Football, or soccer as it’s more commonly known in the US, is the most popular spectator sport in the UK. As a result, millions watch matches every week, both legally and illegally.

The latter method of consumption is a big thorn in the side of organizations such as the Premier League, which has been working hard to stamp out piracy in all its forms, often via aggressive enforcement. However, a new survey published today suggests more education is also needed.

Commissioned by betting tips service OLBG and carried out by market research company OnePoll in September, the survey looks at some of the habits of 1,000 football fan respondents.

The survey begins by noting that 16.6% of respondents usually attend live games, closely followed by 14.3% who “usually” watch in the pub. However, the largest audience (46.9%) are those who regularly watch matches live at home.

This, of course, opens up the opportunity for piracy. The report states that 22.4% of football fans surveyed admitted to knowingly using “unofficial streams” at some time in the past, a figure that is extrapolated in the report to “over five million UK football fans” admitting to illegal streaming.

Asking whether fans had watched a pirated stream in the past 12 months (or even “usually”) would have arguably been a little more useful, in order not to inflate the figures beyond current consumption habits. There will be fans in those millions who, in varying combinations, attend matches, watch legally in the pub, and on occasion, illegally at home too.

Nevertheless, the report provides some interesting data on the knowledge of those surveyed when it comes to illegal and legal consumption.

For example, just over 61% of respondents acknowledged that accessing streams from unofficial providers is illegal, meaning that almost 40% believe that watching matches from third-party sources is absolutely fine. That’s a pretty big problem for the Premier League and other broadcasters when four out of ten fans can’t tell the difference between a legal and illegal provider.

Strangely, the figure drops slightly when respondents were asked about “Kodi-style” devices. Just 49% said that these boxes provide content illegally, meaning around half believe they offer football matches legally. Given the drive to stamp out the illegal use of these devices globally, this is also an eye-opener.

Moving to other methods of access, the figures are a little bit more predictable. Just under 29% felt that social media streams (Facebook Live etc) are illegal, so that may raise the possibility that respondents associated the perceived legitimacy of the platform with legality.

Password sharing is also tackled in the survey, with 32.5% of respondents stating that they believe that using someone else’s login to access football matches is illegal. If that happens outside the subscriber’s household it might constitute a terms-of-service breach but actual illegality is open to question, account stealing aside.

All that being said, according to the survey, just 11% have actually used a family member’s login to watch football during the past 12 months, a figure that drops to 9.8% when borrowing from a friend.

In common with the debate around password sharing on Netflix and other platforms, this issue is likely to receive greater attention in the future but how it will be tackled by providers is far from clear. At least at the moment, the problem seems limited.

Finally, and just returning to the headline “five million football pirates in the UK”, it’s worth noting that this refers to people who have “EVER” used an unofficial stream to watch football, so it’s not necessarily five million fans who don’t ever part with a penny.

As far as we could see, no question in the report tried to determine what percentage of fans currently freeload all of the time, which is undoubtedly the biggest problem for the Premier League.

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For more than a decade, alleged file-sharers around the world have been pressured to pay significant settlement fees.

These so-called ‘copyright-trolling’ efforts are pretty straightforward. Copyright holders obtain a list of ‘pirating’ IP-addresses and then request a subpoena from the court, compelling ISPs to hand over the associated customer data.

This scheme can be rather lucrative. With minimal effort, rightsholders can rake in hundreds or thousands of dollars per defendant. That is, if a court grants expedited discovery, allowing the companies to request the personal details of alleged infringers from ISPs.

In the past, it has been relatively easy to pursue these cases, but the tide is slowly turning. Most prominent was a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from last year in the Cobbler Nevada v. Gonzales case. Here, the court ruled that identifying the registered subscriber of an IP-address is by itself not enough to argue that this person is also the infringer.

While the Cobbler case wasn’t about a subpoena request, it certainly said something about the strength of the underlying complaints.

As the most prolific filer of piracy lawsuits in the US, Strike 3 Holdings has come under fire as well. For example, last November Columbia District Judge Lamberth accused the company of being a “copyright troll,” that uses “famously flawed” technology to prey on “low-hanging fruit,” flooding the
courthouse “with lawsuits smacking of extortion.”

That didn’t stop Strike 3, which produces adult content, from continuing its legal campaign. The company filed has more than 1,150 lawsuits already this year, many of which are believed to have resulted in profitable settlements. However, there have been setbacks as well.

Last week, New Jersey District Court Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider denied Strike 3 expedited discovery in four cases. This means that it’s not allowed to subpoena ISPs for the personal details of account holders whose IP-addresses were used to share pirated videos via BitTorrent.

