Tensions Rise as Copyright “Small Claims” Bill Moves Forward


In May, new legislation was tabled in the U.S. House and Senate that introduces the creation of a “small claims” process for copyright offenses.

The CASE Act, short for “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement,” proposes to establish a copyright claim tribunal within the United States Copyright Office.

If adopted, the new board will provide an option to resolve copyright disputes outside the federal courts, which significantly reduces the associated costs. Supporters say that this will be ideal for smaller creators, such as photographers, to address copyright infringement.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor of the CASE Act, which means that the bill is now heading to the Senate.

The positive vote was welcomed by many rightsholders. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), for example, said that it’s a great first step to get this bill written into law. 

“If enacted into law, for the first time photographers, graphic artists, illustrators, authors, songwriters and other individual creators and small businesses would have an affordable and accessible venue to protect their creative efforts from infringement,” ASMP noted.

ASMP and others see the CASE Act as a missing piece in the copyright enforcement puzzle. They believe that many creators are not taking action against copyright infringers at the moment, because filing federal lawsuits is too expensive.

Taking their complaint to the proposed tribunal at the US Copyright Office would be much cheaper. This issue is also highlighted by Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance.

“Right now, few small creators have that ability because the law requires them to sue in federal court and federal court is much too costly and complex, especially when compared to the relatively small size of the claims at issue,” Kupferschmid tells TorrentFreak.

However, there is also significant pushback against the new bill. Several digital rights activists, for example, warn that the Copyright Office is not the most objective venue to resolve copyright disputes. Another common complaint is that a small claims court invites “copyright-trolling,” with rightsholders potentially filing a flurry of complaints.

EFF‘s manager of policy and activism Katharine Trendacosta notes that, although people can opt-out from participating in the tribunal, rightsholders will find those who don’t and prey on these people.

“It encourages copyright trolling by inviting filing as many copyright claims as one can against whoever is least likely to opt-out—ordinary Internet users who can be coerced into paying thousands of dollars to escape the process, whether they infringed copyright or not,” Trendacosta notes.

While potential damages are lower than in a federal court, they are still substantial. The Tribunal can award damages of $15,000 per infringement, or $30,000 per case, which could easily bankrupt families according to Re:Create‘s Executive Director Joshua Lamel.

“It is not small claims when it could bankrupt over half of American families for sharing a photograph online if they were subject to the CASE Act. It is not constitutional when the tribunal could get the law wrong and a defendant will have no recourse to appeal to the courts,” Lamel stresses.

The new bill creates a familiar tension between rightsholder groups and digital activists, with both refuting each other’s arguments.

According to the Copyright Alliance’s Keith Kupferschmid, opponents use scare tactics and intentionally misstate and omit details about the bill to gin up resistance.

“The bill will neither create or exacerbate a copyright troll problem or result in massive default judgments. The bill includes numerous safeguards to prevent such a thing. In fact, it includes many more safeguards than presently exist today when someone sues in federal court,” Kupferschmid tells us.

One of the main safeguards is the fact that people can opt-out. However, the opponents, for their part, believe that this is meaningless. They counter that many people may simply have no clue what to do. They would prefer to see an opt-in system instead.

“The average person is not really going to understand what is going on, other than that they’ve received what looks like a legal summons,” EFF’s
Trendacosta notes.

Some opponents believe that the new bill will give rightsholders an easier way to take down content and keep it down permanently. If a copyright holder files a takedown request after it starts a small claims action, the platform will have to keep the content down until the action is resolved

The Copyright Alliance, of course, sees things differently. It doesn’t believe that it’s logical for rightsholders to pay a fee to simply take a single piece of content down. And if rightsholders file inaccurate claims, they can easily lose a case.

Instead, Kupferschmid counters that the CASE Act could actually help creators to fight abusive takedowns. If people have their content taken down, from YouTube, for example, they can use the small claims court to cheaply dispute this.

Opponents of the bill are not impressed by this argument, however. EFF Senior Staff Attorney  Mitch Stoltz tells TorrentFreak that such claims are rare and often hard to prove.

