Way back in 2013, Movie2K was not only one of the most-visited pirate sites, but also one of the most popular platforms on the entire Internet.
Offering all of the latest movies and TV shows in a convenient interface, during February that year Movie2K was the 240th most popular site in the world.
In Germany, where the site was particularly well-received, it was the 19th most popular site, period, pulling more traffic than Twitter, Amazon, Apple and PayPal. Understandably, the site attracted plenty of anti-piracy attention but suddenly, at the end of May 2013, the site shut down without warning.
In its wake appeared Movie4K, a site that bore more than a passing resemblance to its similarly-named predecessor, but it now appears that the authorities in Germany had not simply forgotten about Movie2K or bringing those behind it to justice.
According to the Attorney General’s Office in Dresden, two men aged 44 and 37 were arrested last Thursday in the states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Bavaria. The men are suspected former operators of Movie2K.
The men are reported to have distributed 880,000 copies of movies and TV shows between the fall of 2008 when Movie2K was founded and May 2013 when it closed down. They are also suspected of operating the streaming site Stream2K.com.
Movie2K before its closure
A spokesperson for the Prosecutor General’s Office told SWR that the man from Rhineland-Palatinate had been living there for some time and that extensive evidence had been seized including computer equipment, cell phones, cash and documents.
Investigators claim that the suspects generated “several million euros” from advertising and other methods via Movie2K, which stepped in to become one of the world’s largest illegal streaming portals after the demise of Kino.to. That site was shut down following one of the most significant anti-piracy operations in history.
The Attorney General’s Office further revealed that a third man was arrested in Berlin last week. He is described as a 37-year-old real estate entrepreneur who was detained under suspicion of money laundering offenses.
It’s claimed that the individual worked with the former operators of Movie2K in the fall of 2013, managing some of the revenues generated by the men by making financial investments and obtaining real estate in Saxony, Brandenburg and Berlin.
The numbers under discussion are significant, with the authorities claiming that the alleged money-launderer received more than 5.1 million euros from the other suspects through a Dutch mailbox company alone by mid-2016.
The home and business addresses of the defendants were searched with the support of officials of the Land Office of Criminal Investigation Berlin and the Criminal Investigation Police Bamberg.
As highlighted by Tarnkappe, the Prosecutor General’s Office was previously involved in the case brought against Kino.to. It’s suspected that there were links between that now-defunct site and the operators of Movie2K.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/arrest-feat.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-20 13:20:172019-11-20 13:20:17Police Arrest Three in Prolonged Movie2K Piracy Investigation
Raids, shutdowns, legal action, settlements, and even technical issues have caused many sellers of ‘pirate’ IPTV to shut down in recent months.
The end to the problem for broadcasters, however, seems as far away as ever, with large numbers of providers and sellers managing to service the illicit market, despite serious setbacks.
Hoping to make a dent in the supply chain, police in Spain say they have carried out an operation to “dismantle” a service that sourced raw TV streams and distributed them, supplied VOD content, and then sold packages to clients.
The investigation began in 2017 when officers of the Central Cybercrime Unit became aware of a Facebook page where access to pirate TV was being offered.
Investigators determined that those behind the operation were capturing channels broadcast by the major TV outfits and uploading them to servers operated by different companies abroad. At the same time, they operated a sales and marketing division, to sell their product to the public.
In total, 12 people were identified as suspects, with four people said to have been in charge of capturing the broadcast signals and distributing them, managing access to content, attracting customers, and collecting the cash through various platforms.
The remaining eight were considered resellers of the services. These individuals obtained access to the main platform from the four operators at a reduced cost in order to market these subscriptions to their own customers in Spain and overseas.
Image credit: Policia Nacional
The two-year investigation came to head last Friday when the 12 suspects were arrested when raids were carried out on addresses in Madrid, Toledo, Alicante, Murcia, Gran Canaria, Tenerife and other locations.
Seven websites and two social media profiles were shut down and 86 decoders, 15 hard drives, 10 computers, NAS drives, 17 mobile phones, a ‘high-end’ vehicle and more than 22,000 euros in cash were seized.
