage direct infringement.

“The argument that contributory infringement only lies where the defendant’s actions result in further infringement ignores the ‘or’ and collapses ‘inducing’ and ‘encouraging’ into one thing when they are two distinct things,” Playboy writes.

As for Boing Boing’s four classic fair use arguments, the publisher describes these as “extremely weak” and proceeds to hit them one by one.

In respect of the purpose and character of the use, Playboy discounts Boing Boing’s position that the aim of its post was to show “how our standards of hotness, and the art of commercial erotic photography, have changed over time.” The publisher argues that is the exact same purpose of Playboy magazine, while highliting its publication Playboy: The Compete Centerfolds, 1953-2016.

Moving on to the second factor of fair use – the nature of the copyrighted work – Playboy notes that an entire album of artwork is involved, rather than just a single image.

On the third factor, concerning the amount and substantiality of the original work used, Playboy argues that in order to publish an opinion on how “standards of hotness” had developed over time, there was no need to link to all of the pictures in the archive.

“Had only representative images from each decade, or perhaps even each year, been taken, this would be a very different case — but Happy Mutants cannot dispute that it knew it was linking to an illegal library of ‘Every Playboy Playmate Centerfold Ever’ since that is what it titled its blog post,” Playboy notes.

Finally, when considering the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work, Playbody says its archive of images continues to be monetized and Boing Boing’s use of infringing images jeopardizes that.

“Given that people are generally not going to pay for what is freely available, it is disingenuous of Happy Mutants to claim that promoting the free availability of infringing archives of Playboy’s work for viewing and downloading is not going to have an adverse effect on the value or market of that work,” the publisher adds.

While it appears the parties agree on very little, there is agreement on one key aspect of the case – its wider importance.

On the one hand, Playboy insists that a finding in its favor will ensure that people can’t commercially exploit infringing content with impunity. On the other, Boing Boing believes that the health of the entire Internet is at stake.

“The world can’t afford a judgment against us in this case — it would end the web as we know it, threatening everyone who publishes online, from us five weirdos in our basements to multimillion-dollar, globe-spanning publishing empires like Playboy,” the company concludes.

Playboy’s opposition to Happy Mutants’ motion to dismiss can be found here (pdf)

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Court Orders Hosting Provider to Stop Pirate Premier League Streams


In many parts of the world football, or soccer as some would call it, is the number one spectator sport.

The English Premier League, widely regarded as one the top competitions, draws hundreds of millions of viewers per year. Many of these pay for access to the matches, but there’s also a massive circuit of unauthorized streams.

The Football Association Premier League (FAPL) has been clamping down on these pirate sources for years. In the UK, for example, it obtained a unique High Court injunction last year, which requires local Internet providers to block streams as they go live.

In addition, the organization has also filed legal action against a hosting provider through which several live sports streaming sites are operating. The case in question was filed in the Netherlands where Ecatel LTD, a UK company, operated several servers.

According to the complaint, Ecatel hosted sites such as cast247.tv, streamlive.to and iguide.to, which allowed visitors to watch live Premier League streams without paying.

As the streaming platforms themselves were not responsive to takedown requests, the Premier League demanded action from their hosting provider. Specifically, they wanted the company to disconnect live streams on their end, by null-routing the servers of the offending customer.

This week the Court of The Hague issued its judgment, which is a clear win for the football association.

The Court ruled that, after the hosting company receives a takedown notice from FAPL or one of its agents, Ecatel must disconnect pirate Premier League streams within 30 minutes.

“[The Court] recommends that, after 24 hours of service of this judgment, Ecatel cease and discontinue any service used by third parties to infringe the copyright to FAPL by promptly but no later than 30 minutes after receipt of a request to that end,” the verdict reads.

The ban can be lifted after the game has ended, making it a temporary measure similar to the UK Internet provider blockades. If Ecatel fails to comply, it faces a penalty of €5,000 for each illegal stream, to a maximum of € 1,500,000.

While the order is good news for the Premier League, it will be hard to enforce, since Ecatel LTD was dissolved last year. Another hosting company called Novogara was previously linked with Ecatel and is still active, but that is not mentioned in the court order.

This means that the order will mostly be valuable as a precedent. Especially since it goes against an earlier order from 2015, which Emerce pointed out. This warrants a closer look at how the Court reached its decision.

In its defense, Ecatel had argued that an obligation to disconnect customers based on a takedown notice would be disproportionate and violate its entrepreneurial freedoms. The latter is protected by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The Court, however, highlights that there is a clash between the entrepreneurial rights of Ecatel and the copyrights of FAPL in this case. This requires the Court to weigh these rights to see which prevails over the other.

According to the verdict, the measures Ecatel would have to take to comply are not overly costly. The company already null-routed customers who failed to pay, so the technical capabilities are there.

Ecatel also argued that disconnecting a server could affect legal content that’s provided by its customers. However, according to the Court, Ecatel is partly to blame for this, as it does business with customers who seemingly don’t have a proper takedown process themselves. This is something the company could have included in their contracts.

As a result, the Court put the copyrights of FAPL above the entrepreneurial freedom rights of the hosting provider.

The second right that has to be weighed is the public’s right to freedom of expression and information. While the Court rules that this right is limited by the measures, it argues that the rights of copyright holders weigh stronger.

“Admittedly, this freedom [of expression and information] is restricted, but according to the order, this will only apply for the duration of the offending streams. Furthermore, as said, this will only take place if the stream has not already been blocked in another way,” the Court writes.

If any legal content is affected by the measures then the offending streaming platform itself will experience more pressure from users to deal with the problem, and offer a suitable takedown procedure to prevent similar problems in the future, the Court notes.

TorrentFreak reached out to FAPL and Ecatel’s lawyers for a comment on the verdict but at the time of writing we haven’t heard back.

The verdict appears to be a powerful precedent for copyright holders. Kim Kuik, director of local anti-piracy group BREIN, is pleased with the outcome. While BREIN was not involved in this lawsuit, it previously sued Ecatel in another case.

“It is a good precedent. An intermediary like Ecatel has its accountability and must have an effective notice and take down procedure,” Kuik tells TorrentFreak.

“Too bad it wasn’t also against the people behind Ecatel, who now can continue using another vehicle. The judge thinks this verdict serves a warning to them. Time will tell if that is so.”

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