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.

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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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Cheating in videogames is a popular pastime for those who don’t want to play by the rules but there are two distinct groups who detest the activity.

While genuine players are routinely disadvantaged by those running cheat software, developers not only see their finely-tuned gaming environments disrupted but in some cases their business models too.

In September, the BBC ran a video piece on the topic of game cheating. An alleged 17-year-old appeared on the show in disguise, speaking of the hacks he created for Rainbow Six Seige, and noting that if Ubisoft “decides to come after you for copyright infringement then you’re in for a tough time.”

A month later, those tough times have arrived. In a lawsuit filed by Ubisoft in a California federal court, the videogame company is suing ‘J.V.L’, a teenager who lives in the Netherlands, allegedly developed a sophisticated Rainbow Six Seige (R6S) cheat, and reportedly appeared in the BBC interview under the alias ‘Lucas’.

Formerly known as “CheapBoost” but now known as “Budget Edition Rainbow Six: Siege Cheat”, it’s claimed the cheat allowed people to manipulate R6S to their advantage by “increasing the damage inflicted by the player, changing the player’s perspective, and allowing the player to see areas of the battlefield that otherwise would be obscured.”

The lawsuit targets several people, including J.V.L’s mother, Sandra Rijken, and numerous alleged support staff and resellers of the cheat. Most are only known by their online aliases but Ubisoft says it will amend its complaint when their identities are known.

The lawsuit also lists business entities Mizusoft (which was allegedly founded by J.V.L and sold the cheat) plus Rijken’s company Simply san Webdesign, which reportedly collected, processed and transmitted payments from Mizusoft customers to one or more of the defendants.

Ubisoft claims that Mizusoft was created for the “express purpose” of shielding J.V.L and his mother from the legal consequences of creating and distributing the R6S cheat software.

“Ubisoft is informed and believes, and on that basis alleges, that Defendants’ entire business is dedicated to creating, producing, marketing, distributing, and supporting the Cheating Software – which can be used only to cheat in R6S. Thus, Defendants’ business is wholly parasitic in nature and is entirely dependent upon causing harm to Ubisoft and its multiplayer community,” the complaint notes.

For those unfamiliar with this kind of cheating software, its cost will come as a surprise. According to the complaint, the cheat in question was sold on a recurring subscription fee basis of 11.99 euros per day, 29.99 euros per week, or 69.99 euros per month. Those payments, Ubisoft claims, were made to Simply San Webdesign via Stripe.

“Defendants know that trafficking in circumvention products such as the Cheating Software is unlawful and violates Section 1201 of the DMCA. As J.V.L. admitted on a BBC news segment: ‘if Ubisoft decides to come after you because of copyright infringement then you’re in for a tough time’,” Ubisoft adds.

The company says that the defendants’ actions have caused serious harm to its games and its online community, ruining the gaming experience for players and causing them to lose interest and stop playing R6S. On top, the company says it has spent “enormous sums of money” attempting to mitigate the cheat, including hiring people to police games for cheaters.

Ubisoft says that by creating and distributing the cheat software, the defendants trafficked in circumvention devices that are solely designed to defeat technological measures put in place to control access to a copyrighted work.

“As a result of the foregoing, Defendants are offering to the public, providing, importing, or otherwise trafficking in technology that violates 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2). Defendants’ acts constituting DMCA violations have been and continue to be performed without the permission, authorization, or consent of Ubisoft,” the complaint adds.

In terms of damages under the DMCA, at the very least Ubisoft is demanding the profits generated by the defendants, which according to them could run to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Alternatively, Ubisoft says it is entitled to maximum statutory damages of $25,000 for every breach of the DMCA, which run into their thousands. In any event, the company wants all of its legal fees and costs repaid.

But the complaint doesn’t stop at claims under the DMCA. A second count claims ‘intentional interference with contractual relations’, with the defendants standing accused of encouraging and inducing their customers to breach their Terms of Use agreement with Ubisoft, which bans cheating. The company also claims unfair competition.

“Defendants are guilty of oppression, fraud, or malice, and Ubisoft, in addition to its actual damages, by reason thereof, is entitled to recover exemplary and punitive damages against Defendants,” the company adds.

Initially, however, Ubisoft wants the entire operation shut down and more.

In addition to an injunction preventing the activities detailed in the complaint, Ubisoft wants the defendants to hand over everything that infringes their rights along with accounts that show all sales of cheat products and services in the United States. Ubisoft also wants to seize all domain names connected to the cheating business.

Ubisoft’s complaint, obtained by TorrentFreak, can be found here (pdf)

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RapidVideo is a popular file-hosting service that specializes in hosting videos.

Similar to other file-hosting services, it can be used for good and bad. The bad, in this case, is people uploading pirated videos. 

