Hollywood Wins ISP Blockade Against Popular Pirate Sites in Ireland


Like many other countries throughout Europe, Ireland is no stranger to pirate site blocking efforts.

The Pirate Bay was blocked back in 2009, as part of a voluntary agreement between copyright holders and local ISP Eircom. A few years later the High Court ordered other major Internet providers to follow suit.

However, The Pirate Bay is not the only ‘infringing’ site out there. The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has therefore asked the Commercial Court to expand the blockades to other sites.

On behalf of several major Hollywood studios, the group most recently targeted a group of the most used torrent and streaming sites; 1337x.io, EZTV.ag, Bmovies.is, 123movieshub.to, Putlocker.io, RARBG.to, Gowatchfreemovies.to and YTS.am.

On Monday the Commercial Court sided with the movie studios ordering all major Irish ISPs to block the sites. The latest order applies to Eircom, Sky Ireland, Vodafone Ireland, Virgin Media Ireland, Three Ireland, Digiweb, Imagine Telecommunications and Magnet Networks.

According to Justice Brian McGovern, the movie studios had made it clear that the sites in question infringed their copyrights. As such, there are “significant public interest grounds” to have them blocked.

Irish Examiner reports that none of the ISPs opposed the blocking request. This means that new pirate site blockades are mostly a formality now.

MPA EMEA President and Managing Director Stan McCoy is happy with the outcome, which he says will help to secure jobs in the movie industry.

“As the Irish film industry is continuing to thrive, the MPA is dedicated to supporting that growth by combatting the operations of illegal sites that undermine the sustainability of the sector,” McCoy says.

“Preventing these pirate sites from freely disturbing other people’s work will help us provide greater job security for the 18,000 people employed through the Irish film industry and ensure that consumers can continue to enjoy high quality content in the future.”

The MPA also obtained similar blocks against movie4k.to, primewire.ag, and onwatchseries.to. last year, which remain in effect to date.

The torrent and streaming sites that were targeted most recently have millions of visitors worldwide. While the blockades will make it harder for the Irish to access them directly, history has shown that some people circumvent these measures or simply move to other sites.

Several of the targeted sites themselves are also keeping a close eye on these blocking efforts and are providing users with alternative domains to bypass the restrictions, at least temporarily.

As such, it would be no surprise if the Hollywood studios return to the Commercial Court again in a few months.

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Tickbox Clearly Promotes and Facilitates Piracy, Hollywood Tells Court


The rising popularity of piracy streaming boxes has turned into Hollywood’s main piracy concern in recent months.

While the hardware and media players such as Kodi are not a problem, sellers who ship devices with unauthorized add-ons turn them into fully-fledged piracy machines.

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 set-top boxes that allow users to stream a variety of popular media. The Tickbox devices use the Kodi media player and comes with instructions on how to add various add-ons.

According to ACE, these devices are nothing more than pirate tools, allowing buyers to stream copyright-infringing content. The coalition, therefore, asked the court for a permanent injunction to remove all infringing add-ons from previously sold devices.

Tickbox maintained its innocence, however. The company informed the court that its box is a simple computer like any other, which is perfectly legal.

According to Tickbox, they don’t have anything to do with the infringing “Themes” that users can select on their device. These themes feature several addons that link to infringing content.

This explanation doesn’t sit well with the movie companies, which submitted a reply to the court late last week. They claim that Tickbox is deliberately downplaying their own role, as they are the ones who decided to make these themes accessible through their boxes.

“TickBox falsely claims that the presence of these ‘Themes’ on TickBox devices ‘have nothing to do with Defendant’,” ACE’s reply reads.

“To the contrary, TickBox intentionally chooses which ‘Themes’ to include on its ‘Select your Theme’ menu for the TickBox TV interface, and TickBox pushes out automatic software updates to its customers’ TickBox TV devices.”

The movie companies also dispute Tickbox’s argument that they don’t induce copyright infringement because their device is “simply a small computer” that has many legitimate uses.