According to police, the as-yet-unnamed service generated an estimated 1,000,000 euros for its operators who are now charged with various offenses including intellectual property crimes, belonging to a criminal organization, and money laundering.
In our ongoing mission to bring you the very greatest (and most reliable) media centre software in the world, it’s time to let another point release escape into the wild. Usual rules apply: this isn’t about features, it’s about stability and usability.
As usual, you can find a full summary of closed pull requests on GitHub, but the summary would be…
Interface/Look-and-Feel
Estuary and GUI info fixes, including scrollbar behaviour, icon names, label changes
Add dual support for Artist Slideshow 2.x and 3.x
Fix to always allow ‘Black’ screen saver
Fix wrong sort order list for music playlists node
Playback/Display
Fixes to external subtitle playback
Fixes to support for archives over UPnP
Fixes to “queue item” and “play next” for STRM files with Plugin URL
Fixes to “hide watched” status for videos
Fixes to resume handling when marking a file as unwatched
PVR
Fixes to EPG database storage, start/stop of PVR service
Fix handling of open modal dialogs
Fixes to commercial skip (EDL) processing
Other/General Fixes
Multiple Android changes around windowing, secure decoder and SDK versions
Multiple iOS changes, including support for iPhone 11 and 7th generation iPad, plus fixes for touch input, overlapping drawing surfaces, sandbox checks, notch support.
MacOS fixes around windowing, where only a portion of the screen was correctly rendered
Log files improvements around verbosity and security
Shoutcast improvements
Various fixes and improvements to add-on settings, package build documentation, build system, advancedsettings.xml, skin/profile changes and many other subsystems
The nature of point releases is that most of these changes won’t be visible to most people unless they address a specific problem you’d stumbled across. That said, they’re all real bugs, and real fixes, so thanks as always to all who found a bug, took the time to report it and, in some cases, provided a fix.
The full v18.5 changelog can be found in our GitHub milestone. If you want to read back on what was actually changed in v18 itself, you can find the corresponding articles in the blog posts – Kodi 18, Kodi 18.1, Kodi 18.2, Kodi 18.3 and Kodi 18.4.
Application delpoyment on different platforms (notably, Google Play and the Microsoft Store) varies due to circumstances outside of our control. It may thus take a few more days to appear everywhere, so just stay tuned.
Matt Lowne is a very popular YouTuber with a passion for the simulation game Kerbal Space Program. Since 2013 he’s amassed close to 56 million views but late last week, his video world was turned upside down.
In common with many YouTubers, Matt didn’t want any copyright issues on his channel. So, to play things safely, he obtained the track ‘Dreams‘ by Joakim Karud from YouTube’s very own audio library for use in his intro. Unfortunately, this strategy of obtaining supposedly risk-free music from a legitimate source still managed to backfire.
Very early last Friday, Matt says he received a “massive barrage” of emails from YouTube, targeting “pretty much all” of his KSP videos. The emails said that Matt’s videos “may have content owned or licensed by SonyATV, PeerMusic, Warner Chappell, Audiam and LatinAutor.”
A clearly exasperated Matt took to YouTube, noting that any ads that now show up on his videos “split up the revenue between all the companies listed” in the emails, with Matt himself “allowed to keep what’s left of that.” He doesn’t know what that amount might be, because he says there’s just no way of knowing.
After highlighting the vague use of the word “may” in YouTube’s emails to him, Matt then went on to describe the real “kick in the gut”, which revolves around the track itself.
‘Dreams’ composer Joakim Karud allows anyone to use his music on YouTube, even commercially, for free. And the fact that Matt downloaded the track from YouTube’s own library was the icing on this particularly bitter cake.
“So I guess this library can’t be trusted at all,” says Matt. “YouTube might just remove songs from it after the fact and then shrug off any consequences for videos that use that music as you know, shit happens.”
Matt said he had to time out to manually protest the automated claims against his account but he says his overtures were immediately rejected, “almost like it’s an automated bot or something.” But things get worse from there.
After contesting each claim and having all of those rejected, Matt says the only option left is to appeal every single one. However, if an appeal is lost, the video in question will be removed completely and a strike will be placed against his account.