“The proposal to have the new Board hear claims of false takedowns sounds good on paper, but it won’t help people in practice. Legal claims against people for sending false takedowns are very rare, but that’s not because of the expense of a lawsuit – it’s because the legal standard for a false takedown is very narrow and hard to prove,” Stoltz says.

We can go on and on with arguments from both sides, but it’s clear that the bill is creating quite a bit of tension between both camps.

What we do want to stress, however, is that the CASE Act will be useless to the copyright trolls who go after alleged BitTorrent pirates. Unlike an earlier version of the bill, there is no subpoena power. This means that rightsholders can’t start a case against a John Doe who’s only known by an IP-address.

In other words, the proposed small claims court, if adopted, can only be used against infringers who are known by name. That leaves out the millions of traditional file-sharers and downloaders.

As the CASE Act moves forward, be can expect more lobbying from both sides. Which position lawmakers will be most susceptible to will eventually decide whether it’s turned into law, or not.

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EBook.bike Owner Says Deficient DMCA Notices Means No Case to Answer


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.

One of the notices sent by Van Stry to eBook.bike

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)

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Court Denies Abuse of Process Claim Against Copyright Troll


Every year, so-called ‘copyright trolls’ sue thousands of people in the United States for online file-sharing, mostly through BitTorrent.

These companies target people whose connections were allegedly used to download and share infringing videos, in the hope of obtaining a significant financial settlement.

While many of the defendants may indeed be guilty, a number of accused Internet subscribers have done nothing wrong. This is also what a John Doe, known by the IP-address 73.225.38.130, has repeatedly argued before a federal court in Seattle, Washington.

The defendant in question was sued by Strike 3 Holdings late 2017. In common with other defendants, the man was offered a settlement to let the case go, but instead, he went on the offensive.

When the man pushed back, Strike 3 Holdings was ready to let the case go. The company filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss all claims but the defendant, a 70+-year-old retired policeman, wasn’t willing to let them. At least not without getting paid.

The defendant submitted a counterclaim accusing Strike 3 of abuse of process and “extortion through sham litigation.” The man accused the rightsholder of going on a “fishing expedition,” while knowing that it couldn’t link the subscriber of the IP-address to any specific infringement.

As part of this fishing expedition, the rightsholder also allegedly misused the discovery process to explore whether the man’s son, other family members or friends engaged in any infringement activity.

Strike 3, for its part, moved for summary judgment asking the court to dismiss that counterclaim. The company stressed that it did nothing wrong and merely wanted to find out who the real infringer was.

After reviewing the positions from both sides, US District Judge Thomas Zilly decided to dismiss the abuse of process claim.

The defendant argued that an IP-address alone is not enough to identify an infringer. This is in part based on an Appeal Court ruling that came in after Strike 3 had voluntarily dismissed its infringement claim. As such, the company can’t be judged by this standard, Judge Zilly argues.

In addition, Strike 3’s efforts to go after the man’s son and other family members are no grounds for abuse of process either, the Court ruled.

“Strike 3 was entitled to pursue a theory of defense that another member of defendant’s household or someone with access to defendant’s IP address had infringed one or more of Strike 3’s motion pictures via the BitTorrent network, which would undermine defendant’s allegation that Strike 3’s copyright infringement claim was frivolous and asserted for purely extortionist or other improper purposes,” the Judge notes.

The ruling is a setback for the defendant, but it’s not the end of the case yet. The retired police officer has also requested a declaratory judgment that he has not himself infringed any of Strike 3’s copyrighted works. This request remains pending and the court has instructed both parties to reach an agreement.

Strike 3 previously said that it was willing to declare that the defendant didn’t infringe its works and Judge Zilly encouraged the parties to file a proposed judgment on what costs and fees the copyright holder must pay, if any.

“With respect to attorney’s fees and costs, the parties shall attempt to reach agreement concerning whether and, if so, how much defendant should receive, bearing in mind that, under the Copyright Act, attorney’s fees are discretionary, and the Court may decline to award them,” Judge Zilly writes.

At the time of writing a proposed judgment has yet to be submitted. Whether Strike 3 is willing to pay (part) of the fees and costs remains to be seen. If both parties can’t come together, the Judge will have the final say.