This liability question isn’t about whether Tickbox stores any infringing material or runs pirate streams through their servers, they counter. It’s about the intended use and how Tickbox promotes its product.

“TickBox’s liability arises based on its advertising and promoting TickBox TV as a tool for infringing use, and from designing and including software on the device that encourages access to infringing streams from third-party sources.”

ACE notes that, unlike Tickbox claims, the current case shows a lot of parallels with previous landmark cases including Grokster and Fung [isoHunt].

The isoHunt website didn’t store and infringing material, nor was it crucial in the torrent piracy ecosystem. However, it was liable because the operator willingly facilitated copyright infringing activity. This is what Tickbox does too, according to ACE.

“TickBox ‘competes’ with legitimate services by telling customers that they can access the same content available from legitimate distributors ‘ABSOLUTELY FREE’ and that customers therefore ‘will find that you no longer need those subscriptions’.”

The movie companies therefore ask the court to issue the requested injunction. They want all existing devices to be impounded and Tickbox should, through an update, remove infringing addons from already sold devices.

Tickbox argued that this would require them to “hack into” their customers’ boxes and delete content. ACE, however, says that this is a simple update and nothing different from what the company has done in the past.

“The proposed injunction would merely obligate TickBox to make good on its halfhearted and ineffective efforts to do what it claims to have already done: remove Kodi builds with illicit addons from TickBox TV,” ACE writes.

“As demonstrated by TickBox’s own, repeated software updates since the filing of Plaintiffs’ Complaint, TickBox has the means and ability to easily and remotely change what options users see and can access on their TickBox TVs.”

After having heard the arguments from both sides, it’s now up to the California federal court to decide who’s right.

The current case should set an important precedent. In addition to Tickbox, ACE also filed a similar lawsuit against Dragon Box. Clearly, the coalition is determined to get these alleged pirate devices off the market.

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A copy of ACE’s reply is available here (pdf).

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“Where to Invade Next” Popular Among North Korean Pirates


Due to the public nature of BitTorrent transfers, it’s easy to see what a person behind a certain IP-address is downloading.

There are even entire sites dedicated to making this information public. This includes the ‘I Know What You Download‘ service we’ve covered in the past.

While the data are not complete or perfect, looking at the larger numbers provides some interesting insights. The site recently released its overview of the most downloaded titles in various categories per country, for example.

What stands out is that there’s a lot of overlap between countries that seem vastly different.

Game of Thrones is the most downloaded TV show in America, but also in Iran, Mongolia, Uruguay, and Zambia. Other popular TV-shows in 2017, such as The Flash, The Big Bang Theory, and The Walking Dead also appear in the top ten in all these countries.

On the movie side, a similar picture emerges. Titles such as Wonder Woman, The Fate of the Furious, and Logan appear in many of the top tens. In fact, browsing through the result for various countries there are surprisingly little outliers.

The movie Prityazhenie does well in Russia and in India, Dangal is among the most pirated titles, but most titles appear globally. Even in North Korea, where Internet access is extremely limited, Game of Thrones is listed as the most downloaded TV-show.

However, North Korea also shows some odd results, perhaps because there are only a few downloads per day on average.

Browsing through the most downloaded movies we see that there are a lot of kids’ movies in the top ten, with ‘Despicable Me’ as the top result, followed by ‘Moana’ and ‘Minions’. The Hobbit trilogy also made it into the top ten.

12 most pirated movies in North Korea (2017)

The most eye-catching result, however, is the Michael Moore documentary ‘Where to Invade Next.’ While the title may suggest something more malicious, in this travelogue Moore ‘invades’ countries around the world to see in what areas the US can improve itself.

It’s unclear why North Koreans are so interested in this progressive film. Perhaps they are trying to pick up a few tips as well. This could also explain why good old MacGyver is listed among the most downloaded TV-series.

The annual overview of ‘I Know What You Download’ is available here, for those who are interested in more country statistics.