It’s three strikes and you’re out on YouTube, so this is not an attractive option for Matt if the music companies somehow win the fight. So, instead, Matt is appealing against just one of the complaints in the hope that he can make some progress without putting his entire account at risk.
Matt says he won’t be able to risk putting any music in his videos in future, because even with the best intentions, a “billion-dollar corporation” can simply decide that they “would like to start benefiting off your blood, sweat and tears.”
Worryingly, searches online show that not only are other people affected by similar mass complaints, but there may – may – be an explanation for what is going on here.
“SonyATV & Warner Chappell have claimed 24 of my videos because the royalty free song Dreams by Joakim Karud (from the OFFICIAL YOUTUBE AUDIO LIBRARY BTW) uses a sample from Kenny Burrell Quartet’s ‘Weaver of Dream’,” a Twitter user wrote on Saturday.
Sure enough, if one turns to the WhoSampled archive, Dreams is listed as having sampled Weaver of Dreams, a track from 1956 to which Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC and Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. own the copyrights.
If the trend of claims against ‘Dreams’ continues, there is potential for huge upheaval on YouTube and elsewhere. Countless thousands of videos use the track and as a result it has become very well-known. Sadly, people trying to claim it as their own is nothing new but fingers crossed, common sense will sort out the present issues.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/youtube-feat.jpg3211200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-19 07:17:132019-11-19 07:17:13‘Royalty-Free’ Music Supplied By YouTube Results in Mass Video Demonetization
Another year passes, and here we are once again, locked in a windowless room to discuss all things Kodi-shaped. Genuine thanks to the generosity of our sponsors and users – that means you, you lovely people – whose donations make these meetings possible. Old faces, new faces, guests – these events really do help us to come together, share ideas and shape the direction of our favourite media software.
So, where are we? Well, this blog post comes to you from Belgrade, the capital of the Balkan state of Serbia, at the crossroads of central and south-east Europe. A city of some 1.25 million people, Belgrade has a long and turbulent history: the area has been inhabited for some 8,000 years, and has been home to, or part of, the Vinča culture, Celts, the Roman Empire, Slavs, the Bulgarian Empire, the Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Habsburgs and Yugoslavia.
On with the show…
After the usual round of introductions, kambala opened the show with a session on crash reporting: whether and how we could collect more crash logs by making it semi-automated or just generally easier (“Kodi has had a problem, would you like to send a report to the developers?” sort of thing). If we can get better insights, particularly into “silent” crashes, then we can get to work on eliminating bugs without waiting until someone gets annoyed enough to report it. Of course, we need to balance data volumes, human workload, user privacy, platform/component-specifics, and several other factors before we go down this road, so it isn’t something that would appear tomorrow.
Next up, DarrenHill gave an update on forum activity and moderation. Overall, we’ve got a solid, worldwide team of moderators and a good suite of supporting tools that have had a significant positive impact on volumes of spam or undesirable posts. There’s more user-led engagement around what we can and can’t support on the forum; we’ve improved how we can notify our users when there’s an upstream problem (e.g. with metadata providers) that might cause issues with Kodi; spammers are either blocked at source or removed from the forum very swiftly. What we’re perhaps lacking, though, is more diligence around the wiki as a source of help – keeping this up-to-date as Kodi continues to grow and improve. As usual, volunteers are always welcome.
Our 2019 Google Summer of Code student, gusandrianos, took the microphone next to talk about his work on multi-pass shaders in RetroPlayer. Shaders are GPU routines that handle scaling, colours, lighting, shading, etc., and are used in RetroPlayer to change the look-and-feel of games as individual frames are rendered: pixellation, colour saturation, scaling, video effects, and similar. More information can be found via the GSoC website here.
