For the past several weeks, some ‘pirate’ IPTV services have been subjected to ‘hacks’ carried out by as-yet unidentified people.

In early December, Helix Hosting became the first reported case. Its homepage was defaced with a message explaining that the service had been asked to pay a ransom or face having its customer database leaked online.

Just a few days later, PrimeStreams became the victim of similar blackmail efforts. Its operator revealed that a weak password had been exploited and that 10 bitcoin was being demanded in order to prevent the service’s confidential data from being exposed to the world.

Unconfirmed reports indicated that other services were also targeted in December, which may or may not have settled in the face of similar threats. However, PrimeStreams’ situation appears to be ongoing as a quick visit to what used to be its main servicing domain (PrimeStreams.store) reveals a rather ominous message.

This countdown-timer message usually indicates that a domain has been taken over by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, the global anti-piracy coalition headed up by the MPA. It is currently displayed on dozens of file-sharing and IPTV platforms, commonly after they have reached some kind of settlement with the world’s largest entertainment groups. Vaders and Openload are two of the most obvious examples.

Of course, seeing that message will probably be enough to send many customers running for the hills but the truth is relatively easy to uncover. This isn’t a domain seizure carried out by ACE but most probably the work of a malicious actor, as a dive into the domain’s details reveal.

As the image above shows, at the time of writing the PrimeStreams domain is using the services of Njalla, the domain registration and hosting service closely associated with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde. That doesn’t mean that Njalla has anything to do with the issue, of course, but it does indicate in a particularly clear way that ACE isn’t the entity in control here.

When ACE does take control of a domain, Openload.co for example, there are many tell-tale signs that the seizure is legitimate, including the use of the MPA’s own nameservers, redirection to certain banks of servers in the United States, not to mention contact details that relate to bodies and individuals at the MPA.

If we rule out the highly unlikely possibility that the operator of PrimeStreams redirected his own domain to ACE’s anti-piracy servers, then we’re left with a situation that was most probably engineered by a malicious actor. Whether that was the same person who threatened the site in December is unknown but losing a domain to an unauthorized third-party is an extremely serious matter.

The double-edged sword here is the involvement of Njalla. While there’s a possibility that there might be an element of sympathy at the sight of an unlawful hack (not to mention that some of the team were previously involved in The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån), Njalla is utterly militant when it comes to the privacy of its users so may not even be able to help.

That might have played a part in PrimeStreams’ decision to dump this domain entirely and transfer to a new one. The big question, however, was whether the service had any more big security headaches waiting to kick in. Sure enough, within hours of going live, incredibly that domain was ‘hacked’ as well.

In the meantime, ACE gets yet another traffic boost.

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When it comes to targeting infringement, Facebook has rolled out a few anti-piracy initiatives over recent years.

In addition to processing regular takedown requests, the company has a “Rights Manager” tool that detects infringing material automatically and allows owners to take down or monetize the content.

In a recent meeting organized by the European Commission, Facebook explained in detail how this automated system works. The meeting was organized to create a dialogue between various parties about possible solutions for the implementation of Article 17.

In Facebook’s presentation Dave Axelgard, product Manager for Rights Manager, explained how automated matching of copyrighted content takes place on the social media network. He also detailed what actions rightsholders can take in response, and how users can protest misuse and abuse of the system.

The EU meeting was attended by a wide range of parties. In addition to copyright holders, it also included various people representing digital rights organizations. Facebook made it clear that it keeps the interests of all sides in mind. It specifically highlighted, however, that abuse of Rights Manager is a serious concern.

“We spend much of our time building systems to avoid blocking legitimate content,” Axelgard mentioned during his presentation.

“The way that inappropriate blocks occur is when rightsholders gain access to Rights Manager despite our application process, who attempt to upload content to the tool that they do not own.”

Another form of overblocking that takes place is when copyright holders upload content that they don’t own. This can happen by mistake when a compilation video is added, which also includes content that’s not theirs.

Facebook works hard to catch and prevent these types of misuse and abuse, to ensure that its automated detection system doesn’t remove legitimate content. This is also something to keep in mind for the implementation of possible ‘upload filters’ with the introduction of Article 17.

“Misuse is a significant issue and after operating Rights Manager for a number of years, we can tell you it is one of the most sensitive things that need to be accounted for in a proportionate system,” Axelgard says.

Facebook tries to limit abuse through a variety of measures. The company limits access to its Rights Manager tool to a select group of verified copyright holders. In addition, it always requires playable reference files, so all claims can be properly vetted.

The social media network also limits the availability of certain automated actions, such as removal or blocking, to a subset of Rights Manager users. This is in part because some smaller rightsholders may not fully understand copyright, which can lead to errors.

Finally, Facebook points out that misuse of its Rights Manager tool constitutes a breach of its Terms of Service. This allows the company to terminate rightsholders that repeatedly make mistakes.