Finally, we have to note that North Korean IP-ranges have been vulnerable to hijacks in the past so you’re never 100% sure who might be using them. It might be the Russians…

Image credit: KNCA

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Pirate Streaming on Facebook is a Seriously Risky Business


For more than a year the British public has been warned about the supposed dangers of Kodi piracy.

Dozens of headlines have claimed consequences ranging from system-destroying malware to prison sentences. Fortunately, most of them can be filed under “tabloid nonsense.”

That being said, there is an extremely important issue that deserves much closer attention, particularly given a shift in the UK legal climate during 2017. We’re talking about live streaming copyrighted content on Facebook, which is both incredibly easy and frighteningly risky.

This week it was revealed that 34-year-old Craig Foster from the UK had been given an ultimatum from Sky to pay a £5,000 settlement fee. The media giant discovered that he’d live-streamed the Anthony Joshua v Wladimir Klitschko fight on Facebook and wanted compensation to make a potential court case disappear.

While it may seem initially odd to use the word, Foster was lucky.

Under last year’s Digital Economy Act, he could’ve been jailed for up to ten years for distributing copyright-infringing content to the public, if he had “reason to believe that communicating the work to the public [would] cause loss to the owner of the copyright, or [would] expose the owner of the copyright to a risk of loss.”

Clearly, as a purchaser of the £19.95 pay-per-view himself, he would’ve appreciated that the event costs money. With that in mind, a court would likely find that he would have been aware that Sky would have been exposed to a “risk of loss”. Sky claim that 4,250 people watched the stream but the way the law is written, no specific level of loss is required for a breach of the law.

But it’s not just the threat of a jail sentence that’s the problem. People streaming live sports on Facebook are sitting ducks.

In Foster’s case, the fight he streamed was watermarked, which means that Sky put a tracking code into it which identified him personally as the buyer of the event. When he (or his friend, as Foster claims) streamed it on Facebook, it was trivial for Sky to capture the watermark and track it back to his Sky account.

Equally, it would be simplicity itself to see that the name on the Sky account had exactly the same name and details as Foster’s Facebook account. So, to most observers, it would appear that not only had Foster purchased the event, but he was also streaming it to Facebook illegally.

It’s important to keep something else in mind. No cooperation between Sky and Facebook would’ve been necessary to obtain Foster’s details. Take the amount of information most people share on Facebook, combine that with the information Sky already had, and the company’s anti-piracy team would have had a very easy job.

Now compare this situation with an upload of the same stream to a torrent site.

While the video capture would still contain Foster’s watermark, which would indicate the source, to prove he also distributed the video Sky would’ve needed to get inside a torrent swarm. From there they would need to capture the IP address of the initial seeder and take the case to court, to force an ISP to hand over that person’s details.

Presuming they were the same person, Sky would have a case, with a broadly similar level of evidence to that presented in the current matter. However, it would’ve taken them months to get their man and cost large sums of money to get there. It’s very unlikely that £5,000 would cover the costs, meaning a much, much bigger bill for the culprit.

Or, confident that Foster was behind the leak based on the watermark alone, Sky could’ve gone straight to the police. That never ends well.

The bottom line is that while live-streaming on Facebook is simplicity itself, people who do it casually from their own account (especially with watermarked content) are asking for trouble.

Nailing Foster was the piracy equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel but the worrying part is that he probably never gave his (or his friend’s…) alleged infringement a second thought. With a click or two, the fight was live and he was staring down the barrel of a potential jail sentence, had Sky not gone the civil route.

It’s scary stuff and not enough is being done to warn people of the consequences. Forget the scare stories attempting to deter people from watching fights or movies on Kodi, thoughtlessly streaming them to the public on social media is the real danger.

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ISP: We’re Cooperating With Police Following Pirate IPTV Raid


This week, police forces around Europe took action against what is believed to be one of the world’s largest pirate IPTV networks.

The investigation, launched a year ago and coordinated by Europol, came to head on Tuesday when police carried out raids in Cyprus, Bulgaria, Greece, and the Netherlands. A fresh announcement from the crime-fighting group reveals the scale of the operation.