—

A copy of United States District Judge Thomas Zilly’s order is available here (pdf).

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Senators and Copyright Office Want Streaming Piracy Loophole Fixed


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.

From the Copyright office’s letter (pdf)

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.

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LaLiga & Pro League Team Up With New Anti-Piracy Deal


Football is big business around the world and in Europe, Spain’s LaLiga is without doubt one of the biggest players.

Less referenced by its full name – Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División – LaLiga is the top professional football league in the country and like its counterparts in England, Italy, and Germany, has a piracy problem to contend with.

Around 2014, LaLiga began using new tools to combat the unlicensed reproduction of matches and associated content on the Internet. In 2018 it reported that 268,000 unlicensed videos had been removed from social media with 9,000 associated accounts blocked. The company also claimed to have “disabled” 10,000 card sharing servers, which are systems designed to bypass access controls on consumer TV equipment in order to avoid paying a subscription.

In the same year, LaLiga revealed it would be teaming up with Pro League, Belgium’s top-tier football league. The latter would begin using the former’s anti-piracy resources with an option to extend the agreement beyond the 2019/2019 campaign.

According to an update provided by LaLiga Thursday, that has now been taken up.

“[R]enewing [the agreement] is a guarantee that the work carried out in collaboration with the Belgian league is bearing fruit,” says Melcior Soler, director of LaLiga’s audiovisual department.

“The increase in data is a reason to keep working to defend competitions’ audiovisual value. Fighting against piracy is a priority for LaLiga and the Pro League and together we’ll continue to invest in technical tools and human resources to keep developing in this field.”

According to LaLiga, its successes over the last year are numerous. Across platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Periscope and SportsTube, the company claims to have removed 23,652 videos and deleted 100 associated accounts.

It’s also been busy targeting the app-based market too. The league says that across Google Play and Apple’s App Store, 703 apps that had the ability to stream top-tier football were removed following takedown requests. Together, they had clocked up more than 10 million downloads.

Of course, LaLiga has been looking to hinder IPTV providers too but its strategy is a curious one. Instead of going after the sources, in the way that the Premier League has, they’ve instead targeted IPTV sales web portals by asking Google to delist them from search.

LaLiga says it has successfully removed 6,000 links in this manner but it’s up for debate whether this has had much of an effect on content availability, particularly when one considers that IPTV subscriptions are often sold through re-sellers and via word of mouth.

Concluding its summary, LaLiga notes that it’s also removed 5,700 links to live streaming sites from Google search, adding that following requests to advertisers to prevent their ads from appearing on ‘pirate’ sites, there has been cooperation.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the league didn’t mention its 250,000 euro fine for using fans’ phones to spy on piracy and breaching the GDPR in the process.

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LibreELEC (Leia) 9.1.002 ALPHA



LibreELEC 9.1.002 (Leia) has arrived based upon Kodi v18.3, the 9.1.002 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.

Changes since LibreELEC 9.1.001:

  • mainly improvements for the RPi4

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 softwar 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 Alpha 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, and the summer vacation season is about to start. 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 5.1 and Kodi v18 so nightlies mirror LibreELEC 9.2, but in the near future we will start moving master towards Linux 5.3 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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Law Council of Australia Warns Data Retention Regime Could Affect Pirates


Retention of telecommunications metadata is increasingly viewed by governments as a valuable tool to fight serious crimes, including terrorism.

Communications systems, such as telephone networks and the Internet, can provide the ability to collect information revealing who contacted who and when.

However, when such sensitive data is collected on a broad scale, who can get access to that data becomes a serious concern. In Australia, a review of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (TIA Act) has generated warnings that data supposedly being collected to fight serious crime is falling into broader hands.

The Communications Alliance, for example, highlights (pdf) that while there’s a perception that data will only be available to a limited number of law enforcement and security agencies, large numbers of other organizations have sought access to the data. They include a sports anti-doping authority, at least two illegal dumping groups, plus veterinary and fisheries authorities.

