For many old-school torrent users, Demonoid is a familiar name. The site was founded sixteen years ago, which made it one of the oldest BitTorrent sites around.

However, last year things changed when Deimos, the site’s founder, went missing. After months of uncertainty and downtime, it became clear that the site wasn’t coming back this time. Deimos is believed to have passed away in a tragic accident, marking the end of an era.

As time went on it became obvious that Demonoid would not return in its original state. However, many of the site’s staffers and users were eager to build a new home. Not so much to replace the old Demonoid, but more as a tribute, and to keep the name alive.

This vision came to fruition a few months ago when Dnoid.to, a Demonoid successor, was launched. The new site has the same look and feel as the old site, but started over with a completely new user database.

The new site doesn’t operate a tracker either. Instead, the most important goal of the site was to bring the old community back together.

“Demonoid always had a special spot in people’s hearts. Keeping a memento of it without letting others ruin it by making copycats and phishing sites from it is our way of saying ‘thank you’ to him and keeping his legacy alive,” Demonoid staffer ‘phaze1G’  told us at the time.

In the weeks that followed the site’s new userbase slowly started to grow but it also became apparent that the domain name choice was far from ideal.

The .to domain is also used by another site, Demonoid.to, which is a well-known scam site. Instead of offering torrents, Demonoid.to urges people to download a binary client. The client download URL redirects to an affiliate link for a paid Usenet service.

Because of the dnoid.to / demonoid.to confusion, many users ended up at the wrong site. According to phaze1G, more than 800 emails with complaints about this issue were received in recent weeks.

This volume wasn’t something the staff could ignore. As such, the team registered a new domain name, Demonoid.is, which is the new home from now on. For the time being, visitors to the old domain will be automatically redirected.

“The Tonic registry is not as reliable as it used to be with their redacted whois. They are handing over owner details, even following DMCA complaints, as we were told by some people from other sites,” phaze1G says.

Indeed, as we have covered previously, the Tonic registry does comply with DMCA subpoenas from US Courts, but that’s something it has always done. The change here may be that DMCA subpoenas are more often used as an enforcement tool nowadays.

With the fresh domain name, the ‘new’ Demonoid hopes to avoid any confusion and other domain troubles. Meanwhile, it will continue to keep the site going, something that went relatively well over the past weeks.

“The site itself is doing fine. It’s not oversaturated, which is our goal. Many former users returned and lots of newcomers are stopping by too,” phaze1G notes.

“We are trying to keep a moderated size of visitors, so the infrastructure doesn’t include more cost as the revenue from ads is not enough to cover the costs itself,” he adds.

While Demonoid remains a big name that for many is surrounded by nostalgia, it’s a small player in the larger ecosystem today. With roughly half a million monthly visits, according to SimilarWeb, it pales in comparison to the larger torrent sites.

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In common with many other online services, copyright holders regularly ask Twitter to remove tweets that link to pirated material.

Whether it’s a tweet from the U.S. President or some random pirate site, the social media platform investigates the claims and takes action, if needed.

A few hours ago Twitter published a new update to its transparency report, highlighting the latest takedown trends. This reveals that the number of copyright notices received during the first half of the year skyrocketed compared to the previous six months.

“We received a 101% increase in DMCA takedown notices since our last report,” Twitter reports, noting that this includes a high volume of fraudulent DMCA notices from Turkey and Japan.

From January to June of this year a total of 106,951 DMCA notices were received, compared to 53,094 during the last half of 2018. This is a notable increase. However, it doesn’t directly translate to an equal change in removed tweets or withheld content.

The number of tweets that were removed increased by 46% to 113,015. At the same time, there was a 4% decrease in withheld media in the same period, 266,699 files in total.

This suggests that the average notice today includes fewer tweets and media files.

The percentage of notices for which Twitter took action also dropped significantly. On average, less than half of the notices (45%) resulted in material being removed, down from 62% last period.

The above applies to notices that were sent to Twitter, but the company also owns and operates Periscope. The number of copyright notices received by the streaming platform increased by roughly ten percent to 26,331 over the past six months.

Taken together, more than a third of the Twitter and Periscope copyright notices were sent in by a handful of reporters. Music industry group IFPI is the most prolific sender, followed by Netresult, LeakID, Athletia Sports and LaLiga.

