In recent years, various copyright holder groups embraced a “follow-the-money” approach in the hope of cutting off funding to so-called pirate sites.

Thus far this has resulted in some notable developments. In the UK, hundreds of advertising agencies began banning pirate sites in 2014 and in Denmark and elsewhere there are similar initiatives.

While many rightsholders and advertisers are positive about these developments, there is little international coordination. This is a gap the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) hopes to bridge with a new project. 

WIPO, which is part of the United Nations, was founded more than 50 years ago with the aim of protecting intellectual property. This includes combating online piracy, something it hopes to facilitate with its  ‘BRIP’ Database, short for “Building Respect for Intellectual Property.”

The goal of the project is simple: allow stakeholders from member states to report problematic sites and share this list with advertisers, so they can block bad apples. This will result in less money going to pirate sites, making it harder for them to generate profit. 

The idea for such a global database was first introduced by WIPO in 2017 and, behind the scenes, it was developed into a fully operational resource. According to a document released in preparation for a future WIPO’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement meeting, it is now ready to go public. 

“The BRIP Database is now open for the acceptance of Authorized Contributors from WIPO Member States and Authorized Users from the advertising sector,” WIPO writes.

“It comprises a secure, access-controlled online platform, to which authorized agencies in WIPO Member States may upload lists of websites which deliberately facilitate the infringement of copyright.”

The BRIP database aims to cut revenue to pirate sites. In addition, it’s also useful to major brands who don’t want their products or services appearing on copyright-infringing websites.

“The intention is to reduce the flow of money to illegal website operators, to protect brands from tarnishment and to reduce the risk that legitimate advertising may lend an appearance of legality to illegal websites, to the confusion of consumers,” WIPO clarifies.

Each member state may appoint their own designated submitters who can add suspected pirate sites to the database. The Italian telecom regulator AGCOM and the Korean copyright protection agency KCOPA have already tested it in advance of the official launch. 

In other countries, trade organizations and copyright enforcement bodies will likely join in as well. In the UK, for example, the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is likely to join, as they already maintain a similar list.

According to WIPO, international cooperation will ensure that stakeholders from all over the world can benefit from each other’s work. This is also helpful in order to block foreign pirate sites, which may not always be easy to identify due to language barriers. 

Another advantage is that local member states don’t have to set up their own blocklist systems. They can simply use the BRIP system and get going right away. 

There are downsides to the BRIP database as well. For example, it appears that there is little transparency, as the public at large doesn’t have access to the lists of blocked sites. This could be a concern, as WIPO itself states that not all blocked sites are clearly copyright-infringing. 

“The operation of the BRIP Database is not based on any assertion by WIPO that any particular site has, as a matter of law, infringed copyright. Rather, the qualification for inclusion of a national list on the platform is that the list contains ‘sites of concern’,” WIPO writes.

“WIPO defines a site of concern as ‘an online location which is reasonably suspected by an Authorized Contributor of deliberately infringing or facilitating the infringement of copyright and related rights, whether in its country of establishment or elsewhere.”

Since the BRIP database doesn’t include any comprehensive information on why a site is included, this could potentially lead to over-blocking.

WIPO clarifies that it won’t get involved in any infringement related decisions. Its role is to administer the technical platform, to assist contributors and users, and to promote the BRIP database to a broad audience.

“The project responds to increased interest among policy-makers in methods of building respect for intellectual property which rely on voluntary cooperation, rather than on judicial or other compulsory measures,” WIPO notes.

“Its success will, however, depend on the extent to which it is adopted by Member State agencies and the advertising sector.”

The latter part is crucial. While higher-tier advertisers and major brands would like to avoid pirate sites, there are also plenty of advertising outfits that still love to work with pirate sites. 

In fact, there are many players in the advertising industry that specifically target them.

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More information on the BRIP database is available here (pdf), courtesy of the WIPO secretariat.

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The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been battling online piracy for years, but the problem remains.

Roughly a decade ago torrent sites were the main threat. In recent years that switched, first to cyberlockers, and then to online streaming.

While the MPAA has pursued civil lawsuits against pirate sites and services throughout the world, it believes that more progress can be made through criminal prosecutions.

In a recent testimony before the  U.S. House of Representatives, MPAA’s Senior Counsel Neil Fried explains that these criminal cases have a much broader impact, using the Megaupload case as an example.

