China Says It Will “Severely Strike” Websites Involved in Piracy


When it comes to the protection of intellectual property, China is often viewed as one of the world’s leading scofflaws. Everything is copied in the country, from designer watches to cars. Not even major landmarks can escape the replica treatment.

In more recent times, however, there have been signs that China might be at least warming to the idea that IP protection should be given more priority.

For example, every few months authorities announce a new crackdown on Internet piracy, such as the “Jian Wang 2016” program which shuttered 290 piracy websites in the final six months of last year.

Maintaining the same naming convention, this week China’s National Copyright Administration revealed the new “Jian Wang 2017” anti-piracy program. During a meeting in Beijing attended by other state bodies, copyright groups, rights organizations, and representatives from the news media, the administration detailed its latest plans.

The anti-piracy program will focus on protecting the copyrights of the film, television, and news industries in China. Infringing websites, e-commerce and cloud storage services, social networks, plus mobile Internet applications will all be put under the spotlight, with authorities investigating and prosecuting major cases.

The program, which will run for the next four months, has a mission to improve compliance in three key areas.

The first aims to assist the film and TV industries by cracking down on ‘pirate’ websites, the unlawful use of file-sharing software, plus “forum communities and other channels that supply infringing film and television works.”

Also on the cards is a blitz against users of the hugely popular social media and instant messaging app, WeChat.

Released in 2011, WeChat now has more than 930 million users, some of which use the platform to republish news articles without permission from creators. Chinese authorities want to reduce this activity, noting that too many articles are stripped from their sources and reproduced on personal blogs and similar platforms.

The second area for attention is the booming market for pirate apps. Chinese authorities say that cracked app stores and the software they provide are contributing to a huge rise in the unlawful spread of films, TV shows, music, news and other literature. Set-top boxes that utilize such apps will also be targeted in the crackdown.

Finally, there will be a “strengthening of copyright supervision” on large-scale e-commerce platforms that supply audio and video products, eBooks, and other publications. Cloud storage platforms will also be subjected to additional scrutiny, as these are often used to share copyright works without permission.

What kind of effect the program will have on overall copyrighted content availability will remain to be seen, but if previous patterns are maintained, the National Copyright Administration should reveal the results of its blitz in December.

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Apple Bans VPNs From App Store in China


Apple is known to have a rigorous app-review policy.

Over the past several years, dozens of apps have been rejected from the App Store because they mention the word BitTorrent, for example.

The mere association with piracy is good enough to warrant a ban. This policy is now expanding to the privacy-sphere as well, at least in China.

It is no secret that the Chinese Government is preventing users from accessing certain sites and services. The so-called ‘Great Firewall’ works reasonably well, but can be circumvented through VPN services and other encryption tools.

These tools are a thorn in the side of Chinese authorities, which are now receiving help from Apple to limit their availability.

Over the past few hours, Apple has removed many of the most-used VPN applications from the Chinese app store. In a short email, VPN providers are informed that VPN applications are considered illegal in China.

“We are writing to notify you that your application will be removed from the China App Store because it includes content that is illegal in China, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines,” Apple informed the affected VPNs.

Apple’s email to VPN providers

VPN providers and users are complaining bitterly about the rigorous action. However, it doesn’t come as a complete surprise. Over the past few months there have been various signals that the Chinese Government would crack down on non-authorized VPN providers.

In January, a notice published by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that the government had launched a 14-month campaign to crack down on local ‘unauthorized’ Internet platforms.

This essentially means that all VPN services have to be pre-approved by the Government if they want to operate there.

Earlier this month Bloomberg broke the news that China’s Government had ordered telecommunications carriers to block individuals’ access to VPNs. The Chinese Government denied that this was the case, but it’s clear that these services remain a high-profile target.

Thanks to Apple, China’s Government no longer has to worry about iOS users having easy access to the most popular VPN applications. Those users who search the local app store for “VPN” still see plenty of results, but, ironically, many of these applications are fake.

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Which Domain Names Are Safe From Copyright Bullies?


There are plenty options for copyright holders to frustrate the operation of pirate sites, but one of the most effective is to attack their domain names.

The strategy has been deployed most famously against The Pirate Bay. Over the past couple of years, the site has lost more than a handful following copyright holder complaints.

While less public, hundreds of smaller sites have suffered the same fate. Sometimes these sites are clear infringers, but in other cases it’s less obvious. In these instances, a simple complaint can also be enough to have a domain name suspended.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge address this ‘copyright bullying’ problem in a newly published whitepaper. According to the digital rights groups, site owners should pick their domain names carefully, and go for a registry that shields website owners from this type of abuse.