Keith then stepped up to lead a discussion about Kodi’s trademark policyand how we work with community groups that wish to use our code and/or branding. This covers projects which effectively bundle or build Kodi for specific purposes (e.g. LibreELEC or Debian) as well as complete rebranding (e.g. OSMC, SPMC). What we’re really trying to do is protect our intellectual property while being as easy to work with as we can be: we’ve probably been a bit heavy-handed in the past, and this isn’t helpful when people are simply trying (for the most part) to do the right thing. This conversation then led into how we include more “stakeholders” into our conversations – people who aren’t team members, who maybe aren’t specifically contributing to Kodi, but who are still doing interesting, relevant things that should be embraced. The conversation also covered “best practices” and how we can more easily advise people what they can and can’t do, or under what conditions.
The afternoon session kicked off with Keith giving an overview of Kodi’s financial position – where our money has come from, where it’s gone back out to, what we have left. Changing financial regulations around the world also mean that we need to re-assess our bank account setup, specifically in terms of how we keep “local” accounts to receive donations and pay expenses in e.g. EUR when we’re incorporated in the US.
Within the team, we use Slack extensively to talk to each other on both broad (e.g. “moderators”) and narrow (e.g. “HDR on Windows”) topics, so we had a conversation about all the channels we have that team members may have missed. We also talked about external channels, which we have so we can invite guests, bridge to IRC, and similar. If you collaborate with Team Kodi in any way and would find this useful, please let us know and we’ll set something up.
Next up, yol and DaVu led a conversation about how, now we’ve completed the move, switching bug tracking from Trac to GitHub Issues has worked out. In general, it’s working well, although we need to tighten up how we tag issues to both make sure they get routed correctly and, ultimately, to ensure that they get closed off once complete. You can find the current list of open and closed issues on our GitHub code repository. We’ve adopted a similar process for tagging pull requests, although we clearly need to improve our approach for notifying, reviewing and merging PRs given the backlog we’ve built up.
We talked a little about the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and what this means for us – specifically, the forum, as that’s arguably personally-identifiable information. Generally, we don’t aim to collect such information, and people’s posts are made publicly and thus outside of the scope of the legislation. However, there are still perhaps some tweaks we can make to ensure all “fingerprints” are removed should someone ask.
The next topic was around the vision for Kodi and how it fits into the streaming world we find ourselves in. The conversation was started off by da-anda, reflecting how we, as individuals, have seen our viewing habits change in recent years. This is a big topic, as there are as many political issues as there are any others: as part of the battle between themselves, the “walled garden” content providers fiercely defend the ‘user experience’ via their specific interface and applications. This obviously has real implications for any attempts to bring streamed content into a combined library view.
The conversation moved on with a conversation about add-ons – specifically, how they’re listed and shown, which is currently best summarised as “in a long list, not all of which will work for everyone even if you know what they might be for”. Can we group them? Can we tag them? Who would, how? We also touched on use cases – how clumsy it is to add your own home videos or similar content, for example – and also how else people do or could use Kodi. And we also talked about the implications for core developer time (both as mentors and programmers), and our constant need for more people who are motivated and interested in contributing significant features to the project; if nothing else, it’s futile to have a roadmap or list of features if we then can’t actually implement them. Kodi is a fantastic playground for experienced C++ developers and for those who wish to develop these skills; you don’t need to be a video guru either, as there’s an awful lot of code around the core player/renderer routines. Go on: you know you want to…
The day continued with a1rwulf and the work he’s been doing on metadata and database storage. This is major re-work that impacts large pieces of code throughout the application, so merging it needs to be done carefully. However, it brings about significant performance improvements, scales to large databases better, and brings new functionality around music sources and playlists. Some of these functions might better implemented as binary add-ons so they can be ported to the core application sooner rather than later – the benefit of taking a more modular approach.
Rounding off the session, then, garbear introduced a discussion around Kodi versioning which quickly led into plans for Kodi 19 “Matrix”. New features or capabilities notwithstanding, Python 2 goes end-of-life on New Year’s Day 2020 – the clock is literally ticking down – and that gives a growing imperative to release the Python 3 version of Kodi into the wild. There are, of course, other issues to address and other code to include before we can release, and a final check that Python 3 doesn’t break more than it solves, so it’s a balancing act now.