It was led by the Cypriot Police – Intellectual Property Crime Unit, with the support of the Cybercrime Division of the Greek Police, the Dutch Fiscal Investigative and Intelligence Service (FIOD), the Cybercrime Unit of the Bulgarian Police, Europol’s Intellectual Property Crime Coordinated Coalition (IPC³), and supported by members of the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA).

In Cyprus, Bulgaria and Greece, 17 house searches were carried out. Three individuals aged 43, 44, and 53 were arrested in Cyprus and one was arrested in Bulgaria.

All stand accused of being involved in an international operation to illegally broadcast around 1,200 channels of pirated content to an estimated 500,000 subscribers. Some of the channels offered were illegally sourced from Sky UK, Bein Sports, Sky Italia, and Sky DE. On Thursday, the three individuals in Cyprus were remanded in custody for seven days.

“The servers used to distribute the channels were shut down, and IP addresses hosted by a Dutch company were also deactivated thanks to the cooperation of the authorities of The Netherlands,” Europol reports.

“In Bulgaria, 84 servers and 70 satellite receivers were seized, with decoders, computers and accounting documents.”

TorrentFreak was previously able to establish that Megabyte-Internet Ltd, an ISP located in the small Bulgarian town Petrich, was targeted by police. The provider went down on Tuesday but returned towards the end of the week. Responding to our earlier inquiries, the company told us more about the situation.

“We are an ISP provider located in Petrich, Bulgaria. We are selling services to around 1,500 end-clients in the Petrich area and surrounding villages,” a spokesperson explained.

“Another part of our business is internet services like dedicated unmanaged servers, hosting, email servers, storage services, and VPNs etc.”

The spokesperson added that some of Megabyte’s equipment is located at Telepoint, Bulgaria’s biggest datacenter, with connectivity to Petrich. During the raid the police seized the company’s hardware to check for evidence of illegal activity.

“We were informed by the police that some of our clients in Petrich and Sofia were using our service for illegal streaming and actions,” the company said.

“Of course, we were not able to know this because our services are unmanaged and root access [to servers] is given to our clients. For this reason any client and anyone that uses our services are responsible for their own actions.”

TorrentFreak asked many more questions, including how many police attended, what type and volume of hardware was seized, and whether anyone was arrested or taken for questioning. But, apart from noting that the police were friendly, the company declined to give us any additional information, revealing that it was not permitted to do so at this stage.

What is clear, however, is that Megabyte-Internet is offering its full cooperation to the authorities. The company says that it cannot be held responsible for the actions of its clients so their details will be handed over as part of the investigation.

“So now we will give to the police any details about these clients because we hold their full details by law. [The police] will find [out about] all the illegal actions from them,” the company concludes, adding that it’s fully operational once more and working with clients.

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Court Expands Dutch Pirate Bay Blockade to More ISPs, For Now


The Pirate Bay is arguably the most widely blocked website on the Internet.

ISPs from all over the world have been ordered by courts to prevent users from accessing the torrent site, and this week the list has grown a bit longer.

A Dutch court has ruled that local Internet providers KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile, Zeelandnet and CAIW must block the site within ten days. The verdict follows a similar decision from September last year, where Ziggo and XS4All were ordered to do the same.

The blockade applies to several IP addresses and more than 150 domain names that are used by the notorious torrent site. Several of the ISPs had warned the court about the dangers of overblocking, but these concerns were rejected.

While most Dutch customers will be unable to access The Pirate Bay directly, the decision is not final yet. Not until the Supreme Court issues its pending decision. That will be the climax of a legal battle that started eight years ago.

A Dutch court first issued an order to block The Pirate Bay in 2012, but this decision was overturned two years later. Anti-piracy group BREIN then took the matter to the Supreme Court, which subsequently referred the case to the EU Court of Justice, seeking further clarification.

After a careful review of the case, the EU Court of Justice decided last year that The Pirate Bay can indeed be blocked.

The top EU court ruled that although The Pirate Bay’s operators don’t share anything themselves, they knowingly provide users with a platform to share copyright-infringing links. This can be seen as “an act of communication” under the EU Copyright Directive.

