In the spring of 2013, more than six years ago, a new niche hosting service called Instaudio saw the light.

The site, operated by an anonymous musician, offered anyone a quick and easy way to upload music files. Before the launch, it was used as a private service, but the operator eventually made it available to the public at large.

Despite attracting a healthy user-base, the site always remained a side-project. The operator, who works at a music-related company, didn’t promote it either. People simply found their way to the site through word-of-mouth promotion.

This went well, but as time went by, more and more problems arose. As with any hosting service, some people started to use the site to share pirated files. On popular forums and leak-sharing sites, links to Instaudio were no exception either.

This meant that the operator had to worry about removing content from his platform. While the site accepts and honors takedown requests, it was never meant to be a platform for leaks, something that was communicated loud and clear on Twitter and elsewhere.

Despite this call, the abuse didn’t stop. This led to the frustrating situation that a site, which aimed to help musicians share files, was increasingly seen as a threat by music industry outfits. As a result, the operator has now decided to put an end to it himself.

A few days ago, Instaudio stopped accepting new uploads and signups. Previously uploaded files will remain available for now, but they will be made unavailable to the public at the end of August. Four weeks later, all files and user accounts will be purged.

In a public announcement, the Instaudio operator cites the “abuse” as one of the reasons for his decision.

“The abuse situation has gotten to the point where I’m being threatened with ‘legal consequences’ and other such things because, in those organizations’ judgment, I am ineffective at preventing infringing content from being distributed through Instaudio.”

To stop widespread uploading of pirated material Instaudio could implement an upload filter, but the operator is not a fan of these types of measures, as they can lead to false positives.

In addition to sharing pirated content, people were also abusing the site by hotlinking to files and bulk-downloading content. This significantly increased costs.

“Other forms of abuse also occurred, such as automated bulk-downloading, or hot-linking to Instaudio-hosted files on webpages with high traffic. Both of these result in high bandwidth, and therefore high cost for me,” the operator notes.

The growing costs are cited as another reason for the shutdown. As Instaudio was a personal project, all costs were paid out of the pockets of the operator. While he did have a sponsor, it has now reached the point where the costs are no longer justified.

All in all, the negatives outweigh the positives, and shutting Instaudio down is the logical conclusion.

“As time went on I had to put more and more effort into the ugly side of keeping Instaudio running, which left no energy to work on cool new features. Coupled with the cost and the stress, it became an overall negative for me,” Instaudion’s operator writes.

“I have other, more fulfilling hobbies that I’d much rather spend the time and money on,” he adds.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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While rightsholders and anti-piracy groups often deploy multiple strategies for dealing with online copyright infringement, blocking websites, streams, and servers is now one of the most common.

The Premier League broke new ground on this front in 2017, after it obtained a pioneering injunction which enabled it to track live ‘pirate’ streams and have them blocked by leading ISPs BT, Virgin Media, EE, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk in real-time.

With backing from the High Court, the Premier League deployed its system during the 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons. We can now confirm that the Court recently granted permission for the efforts to continue during the 2019/20 campaign.

A High Court order signed off July 15, 2019, by Justice Arnold, but as yet unannounced by the Premier League or the Court, will be the basis for the blocking mechanism during the upcoming season. Thus far, one ISP has confirmed the existence of the order.

“A number of unidentified servers associated with infringing Premier League match footage will be blocked until the end of the 2019/20 Premier League season,” Sky notes.

Unlike other blocking orders targeting torrent sites or streaming platforms with a fixed domain, the servers streaming Premier League content are “unidentified” until its anti-piracy partners are able to locate them a few minutes before matches begin. The relevant IP addresses are then forwarded to the ISPs who block them under the authority of the Court.

TorrentFreak has been able to confirm that other ISPs are aware of the new Premier League order but are yet to make a public statement.

Late 2017, UEFA followed in the footsteps of the Premier League by obtaining a similar order covering the period February 13, 2018, to May 26, 2018, in an effort to protect European matches. A month later in July 2018, UEFA was given permission by the High Court to expand and extend its campaign until July 12, 2019.

