Online piracy is an international problem for the content industries, one that’s particularly hard to curb.

Pirate site blocking appears to be the preferred countermeasure, which has been rolled out in dozens of countries over the years.

While industry reports and academic research have shown signs that this can indeed be effective, it’s certainly no a silver bullet.

With few other options to hand, rightsholders do see it as one of their best bets for now. As such, they frequently push lawmakers to lay the groundwork for ISP blocking, if that’s not available.

It’s also a topic of interest in South Africa at the moment, where the Government has been working on a new ‘Cybercrimes Bill. The proposed legislation doesn’t have any blocking requirements, but there have been calls from industry groups to require ISPs to block blatantly-infringing pirate sites.

While this doesn’t come as a complete surprise considering the global trend, local Internet providers are fiercely against any type of piracy enforcement. Speaking with MyBroadband, the Internet Service Providers’ Association of South Africa (ISPA) describes site blocking as ineffective and concerning.

“Blocking is technically complicated and subject to false positives, yet it is relatively trivial for consumers and content providers to bypass the blocks, bringing its effectiveness into question,” ISPA said.

“There are also complex freedom of expression concerns which are not for ISPs or copyright associations to resolve and which need to be properly ventilated through the courts,” the group added.

The ISP association points out that new technologies such as Encrypted DNS could render website blocking pretty much useless, without the need to use proxies or a VPN.

The group doesn’t deny that blocking may have a marginal anti-piracy effect but says that it’s unsure whether the positive impact of such as “blunt and limited” measure will outweigh the potential negative consequences.

“It is not clear that there will be any significant benefit to copyright holder associations and their members from this approach and certainly no indication that any positive impact will outweigh the risks to freedom of expression and access to information outlined above, as well as the cost of implementation,” ISPA noted.

There is currently no indication that the Government is seriously considering implementing any blocking-related obligations. However, it’s always possible that rightsholders will try to have such measures put in place through the judicial route.

ISPA didn’t comment on this option specifically, but going through the court will at least mean that the interests of the public at large will be carefully weighed.

Finally, ISPA also commented on some scaremongering which suggested that, under the new Cybercrimes Bill, ISPs will have to report all pirates to the authorities.

According to ISPA, this is an incorrect interpretation of the bill. The group stressed that current law makes it clear that ISPs don’t have to monitor their customers. In fact, doing so may be illegal.

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When there were few, if any, legal services available to stream movies and TV shows via the Internet, pirate sites had a virtual stranglehold on the entire market.

The obvious theory was that when entertainment industry groups came together to actually make their content both accessible and at a reasonable price (build it and they will come), visits to pirate sites would naturally decrease.

In Sweden, where The Pirate Bay and similar platforms have stamped their mark on the pirate landscape for at least 15 years, the market was crying out for legal options. Now there are a few to choose from, including Netflix and HBO Nordic, for example.

However, according to anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the availability of legal services and indeed increased uptake of them among the public hasn’t had a negative effect on the numbers of people using ‘pirate’ services.

“Unfortunately, we do not see a reduction in illegal use,” Rights Alliance lawyer Sara Lindbäck informs Sveriges Radio.

“[Piracy rates] in Sweden are much higher than they are in the neighboring Nordic countries. We are at about 20%, so every fifth Swede uses an illegal service.”

The claim that the volume of people using piracy sites isn’t reducing in line with increased uptake of legal services will be a disappointment to the movies and TV industries. However, the big question is why this is the case. Lindbäck notes that pirate streaming sites are essentially free to use, which is a big attraction but there are other issues too.

Particularly in the case of movies, pirate sites are able to exploit weaknesses in the legal market. Theatrical and other windowing (such as the often extended wait for titles to appear on streaming services) means that pirate sites are the only option for early viewing of the latest content, something that keeps them relevant, even while people also subscribe to services like Netflix.

As reported last week, a very high percentage of pirates in Europe are also consumers of legal content, which means that improved legal options should mean that people turn to piracy less. In Sweden, there also appears to be a situation where people are happy to buy and pirate at the same time, with piracy supplementing legal consumption.

This inevitably leads Rights Alliance back down the enforcement route, calling for stricter penalties against pirate site operators and greater help from those supplying Internet connections to the public.

