Despite the widespread availability of legal streaming services, piracy remains rampant around the world.

This is the situation in Singapore where a new study commissioned by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) found that 39% of all Singaporeans download or stream movies, TV shows, or live sports illegally.

The survey, conducted by Sycamore Research, polled the opinions and behaviors of a weighted sample of 1,000 respondents. The research concludes that nearly half of the population regularly pirates and also found that these people are not easily deterred.

Although the vast majority of the population knows that piracy is against the law, the lure of free content is often hard to ignore. Many simply see it as socially acceptible behavior.

“The notion that piracy is something that everybody does nowadays turns it into a socially acceptable behavior”, Sycamore Research Director Anna Meadows says, commenting on the findings.

“Numerous studies have shown that what we perceive others to be doing has a far stronger influence on our behavior than what we know we ‘ought’ to do. People know that they shouldn’t really pirate, but they continue to do so because they believe those around them do as well.”

One of the main threats pirates face is the availability of malware and malicious ads that are present on some sites. This risk is recognized by 74% of the active pirates, but they continue nonetheless.

The dangers of malware and viruses, which is a key talking point among industry groups nowadays, do have some effect. Among those who stopped pirating, 40% cited it as their primary reason. That’s more than the availability of legal services, which is mentioned in 37% of cases.

Aside from traditional download and streaming sites, the growing popularity of pirate media boxes is clearly present in Singapore was well. A total of 14% of Singaporeans admit to having such a device in their home.

So why do people continue to pirate despite the risks?

The answer is simple; because it’s free. The vast majority (63%) mention the lack of financial costs as their main motivation to use pirate sites. The ability to watch something whenever they want and a lack of legal options follow at a distance, both at 31%.

“There are few perceived downsides to piracy,” Meadows notes.

“Whilst the risk of devices being infected with viruses or malware is understood, it is underweighted. In the face of the benefit of free content, people appear to discount the risks, as the idea of getting something for nothing is so psychologically powerful.”

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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In June 2011, police across Europe carried out the largest anti-piracy operation the region had ever seen. Their target was massive streaming portal Kino.to and several affiliates with links to Spain, France and the Netherlands.

With many sites demonstrating phoenix-like abilities these days, it didn’t take long for a replacement to appear.

Replacement platform KinoX soon attracted a large fanbase and with that almost immediate attention from the authorities. In October 2014, Germany-based investigators acting on behalf of the Attorney General carried out raids in several regions of the country looking for four main suspects.

One raid, focused on a village near to the northern city of Lübeck, targeted two brothers, then aged 21 and 25-years-old. The pair, who were said to have lived with their parents, were claimed to be the main operators of Kinox.to and another large streaming site, Movie4K.to. Although two other men were arrested elsewhere in Germany, the brothers couldn’t be found.

This was to be no ordinary manhunt by the police. In addition to accusing the brothers of copyright infringement and tax evasion, authorities indicated they were wanted for fraud, extortion, and arson too. The suggestion was that they’d targeted a vehicle owned by a pirate competitor, causing it to “burst into flames”.

The brothers were later named as Kastriot and Kreshnik Selimi. Born in 1992, 21-year-old Kreshnik was born in Sweden. 25-year-old Kastriot was born in Kosovo in 1989 and along with his brother, later became a German citizen.

With authorities piling on the charges, the pair were accused of being behind not only KinoX and Movie4K, but also other hosting and sharing platforms including BitShare, Stream4k.to, Shared.sx, Mygully.com and Boerse.sx.

Now, almost three years later, German police are one step closer to getting their men. According to a Handelsblatt report via Tarnkappe, Kreshnik Selimi has been detained by authorities.

The now 24-year-old suspect reportedly handed himself to the German embassy located in the capital of Kosovo, Prestina. The location of the arrest isn’t really a surprise. Older brother Kastriot previously published a picture on Instagram which appeared to show a ticket in his name destined for Kosovo from Zurich in Switzerland.

But while Kreshnik’s arrest reportedly took place in July, there’s still no news of Kastriot. The older brother is still on the run, maybe in Kosovo, or by now, potentially anywhere else in the world.