“It turns out that not every top-level domain is created equal when it comes to protecting the domain holder’s rights. Depending on where you register your domain, a rival, troll, or officious regulator who doesn’t like what you’re doing with it could wrongly take it away,” the groups warn.

The whitepaper includes a detailed analysis of the policies of various domain name registries. For each, it lists the home country, under which conditions domain names are removed, and whether the WHOIS details of registrants are protected.

When it comes to “copyright bullies,” the digital rights groups highlight the MPAA’s voluntary agreements with the Radix and Donuts registries. The agreement allows the MPAA to report infringing sites directly to the registry. These can then be removed after a careful review but without a court order.

“Our whitepaper illustrates why remedies for copyright infringement on the Internet should not come from the domain name system, and in particular should not be wielded by commercial actors in an unaccountable process. Organizations such as the MPAA are not known for advancing a balanced approach to copyright enforcement,” the EFF explains.

While EFF and Public Knowledge don’t recommend any TLDs in particular, they do signal some that site owners may want to avoid. The Radix and Donuts domain names are obviously not the best choice, in this regard.

“To avoid having your website taken down by your domain registry in response to a copyright complaint, our whitepaper sets out a number of options, including registering in a domain whose registry requires a court order before it will take down a domain, or at the very least one that doesn’t have a special arrangement with the MPAA or another special interest for the streamlined takedown of domains,” the groups write.

Aside from the information gathered in the whitepaper, The Pirate Bay itself has also proven to be an excellent test case of which domain names are most resistant to copyright holder complaints.

In 2015, the notorious torrent site found out that exotic domain names are not always the best option after losing its .GS, .LA, .VG, .AM, .MN, and .GD TLDs in a matter of months. The good old .ORG is still up and running as of today, however, despite being operated by a United States-based registry.

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EFF and Public knowledge’s full whitepaper is available here (pdf).

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Italian ISPs Say New Copyright Amendment Infringes Human Rights


After being spoken of in unfavorable terms by the United States Trade Representative in its Special 301 Reports, Italy achieved a sudden breakthrough in 2014.

“Italy’s removal from the Special 301 List reflects the significant steps the Government of Italy has taken to address the problem of online piracy, and the continued U.S. commitment to meaningful and sustained engagement with our critical partner Italy,” the USTR said in a special announcement.

This praise was in part due to the way Italy promised to deal with online piracy. Instead of legislating to make a piracy crackdown easier, the government handed AGCOM, the Italian Communications Regulatory Authority, the power to deal with infringement based on complaints filed by rightsholders.

Without any need for legal cases or court injunctions, at the end of March 2014, AGCOM was granted the power to have allegedly infringing content removed from sites and to have domains blocked at the ISP level.

Now, just over three years later, AGCOM has been granted even more power. Passed last week, Amendment 1.022 effectively gives AGCOM the power to order sites to not only take allegedly infringing content down but to keep it down permanently, all without intervention from the judiciary.

The decision has provoked a furious response from a body representing the country’s ISPs, which describes the “unconstitutional rules” as a way to protect the economic interests of right holders behind various creative works and live sporting events.

“This measure abolishes procedural safeguards for citizens, imposes interception obligations to Internet providers, and damages consumers by imposing technical measures that will result in increased costs,” the Italian Association of Internet Providers (AIIP) said in a statement.

According to AIIP, it is the judiciary that should have sole power over copyright infringement disputes in Italy. When other bodies such as AGCOM are given control over criminal issues, it represents a violation of both constitutional principles and EU law.

“Any rule that would require Internet Providers to filter and carry out preventive checks – as well as to remove content generated by users without a court order – is in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Community legislation on electronic communications services, and case law of the European Court of Justice,” AIIP says.

The ISP body says that AGCOM now possesses discretionary powers that even magistrates do not have, which from a technical perspective includes monitoring, interception, and blocking of user activity, a position that amounts to “gigantic state censorship.”

Only time will tell how the situation pans out but it’s crystal clear that ISPs feel that unlike the views of the copyright industry, their concerns have not been taken into consideration.

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Police Confirm ‘Extra’ Illegal Spying on Kim Dotcom


Kim Dotcom has made headlines in the press again over the past week, but not for his own alleged misconduct.

Instead, there is a renewed focus on the unlawful surveillance practices of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB).

During the months leading up to the raid, the GCSB carried out surveillance on Dotcom but failed to check his residency status. The outfit was not allowed to spy on its own residents and clearly crossed a line with its unlawful information gathering.

To find out what was collected, Dotcom asked the High Court for access to the surveilled information, but last week this request was denied. While this came as a disappointment, the court did reveal something else of interest.