“[T]here is a proposal that awaits the government to [make piracy a] serious crime so that the sanctions will be greater and the police will have better tools to work against it,” Lindbäck explains, adding that improved collaboration with ISPs might help to reduce piracy rates too.

Finally, education about piracy issues is often touted as a means to keep people away from pirate sites. Lindbäck believes that progress is being made in this area, with people noting that the money being made by pirate site operators via advertising, for example, is associated with crime and money laundering.

“I think there is a maturity that continues, surprisingly, about the use of the Internet,” Lindbäck concludes.

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Visitors to ‘pirate’ sites are no strangers to the Russia-based gambling company 1XBET.

As reported back in May, the company’s branding appears on hundreds of so-called ‘cam’ releases, much to the annoyance of people hoping to enjoy a movie without unnecessary interruptions.

The mechanism through which these ads appear in ‘pirate’ releases isn’t clear. As we’ve previously pointed out, there’s no public information that 1XBET directly sponsors ‘pirate’ releases or whether over-enthusiastic affiliates are to blame. Nevertheless, things were bound to boil over at some point.

In August, we pointed out a bizarre situation in Italy, where top tier football league Serie A launched an anti-piracy campaign, decrying piracy of all kinds – of movies too – with 1XBET advertising directly underneath. In fact, 1XBET is an official presenting partner for Serie A which has its ads all over its site.

While Serie A currently seems untroubled by these developments, Premier League clubs in the UK – who are also quick to criticize pirates – have a bigger and more immediate problem.

Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur – which all previously struck sponsorship deals with 1XBET – recently received communication from the UK’s Gambling Commission noting that after having its license revoked (in part due to its advertising on ‘illegal’ sites), the clubs cannot continue doing business with 1XBET.

“We recently wrote to Liverpool FC, Chelsea FC and Tottenham Hotspur FC to remind them that organizations engaging in sponsorship, and associated advertising arrangements, with an unlicensed operator, may be liable to prosecution . . . for the offense of advertising unlawful gambling,” the Commission reportedly told the clubs.

A few days ago, Tottenham announced that it had terminated its multi-million-pound sponsorship deal with the company. At the time of writing, Chelsea and Liverpool are yet to make an official announcement.

In response to the allegations, a 1XBET spokesperson said that is taking the matter seriously and, as such has, decided to stop operating in the UK, at least for the moment.

“We take very seriously the allegation that 1xBet’s brand has been promoted on prohibited sites, which is strictly against our policies, and we have launched an investigation. Pending the outcome…we believe it is responsible to temporarily suspend our advertising activity in the UK,” the company said.

With Matt Zarb-Cousin of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling describing the clubs’ lack of due diligence as “shocking” and an “absolute debacle”, TorrentFreak spoke with brand protection company White Bullet to find out if it had some additional data on the scale of 1XBET’s alleged advertising on ‘pirate’ platforms.

The company, which works with brands to identify websites and applications that damage brand reputation (including by funding online piracy), told us that it tracks around 10,000 ‘pirate’ sites, with that number depending on how many are online and have ad impressions to be counted.

“1,200 of those sites had 1XBET ads found on a regular basis over the last 6 months,” the company noted, adding that 25% were or still are on the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s IWL Infringing Website List (IWL).

Somewhat embarrassingly for Serie A and the above-named Premier League teams, 13% of the sites carrying 1XBET ads were ‘pirate’ sports streaming platforms and categorized as “high risk” by White Bullet.

All in all, this is an interesting completion of the funding circle as far as the clubs go, not to mention the Premier League’s constant complaints about piracy.

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France has been working hard to disrupt online piracy for more than a decade, largely through the efforts of local anti-piracy agency Hadopi.

After many years of planning, in 2010 France became a pioneer of the so-called “graduated response” system, whereby persistent copyright infringers could eventually find themselves disconnected from the Internet.

The entire project was overseen by Hadopi (High Authority for the Distribution and Protection of Intellectual Property on the Internet), the government agency responsible created to ensure citizens comply with relevant anti-piracy laws.

Hadopi has made the headline numerous times over the past 10 years, largely reporting on progress in its field. However, Hadopi’s main goal was to reduce illicit sharing on peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent, which has in many instances given way to streaming equivalents in the interim.