While his whereabouts remain a mystery, the other puzzle faced by German authorities is the status of the two main sites the brothers were said to maintain.

Despite all the drama and unprecedented allegations of violence and other serious offenses, both Movie4K and KinoX remain stubbornly online, apparently oblivious to the action.

There have been consequences for people connected to the latter, however.

In December 2015, Arvit O (aka “Pedro”) who handled technical issues on KinoX, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for his involvement in the site.

Arvit O, who made a partial confession, was found guilty of copyright infringement by the District Court of Leipzig. The then 29-year-old admitted to infringing 2,889 works. The Court also found that he hacked the computers of two competitors in order to improve Kinox’s market share.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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In September 2015, U.S. authorities announced action against a pair of sites involved in music piracy.

ShareBeast.com and AlbumJams.com were allegedly responsible for the distribution of “a massive library” of popular albums and tracks. Both were accused of offering thousands of tracks before their official release dates.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) placed their now familiar seizure notice on both domains, with the RIAA claiming ShareBeast was the largest illegal file-sharing site operating in the United States. Indeed, the site’s IP addresses at the time indicated at least some hosting taking place in Illinois.

“This is a huge win for the music community and legitimate music services. Sharebeast operated with flagrant disregard for the rights of artists and labels while undermining the legal marketplace,” RIAA Chairman & CEO Cary Sherman commented at the time.

“Millions of users accessed songs from Sharebeast each month without one penny of compensation going to countless artists, songwriters, labels and others who created the music.”

Now, a full two years later, former Sharebeast operator Artur Sargsyan has pleaded guilty to one felony count of criminal copyright infringement, admitting to the unauthorized distribution and reproduction of over 1 billion copies of copyrighted works.

“Through Sharebeast and other related sites, this defendant profited by illegally distributing copyrighted music and albums on a massive scale,” said U. S. Attorney John Horn.

“The collective work of the FBI and our international law enforcement partners have shut down the Sharebeast websites and prevented further economic losses by scores of musicians and artists.”

The Department of Justice says that from 2012 to 2015, 29-year-old Sargsyan used ShareBeast as a pirate music repository, infringing works produced by Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Beyonce, Kanye West, and Justin Bieber, among others. He linked to that content from Newjams.net and Albumjams.com, two other sites under his control.

The DoJ says that Sargsyan was informed at least 100 times that there was infringing content on ShareBeast but despite the warnings, the content remained available. When those warnings produced no results, the FBI – assisted by law enforcement in the UK and the Netherlands – seized servers used by Sargsyan to distribute the material.

Brad Buckles, EVP, Anti-Piracy at the RIAA, welcomed the guilty plea.

“Sharebeast and its related sites represented the most popular network of infringing music sites operated out of the United States. The network was responsible for providing millions of downloads of popular music files including unauthorized pre-release albums and tracks.This illicit activity was a gut-punch to music creators who were paid nothing by the service,” Buckles said.

“We are incredibly grateful for the government’s commitment to protecting the rights of artists and labels. We especially thank the dedicated agents of the FBI who painstakingly unraveled this criminal enterprise, and U.S. Attorney John Horn and his team for their work and diligence in seeing this case to its successful conclusion.”

Sargsyan, of Glendale, California, will be sentenced December 4 before U.S. District Judge Timothy C. Batten.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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Dedicated Internet pirates dealing in fresh content or operating at any significant scale can be pretty sure that rightsholders and their anti-piracy colleagues are interested in their activities at some level.

With this in mind, most pirates these days are aware of things they can do to enhance their security, with products like VPNs often get discussed on the consumer side.

This week, in a report detailing the challenges social media poses to intellectual property rights, UK anti-piracy outfit Federation Against Copyright Theft published a list of techniques deployed by pirates that hinder their investigations.

Fake/hidden website registration details

“Website registration details are often fake or hidden, which provides no further links to the person controlling the domain and its illegal activities,” the group reveals.

Protected WHOIS records are nothing new and can sometimes be uncloaked by a determined adversary via court procedures. However, in the early stages of an investigation, open records provide leads that can be extremely useful in building an early picture about who might be involved in the operation of a website.