As it turns out, the illegal spying on Dotcom didn’t stop on January 20, 2012, when Dotcom was arrested. Instead, it carried on for another two months, ending March 22, 2012.

Initially, some people thought that the High Court may have made a mistake in the timeline, but with pressure mounting, New Zealand police have now confirmed that this is not the case. The illegal spying did indeed continue for two more months.

“We’ve checked the file and can confirm that the dates you’ve highlighted were known to the Operation Grey team. They were considered as part of the investigation and decision-making about the outcome,” a police spokesman told NZ Herald.

While this is all news to the public, the police and others were well-aware of the additional spying. This raises a series of questions, which Megaupload’s founder would like to see answered.

“Does this mean that New Zealand Police knew that the GCSB affidavits were false? GCSB told the Courts under oath that the illegal spying ended two months earlier. Not in March but in January,” Dotcom says, commenting on the news.

The issue is more than a matter of oversight, Dotcom says, and he calls for a proper investigation where the people responsible will be held accountable.

“New Zealand Police investigated GCSB because of the illegal spying but nobody was ever charged with any crime. How is that possible if the Police knew that the GCSB lied to the New Zealand Courts? What else would we discover if we had a fair and open hearing instead of secret submissions in closed Court?

“The New Zealand Courts have been fooled by the GCSB and the Police. What’s next? What are the consequences?” Dotcom adds.

In recent years the Megaupload case has been a stumbling block for several politicians and the latest revelations have put Prime Minister Bill English under pressure. It’s clear that several high ranked officials would rather see Dotcom leave, but thus far the fiasco is more likely to help him stay.

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Google Challenges Canada’s Global Blocking Injunction in the US


Despite being what courts have described as an “innocent bystander”, Google has found itself at the heart of a potentially damaging intellectual property case. Running since 2014, Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack saw Canadian entities battle over stolen intellectual property.

Equustek Solutions claimed that Google’s search results helped to send visitors to Datalink websites operated by the defendants (former Equustek employees) who were selling unlawful products. Google voluntarily removed links to the sites from its Google.ca (Canada) results but Equustek wanted more, and soon got it.

A court in British Columbia, the Court of Appeal, and then the Supreme Court of Canada all agreed that Google should remove links to the sites on a global basis, by definition beyond Canada’s borders.

When court rulings encroach on potentially opposing legal systems overseas, difficulties are bound to arise. Google raised concerns that the decision would conflict with U.S. law, but the Supreme Court described the issues as “theoretical” and left it up to the U.S. to solve the problem.

In response, Google filed for an injunction at the US District Court for Northern California this week, arguing that the Canadian decision violates important U.S. legislation.

“Google now turns to this Court, asking it to declare that the rights established by the First Amendment and the Communications Decency Act are not merely theoretical,” Google wrote.

“The Canadian order is repugnant to those rights, and the order violates principles of international comity, particularly since the Canadian plaintiffs never established any violation of their rights under U.S. law.

“Pursuant to well-established United States law, Google seeks a declaratory judgment that the Canadian court’s order cannot be enforced in the United States and an order enjoining that enforcement.”

According to Google, Internet search results are fully protected speech under the First Amendment, and because the Canadian decision is directed to a specific speaker (Google) and is content-specific, it must come under scrutiny.

Google insists that the websites to be censored are already a matter of public record and Equustek has not shown that it has no alternative remedies to hand other than to censor Google’s results outside of Canada.

“Equustek has not sought similar delisting injunctions against the world’s other search engines, such as Bing or Yahoo,” Google writes, noting that action hasn’t been taken against regular websites carrying links either.

Google also suggests that Equustek could have taken action against Datalink’s registrars and webhosts, which have the ability to delete the actual sites in question. With the websites gone the search de-indexing battle would be moot, but for reasons unknown, Equustek has chosen a different battle.

Describing the Canadian order as one of “convenience,” Google criticizes the effort to deal with a Canadian legal problem on a global basis, adding that “no one country should purport to control the global internet.”

In closing, Google asks the court to declare the Canadian Order unenforceable in the United States on the basis it violates the the First Amendment, the Communications Decency Act, and public policy surrounding enforceability of foreign judgments.

“The Canadian Order purports to place the Canadian court in the position of
supervising the law enforcement activities of a foreign sovereign nation (the United States) against the United States’ own citizens on American soil. Because the Canadian courts ignored principles of international comity, corrective action by this Court is required,” Google concludes.

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Surge of Threatening Piracy Letters Concerns Finnish Authorities


finlandStarting three years ago, copyright holders began sending out thousands of settlement letters to alleged pirates in Finland, a practice often described as copyright trolling.