And that concludes our first day. As the sun sets on Belgrade, it’s time to head out into the Balkan night in search of beer and something to eat. Okay, mostly beer.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.png00Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-18 21:16:102019-11-18 21:16:10DevCon 2019 – Belgrade – Part I
In April, a group of movie companies filed a lawsuit against the operators of various websites that promoted and distributed the Showbox app.
Showbox and similarly named clones are used by millions of people. These apps enable users to stream movies via torrents and direct sources, using a Netflix-style interface.
The tools are a thorn in the side of movie companies, including those behind “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “London Has Fallen,” and “Hunter Killer.” In a complaint filed at a U.S. District Court in Hawaii, the companies pointed out that Showbox facilitates massive piracy.
“The Defendants misleadingly promote the Show Box app as a legitimate means for viewing content to the public, who eagerly install the Show Box app to watch copyright protected content, thereby leading to profit for the Defendants,” the 58-page complaint read.
The movie outfits went after several defendants suspected of having ties to one or more piracy-related sites. This includes a Vietnamese man named Nghi Phan Nhat, who allegedly operates the APK download portal ‘apkmirrordownload.com.’
The site stood accused of offering the ShowBox and Popcorn Time apps, which have since been removed, but the defendant never responded to the allegations in court. This prompted the movie companies to file a motion for a default judgment.
In September, they requested $150,000 in statutory damages, as well as thousands of dollars in attorney fees and costs. In addition, they asked for an injunction ordering third party services such as hosting companies and domain registrars to stop doing business with the site.
While the defendant remained silent, the Court referred that matter to a magistrate judge for a recommendation. Although default judgments are often easily granted, in this case, Hawaii’s Magistrate Judge Kenneth Mansfield advises denial of the request.
In their motion, the filmmakers argued that the Court has personal jurisdiction over the operator of the site. This requires a relationship between the foreign defendant and the US. To establish this, it has to pass the three-part minimum contacts test.
The first part of this test is to show that the defendant purposefully directed activities to the United States or purposefully availed himself of the privileges of conducting activities there.
According to the movie companies, this is certainly the case, since the site is quite popular in the US and also presented entirely in English. However, that’s not enough to establish personal jurisdiction, according to the Judge.
“That the APK Site is in English does not show purposeful direction, as the United States is not the only country with English as an official language. Nor is Plaintiffs’ allegation that the United States is the country with the second most traffic to the APK site evidence of purposeful direction,” Judge Mansfield writes.
The filmmakers further argued that the defendant purposefully availed himself to the State of Hawaii by conducting business with US-based companies, domain registrar Namesilo and CDN provider Cloudflare. However, the Magistrate Judge disagrees again.
“While Defendant Nhat may have contacts with California and Arizona pursuant to his registration with United States companies, such contacts are not extensive enough to invoke nationwide jurisdiction such that it is reasonable to subject Defendant Nhat to litigation in any United States federal forum,” the Judge writes.
The fact that the APK download site references the US DMCA law on its site is not good enough either. According to the Judge that merely means that the site is in compliance with the DMCA, not that the defendant subjects himself to the jurisdiction of US courts.
Based on these and other arguments, Judge Mansfield concludes that the Court doesn’t have personal jurisdiction over the alleged site operator. Without even considering the other two elements of the minimum contacts test, he recommends denying the motion for a default judgment.
The recommendation is a setback for the movie companies. If the Court adopts it, they will not get their $150,000 damages through a default judgment. Neither will they get an injunction to take the site offline.
The filmmakers had more success a few weeks ago when they reached an agreement with the Pakistani operator of ‘latestshowboxapp.com,’ who agreed to pay a $150,000 settlement. Whether that will be paid in full is another question.
—
A copy of Magistrate Judge Kenneth Mansfield’s findings and recommendations is available here (pdf).
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/popcorntime.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-18 11:15:082019-11-18 11:15:08Judge Recommends Denial of $150,000 Piracy Judgment Against APK Download Site
Nearly two years ago, we announced that Kodi was migrating to use the Python 3 interpreter for its many addons (see here) and we explained both why we were doing it and what would change. Since then we have been encouraging all add-on developers to work towards that goal. If you want to read more about how to make add-ons work with the new Python version, see this page on our wiki.