“Although the U.S. government does not take many such actions, those they do can have a greater deterrent effect than civil suits because criminal cases bring more attention, along with the possibility of jail time for convicted culprits,” Fried notes.

“Indeed, a 2012 U.S. action against Megaupload—then the largest piracy ‘cyberlocker,’ accounting for 4 percent of all internet traffic—increased lawful digital sales by 6.5 to 8.5 percent for three major studios in 12 countries,” he adds, citing an academic study from an MPAA funded research group.

Hollywood’s anti-piracy outfit hopes that the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) will continue to investigate piracy cases. In order to facilitate this, the MPAA says it has already reported several unnamed piracy streaming operations, hoping for a similar effect.

“The MPAA has pending a number of criminal referrals to DOJ regarding streaming piracy operations, with the goal of replicating a comparable uptick in legitimate consumption,” Fried notes.

These referrals have not been made public, but it’s clear that the MPAA would like to see some streaming-related criminal prosecutions. This could be streaming sites, but also illegal IPTV services, or companies that sell pirate streaming boxes.

The MPAA has fed law enforcement with information leading to piracy-related indictments on several previous occasions. The anti-piracy group triggered the criminal prosecution of members of the BitTorrent release group IMAGiNE, as well as the Megaupload and KickassTorrents cases.

The latter two cases are still on hold, pending the outcome of extradition requests in New Zealand and Poland respectively. Considering the slow progress in these cases, it could be that the DoJ is not too eager to take on another online piracy case just yet.

The MPAA’s criminal referrals are part of its three-pronged approach to combating online piracy. This further involves voluntary anti-piracy initiatives with third-party services, as well as civil lawsuits against copyright-infringing sites and services. 

The voluntary initiatives include agreements with domain name registrars, advertisers, payment processors, which are encouraged to cut their ties with known pirate sites.

On the civil action side, the MPAA’s activity has recently been coordinated through the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE). This group has filed civil cases against streaming box vendors and IPTV services, and also conducts “knock and talks,” targeting pirate add-on developers. 

In recent years there haven’t been any criminal cases against streaming piracy outfits. The MPAA, however, urges lawmakers to ensure that the feds expand their horizons and pursue cases against these streaming piracy operations.

“Our hope is that Congress will encourage DOJ to move forward with those cases,” Fried notes in the testimony.

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The full testimony from the MPAA’s Neil Fried, was submitted for hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce (pdf) and the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation (pdf).

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Pirated copies of movies appear online every day in a variety of formats, such as CAM, DVDRip, WEBRip, and Web-DL.

The latter, which usually come from streaming and download services such as Netflix, Amazon, or iTunes, have proven to be a reliable source for pirates over the years.

In general, that doesn’t apply to 4K releases. These are protected by the highest encryption standards. In the case of Netflix, this is Widevine’s highest level DRM. Cracking this is seen as the holy grail by pirates.

While there is no confirmation that the keys have been cracked, a flurry of new 4K Netflix leaks suggests that there’s at least some type of vulnerability that allows outsiders to decrypt the original steams.

Over the past 24-hours several 4K releases of prominent Netflix releases spread across various pirate sites. The leaks comprise of the entire third season of the Netflix exclusive “Stranger Things,” which came out yesterday.

The leaked episodes originate from the DEFLATE release group and are all marked as ‘INTERNAL’ releases, such as “Stranger Things S03E01 INTERNAL 2160p WEB H265-DEFLATE.”

In the past, we have seen several 4K videos being ripped from Netflix. In fact, the first rips came out four years ago. However, the WEB tags on today’s releases indicate that these files were directly decrypted from the original files, which means that there’s no loss in quality. 

“Untouched releases must be considered as anything that has been losslessly downloaded by official (offered) or unofficial (backdoor) methods,” official Scene rules dictate.

These untouched releases are rare. We’ve only previously seen these types of Netflix leaks for a brief period in 2017. At the time, the releases stopped following a Widevine update, a source informed TorrentFreak.

Exactly how the release group was able to pull off these new leaks is unknown. The leaks were pointed out by Tarnkappe and TorrentFreak reached out to Netflix for a comment on the matter, but at the time of publication, we have yet to hear back. 