Whether the site’s operators want it or not, that’s what many of RapidVideo’s users are indeed doing. Two weeks ago this resulted in yet another scathing report from movie industry group MPA, which branded the site as a “notorious” piracy haven. 

Behind the scenes, the website’s operator faces mounting pressure as well. RapidVideo has been targeted by lawyers from the MPA and ACE, two of the most powerful anti-piracy forces, which are demanding far-reaching copyright enforcement measures from the site.

To back up their pressure, two MPA/ACE members, Warner Bros. Entertainment and Netflix, filed a lawsuit in Germany to stop the alleged copyright infringements the site enables. While this case remains ongoing, the site’s operator decided not to await the verdict and has shut the site down effective immediately.

The millions of users who regularly visit the site currently see nothing more than a 404 error.

TorrentFreak spoke to “Alex Bytes,” the operator of RapidVideo, who informed us that the shutdown is permanent. The site’s operator already considered throwing the towel after the adoption of the new EU Copyright Directive earlier this year, which may make upload filters semi-mandatory for some sites.

“It was high time to quit, because of the upcoming law changes within the EU, due to Article 13/17, where it is a more challenging situation for service providers,” RapidVideo’s Alex tells us.

By shutting the service down, RapidVideo also hopes to get the lawsuit from Warner Bros. and Netflix off its back. In addition, Alex points out that advertising revenues were dropping significantly, so it was hardly worth continuing anyway.

According to RapidVideo’s operator, ACE and the MPA previously demanded far-reaching measures to prevent piracy. The rightsholders requested a thorough “take down, stay down” policy, that would go further than hash or filename filtering.

Instead, rightsholders wanted the site to implement a system similar to YouTube’s Content-ID where more advanced fingerprinting techniques are used to match file uploads to potentially infringing content.

This wasn’t an option for RapidVideo, likely because it would require substantial investments. The other option, shutting the entire site down, became more and more attractive instead, especially in light of the pending lawsuit.

“By shutting down, the lawyers have no more reason to fight in the court against me,” Alex tells us.

For now, however, the court case remains ongoing. TorrentFreak reached out to the lawyer of Warner Bros. and Netflix for a comment on RapidVideo’s decision and the future of their legal claims, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

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While ‘pirate’ sites still exist as regular web-based streaming or torrent portals accessible through a browser, recent years have seen a shift.

Software applications, or apps as they’re more commonly known, are now seen as a more convenient option.

Installable on phones, tablets, and a multitude of set-top devices, they often provide access to huge libraries of instantly-streamable movie and TV shows, presented in a Netflix-style interface.

While Popcorn Time was the first to hit the mainstream, plenty of alternatives now exist. One of those is TeaTV, a popular app for Android, Windows and macOS. According to SimilarWeb stats, its download portal has been pulling in around 1.5 million visits per month a few days ago a considerable irritant presented itself.

News outlet CNBC – which is owned by media giant NBCUniversal – ran a piece claiming that TeaTV was being “bankrolled” by advertising, some of it being placed by Pandora, TikTok, Hulu, Yahoo Mail, and Amazon, among others.

There was no suggestion in the CNBC piece that any of the companies placed ads directly with Teat-TV. Instead, a network of hard-to-control resellers was handed the blame, some of which are no longer doing business with TeaTV due to the CNBC investigation. Other advertising companies approached declined to comment.

Interestingly, the publication also revealed that during a “recent meeting of major industry players in New York” on the topic of ad-supported piracy, TeaTV came up as a discussion point.

Who those players are is open to debate but ad-supported piracy is a hot topic and there can be little doubt that familiar names, including those involved in the ACE anti-piracy coalition (CNBC owner NBCUniversal is an ACE member), would’ve been privy to the conversations.

Perhaps coincidentally but more likely not, in the hours following the publication of the CNBC piece, TeaTV began to purge itself from the web. Its main webpage, previously located at TeaTV.net, no longer exists, meaning that downloads of the app from that portal have come to a halt.

Furthermore, TeaTV’s social media has been blacked out too. Both its Twitter and Facebook pages have been removed or deleted, leading some to speculate that the popular software has been consigned to history following the investigation.

After receiving unconfirmed information that TeaTV won’t ever be coming back, TorrentFreak spoke directly with a source very close to the app. That person declined to comment on the CNBC investigation specifically or whether TeaTV’s disappearance is directly connected to it.

However, we were assured that TeaTV will be returning sometime in the future. No timescale was given for the full resurrection but at least some changes are planned, including a potential rebranding of the app.

“Just a matter of time. We will get back to you when there is an update,” we were told.

With a full return (in some shape or form) penciled in for a future date, it appears that TeaTV as an application is still working for many of its users. Numerous reports online suggest that despite the app’s homepage and social media going dark, the software is still providing access to content.

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