In a country with a population of just over five million, copyright holders have cast their net wide. According to local reports, Internet providers handed over details of one hundred thousand customers last year alone.

This practice has not been without controversy. As the settlement letters were sent out, recipients – including some pensioners – started to complain. Many of the accused denied downloading any pirated material but felt threatened by the letters.

Thus far, complaints have been filed with the Market Court, the Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority, the Consumer Authority, and the Ministry of Education and Culture.

In May, the Ministry of Education set up a working group to create a set of ‘best practices’ for copyright enforcement. The working group includes, among others, Internet providers, and outfits that are involved in sending the influx of settlement letters.

Anna Vuopala, a Government’s counselor at the Ministry of Education and Culture, told Kauppaleht that rightsholders should act within the boundaries of the law.

“We strive to create good practices [for copyright enforcement] and eliminate practices that are contrary to law,” says Vuopala, who’s leading the working group.

If the parties involved can’t reach an agreement on how to proceed, the Government considers changing existing copyright law to defuse the situation. What these changes could be is unclear at this point.

Earlier this year the Finnish market court already dealt a blow to local copyright trolls. In a unanimous ruling, seven judges ruled that the privacy of alleged BitTorrent pirates outweighs the evidence provided by the rightsholders.

While it was clear that copyright infringement was taking place, the rightsholders failed to show that it was significant enough to hand over the requested personal details.

Although this decision supports the rights of those who are falsely accused, the Government believes that a set of good practices is still needed to prevent future excesses and controversy.

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Kim Dotcom Spying Fiasco Puts Prime Minister Under Pressure


In the lead up to the January 2012 raid on cloud storage site Megaupload, authorities in New Zealand used the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) agency to spy on Kim and Mona Dotcom, plus Megaupload co-defendant Bram van der Kolk. That should not have happened.

Intelligence agency GCSB was forbidden by law from conducting surveillance on its own citizens or permanent residents in the country. Former Prime Minister John Key later apologized for the glaring error but for Dotcom, that wasn’t enough. The entrepreneur launched legal action in pursuit of the information illegally obtained by GCSB and appropriate compensation.

Last week the High Court decided that Dotcom wouldn’t get access to the information but it also revealed something of much interest. Instead of confirming that the illegal spying on Dotcom took place December 16, 2011, through to January 20, 2012, the range was extended by two months to March 22, 2012.

The implications of the extension are numerous, not least that GCSB continued to spy on Dotcom even after it knew it was acting illegally. The reveal also undermines an earlier affidavit from a GCSB staff member, problems which are now returning to haunt New Zealand Prime Minister, Bill English.

When the spying was taking place, John Key was Prime Minister but when Key traveled overseas, English was left at the helm. As a result, when the possibility that Dotcom had been spied on was raised during court hearings in 2012, it was English who was approached by the GCSB with a request to have its involvement made a state secret.

According to NZHerald, English was briefed by then-GCSB director Ian Fletcher and former acting director Hugh Wolfensohn on GCSB’s assistance to the police in the Dotcom case.

The content of those discussion has not been made public but English appears to have been convinced of the need to keep the information private. He subsequently signed a ministerial certificate, which barred disclosure of GCSB activities, even by people asked to provide them in a court of law.

However, since GCSB had broken the law by illegally spying on the Dotcoms and van Der Kolk, the certificate subsequently collapsed. But, like a dog with a bone, Dotcom isn’t letting this go, claiming that acting Prime Minister English acted unlawfully by signing the certificate in an effort to suppress wrong-doing.

“The ministerial certificate was an attempted cover-up. Bill English must have been briefed that GCSB was facing legal troubles because of unlawful conduct,” he told NZHerald.

“And only after the attempted gag-order failed in the High Court did the Government admit unlawful spying with a fake narrative that it was all a big mistake, a misunderstanding of the law, an error.”

Following the judgment last week that revealed the extended spying period, Dotcom confirms that there will be fresh legal action to obtain information from GCSB.

“The new revelations completely undermine the government narrative and it raises new questions about what really happened,” Dotcom concludes.

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Facebook Buys Startup to Expand its Anti-Piracy Repertoire


facebayIn common with other sites dealing with user-generated content, Facebook has to battle a constant stream of unauthorized copyright material.

When it comes to targeting infringement, Facebook has rolled out a few anti-piracy initiatives in recent years. The company has a “Rights Manager” tool that detects infringing material automatically and allows owners to take down or monetize this content.

The social media network is not done yet, though. Anti-piracy strategies need constant refinement and with a new acquisition, Facebook has expanded its expertise in this area.