This put the case back to the Dutch Supreme court, which has yet to decide on the matter.

BREIN, however, wanted a blocking decision more quickly and requested preliminary injunctions, like the one issued this week. These injunctions will only be valid until the final verdict is handed down.

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A copy of the most recent court order is available here (pdf).

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Torrent Links Return to Torrentz2 After Mystery Disappearance


When the original Torrentz site shut down during the summer of 2016, several copies jumped in to fill its shoes.

The most successful alternative, in terms of traffic, was the elegantly named Torrentz2.eu. Unlike many others, Torrentz2 has always been upfront with its users and never claimed to be an official resurrection.

This approach worked, as millions of users were drawn to the site. However, just before Christmas the site suddenly removed all links to external torrent sites. Instead of a metasearch engine, it turned into a database of torrent metadata, and traffic started to drop off.

The message on the site’s homepage changed as well. Instead of claiming to be “a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines,” it turned into “is a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine.”

As the weeks rolled by, many people thought that the links would never return. While the homepage was updated briefly to promote a freelancer ICO, not much happened. Until this week.

Just as abruptly as the torrent links disappeared last month, they were added again, returning Torrent2 to its former glory. At the time of writing, the site list links to 61,111,077 torrents on 82 domains.

Torrentz2 with links

So what happened here?

TorrentFreak reached out to the operator of the site to find out more. He replied, but at the moment he prefers not to comment on the disappearing links incident or the site’s future.

That leaves us with nothing else than speculation really. Perhaps there was a technical error, an operational change, a simple mistake, or outside intervention? We simply don’t know.

The only real conclusion we can draw is that, at least for the casual observer, Torrentz2 appears to be back where it used to be. For now…

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Europol Hits Huge 500,000 Subscriber Pirate IPTV Operation


Live TV is in massive demand but accessing all content in a particular region can be a hugely expensive proposition, with tradtional broadcasting monopolies demanding large subscription fees.

For millions around the world, this ‘problem’ can be easily circumvented. Pirate IPTV operations, which supply thousands of otherwise subscription channels via the Internet, are on the increase. They’re accessible for just a few dollars, euros, or pounds per month, slashing bills versus official providers on a grand scale.

This week, however, police forces around Europe coordinated to target what they claim is one of the world’s largest illicit IPTV operations. The investigation was launched last February by Europol and on Tuesday coordinated actions were carried out in Cyprus, Bulgaria, Greece, and the Netherlands.

Three suspects were arrested in Cyprus – two in Limassol (aged 43 and 44) and one in Larnaca (aged 53). All are alleged to be part of an international operation to illegally broadcast around 1,200 channels of pirated content worldwide. Some of the channels offered were illegally sourced from Sky UK, Bein Sports, Sky Italia, and Sky DE

If initial reports are to be believed, the reach of the IPTV service was huge. Figures usually need to be taken with a pinch of salt but information suggests the service had more than 500,000 subscribers, each paying around 10 euros per month. (Note: how that relates to the alleged five million euros per year in revenue is yet to be made clear)

Police action was spread across the continent, with at least nine separate raids, including in the Netherlands where servers were uncovered. However, it was determined that these were in place to hide the true location of the operation’s main servers. Similar ‘front’ servers were also deployed in other regions.

The main servers behind the IPTV operation were located in Petrich, a small town in Blagoevgrad Province, southwestern Bulgaria. No details have been provided by the authorities but TF is informed that the website of a local ISP, Megabyte-Internet, from where pirate IPTV has been broadcast for at least the past several months, disappeared on Tuesday. It remains offline this morning.

The company did not respond to our request for comment and there’s no suggestion that it’s directly involved in any illegal activity. However, its Autonomous System (AS) number reveals linked IPTV services, none of which appear to be operational today. The ISP is also listed on sites where ‘pirate’ IPTV channel playlists are compiled by users.