In an announcement this week by the Ministry of Culture, it transpires that a new bill foresees Hadopi merging with another powerful government agency in the near future

The CSA (Conseil Supérieur de L’audiovisuel / Higher Audiovisual Council) – is the local authority for the regulation of electronic media in France, including television. It’s envisioned that a merger between Hadopi and CSA will create a brand new organization with even greater powers for regulating all things digital.

According to a Reuters report, the merger project will be presented to the Council of Minister in November before arriving at parliament early next year.

“The idea is to create a new authority based on this merger that regulates both audiovisual communications and digital communications,” said Franck Riester, France’s Minister of Culture.

Earlier this year, Riester noted that the convergence between the Internet, television, and radio needed to be addressed. This planned merger seems a clear attempt to bridge the gaps although what it will mean for anti-piracy enforcement will remain to be seen.

A July 2018 report indicated that not only were French pirates on the wane (down from 11.6 million in 2016 to 10.6 million in 2017), many were increasingly turning to legal sources such as Netflix.

Those that were still determined to pirate were also downloading and streaming less unlicensed content, with consumption down by 4% and the number of pirates without access to a legal subscription dropping by 30%.

A more recent report, published this June, indicated that in 2018 the agency had dealt with 50,000 to 70,000 instances of Internet users unlawfully and repeatedly making content available on peer-to-peer networks.

“[D]uring the three phases of warnings sent to Internet users, 60% of them were no longer accused of new illegal acts,” Hadopi said, citing the scheme’s effectiveness.

Nevertheless, calls remain for enforcement to be stepped up, including via the use of blacklists that would help to restrict access to unlicensed streaming sites via ISPs and search engines, while encouraging advertisers to boycott the platforms.

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For many years, Dutch Internet users were allowed to download copyrighted content with impunity, as long as it was for their own use.

In 2014, the European Court of Justice decided that the country’s “piracy levy” through which rightsholders could be compensated, was actually unlawful.

It took another three years for entertainment industry groups to realize the untapped potential of settlement lawsuits but in 2017 it was revealed that distribution company Dutch Filmworks (DFW) wanted to begin monitoring pirates. It didn’t immediately mention it would be seeking any compensation but that always seemed likely.

Later that year it became clear the company would indeed try to do just that, using an initial letter to alleged infringers to request payment.

“[The lettter] will propose a fee,” said DFW CEO Willem Pruijsserts. “If someone does not agree [to pay], the organization can start a lawsuit.”

However, before DFW can begin sending letters, it needs to match the IP addresses of alleged infringers with real identities and for that, it needs cooperation from ISPs. Immediately, ISPs including Ziggo refused to comply without being taken to court.

DFW went ahead wth legal action anyway and targeted 377 of Ziggo’s customers, all alleged to have downloaded the movie “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”. However, the effort failed when in February 2019 the Central Netherlands Court denied the company’s request for data.

The Court didn’t deny that those sharing copyrighted movies without permission were breaking the law. However, it also pointed out that an IP-address alone doesn’t identify an infringer. The Court also had issues with the settlement amount that DFW proposed to extract from alleged infringers, describing the ‘fine’ as “in no way substantiated” in respect of actual damages.

In response, DFW filed an appeal, stating that the judge in the case “agreed with DFW on almost all points” so felt that the ruling should have gone the distributor’s way.

“DFW is of the opinion that this decision should have been in favor of the rightsholder and it is convinced that the claim should be awarded on appeal,” the company said.

Accordingly, the Court of Appeal looked at the case and was due to deliver its verdict yesterday, September 3, 2019. However, a report from NRC now reveals that the decision will be postponed “partly due to the complexity of the case.”

A spokesperson for the Court told the publication that “we’re working hard on it” and a ruling should be handed down no later than November 5, 2019, but hopefully sooner.

While in other regions of Europe, notably countries like Germany and Sweden, the discovery process can be a fairly simple one, it seems clear that the Dutch court wants to take a much closer look at the details.

What those reservations are isn’t yet clear but the earlier insistence from DFW, that subscribers should be responsible for what happens on their connections whether they’re the infringer or not, might be playing a part in the Court’s hesitancy.

On top, of course, any decision in favor of DFW could open the floodgates to other companies seeking to obtain settlements from Internet users, something which would be music to the ears of various copyright trolls, many based in the United States and working on an industrial scale.

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