Earlier this month, UEFA obtained permission from the High Court to continue. As yet, no associated documents have been published by the Court but both Sky and Virgin have confirmed they will be blocking ‘pirate’ servers again, with the Court’s authorization, until 2021.

“A number of unidentified servers associated with infringing UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Super Cup, UEFA Nations League, UEFA European Qualifiers and UEFA Friendlies match footage will be blocked until the end of the 2020/21 Champions League or Europa League competitions,” Sky notes.

Virgin states that it will block “Various Target Servers notified to Virgin Media by UEFA or its appointed agent for the duration of the UEFA 2019/2020 & 2020/2021 competition seasons.”

The technical details of the blocking systems deployed by both the Premier League and UEFA (TF understands they’re managed by different anti-piracy companies) are largely secret although some insiders have recently been prepared to talk more about what happens behind the scenes.

As the new season progresses, we expect to report more on how this digital game of cat-and-mouse is playing out.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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Millions of people in the UK cite football (soccer for those over the pond) as their favorite sport. Every week, huge numbers head off to grounds far and wide but for the travel averse, watching matches on TV is the only option.

Broadcasters like Sky and BT Sport would like consumers to choose their premium offerings but that can be prohibitively expensive. Even then, the Premier League’s top games played on a Saturday afternoon are banned from TV, thanks to the somewhat archaic “3pm blackout“.

As a result, pirate IPTV services, which all but eliminate high costs while completely ignoring the blackout, are thriving. In response, the Premier League obtained a pioneering injunction from the High Court in 2017 that compelled the largest ISPs to block ‘pirate’ servers for a season. It has obtained permission to continue along the same lines twice since.

Based on information made available in the initial injunction, we previously provided a rough guide on how the system operates. However, the High Court also accepted that other details were secret and agreed to them not being detailed in public.

Since then, TF has received various pieces of information about how the blocking system works in practice but recently a new source came forward offering much more detail, from both the perspective of IPTV providers dealing with the technology and based on information that we’re told was leaked from inside an anti-piracy company.

TF was able to review copies of some of the information. We have been unable to confirm the manner in which the leaks allegedly took place but a secondary source, who has proven reliable in the past, acknowledged that a leak had taken place. It therefore seems likely that the company in question, which we have also chosen not to name, is already familiar with the circumstances.

We’re told that the original source of the leaks, with whom TF has had no contact and whose identity is unknown to us, went AWOL a number of months ago and stopped providing data. Exactly why is unclear but at this point, the details aren’t particularly important.

Inside the Blocking System

In a detailed analysis, our source explained that, unsurprisingly, the anti-piracy company first needs to become a customer of the providers it targets. That means signing up to services in the usual manner and handing over money to what are essentially illegal services.

Documents reviewed by TF also suggest the use of fake online social media accounts which solicit IPTV providers for trials. One particular account, created less than a week before the new season began in August 2017, had nothing but these kinds of requests in its timeline. At least one provider responded in public, apparently unaware of the nature of his potential customer.

Other information supplied suggests that in some instances PayPal accounts with fake details were used to sign up to IPTV providers. This, the source says, probably caused problems because the details on the accounts didn’t match real people’s identities, so they would eventually fail PayPal’s checks and become much less useful.

Once signed up, the anti-piracy company could act like any other subscriber but this didn’t go unnoticed. TF was shown a screenshot from an IPTV service’s customer panel, dated sometime in 2018, which revealed a suspect subscriber who had been a member for many months. The last login was actioned from a particular IP address which, according to current public WHOIS information, remains registered to the anti-piracy company in question.

An invoice for between 10 and 20 euros, dated 2019, which the source says was issued to one of the anti-piracy accounts, gave a name plus an address in London. The supplied postcode relates to an address in another country of the UK. When all put together it is clearly a fake account, although we weren’t able to positively link it to a specific anti-piracy operative.

Nevertheless, it seems clear from the supplied channel surfing logs (which we were told were retained and supplied by a cooperative third-party IPTV provider) that a normal human viewer almost certainly wasn’t behind the subscription.