Facebook has taken over the startup Source3, which specializes in IP recognition, IP licensing and rights administration services. The company is a known player in the copyright industry and its founders previously sold another startup, RightsFlow, to Google.

“Today, we wanted to let everyone know that we’ve decided to continue our journey with Facebook,” Source3 announced in a statement on its website.

“We’re excited to bring our IP, trademark and copyright expertise to the team at Facebook and serve their global community of two billion people, who consume content, music, videos and other IP every day.”

Commenting on the deal, a Facebook spokesperson informed Recode that they are excited to learn from Source3’s copyright expertise. No further details were released on the terms of the deal, and it’s unclear how much was paid.

Neither company has shared any concrete plans for the future, but it’s likely that the acquisition will be used to expand existing anti-piracy initiatives.

Among other things, the startup heavily focused on automated licensing tools. This could mean that Facebook might want to offer its users the option to license content from rightsholders and minimize copyright infringement in a positive way.

“Source3 can monitor and manage third-party IP and proactively establish licensing relationships with brands,” the company boasted on its website, before the acquisition.

“We also provide a range of scalable licensing tools, supported by a team of licensing veterans, to manage the licensing process from negotiation to real-time approvals to royalty reporting,” it added.

Time will tell how exactly Facebook will expand its anti-piracy efforts, but it’s clear that it remains a high priority for the social network.

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Cloudflare Wants to Eliminate ‘Moot’ Pirate Site Blocking Threat


Representing various major record labels, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against MP3Skull in 2015.

With millions of visitors per month the MP3 download site had been one of the prime sources of pirated music for a long time.

Last year a Florida federal court sided with the RIAA, awarding the labels more than $22 million in damages. In addition, it issued a permanent injunction which allowed the RIAA to take over the site’s domain names.

Despite the multi-million dollar verdict, MP3Skull continued to operate using a variety of new domain names, which were subsequently targeted by the RIAA’s legal team. As the site refused to shut down, the RIAA eventually moved up the chain targeting CDN provider Cloudflare with the permanent injunction.

The RIAA argued that Cloudflare was operating “in active concert or participation” with the pirates. Cloudflare objected and argued that the DMCA shielded the company from the broad blocking requirements. However, the court ruled that the DMCA doesn’t apply in this case, opening the door to widespread anti-piracy filtering.

The court stressed that, before issuing an injunction against Cloudflare, it still had to be determined whether the CDN provider is “in active concert or participation” with the pirate site. However, this has yet to happen. Since MP3Skull has ceased its operations the RIAA has shown little interest in pursuing the matter any further.

Cloudflare now wants the dangerous anti-piracy filtering order to be thrown out. The company submitted a motion to vacate the order late last week, arguing that the issue is moot. In fact, it has been for a while for some of the contended domain names.

The CDN provider says it researched the domain names listed in the injunction and found that only three of the twenty domains used Cloudflare’s services at the time the RIAA asked the court to clarify its order. Some had never used CloudFlare’s services at all, they say.

“Indeed, six domains – including five of the so-called ‘Active MP3Skull Domains’ in the amended injunction – had never used Cloudflare services at all. And the remaining eleven had stopped using Cloudflare before Plaintiffs brought their motion, in some cases long before Plaintiffs filed suit,” Cloudflare writes.

“Every domain Plaintiffs identified had stopped using Cloudflare by December 2016, without any independent or affirmative action by Cloudflare. Yet Plaintiffs made no effort to inform the Court of the mootness of their ’emergency’ motion in the three months before the Court issued its Order.”

Cloudflare’s research

Making the matter even worse, several of the domain names listed in the injunction were owned by the record labels, when the RIAA tried to have Cloudflare block them.

“Moreover, Cloudflare’s investigation revealed that that Plaintiff Sony Music Entertainment itself owned seven of the twenty domains months as of the time Plaintiffs brought their motion, and Sony acquired one more domain shortly after.”

The latter is due to the seizure order, which was also granted by the court. However, according to Cloudflare, the RIAA failed to inform the court about these and several other changes.

“Plaintiffs did not inform the Court of the mootness of their motion against Cloudflare,” the company writes.

Since the RIAA was not entirely upfront, and the issue is no longer relevant, Cloudflare is now asking the court to vacate the order. This will push the looming piracy blocking obligations aside, which could otherwise come back to haunt the company in the future.

The RIAA has yet to reply to CloudFlare’s request, but they would likely want to keep the order in place. There’s always a tiny chance that MP3Skull might arise from the ashes, and they would want to be prepared should that be the case.

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Cloudflare’s full motion is available here (pdf).

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