The availability of this data seems to be a magnet for many groups seeking to solve their own problems and according to the Law Council of Australia, that has the potential to include copyright holders in the future. While noting that some of its concerns that data will not be used by civil litigants have been addressed, there remains a concern that data collected now could be used for other purposes later on.

“[T]here is still the potential for ‘function creep’ under the regime due to the lack of prescription as to what purpose telecommunications data retained under the regime may be used for, potentially allowing for information collected for one reason to be later used for other purposes,” the Council’s submission reads (pdf).

Specifically, The Law Council says that earlier amendments to sections 280 and 281 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 may still have limitations that would allow file-sharers (typically BitTorrent users) to be scooped up, if there is a change of heart over the seriousness of their offenses.

“[T]here remains the potential for telecommunications data retained under the scheme to be used in matters of online piracy as telecommunications data may provide an irrefutable download history,” the Council warns.

“Former Attorney-General Brandis and the former AFP Commissioner have stated that the regime will not be used to tackle digital piracy, but should digital piracy offenses of individual consumers become criminalized in the future (currently piracy is only a criminal offense when at a commercial scale) it is possible that this position would be reassessed by the Government of the day.”

While a change in the law could potentially increase access to metadata in respect of pirates, copyright trolls are already on record trying to convince courts that their behavior is much more serious than it first appears. In 2017 in the United States, LHF Productions characterized five file-sharers as being part of a worldwide criminal conspiracy.

“While the actions of each individual participant may seem innocuous, their collective action amounts to one of the largest criminal enterprises ever seen on earth,” the lawsuit claimed.

“The Defendants are participants in a global piracy ring composed of one hundred fifty million members – a ring that threatens to tear down fundamental structures of intellectual property.”

Whether such a claim would ever gain credibility in Australia remains to be seen but it’s clear that tracking every action carried out by Internet users – file-sharers included – and recording them in a database for potential action is an extremely attractive proposition for copyright trolls.

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Police Dismantle Pirate IPTV Provider, Seize Cash, Crypto, Gold Bars


Rightsholders, anti-piracy outfits, and police are stepping up their efforts to disrupt ‘pirate’ IPTV operations around Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world.

These unlicensed services are considered one of the prime threats to the profits of broadcasters since they offer hundreds and often thousands of live TV channels to Internet users at a fraction of their official retail price.

Italy’s Postal and Communications Police (Polizia Postale e delle Comunicazioni) is the latest body to report success in this area, after targeting a source (perhaps the main source) of popular local provider ZSat, a service that offered the entire programming schedule of media giant Sky.

Following what authorities are describing as a highly technical and complex operation carried out under the coordination of the Public Prosecutor of Palermo, the cybercrime unit says it targeted the Palermo home of a 35-year-old man.

In his bedroom police found a total of 57 Sky Italia satellite decoders which were configured to receive Sky’s broadcasts. In turn, these receivers were connected to equipment which allowed channels to be retransmitted over the Internet for consumption by IPTV subscribers.

According to the authorities, the scale of the business was supported by the discovery of various assets at the property, including 186,900 euros in cash and a car. A banknote counter and gold bars were found hidden in a toilet and garbage disposal areas.

Police also found virtual wallets containing various cryptocurrencies. No value has yet been placed on the digital haul but the Postal and Communications Police says the amount is “certainly high” but will be better estimated following further “technical assessments”.

The discovery of a large number of satellite decoders at the address indicates that this wasn’t a low-level provider. Considerable effort is required to put together this kind of operation and it’s likely that the resulting Internet streams would have been utilized by other IPTV providers.

Authorities say the man is now under investigation for suspected criminal offenses under Art. 171 of local copyright law which carries penalties of up to three years in prison for commercial infringement.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5yT6M3MkaI?feature=oembed&w=694&h=521]
Video released by police

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Groupe TVA, Bell, Rogers Team Up to Sue ‘Pirate’ IPTV Service


There are currently thousands of providers of unlicensed IPTV services around the world so stopping them all will prove a herculean task.

Nevertheless, entertainment industry groups and anti-piracy outfits seem to determined to take on the challenge, in the hope that strategic action here and there will deter others from getting involved in this growing business.