The logs show that sports channels were systematically selected, presumably to be analyzed back at base, and then skipped to fresh channels over pretty precise set periods. According to our source, these durations were sometimes varied, in his opinion to avoid detection as a computerized system.

Of course, not all attempts at subscribing to channels for anti-piracy purposes are spotted early by the affected IPTV providers. Once in, we’re informed that the preferred method of scanning for infringement is via the humble .m3u playlist file, with channels to be monitored being captured for set periods and then rotated.

The scanning system reportedly allows for a VPN to be assigned to each .m3u line/account, in order to make detection more difficult. VPNs are also sometimes used to sign up and/or used for contact via customer support services offered by the providers.

According to the source, captured frames from ‘pirate’ streams are compared with a direct source from the original content. If there’s an automatic match (sometimes manual intervention is required) then the source server’s IP address is logged and sent to the big six ISPs in the UK for blocking.

We’re told that an email is also sent to the hosting companies of the servers informing them of the block, accompanied by a link to the High Court order. Often these notices aren’t passed on to the operators of IPTV services.

According to one IPTV provider, the process for checking for infringing streams begins around 15 minutes before a match begins and continues for 15 minutes after. Further checks are conducted in the interim to catch any IP address or other network changes carried out by the providers.

However, while infringing streams are apparently blocked in just a “few seconds”, it can take a couple of hours for them to become unblocked by ISPs after the games have finished.

While reports online indicate that some services have been affected by this type of blocking, it has also had some unintended consequences that may have made IPTV providers more resilient and more adept at countering the blocking program. We’ll cover some of those next time.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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On March 27, 2019, US-based author John Van Stry filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Travis McCrea, the operator of eBook platform eBook.bike.

McCrea initially chose not to become involved in the suit and in June, Van Stry’s lawyers filed for a default judgment in a Texas court.

As reported here earlier this month, the presiding judge chose not to rubber-stamp the request but instead questioned whether the court had personal jurisdiction over McCrea, a Canada resident.

The parties were invited to file simultaneous briefs, indicating whether the alleged injury to the copyright holder occurred in Texas, whether any injury was sufficient enough to imply a “substantial connection” with the forum/state, and whether McCrea knew that “his acts would be felt” by Van Stry in Texas.

This week, Van Stry’s lawyers filed documents with the Court, sent to them by McCrea but yet to be officially filed by the defendant. That will happen in due course, the author’s legal team note. They make for interesting reading.

Representing himself, McCrea writes that his engagement in the case has been limited due to a number of factors including “massive waves of cyber bullying” and direct attacks on his ability to defend himself.

Van Stry previously launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise cash to fight McCrea, an effort that to date has raised more than $23,000. However, when McCrea opened his own fundraiser on the same platform, he says GoFundMe shut it down. In an earlier conversation, he told TF he didn’t know why that had happened.

“Why GoFundMe shut down my fundraiser but allowed his is beyond me,” he told us. “They cited ‘TOS Violations’ yet when I emailed asking for further elaboration they ignored my emails.”

In the documents filed by Van Stry’s team, McCrea informs the Court that “putting food” on the table had prevented him from being as engaged in the case as he would’ve liked but that shouldn’t be perceived as a sign of disrespect.

While acknowledging the motion for default judgment, he asks the Court to consider accepting a late motion to dismiss and a motion for change of venue, to be taken as part of the Court’s request for further information on jurisdiction.

“Regardless of any argument made by the Plaintiff, it is an inarguable fact that the Plaintiff did not file proper takedown notices as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” the motion reads.

“It is not my intent to argue safe harbor at this moment, but rather the failure of the Plaintiff to even properly file a take-down notice in the first place or provide me with any reasonable notice of the infringement at all (without proper notice, the argument of safe harbor cannot even be entertained. If I am not properly informed of copyright infringement, I cannot reply to said infringement).”

McCrea points out a number of alleged deficiencies in the notices sent by Van Stry but majors on the fact that the DMCA requires takedown notices to contain “information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material.” That usually means the precise URLs at which the content can be found, a detail reportedly missing from Van Stry’s notices.