According to sources in Cyprus, police requested permission from the Larnaca District Court to detain the arrested individuals for eight days. However, local news outlet Philenews said that any decision would be postponed until this morning, since one of the three suspects, an English Cypriot, required an interpreter which caused a delay.

In addition to prosecutors and defense lawyers, two Dutch investigators from Europol were present in court yesterday. The hearing lasted for six hours and was said to be so intensive that the court stenographer had to be replaced due to overwork.

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Netflix, Amazon and Hollywood Sue Kodi-Powered Dragon Box Over Piracy


More and more people are starting to use Kodi-powered set-top boxes to stream video content to their TVs.

While Kodi itself is a neutral platform, sellers who ship devices with unauthorized add-ons give it a bad reputation.

In recent months these boxes have become the prime target for copyright enforcers, including the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy partnership between Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies.

After suing Tickbox last year a group of key ACE members have now filed a similar lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, which sells the popular Dragon Box. The complaint, filed at a California federal court, also lists the company’s owner Paul Christoforo and reseller Jeff Williams among the defendants.

According to ACE, these type of devices are nothing more than pirate tools, allowing buyers to stream copyright infringing content. That also applies to Dragon Box, they inform the court.

“Defendants market and sell ‘Dragon Box,’ a computer hardware device that Defendants urge their customers to use as a tool for the mass infringement of the copyrighted motion pictures and television shows,” the complaint, picked up by HWR, reads.

The movie companies note that the defendants distribute and promote the Dragon Box as a pirate tool, using phrases such as “Watch your Favourites Anytime For FREE” and “stop paying for Netflix and Hulu.”

Dragon Box

When users follow the instructions Dragon provides they get free access to copyrighted movies, TV-shows and live content, ACE alleges. The complaint further points out that the device uses the open source Kodi player paired with pirate addons.

“The Dragon Media application provides Defendants’ customers with a customized configuration of the Kodi media player and a curated selection of the most popular addons for accessing infringing content,” the movie companies write.

“These addons are designed and maintained for the overarching purpose of scouring the Internet for illegal sources of copyrighted content and returning links to that content. When Dragon Box customers click those links, those customers receive unauthorized streams of popular motion pictures and television shows.”

One of the addons that are included with the download and installation of the Dragon software is Covenant.

This addon can be accessed through a preinstalled shortcut which is linked under the “Videos” menu. Users are then able to browse through a large library of curated content, including a separate category of movies that are still in theaters.

In theaters

According to a statement from Dragon owner Christoforo, business is going well. The company claims to have “over 250,000 customers in 50 states and 4 countries and growing” as well as “374 sellers” across the world.

With this lawsuit, however, the company’s future has suddenly become uncertain.

The movie companies ask the California District for an injunction to shut down the infringing service and impound all Dragon Box devices. In addition, they’re requesting statutory damages which can go up to several million dollars.

At the time of writing the Dragon Box website is still in on air and the company has yet to comment on the allegations.

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A copy of the complaint is available here (pdf).

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Judge Issues Devastating Order Against BitTorrent Copyright Troll


In recent years, file-sharers around the world have been pressured to pay significant settlement fees, or face legal repercussions.

These so-called “copyright trolling” efforts have been a common occurrence in the United States since the turn of the last decade.

Increasingly, however, courts are growing weary of these cases. Many districts have turned into no-go zones for copyright trolls and the people behind Prenda law were arrested and are being prosecuted in a criminal case.

In the Western District of Washington, the tide also appears to have turned. After Venice PI, a copyright holder of the film “Once Upon a Time in Venice”, sued a man who later passed away, concerns were raised over the validity of the evidence.

Venice PI responded to the concerns with a declaration explaining its data gathering technique and assuring the Court that false positives are out of the question.

That testimony didn’t help much though, as a recently filed minute order shows this week. The order applies to a dozen cases and prohibits the company from reaching out to any defendants until further notice, as there are several alarming issues that have to be resolved first.

One of the problems is that Venice PI declared that it’s owned by a company named Lost Dog Productions, which in turn is owned by Voltage Productions. Interestingly, these companies don’t appear in the usual records.