“If we find that Rights Manager is being misused, then under our Rights Manager terms we have the ability to terminate someone’s access to the tool. We really do want to stress how important it is that platforms have the ability to adjust access and functionality related to these powerful technologies to avoid misuse,” Axelgard notes.

The strong focus on misuse was welcomed by digital rights groups, including Communia. However, it also raised some eyebrows among rightsholders.

Mathieu Moreuil of the English Premier League, who represented the Sports Rights Owner Coalition, asked Facebook whether the abuse of Rights Manager really is the company’s main challenge.

“I think it’s definitely one of our main challenges,” Axelgard confirmed, while noting that Facebook also keeps the interests of rightsholders in mind.

Overall, Facebook carefully explained the pros and cons of its system. Whether it is an ideal tool to implement Article 17 in EU countries is another question. In its current form Rights Manager isn’t, as it doesn’t allow all copyright holders to join in.

Also, Rights Manager works with audio and video, but not with digital images, which is another major restriction.

On the other hand, there are pitfalls from a consumer perspective as well. Automated systems may be very good at detecting copyrighted content, but Facebook confirmed that they currently can’t make a determination in respect of copyright exemptions such as parody and fair use.

“Our matching system is not able to take context into account. It’s just seeking to identify whether or not two pieces of content matched to one another,” Axelgard said, responding to a question from Communia’s Paul Keller.

This shortcoming of automated filters was also confirmed by Audible Magic, the popular music matching service that’s used by dozens of large companies to detect copyright infringements.

“Copyright exceptions require a high degree of intellectual judgment and an understanding and appreciation of context. We do not represent that any technology can solve this problem in an automated fashion. Ultimately these types of determinations must be handled by human judgment,” Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye said.

As noted by Communia, the most recent stakeholder meeting once again showed that automated content recognition systems are extremely powerful and very limited at the same time.

If any of these technologies become the basis of implementing Europe’s Article 17 requirements, these shortcomings should be kept in mind. Or as Facebook said, a lot of time and effort should go into preventing legitimate content being blocked.

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A video of the full stakeholder meeting is available on the European Commission’s website. A copy of Facebook’s slides is available here (pdf).

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When copyright holders feel they have exhausted all options to have websites stop their allegedly-infringing activities, there is a growing trend to move further up the chain.

Sites now regularly have copyright complaints filed against their hosting companies and domain registries, for example, demanding that they take action to prevent contentious behavior. Since millions of websites now use Cloudflare’s services, that makes the CDN provider a prime candidate for pressure. A new case filed yesterday in a Tennessee district court provides yet another example.

American Clothing Express Inc., which does business as Allure Bridals and Justin Alexander, designs and manufactures wedding dresses. As part of the companies’ sales and marketing efforts, they claim to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on photoshoots featuring models wearing their creations.

According to the companies, however, the resulting photographic images are also being deployed by unauthorized overseas websites (sample below) in an effort to drive customers to unaffiliated bridal stores in local markets selling “cheap imitation” dresses.

The plaintiffs state that they lack a meaningful remedy against such sites, noting that the majority are hosted on servers in China, other locations in South East Asia, or on offshore servers that advertise their non-compliance with United States’ copyright laws.

“Complaints sent by Plaintiffs, or their agents, to the Infringing Website Defendants, or to the entities hosting them in these far-away jurisdictions, largely fall on deaf ears. Domestic judgments obtained against the Infringing Website Defendants are often unenforceable against them in their home jurisdictions,” the complaint reads.

The filing lists 99 websites (represented by Does 1-200) falling into these categories that all have something in common – they are or have been customers of US-based Cloudflare. As a result, the plaintiffs have resorted to filing infringement notices with the CDN company, hoping it will take action to restrict the availability of the infringing images.

Indeed, over the past three years the companies claim that they sent several thousand infringement notifications to Cloudflare which included the URLs of pages on the allegedly infringing sites where unlicensed images were being used. The complaint acknowledges that Cloudflare forwarded the complaints to its customers and their hosts but due to the nature of the clients, the hosting providers mostly ignored the takedown demands.

The complaint targets the operators of the 99 sample sites with claims of direct copyright infringement but additionally, due to Cloudflare’s involvement, the CDN company itself is accused of contributory copyright infringement.

“CloudFlare had actual knowledge of the specific infringing activity at issue here because anti-counterfeiting vendors retained by Plaintiffs delivered more than seven thousand notifications to CloudFlare of the ongoing infringement being prosecuted herein over the course of three years,” the complaint reads.

In common with a similar on-going case in California involving another bridal company, the plaintiffs in this matter also state that Cloudflare should have taken more permanent action when they realized that complaints were being made against the same customers time and again, as illustrated by the sample in the image below.

“CloudFlare could have stopped this infringement being perpetrated through its CDN by simply terminating the accounts of repeat infringers,” the complaint continues.