McCrea points out that one of the notices sent did contain a URL but it related to a search result page that contained no infringing material.

All notices, McCrea states, failed to meet other requirements as set out in law, by not offering “information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number”, a statement that the complaining party “has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law”, and a statement that the “information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

In summary, due to the above McCrea says he has “no case to answer” because the original notices sent to him did not comply with the requirements of the DMCA.

“There are many details about my life in the initial claim and many not flattering, however, I have always shown a commitment to enforce copyright on websites I am involved with,” McCrea continues.

“I advocate change in copyright law, that’s true, but I advocate for copyright terms of 15 years not no copyright. I advocate for change through the law, not against it. Please don’t [allow] the Plaintiff to file a suit because of my religion and political beliefs without having to at least fulfill his legal obligations first.”

Finally, the documents indicate that McCrea will file a request for a change of venue from Texas to Seattle. This would be the closest state for him since he’s a resident of Canada, he adds.

The eBook.bike operator acknowledges that the existence of a motion for default judgment may limit his ability to file these requests but it will nevertheless prove interesting if the Court decides to examine the DMCA notice issue in addition to the matter of jurisdiction.

The related documents can be found here (1,2,3)

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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Under US law, streaming and downloading piracy are seen as two different offenses. Not just from a technical point of view, but also in the way they are punished.

Unauthorized streaming is categorized as a public performance instead of distribution, which is punishable as a misdemeanor, not a felony.

Lawmakers tried to change this with the Commercial Felony Streaming Act in 2011, and later with the SOPA and PIPA bills. These bills were met with public outrage and didn’t pass.

As a result, the gap between streaming and traditional file-sharing still remains today. This frustrates major copyright holder groups and recently caught the eye of the Senate Judiciary Committee as well.

Last month, the Committee’s Chairman Senator Thom Tillis, and Ranking Member Senator Christopher Coons, requested clarification from the US Government’s Copyright Office on several streaming-related issues.

The letter was sent after a hearing, where the NBA and the UFC both requested to increase the criminal penalty for streaming. The senators warn that streaming piracy poses important risks to copyright owners. The fact that this is seen as a lesser offense is problematic and creates a loophole for prospective copyright infringers, they argue.

“Based on the testimony we received regarding the apparent ‘streaming loophole’ enabling illicit streamers to avoid felony criminal liability, we would appreciate the U.S. Copyright Office providing clear guidance regarding if and when unauthorized streaming infringes the right to control distribution of a work.

“Allowing this to remain unanswered will only benefit infringers and harm America’s economy,” the senators add in their letter to the Copyright Office.

The senators asked several questions, starting with whether streaming piracy violates the copyright holder’s right to public performance. In a reply letter published this week, Copyright Office director Karyn Temple answered this with an unequivocal “yes,” which wasn’t a surprise.

The senators next wanted to know whether streaming piracy violates rightsholders’ right to control reproduction and distribution, as downloading does. This one was less straightforward with the Copyright Office noting that, depending upon the technology at issue, there may be instances in where this is the case.

These two questions are at the crux of the “loophole” debate as public performance infringements are seen as misdemeanors while reproduction and distribution offenses are felonies. Streaming is generally seen as a public performance.

However, in the response, the Copyright Office director stresses that it would like this to be changed. Responding to a question about its position, the Office is very clear.

“The Copyright Office supports the same level of felony penalties for violation of the public performance right as for the reproduction and distribution rights, a position reinforced by the combination of the growing importance of streaming to the U.S. economy and the failure of the current law to effectively address unauthorized streaming,” the Office’s response reads.

Finally, the senators asked whether the Copyright Office has any other suggestions to deal with the streaming piracy problem. The Office didn’t go into much detail on this issue but said that a small claims tribunal, which is currently being considered, could provide an additional tool for rightsholders.

The answers and the questions show that there is quite a bit of concern about streaming piracy. As such, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see this issue being addressed in future legislation. Whether that will pass is yet another question, but the Copyright Office is all for it.

“The Office has long supported a legislative fix for the ‘streaming loophole,’ although we do not endorse any particular method of addressing the problem at this time,” Temple writes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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