“A search of the California Secretary of State’s online database, however, reveals no registered entity with the name ‘Lost Dog’ or ‘Lost Dog Productions’,” the Court notes.

“Moreover, although ‘Voltage Pictures, LLC’ is registered with the California Secretary of State, and has the same address as Venice PI, LLC, the parent company named in plaintiff’s corporate disclosure form, ‘Voltage Productions, LLC,’ cannot be found in the California Secretary of State’s online database and does not appear to exist.”

In other words, the company that filed the lawsuit, as well as its parent company, are extremely questionable.

While the above is a reason for concern, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Court not only points out administrative errors, but it also has serious doubts about the evidence collection process. This was carried out by the German company MaverickEye, which used the tracking technology of another German company, GuardaLey.

GuardaLey CEO Benjamin Perino, who claims that he coded the tracking software, wrote a declaration explaining that the infringement detection system at issue “cannot yield a false positive.” However, the Court doubts this statement and Perino’s qualifications in general.

“Perino has been proffered as an expert, but his qualifications consist of a technical high school education and work experience unrelated to the peer-to-peer file-sharing technology known as BitTorrent,” the Court writes.

“Perino does not have the qualifications necessary to be considered an expert in the field in question, and his opinion that the surveillance program is incapable of error is both contrary to common sense and inconsistent with plaintiff’s counsel’s conduct in other matters in this district. Plaintiff has not submitted an adequate offer of proof”

It seems like the Court would prefer to see an assessment from a qualified independent expert instead of the person who wrote the software. For now, this means that the IP-address evidence, in these cases, is not good enough. That’s quite a blow for the copyright holder.

If that wasn’t enough the Court also highlights another issue that’s possibly even more problematic. When Venice PI requested the subpoenas to identify alleged pirates, they relied on declarations from Daniel Arheidt, a consultant for MaverickEye.

These declarations fail to mention, however, that MaverickEye has the proper paperwork to collect IP addresses.

“Nowhere in Arheidt’s declarations does he indicate that either he or MaverickEye is licensed in Washington to conduct private investigation work,” the order reads.

This is important, as doing private investigator work without a license is a gross misdemeanor in Washington. The copyright holder was aware of this requirement because it was brought up in related cases in the past.

“Plaintiff’s counsel has apparently been aware since October 2016, when he received a letter concerning LHF Productions, Inc. v. Collins, C16-1017 RSM, that Arheidt might be committing a crime by engaging in unlicensed surveillance of Washington citizens, but he did not disclose this fact to the Court.”

The order is very bad news for Venice PI. The company had hoped to score a few dozen easy settlements but the tables have now been turned. The Court instead asks the company to explain the deficiencies and provide additional details. In the meantime, the copyright holder is urged not to spend or transfer any of the settlement money that has been collected thus far.

The latter indicates that Venice PI might have to hand defendants their money back, which would be pretty unique.

The order suggests that the Judge is very suspicious of these trolling activities. In a footnote there’s a link to a Fight Copyright Trolls article which revealed that the same counsel dismissed several cases, allegedly to avoid having IP-address evidence scrutinized.

Even more bizarrely, in another footnote the Court also doubts if MaverickEye’s aforementioned consultant, Daniel Arheidt, actually exists.

“The Court has recently become aware that Arheidt is the latest in a series of German declarants (Darren M. Griffin, Daniel Macek, Daniel Susac, Tobias Fieser, Michael Patzer) who might be aliases or even fictitious.

“Plaintiff will not be permitted to rely on Arheidt’s declarations or underlying data without explaining to the Court’s satisfaction Arheidt’s relationship to the above-listed declarants and producing proof beyond a reasonable doubt of Arheidt’s existence,” the court adds.

These are serious allegations, to say the least.

If a copyright holder uses non-existent companies and questionable testimony from unqualified experts after obtaining evidence illegally to get a subpoena backed by a fictitious person….something’s not quite right.

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A copy of the minute order, which affects a series of cases, is available here (pdf).

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