The most spectacular increase we see in the report is the number of counternotices that were submitted by people who disputed a copyright claim. This number jumped 285% to 3,966.

This uptick is in part linked to an increase in fraudulent DMCA notices, which Twitter also highlights in its report. The company says that it will continue to keep a close eye on this trend and has put safeguards in place to help protect people on Twitter and Periscope.

Earlier this year TorrentFreak was also hit by inaccurate DMCA takedown complaints, targeting our news coverage. American entertainment giant Starz removed ours and several other tweets, pointing to an article about leaked TV-shows.

While Twitter accepted these takedowns, the reporting organization lifted the claim after we and many others complained.

Twitter’s complete transparency report, which also addresses trademark notices, information requests, rules enforcement, and other removal requests, is available here.

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In what is becoming an increasingly competitive market, generating revenue by any means is a must for most significant sites, platforms, and services operating in the piracy space.

In Russia, pirate platforms have been experiencing an upward revenue trend for many years but according to a forecast just published by cybersecurity firm Group-IB, 2019 is set to be much less lucrative.

For background, in 2015 revenues were estimated to be $32m but a year later the picture had changed significantly with the market almost doubling in size to $62m. In 2017 there was a further 21% uplift to $85m but in 2018 things began to slow down, with a small 2.3% growth delivering estimated revenues of $87m.

In its latest analysis, the company states that for the first time in half a decade, revenues are set to collapse. Group-IB predicts a figure of around $63.5m for 2019, a drop of 27% compared to estimates for 2018 published last year.

The reasons cited for the dramatic downward shift are numerous. Russia has been tightening its anti-piracy laws almost every year, including site-blocking and in particular, the ability to block repeat-infringer sites and their mirrors/proxies on a permanent basis.

However, the “tectonic shift”, as the company describes it, came as a result of the voluntary anti-piracy memorandum signed in 2018.

Internet platforms including Yandex, Mail.ru, Rambler and Gazprom Media, in conjunction with major content companies, agreed to the creation of an infringing content database which signals which URLs to remove from search results. Around 600,000 links to pirated copies of movies and TV shows are currently included.

The arrangement officially expired early October but an extension was subsequently agreed, with an option to continue until the end of the year if a bill to enshrine its terms in law is submitted to the State Duma by the end of this month. In the meantime, the effects of the agreement haven’t gone unnoticed.

“In the previous years, even if pirated content was removed from a web page, a user still could open the web page, finding it in the search engine, and see the advertisement placed on it, bringing money to online-pirates,” says Andrey Busargin, Director of Brand Protection and Anti-Piracy at Group-IB.

“In 2019, on the contrary, a user was not always able to open a resource with pirated video content, even intentionally.”

Pirate site operators have other advertising issues too. Group-IB estimates that the average earnings for a pirate site via advertising are around $10,000 per month, with online casinos and gaming platforms providing most of the income.

“The active work of the Russian Federal Tax Service against bookmakers and gambling led to the pushing out of advertisers of pirated websites,” Busargin notes.

“For example, Azino777, a highly affiliated provider of advertising services for pirate CDNs, has already lost its leading position.”

Many streaming portals in the region utilize these ‘pirate’ CDNs which bundle video and advertising into a single package. As recently reported, however, several major players were either taken down after legal action by BREIN, the MPA, and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, or shut down as a direct result. At least temporarily, this could be affecting up to 80% of the pirate streaming market.

Nevertheless, there remains a thirst among Russian consumers for pirated content, so solutions are likely to be found. Group-IB says that the volume of search requests seeking pirated movies and TV shows increased by 0.06% in 2019, to 10.4 billion.

But there is also a cultural problem faced by content companies. A survey published in September by security company ESET suggested that just 9% of respondents prefer legal content over pirated, with 75% citing high prices as their motivation.

That being said, their supply will only continue if pirate sites can make money at their end, so it will be interesting to see whether their 2020 revenues continue on a downward trend.

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After beginning with the obligatory statement that Kodi is an entirely legal platform until people augment it with third-party ‘pirate’ add-ons, not every complaint in this area is straightforward.

This week, Kodi add-on resource TVAddons received a relatively unusual complaint about a page on its site that detailed a BT Sport-related add-on called BT Sport Video. According to a cache copy of the page (Google cache) TVAddons didn’t host the software or even link to it but did detail how to find and install it.