In a very detailed 47-page opinion, the Judge takes apart various aspects of Strike 3’s enforcement efforts. He makes it clear that these cases should not be allowed to go forward, as the complaints are futile.

“The most fundamental basis of the Court’s decision is its conclusion that, as pleaded, Strike 3’s complaints are futile. The Court denies Strike 3 the right to bootstrap discovery based on a complaint that does not pass muster,” Judge Schneider writes.

The futility lies in the fact that the complaints themselves include very few facts. The only thing that the company really knows is that an IP address is associated with downloading copyrighted works. Strike 3 doesn’t know whether the subscriber is involved in the actual infringements.

Courts have previously ruled both in favor and against allowing discovery to expose the account holders in these situations, but the New Jersey Court clearly sides with the latter.

“The Court sided with the cases that hold it is not sufficient to merely allege in a pleading that the defendant is a subscriber of an IP address traced to infringing activity. Consequently, the Court will not authorize Strike 3 to take discovery premised on a futile John Doe complaint.”

The decision is partly based on the aforementioned “Cobbler” ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. However, the Court makes it clear that even if there was a properly pleaded infringement claim, the requests for expedited discovery would still be denied.

In the opinion, Judge Schneider sums up the other issues as follows:

(1) Strike 3 bases its complaints on unequivocal affirmative representations of alleged facts that it does not know to be true.
(2) Strike 3’s subpoenas are misleading and create too great of an opportunity for misidentification.
(3) The linchpin of Strike 3’s good cause argument, that expedited discovery is the only way to stop infringement of its works, is wrong.
(4) Strike 3 has other available means to stop infringement besides suing
individual subscribers in thousands of John Doe complaints.
(5) The deterrent effect of Strike 3’s lawsuits is questionable.
(6) Substantial prejudice may inure to subscribers who are misidentified.
(7) Strike 3 underestimates the substantial interest subscribers have in the constitutionally protected privacy of their subscription information.

For example, Strike 3 has argued that these cases do not really raise any substantial privacy concerns, but the Court clearly disagrees. Being named in a lawsuit is an invasion of people’s constitutional privacy rights, which should not be underestimated.

“[G]iven the expansive view of individual privacy under New Jersey law, there should be a good reason before subscriber information is turned over. This is especially true in a situation where questionable averments are relied upon to obtain discovery,” Judge Schneider writes.

Another point the Judge brings up is Strike 3’s claim that it has no other available means to stop copyright infringements. According to the Court, this is not true. The DMCA allows the company to send takedown notices to ISPs, but Strike 3 doesn’t use this option.

While the company is by no means required to issue takedown notices, the Court finds it unreasonable for Strike 3 to argue that it has no other options when it ignores the DMCA.

“One would think that Strike 3 would be eager to notify ISPs that its subscribers are infringing their copyrights, so that an infringer’s internet service would be interrupted, suspended or terminated and infringement would stop. However, Strike 3 does not take this simple step but instead files thousands of lawsuits arguing that it has no other recourse to stop infringement,” Judge Schneider writes.

Even if Strike 3 believes that these notices don’t have any direct effect, it could at least try. If an ISP willfully ignores DMCA notices or fails to follow its repeat infringer policy, it could even consider suing the Internet provider, as other rightsholders have done, the Court adds.

Adding to that, Judge Schneider points out that the current legal campaigns against individual file-sharers are not very effective. There doesn’t seem to be a substantial deterrent effect, as Strike 3 admits that the infringements of its works have only increased.

All in all the Court sees no other option than to deny the request for expedited discovery. This is good news for the people who were targeted by these lawsuits, as they won’t be identified. At the same time, it means that Strike 3 can’t continue these cases, as it can’t name a defendant.

The Court realizes that this makes it nearly impossible to track down the alleged infringers, but sometimes that’s how the law works.

“The Court is not unmindful that its ruling may make it more difficult for Strike 3 to identify copyright infringers. To the extent this is the price to pay to assure compliance with the applicable law, so be it,” Judge Schneider writes.

“A legal remedy does not exist for every wrong, and it is unfortunately the case that sometimes the law has not yet caught up with advanced technology. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, where a party who believes it was wronged was denied discovery,” he adds.

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A copy of the full opinion issued by US Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider is available here (pdf).