The DEFLATE release group is no stranger to novel 4K leaks. Earlier this year the same group also released several movies from iTunes, including the entire James Bond collection. That was the first breach of its kind on iTunes. 

The fact that two groups have been able to decrypt the 4K releases indicates that this ‘breach’ is widespread. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see more titles appear during the coming days, until the hole is patched again.

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Update: We previously mentioned the UHDCANDY releases of Jessica Jones and Black Mirror but there were “depred,” so we removed those from the article.

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Blocking of pirate websites and services is now a global phenomenon. Mostly carried out by movie and music companies, around 4,000 sites are blocked by ISPs in more than 30 countries.

In the UK, the Premier League has pioneered the blocking of illegal live streams. Using various technologies and under the supervision of the courts, the football league is now able to track streams in real-time and have local ISPs such as Sky and Virgin Media block them in an effort to reduce piracy.

The Premier League clearly believes that this mechanism, which has been sanctioned by the courts twice, is having success. According to a report from Irish Times, the league is now seeking to expand its blocking program to Ireland.

An application filed at the High Court demands that several ISPs including Eircom, Sky, Virgin Media and Vodafone, begin preventing their customers from accessing illicit services. At this stage details are scarce, but it seems probable that this will be a direct expansion of the program previously established in the UK.

The targeted ISPs have yet to comment but given the cooperation they’ve offered the Premier League in the UK, it seems unlikely they will put up a serious fight. As suppliers of TV content themselves, some have a vested interest in bringing piracy under control since it could make a difference to their own bottom lines.

Interestingly, Irish Times cites an anonymous source who says that the Premier League, in conjunction with Ireland’s national police, is already investigating people involved in the supply of pirate streams.

Who these people are is currently unknown but Ireland-sourced streams of TV content are easy to spot on pirate IPTV services due to the advertising in between shows being clearly targeted at Irish customers.

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When the Swedish Pirate Party was founded in early 2006, the majority of the mainstream press was skeptical, with some simply laughing it away.

But they were wrong to dismiss this political movement right off the bat.

Following their victory at the local elections, the Swedish Pirate Party secured a seat at the European Parliament in 2009, with another one being added a year later. The success inspired people in other countries to form their own Pirate parties. In 2014, the Pirate Party kept one of these seats, thanks to German voters.

During the last European Election, just a few weeks ago, this number quadrupled to four, showing that the movement is certainly no fluke. While the Swedes were on the forefront in the early years, Germany and the Czech Republic now lead the way, with one and three MEPs respectively.

These Pirates in the European Parliament are not sitting idly by. During the last term, Julia Reda was at the forefront of many lawmaking discussions, particularly with regard to the new Copyright Directive. While Reda recently left Parliament, the new MEPs obviously have similar ambitions.

It’s clear that the Pirate Party will continue to play a vital role in the European Parliament. The movement can list another achievement too after the first Pirate was elected as a Vice-President of the European Parliament.

With 426 votes, Marcel Kolaja was elected with an absolute majority in the second voting round. He will serve as one of the fourteen Vice-Presidents tasked with replacing the President as chair of the plenary if needed, as well as a variety of other tasks.

The 39-year-old Kolaja is a Czech software engineer and activist, who’s been active in the Pirate Party since the start of the decade.

In his new position, he aims to promote transparency and digitization in the European Parliament.

“My role of a Vice-President would be to make the European Parliament more open and transparent, to help ensure that the rules of the Parliament are applied equally to all Members and to work on improvements of the rules where they are currently lacking,” Kolaja says.

The newly elected Vice-President also hopes that this experience in information technology and digitization can be used to benefit the European Parliament.

“It is my hope that my expertise and insights in these fields will be a valuable contribution in the future Bureau’s discussions on improvement of the work in the European Parliament,” Kolaja adds.

In addition to the vice presidency, Marcel Kolaja will also become a member of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) and a substitute member of the Culture and Education (CULT) Committee.

The three other Pirate Party MEPs were also assigned to various committees. Markéta Gregorová will join the International Trade (INTA) committee. Mikuláš Peksa will be a member of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE), while Patrick Breyer joins the Legal Affairs (JURI) committee.

Needless to say, the Pirates have come a long way since the first raid on The Pirate Bay in 2006, when they were first propelled into the mainstream.

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