At first view, this could’ve been any other ‘pirate’ tool offering illegal streams but the ‘BT Sport Video’ add-on simply gave viewers a way to access officially-supplied and/or paid-for BT Sport content inside Kodi, without any piracy involved.

The complaint from BT Sport, however, wasn’t just about the add-on. The TVAddons installation guide included a BT Sport logo and referenced the add-on as BT Sport Video, the name given to the add-on by its developer. This appears to have prompted the broadcaster’s agent to issue a takedown notice covering both copyright and trademark law.

“Our client has recently become aware that on the web site, published in correspondence of the domain name https://www.tvaddons.co/kodi-addons/show/plugin.video.btsportvideo/, an Internet user is publishing, absent any authorization of the legitimate IP Rights owner, contents taken from our client’s official sites and protected by copyrights. See, for instance, at the URL http://sport.bt.com,” the complaint reads.

“This website is breaching IP Rights by offering illegal preloaded apps that enable unauthorized viewing of the BT Sport content. Please either remove all BT Sport content or suspend this website.”

In addition, the BT Sport complaint included copies of its trademark registration certificate, which was effective from September 2016 and details, among other things, rights in respect of computer software and computer services.

A response email sent by TVAddons to BT Sport’s representatives indicates that the site responded quickly to the complaint by taking down the entire installation guide. However, the add-on itself appears to be long-abandoned after being discontinued by its developer last year.

According to a thread on the official Kodi forums, the BT Sport Video add-on was initially available via the official Kodi repository, another sign that the add-on was initially viewed as non-problematic. However, it was subsequently hit with a DMCA notice and as of last summer, is no longer available.

It seems that even with a legitimate BT Sports subscription or content made freely available via its site, the broadcaster doesn’t want its content seen inside the Kodi application. Some will consider this an opportunity lost but BT Sport has its own business model and has probably had its fill of people using Kodi to access its streams illegally via the software.

Driving more users to the Kodi platform probably isn’t high on BT Sport’s list of priorities and when people use the BT Sport name to promote third-party software, it has the potential to imply an official endorsement, obviously a step too far for the company’s brand protection team.

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On December 9, 2014, the file-sharing world was in turmoil.

Swedish police raided the Nacka station, a nuclear-proof datacenter in Stockholm, and confiscated dozens of servers.

The raid caused downtime at many popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay. While a TPB insider later denied that its servers were taken, it remained offline for nearly two months.

After the raid, it became clear that The Pirate Bay was indeed the main reason for the enforcement effort. Similar to the earlier raid in 2005, a criminal investigation was launched to hold the operators responsible and keep the site offline.

However, where the first enforcement action resulted in several criminal convictions, the most recent investigation had limited success.

Last week we reported that the police ended the investigation into Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij, who was seen as a prime suspect. Today, we can report that the entire criminal investigation is now closed.

While the prosecution gathered a substantial amount of evidence, the case can’t continue, simply because time ran out.

“The investigation was closed because the statute of limitations expired,” Anna Ginner, Prosecutor at the National Intellectual Property Crime Unit tells us.

There was enough evidence to pursue a case against a suspect, which we believe is Fredrik Neij. However, the prosecution was unable to reach this person for “final serving,” a process where defendants can review the evidence, which is mandatory in Sweden.

“The investigation was finished. However, we did not manage to contact the suspect to give him the possibility to review the investigation on final serving,” Ginner notes.

Although there are no criminal convictions, the police and prosecution did book some results, Ginner says. The investigation led to a legal battle over the thepiratebay.se domain name, which was registered to Neij. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which forfeited the domain to the Swedish state last year.

The prosecution may have hoped for more but the lack of a conviction doesn’t come as a complete surprise. In 2017, the then leading prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson already warned that time was running out and that oral evidence was weakening.

Due to secrecy provisions, the prosecution can’t comment on whether The Pirate Bay remains a topic of interest, but it’s clear that the investigation following the 2014 raid is now closed.

Last week Neij told us that he is pleased that the case was dropped.

“Now that the investigation is closed, I’m looking forward to being compensated for them unnecessarily holding all my computer equipment for four years and ten months,” he said.

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