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LibreELEC 9.2 Beta 2 (Leia) has arrived based upon Kodi v18.4, the 9.2 Beta 2 release contains many changes and refinements to user experience and a complete overhaul of the underlying OS core to improve stability and extend hardware support.
If no serious bugs appear that the final version of LibreELEC 9.2 should be available with the release of Kodi 18.5 in approximately 2 weeks.

Changes since LibreELEC Beta 1:

• several Bugfixes
• improvements for the RPi4
• added firmware updater for RPi4

Update the firmware at the Raspberry 4:

Change for Raspberry 4:

With LE 9.1.002 and later you need to add “hdmi_enable_4kp60=1“ to your config.txt if you want to use 4k output at the RPi4. Before you needed “hdmi_enable_4k=1“ that is now deprecated.

Beta Notes:

LibreELEC 9.2 for Generic x86/64 and Raspberry Pi 0/1/2/3 devices is a solid beta quality release. Raspberry Pi 4B images are more “late stage Alpha” and are not feature complete or perfect. Normal LibreELEC testing rules apply; if you do not want to experiment on your family’s primary entertainment system – please stick with your current version and wait for the final/stable release. If you do want to experiment – please be prepared to submit log files and work with developers to hunt down problems and test solutions.

Raspberry 4:

It would be nice to have the 4B running the latest mainline kernel as other devices in LibreELEC 9.2, but adding support for an all-newSoC chipset is a huge effort and the Pi Foundation needed to align initial 4B software with the current Raspbian release to maximise compatibility with existing software and to keep the workload sensible. Generic x86/64 devices are running Linux 5.1, while Raspberry Pi devices (0/1/2/3/4) are using Linux 4.19 with some new/extra code.

In this initial release 1080p playback behaviour and performance on the 4B are broadly on-par with the previous 3B/3B+ model, except for HEVC media which is now hardware decoded and massively improved. New 4K video capabilities still have plenty of rough edges to be smoothed out, but the Pi Foundation developers have been pushing fixes to the test team at a phenomenal rate over the last month and that will continue as the userbase expands.

The 4B now uses SPI flash for the bootloader. Current firmware supports SD card boot only – Network and USB booting are still on the Pi Foundation to-do list. Also on the list is HBR audio (current audio capabilities are the same as the 3B) and 3D video. The 4B hardware is HDR capable, but software support has a dependency on the new Linux kernel frameworks merged by Intel developers (with help from Team LibreELEC/Kodi) in Linux 5.2 and a kernel bump will be needed to use them. Once the initial excitement and activity from the 4B launch calms down, serious work on HDR and transitioning Raspberry Pi over to the new GBM/V4L2 video pipeline can start.

Rockchip:

Our Rockchip releases remain in an Alpha state with limited support. The Kodi version is updated but there are no significant video/audio improvements to the Rockchip 4.4 kernel codebase – and none planned. Our work on Rockchip support has refocussed onto the Linux 5.x kernel to use the modern kernel frameworks needed for the next-generation Kodi video pipeline. This work is progressing nicely, but it means the 4.4 codebase “is what it is” until a future kernel bump.

Amlogic

Our original goal was to announce Allwinner and Amlogic images alongside Rockchip as part of the LibreELEC 9.2 release, but while overall readiness has greatly improved in recent months – each has specific technical challenges to overcome before they meet our basic critera for a public release. On the human side of the project several maintainers also have reduced availability for support due to work and family commitments. Combining these factors together, the team felt it was better to be patient and not rush releases.

So instead of releasing LibreELEC 9.2 alpha images we are announcing the start of official nightly images from our master development branch. At the moment the master branch uses Linux 5.2 and Kodi v18 so nightlies mirror LibreELEC 9.2, but in the near future we will start moving master towards Linux 5.4 and Kodi v19.

If you experience problems, please open an thread at our forum. You can also open an ticket at our issue tracker.

Upgrading

On first boot the Kodi media database will be upgraded. Depending on your hardware and media collection size this could take several minutes. Please be patient.

Downloads

Click here to go to the download page.

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Last month, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the game download portal RomUniverse.

The website, which also allows users to download movies and books, stands accused of massive copyright infringement, including that relating to many Nintendo titles.

“The Website is among the most visited and notorious online hubs for pirated Nintendo video games. Through the Website, Defendants reproduce, distribute, monetize, and offer for download thousands of unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s video games,” the Japanese gaming giant wrote.

According to the game company, “hundreds of thousands of copies” have been illegally downloaded through RomUniverse. The site, meanwhile, profits from this by offering premium memberships that allow users to download as many games as they want.