As Python 2 is imminently reaching end of life (1st January 2020)m we’ve needed to pull this forwards, so have just taken the next big step: the nightly builds for Kodi 19 “Matrix” are now using the Python 3 interpreter to run all Python-based add-ons
This means that not only can add-on developers test their work using the most recent Kodi builds, but that early bird users of v19 also are able to use them. However, this migration is very much a breaking change for us, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to get things fully functional again. This also needs to be done quickly, as we need to be complete before the end of life of Python 2 happens.
The support of the wider community in this phase will be very welcome. For early users of Kodi v19 via the nightly builds, the obvious issue is that a large number of add-ons are non-functional. Problems with specific add-ons can best be reported on the forum thread for that add-on – read up if the author is already aware before posting. However, the developers of some older add-ons are no longer active, so anyone with Python skills and an interest in Kodi is encouraged to get involved with updating some of the now otherwise-unmaintained add-ons and scripts.
There are also issues that need core developer knowledge to fix. Since moving to Python 3 there are some difficulties on all Windows platforms in particular. The version of Kodi for UWP (Xbox) does not compile at all, and needs someone to champion it. There are also issues with certain libraries e.g. Pillow, PyCryptodome, cTypes etc., being missing or incompatible versions, so those add-ons that depend on them don’t run and can’t be tested on Windows.
Things will be a little raw at the edges until we can get these things fixed, so bear with us and if you have skills and can step up and contribute then please do.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.png00Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-18 01:14:072019-11-18 01:14:07Kodi 19 with Python 3 Goes Live
This week, news began to filter through that the shutdown of a pair of Kodi add-on related resources had taken place under serious legal pressure.
KodiUKTV and OneNation weren’t specific in their announcements but TorrentFreak was able to confirm that the Federation Against Copyright Theft was behind both actions. Indeed, the anti-piracy group told us that other groups were targeted too but at this stage, we haven’t been able to identify them.
What we do know is at the end of October, FACT sent out cease and desist notices titled ‘Unauthorized Distribution of Film, Television and Sport Subject to Copyright’.
The letters stated that FACT investigators had established that the platforms were “providing or facilitating access without authorization, to broadcasts or premium pay channels” containing content belonging to Sky, BT Sport, and The Premier League.
Demanding an immediate end to “unlawful activity”, the notices added that “all infringing links, listings and information from webpages, social media and any other medium” should be permanently removed. If not, a criminal investigation might get underway.
A recipient of one of the cease-and-desist letters, Matt – founder of KodiUKTV – told us that if he’d have received a simple takedown notice at any point in the past, he would’ve been happy to investigate and take action if any add-on breached copyright. Instead, it appears that FACT went for straight for the jugular.
Part of the problem for Matt, at least from our discussions, is that he doesn’t believe he was doing anything wrong. His platform didn’t develop or host any add-ons but offered a tool so that Kodi users could download and install them from elsewhere.
“Ultimately it was at the risk of the add-on designers and end-users, should such add-ons contain possibly infringing content that we had absolutely no control over,” he explains.
Matt says that he contacted FACT within an hour of receiving their cease-and-desist notice with a request for more information. He also gave FACT a commitment that the site will not deal with add-ons or builds in the future. At the time of writing, he is yet to receive a response.
As a result and at least for now, his entire site remains down, which Matt feels is both disproportionate and frustrating since much of the content the site offered (guides etc) had nothing to do with any of the companies mentioned by FACT.
“We didn’t actually host anything for the add-on guys and we don’t make any add-ons ourselves. We just offered a place for people to put their add-ons to be installed by the end-user, which is very common for many repos,” Matt explains.
“This means we were just a hub for the community for help and guides. This was always my key focus for KODIUKTV – creating guides & voicing our opinion on issues within the community to help others.
“We do not want to kiss goodbye to the website and the community we have been so involved in over the past five years. We are hoping we can continue the website on a publication standpoint and move forward.”
The site was founded by Matt in 2014 after he found himself “tinkering” with XBMC (as Kodi was formerly known) on a Raspberry Pi, installing add-ons, and eventually coming up with a ‘build’
“I’ve always been interested in publications & running a media site. So once the community started to rise we needed a home for our guides and tutorials, our news, and even the odd giveaway over the years,” he explains.