Having them hidden is a definite plus for pirate site operators, especially when the underlying details are also fake, which is particularly common practice. And, with companies like Peter Sunde’s Njalla entering the market, hiding registrations is easier than ever.

Overseas servers

“Investigating servers located offshore cause some specific problems for FACT’s law-enforcement partners. In order to complete a full investigation into an offshore server, a law-enforcement agency must liaise with its counterpart in the country where the server is located. The difficulties of obtaining evidence from other countries are well known,” FACT notes.

While FACT no doubt corresponds with entities overseas, the anti-piracy outfit has a history of targeting UK citizens who are reportedly infringing copyright. It regularly involves UK police in its investigations (FACT itself employs former police officers) but jurisdiction is necessarily limited to the UK.

It is possible to get overseas law enforcement entities involved to seize a server, for example, but they have to be convinced of the need to do so by the police, which isn’t easy and is usually reserved for more serious cases. The bottom line is that by placing a server a long way away from a pirate’s home territory, things can be made much more difficult for local investigators.

Torrent websites and DMCA compliance

“Some torrent website operators who maintain a high DMCA compliance rate will often use this to try to appease the law, while continuing to provide infringing links,” FACT says.

This is an interesting one. Under law in both the United States and Europe, service providers are required to remove infringing content from their systems when they are notified of its existence by a rightsholder or its agent. Not doing so can render them liable, if the content is indeed infringing.

What FACT appears to be saying is that sites that comply with the law, by removing infringing content when asked to, become more difficult targets for legal action. It sounds very obvious but the underlying suggestion is that compliance on the surface is used as a protective mechanism. No example sites are mentioned but the strategy has clearly hindered FACT.

Current legislation too vague to remove infringing live sports streams

“Current legislation is insufficient to effectively tackle the issue of websites illegally offering coverage of live sports events. Section 512 (c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) states that: upon notification of claimed infringement, the service provider should ‘respond expeditiously’ to remove or disable access to the copyright-infringing material. Most live sports events are under two hours long, so such non-specific timeframes for required action are inadequate,” FACT complains.

Since government reports like these can take a long time to prepare, it appears that FACT and its partners may have already found a solution to this particular problem. Major FACT client the Premier League now has a High Court injunction in place which allows it to block infringing streams on a real-time basis. It doesn’t remove the content at its source, but it still renders it largely inaccessible in the UK.

Nevertheless, FACT calls for takedowns to be actioned more swiftly, noting that “the law needs to reflect this narrow timeframe with a specified required response period for websites offering such live feeds.”

Camming content directly from cinema screen to the cloud

“Recent advancements in technology have made this a viable option to ‘cammers’ to avoid detection. Attempts to curtail and delete illicitly recorded film footage may become increasingly difficult with the emergence of streaming apps that automatically upload recorded video to cloud services,” FACT reports.

Over the years, FACT has been involved in numerous operations to hinder those who record movies with cameras in theaters and then upload them to the Internet. Once the perpetrator has exited the theater, FACT has effectively lost the battle, but the possibility that a live upload can now take place is certainly an interesting proposition.

“While enforcing officers may delete the footage held on the device, the footage has potentially already been stored remotely on a cloud system,” FACT warns.

Equally, this could also prove a problem for those seeking to secure evidence. With a cloud upload, the person doing the recording could safely delete the footage from the local device. That could be an obstacle to proving that an offense had even been committed when a suspect is confronted in situ.

Virtual currencies

“There is great potential in virtual currencies for money launderers and illicit traders. Government and law enforcement have raised concerns on how virtual currencies can be sent anonymously, leaving little or no trail for regulators or law-enforcement agencies,” FACT writes.

For many years, pirates of all kinds have relied on systems like PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa, to shift money around. However, these payment systems are now more difficult to deploy on pirate services and are more easily traced, even when operators manage to squeeze them through the gaps.

The same cannot be said of bitcoin and similar currencies that are gaining in popularity all the time. They are harder to use, of course, but there’s little doubt accessibility issues will be innovated out of the equation at some point. Once that happens, these currencies will be a force to be reckoned with.

The UK government’s Share and Share Alike report, which examines the challenges social media poses to intellectual property rights, can be downloaded here (pdf)

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