This week, the operator of RomUniverse, California resident Matthew Storman, responded to Nintendo’s claims. Instead of hiring an attorney, he is defending himself in court, starting with a detailed motion to dismiss the complaint.

Storman doesn’t deny that he is involved in the operation of RomUniverse. However, he sees himself as a Service Provider, who is not part of the ‘forum’ itself. On the contrary, the admin argues that he’s protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions.

“Since DMCA protects SP from any liability, and only limits Plaintiff to only injunctive relief, the Plaintiff complaints are without basis and potentially an abuse of process,” the motion to dismiss reads.

The motion doesn’t clearly name who is responsible for the files that are uploaded to the site, but it suggests that they are copies of games from people who obtained them legally.

Taking matters a step further, RomUniverse’s operator argues that Nintendo is not the owner of the files and therefore has no standing in this case. Citing the First Sale Doctrine, Storman argues that those who buy games have the right to sell, destroy, or give them away.

“The First Sale Doctrine permits non-copyright or trademark owner to dispose of their copies as they see fit. The Plaintiff does not own copies on websites,” the motion reads.

As mentioned before, Storman further argues that he is protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor. In the motion, he explains that takedown requests that were sent on behalf of Nintendo were honored in the past.

Some of the takedown notices that were sent suggested that this was enough to prevent any legal action. This includes the following passage from a Nintendo DMCA notice.

“Therefore I request you to take immediate action to remove or disable access to unauthorised copies of the Nintendo Game listed at the URLs below and in order to prevent further legal actions against your company.”

According to Storman, this is an implied contract suggesting that any potentially infringing copies that were removed will not result in further legal action.

Based on these and many other arguments, the RomUniverse operator (/service provider) asks the US District Court for the Central District of California to dismiss the complaint.

While Storman makes several interesting arguments, the question is whether any of these will hold up in court. On top of that, waging a legal battle against a billion-dollar gaming empire is already a challenge with a good lawyer. Doing so without any legal representation will be even harder.

Nintendo will likely file its response during the coming weeks, and after that, it will be up to the court to make a decision. In the meantime, RomUniverse remains online.

—

A copy of the memorandum in support of the motion to dismiss, filed pro se by Matthew Storman, is available here (pdf).

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On December 9, 2014, The Pirate Bay went dark after Swedish police raided a nuclear-proof datacenter built into a mountain complex near Stockholm.

The hosting facility reportedly offered services to The Pirate Bay, EZTV and several other torrent related sites, which were pulled offline as a result.

The authorities later announced that 50 servers were seized during the raid. And not without success, it seemed. The raid resulted in the longest ever period of continuous downtime for The Pirate Bay, nearly two months.

The raid also triggered a new criminal investigation into the notorious torrent site and its alleged operators. One person with alleged ties to TPB was arrested, but the police eventually dropped this investigation, citing a lack of resources to properly investigate the matter.

Meanwhile, Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij remained a suspect. He had officially cut his ties with the site years earlier, but apparently the authorities were not convinced.

To some, the new investigation into the TPB co-founder came as a surprise, especially since Neij was in prison for his earlier Pirate Bay activities at the time of the raid. However, the enforcement authorities seemed determined and decided to dig in.

Today, nearly five years have passed without any significant progress in the investigation. At least, none that the public is aware of. On the contrary, the entire case appears to have fallen apart.

This week Fredrik Neij, aka TiAMO, informed TorrentFreak that the investigation into his involvement was dropped on October 18, 2019. The prosecutor and police informed Neij through his attorney, who forwarded the good news. After all these years, Neij is happy that he can finally put the issue to rest.

“It took them long enough to realize that I’m not running The Pirate Bay anymore,” Neij tells us.

Pirate Bay’s co-founder now hopes that he will be properly compensated for the seizure of his possessions, which resulted in no tangible claims.

“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,” Neij adds.

At this point, it is unclear if there are any remaining suspects in the 2014 raid investigation, or if the case is closed. We reached out to the police and the prosecutor’s office, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

The information that has been made public thus far suggests that the 2014 raid has yielded no substantial results. For the TPB team, this might not come as a surprise, as someone connected to the site previously said that the police didn’t have much on them.

According to the TPB team, only one of their servers was confiscated in 2014. That server was operated by the moderators and used as a communication channel for TPB matters. The team said the site was pulled offline as a precaution and took longer than expected to return as migrating to a new home proved to be a challenge.

Regardless of the progress in the case, Fredrik Neij is no longer being investigated. He is still listed as the official registrant for the official thepiratebay.org domain, but that is obviously not enough to build a case.

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