“We grew at a rapid rate which gave me and the team a huge learning curve of what it took to manage and maintain a website/project of this size. We became the go-to for people looking for help.”
At KodiUKTV’s peak last year, Matt says it was receiving around eight million users per month, a figure that’s dropped a little this year to a still-impressive six million.
But with this growth has come problems, not only in respect of FACT and its clients, but with various claims against the site’s social media accounts, and even strikes against Matt’s personal pages that had nothing to do with the project. Now, however, he is hopeful that things can move forward.
Matt says he’s just a hobbyist doing what he loves, one that also cares about freedom on the Internet. He has no desire to get into a fight with big media companies and hopes this dispute with FACT can be dealt with quickly while keeping the community intact.
At the same time, there was plenty of interest in ‘unauthorized’ Disney+ releases on pirate sites, particularly in the exclusive Mandalorian series.
As one of the largest entertainment companies in the world, Disney is not new to piracy. It has dealt with this issue for decades. However, now that it operates its own exclusive platform there are other factors to take into account.
How do exclusive releases impact piracy rates, for example? And what is the effect on subscriber rates? How the interplay between legal and illegal supply affects revenues can be a complex and dynamic puzzle to solve.
What is clear is that Disney has the goal to minimize piracy. While it’s not publicized much, the company has a dedicated “piracy intelligence” team that continually keeps an eye on the piracy landscape.
Just recently, a new vacancy opened up, perhaps tied to the launch of Disney+. While there are few details available, Disney describes the team as follows:
“The Piracy Intelligence team at The Walt Disney Studios is based in Burbank and provides meaningful piracy insights to inform strategies that maximize revenue for the film and TV business and minimize the piracy impact.”
Disney is currently looking for a market research and data analyst, who will be responsible for supporting a variety of “piracy intelligence initiatives” and to “measure movie and TV viewing trends across digital media platforms.”
Unfortunately, there is not much information online about the goals and accomplishments of Disney’s anti-piracy team. TorrentFreak reached out to multiple contacts at the company, but thus far we have yet to receive a response.
It’s no secret, however, that major entertainment companies keep a close eye on the pirate landscape.
The enforcement side of this is often quite visible. This is also true for Disney. The company is a member of the global anti-piracy coalition ACE, which has filed several lawsuits and chases site owners and developers as well.
However, piracy “intelligence” can also be used as a valuable market signal. That aspect would be more in line with the “market research” and “data analyst” Disney is currently looking for.
This type of piracy use wouldn’t be unique. Previously we reported how Netflix uses piracy to figure out how much they can charge in a country, as well as what content they license. Similarly, Hulu uses piracy data to see what is popular among potential viewers.
Disney may use similar signals to determine how to best position Disney+ and what content it should offer to minimize piracy, and perhaps more importantly, maximize revenue.
While I have no intention of applying for the job, one free bit of advice is to make sure that Disney+ is available everywhere in the world. Right now, many people feel left out which makes pirated Disney+ exclusives quite tempting.
But I guess the intelligence team will notice that soon enough.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/disneyplusfea.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-17 05:12:092019-11-17 05:12:09Disney Wants to Reinforce Its ‘Piracy Intelligence’ Team
During the summer we reported on the renewed efforts of Golden Eye (International) and Mircom, companies with a track record of targeting alleged BitTorrent pirates with demands for cash settlements to make supposed lawsuits disappear.
After filing no complaints in the UK for years, the pair teamed up in an effort to squeeze the personal details of thousands of Internet users from the hands of ISP Virgin Media. Somewhat unusually given previous compliance in alleged anti-piracy matters, Virgin put up a pretty big fight.
In the end, the cases brought by Golden Eye and Mircom were proven to be so lacking in evidence that a judge in the High Court threw out the companies’ claims. Nevertheless, there are more countries than just the UK to target.
Cyprus-based Mircom (full name Mircom International Content Management & Consulting) has another case on the boil, this time against Telenet, the largest provider of cable broadband in Belgium. In common with previous cases, this one is also about the unlicensed sharing of pornographic movies using BitTorrent.