The latest action comes from Quebecor Inc.’s Groupe TVA Inc., BCE Inc. (Bell Canada Enterprises), and Rogers Communications Inc., who have teamed up to tackle a ‘pirate’ IPTV provider targeting the Canadian market.

The complaint, first reported by The Wire Report, sees the broadcasting giants taking on the operators of GoldTV.ca and GoldTV.biz in Federal Court, claiming that the service provides access to their TV content without licenses or authorization.

“The GoldTV.biz Service provides unauthorized access to hundreds (if not thousands) of live television channels and video-on-demand content,” the complaint filed in court July 18 reads.

Canada’s ‘premium IPTV provider’

A cursory review of the subscriptions offered by GoldTV.ca shows the kind of packages currently being offered by hundreds of other providers operating in the same niche.

Its fairly comprehensive channel list suggests that more than 7,600 are currently available from a huge range of broadcasting companies, although that number is likely to ebb and flow depending on the provider’s third-party sources.

That being said, it’s immediately apparent that from the prices being asked, the fact that’s there no contract, and customers being told they can play content on any device, anywhere, this doesn’t fit the parameters of any normal or sanctioned service.

No contract? Any device? Cheap? Probably pirate

Clicking through to the payment options reveals prices in Canadian dollars, something which adds weight to the claim that the service targets the local market. PayPal appears to be the default option, which probably means that personal details relating to the account will be sought by the plaintiffs at some point.

According to the complaint, GoldTV has been in business since at least 2017. A domain Whois query reveals GoldTV.ca as registered in March 2017 with the .biz variant registered in July of the same year. These records provide no useful information as to who is behind the domains and the plaintiffs state they have had no success in identifying the service’s operators.

Nevertheless, the complaint demands a trial in Montreal where the companies hope to win damages and an injunction to shutter the service.

Groupe TVA, Bell, and Rogers aren’t the only companies to have noticed the activities of GoldTV.ca in 2019.

Earlier this year Spanish soccer league La Liga sent a pair of DMCA notices (1,2) that removed close to 150 of the site’s URLs from Google’s search results. In both of these cases, none of the listed URLs pointed to any copyright-infringing content but instead targeted the service’s sales and support pages.

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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Demonoid Staffers Launch New Site to Keep the Legacy Alive


As one of the oldest torrent communities, Demonoid has gone through many ups and downs over the years.

The site regularly disappeared, only to resurface later, which gave it the reputation of a comeback-kid.

However, last summer 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.

Many staffers were devastated when they heard the news but they were also motivated to keep the Demonoid spirit alive. To honor Deimos, first and foremost, and to create a place where former users of the site could continue to interact.

Initially, they started a forum at Demonoid.info and, as time went by, more and more Demonoid users found their way back. However, there was something missing. The new home didn’t allow people to do what they do best – sharing files.

This motivated a group of staffers to create a new “Demonoid” torrent site. Not to replace the old one, but to have a familiar torrent site again that looks and feels like their old home. With help from old crew members who offered servers, coding skills, and graphic design, Dnoid.to was born.

“Demonoid has a really massive user base, many of them are fans just like me, and just seeing the look of Demonoid feels like a ‘home’ to thousands,” Demonoid staffer ‘phaze1G’ tells TorrentFreak, commenting on the new site. 

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While Dnoid.to looks identical to the old Demonoid, it’s completely different under the hood. It’s built on a new database which means that users have to sign up for a new account. In addition, the new site doesn’t operate a tracker either.

Dnoid.to doesn’t aim to be a replacement of the original site. It’s basically just a magnet index with a Demonoid skin that allows users to add new links. There are no torrents hosted on the site itself.

For the time being anyone can join the site, as registrations are open. However, these may close in the future, to keep spammers and other types of abuse at bay.

The purpose of the new site isn’t to become the next big torrent site. It’s to honor Demonoid’s legacy and also in part to keep scammy sites from taking over the brand.

“The point is not to compete with the original Demonoid or to be above other public torrents sites. It’s just to keep a memory of Demonoid and its founder Deimos, who is well-known around old folks and who set really high standards for torrent communities ever since 2003,” phaze1G says.

“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.”

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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