“CloudFlare has never terminated a repeat infringer in response to notifications sent by Plaintiffs or other bridal manufacturers. Consequently, an exceedingly disproportionate amount of websites infringing Plaintiffs’ copyrights are optimized by CloudFlare, as opposed to other providers of CDNs, due to CloudFlare’s well-known policy of refusing to terminate repeat infringers.”

While the plaintiffs don’t mention Cloudflare’s competitors by name, the complaint alleges that in response to similar copyright infringement notices, other CDN providers told their clients that if the images weren’t removed, their entire website accounts would be terminated.

The term ‘repeat infringer’ is becoming increasingly common in United States copyright infringement cases.

In December 2019, Cox Communications was hit with a $1 billion copyright infringement verdict after a Virginia federal jury determined that the ISP didn’t do enough to stop repeat infringers. Cox was found to be contributorily and vicariously liable for the alleged pirating activities of its subscribers on more than 10,000 copyrighted works.

For comparison, Allure Bridals and Justin Alexander state that Cloudflare is liable for contributory copyright infringement relating to more than 5,000 infringing images published on 99 different websites. Overall, Cloudflare serves many thousands of pirate sites, making the outcome of this and similar cases of particular interest.

In respect of the “willful and intentional” direct infringement claims against the 99 websites themselves, Allure Bridals and Justin Alexander request actual or statutory damages, injunctive relief to prevent the ongoing infringements, and the destruction of all copies of copyright works made in violation of the bridal companies’ rights.

The contributory copyright infringement claim against Cloudflare asserts that the CDN company assisted the direct infringers by storing copies of the infringing images on servers in the United States, improving the performance of the infringing websites, while concealing their true locations.

As a result, Cloudflare’s behavior is also described as “willful and intentional”, with the plaintiffs demanding a similar injunction in addition to actual or statutory damages.

The complaint can be obtained here (pdf)

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This year, The Pirate Bay will celebrate its 17th anniversary.

That’s quite an achievement for any website but particularly for a pirate site when considering the mounting legal pressures.

Over the years The Pirate Bay has certainly weathered a few storms. There were raids, technical problems, and hosting complications, but the site has always returned. This year it even regained its position as the most popular torrent site of all, after a year of absence from the top spot.

While the infamous torrent site often makes the news, surprisingly little is known about what happens behind the scenes. The site’s operator, who goes by the nickname “Winston,” rarely comments in public. At the start of the new year, however, he made an exception.

For the first time ever, TPB’s operator has publicly shared statistics on how much data are ‘uploaded’ through the site. These files, including movies, software, and music, don’t actually hit its servers. They can be shared through the torrent and magnet links on the site though.

TPB’s operator reveals that, in 2019, the uploaded torrents linked to a massive 776 terabytes of data. More than half of these (405 terabytes) are still actively shared or seeded, as it’s called in BitTorrent terminology.

This is a lot of data, but it’s only a subsection of everything that’s available via The Pirate Bay. In total, more than 6,720 terabytes, or 6.7 petabytes have been ‘uploaded’ to the site. Of this data, over 2.5 petabytes are still being seeded.

The chart below shows how this uploaded data evolved over time. Older content is obviously seeded by fewer people, but that’s not the only thing that stands out. Most visible is the continued increase in uploads between 2004 and 2014, and the significant drop after that.

This drop can be explained by The Pirate Bay’s prolonged downtime around the end of 2014 and the start of 2015. Following a raid by the Swedish police, the torrent site remained offline for roughly two months, which substantially hurt the upload numbers.

After the downtime, the ‘uploaded’ data was roughly cut in half. This coincided with a drop in visitor numbers. Even today the site hasn’t fully recovered to the pre-raid numbers, but volumes are increasing year by year.

An archive of more than six petabytes is certainly impressive. According to TPB’s own calculations, it would cost $168,000 to put it all on Amazon’s cheapest 14TB hard drives. It’s certainly not impossible, as the Internet Archive hosts 48 petabytes, but it’s costly.

The Pirate Bay doesn’t have to store much though. All the torrent files combined make up a few gigabytes at most, as the full files are stored and shared by users. While this is cost-effective, it does come at a price.

Since more than half of TPB’s archive is no longer seeded, more than four petabytes of data are not available for download. This may change if people seed again, but the general trend is that availability goes down as time passes.

In order to keep decentralized distribution working, people have to share. TPB’s Winston notes that the ability to share not just files but also costs and resources is BitTorrent’s main advantage.

“This is where bittorent shines, as long as we all keep seeding, especially the rarer and older stuff, one or a few don’t have to take all the cost,” Winston says.

“We all contribute a few cents or dollars per month, on internet connections we already have, and unused storage on our computers, and everyone worldwide can continue to enjoy the torrents for years and decades to come,” he adds, while wishing the site’s users a happy new year.

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