Mircom says it has thousands of IP addresses on file which can identify Telenet subscribers from which it wants to extract cash payments. However, it needs the ISP’s cooperation to match the IP addresses to those customers and the case isn’t progressing in a straightforward manner.
As a result, the Antwerp Business Court (Ondernemingsrechtbank Antwerpen) has referred several questions in the matter to the European Court of Justice. As usual, there are several controversial as well as technical points under consideration.
The first complication concerns how BitTorrent itself works. When a regular user participates in a BitTorrent swarm, small downloaded parts of a movie are then made available for upload. In this manner, everyone in a swarm can gain access to all of the necessary parts of the movie.
Anyone who obtains all of the parts (and therefore the whole movie) becomes a ‘seeder’ if he or she continues to upload to the swarm.
However, a question with three parts sent to the EU Court appears to seek clarity on whether uploading small pieces of a file, which are unusable in their own right, constitutes an infringement and if so, where the limit lies. It also deals with potential ignorance on the user’s part when it comes to seeding.
1. (a) Can the downloading of a file via a peer-to-peer network and the simultaneous provision for uploading of parts (‘pieces’) thereof (which may be very fragmentary as compared to the whole) (‘seeding’) be regarded as a communication to the public within the meaning of Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29, (1) even if the individual pieces as such are unusable? If so,
1. (b) is there a de minimis threshold above which the seeding of those pieces would constitute a communication to the public?
1. (c) is the fact that seeding can take place automatically (as a result of the torrent client’s settings), and thus without the user’s knowledge, relevant?
While the above matters are interesting in their own right, it’s Mircom’s position that perhaps provokes the most interest and has resulted in the next pair of questions to the European Court of Justice.
To be clear – Mircom is not a content creator. It is not a content distributor. Its entire purpose is to track down alleged infringers in order to claim cash settlements from them on the basis that its rights have been infringed. So what rights does it have?
Mircom claims to have obtained the rights to distribute, via peer-to-peer networks including BitTorrent, a large number of pornographic films produced by eight American and Canadian companies. However, despite having the right to do so, Mircom says it does not distribute any movies in this fashion.
Instead, it aims to collect money from alleged infringers, returning a proportion of this to the actual copyright holders, to whom it paid absolutely nothing for the rights to ‘distribute’ their movies via BitTorrent.
Interesting to say the least, a situation that has resulted in a second question with two parts being referred to the EUCJ;
2. (a) Can a person who is the contractual holder of the copyright (or related rights), but does not himself exploit those rights and merely claims damages from alleged infringers — and whose economic business model thus depends on the existence of piracy, not on combating it — enjoy the same rights as those conferred by Chapter II of Directive 2004/48 (2) on authors or licence holders who do exploit copyright in the normal way?
2. (b) How can the license holder in that case have suffered ‘prejudice’ (within the meaning of Article 13 of Directive 2004/48) as a result of the infringement?
A third question asks whether the specific circumstances laid out in questions 1 and 2 are relevant when assessing the correct balance between the enforcement of intellectual property rights and the right to a private life and protection of personal data.
Finally, question four deals with a particularly interesting aspect of BitTorrent swarm data monitoring and subsequent data processing in respect of the GDPR.
4. Is, in all those circumstances, the systematic registration and general further processing of the IP-addresses of a ‘swarm’ of ‘seeders’ (by the licence holder himself, and by a third party on his behalf) legitimate under the General Data Protection Regulation and specifically under Article 6(1)(f) thereof?
There are already considerable concerns that the tracking data collected and processed as part of the case in hand may not have been handled as required under the GDPR. That, on top of the conclusion that Mircom fits the ‘copyright troll’ label almost perfectly, makes this a very interesting case to follow.
https://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/featroll.jpg2501200Dimitrologyhttps://dimitrology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/WEBSITE-LOGO-2020-SMALL.pngDimitrology2019-11-16 19:11:072019-11-16 19:11:07EU Court to Decide on BitTorrent Questions in Copyright Trolling Case
