Netflix, like many other rightsholders, keeps a close eye on pirate sites.

The company has its own in-house anti-piracy team and also works with third-party companies, to issue takedown requests.

Over the past two years, the streaming giant has sent more than five million of these to Google alone. Many of them ask the search engine to remove links to pirate sites, but this week our eye was drawn to a more unusual request.

The notice in question was sent by the anti-piracy outfit Marketly, on behalf of Netflix, and identifies 250 URLs which presumably link to pirated copies of the movie “Triple Frontier.” However, on closer inspection, many of the reported links are not infringing at all.

The most obvious mistake is that the notice reports Netflix’s own listing of “Triple Frontier” as a pirate copy, requesting Google to remove it from its search index.

Google spotted the mistake and didn’t comply. However, that’s not the only error. The same takedown request also includes a variety of links to other legitimate websites. This article from The Wrap about Netflix’s streaming numbers for example, which mentions Triple Frontier, but isn’t piracy related.

The same is true for several other reported URLs. This includes a Hollywood Reporter story, this top ten list from Variety, this article from The Daily Dot, a Business Insider report, and IMDb’s news page for Triple Frontier. We could go on and on.

These findings could easily be used to once again argue that automated DMCA takedown processes are highly inaccurate. After all, if Google wasn’t sharp enough to spot these errors, legitimate content would have disappeared from the search results.

However, since we have seen our fair share of imposters over the past year, we’re not sure that this notice was sent by Marketly at all, or if Netflix has anything to do with it.

Marketly indeed works for Netflix and the streaming service does own the distribution rights to Triple Frontier. However, neither company is known for its negligence when it comes to these types of takedown efforts, although Marketly took down one of our tweets recently.

Upon closer inspection, our doubts started to grow. For one, the Marketly that sent this takedown requests has a separate listing in Google’s transparency report.

In addition, there have been other Marketly imposters recently. For example, Google has flagged this copycat as being fraudulent.

We’re more than happy and are inclined to chalk this clearly erroneous notice up as another scam attempt. Likely in an effort of a pirate site to punish competitors, as we’ve seen before.

However, that doesn’t make this less of a problem. In fact, if scammers continue to make claims like this, it will likely lead to overbroad takedowns. And with millions of URLs being submitted per day, Google will have a hard time catching them all.

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Somewhere in the fall of 1998 a user named ‘Napster’ joined the w00w00 IRC channel, a chatroom on the EFnet network populated by a few dozen elite ‘hackers’.

‘Napster’ shared a new idea with the group. The then 17-year-old developer wanted to create a network of computers that could share files with each other. More specifically, music tracks.

To many people, including some in the IRC channel, that idea sounded absurd. At the time people could already download files from the fringes of the Internet but on a very limited scale. And even then, the choice was limited, and transfers were very unreliable.

Creating a network of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people who would all open up their hard drives to the rest and offer up bandwidth, was something that was entirely alien. ‘Napster’, however, had a feeling that people might be interested.

This feeling was shared by another teenage computer fanatic named ‘Man0War’. The two shared ideas online and eventually decided to meet up.

That’s when Shawn Fanning (aka Napster), who got the Napster nickname for his ‘nappy’ hair, first saw Sean Parker (aka Man0War). Together, they came up with a plan to bring the idea to fruition.

Fast forward a few months and it’s June 1, 1999. What started as a distant vision was now a fully-fledged application that was ready to shake the world. The software, which carried the name of its inventor, Napster, soon found its way to millions of computers all over the world.

From there, things developed quickly. After roughly three months, Napster already provided access to four million songs and in less than a year, 20 million people had downloaded the application.

What started as a simple idea quickly transformed into a multi-million dollar business. The company, which employed several people that were in the w00w00 IRC channel, changed the way millions of people enjoyed music.

For many of Napster’s users, the application represented something magical. It was a gateway for musical exploration that dwarfed even the largest record stores in town. And all for free.

Initially, the novelty concealed the fact that people were not supposed to share their music libraries with the rest of the world, but this would quickly change. Within a year, the RIAA sued Napster Inc. and soon after several artists including Metallica and Dr. Dre followed.

Like most record labels, these artists saw the file-sharing software as a threat. They felt that it would destroy the music industry, which was at its peak at the time. However, there were also more positive sounds from artists who recognized the promotional effect of Napster.

While Dr. Dre said “Fuck Napster,” Chuck D famously described it as “the new radio.”

Napster’s users were not concerned about what the labels and artists thought. They were interested in expanding their music libraries. While there are no official numbers, Napster was responsible for a significant portion of the global Internet traffic at the time.

University campuses were soon transformed into file-sharing hotspots. At some campuses over half of all bandwidth was consumed by MP3-sharing students and staff. This eventually led to a ban of the application at several universities, even before copyright issues arose. 

Meanwhile, the user base swelled to a peak of more than 26.4 million users worldwide in February 2001. But despite the epidemic growth and backing from investors, the small file-sharing empire couldn’t overcome the legal challenges.

The RIAA case resulted in an injunction from the Ninth Circuit Court, which ordered the network to shut down. This happened during July 2001, little more than two years after Napster launched. By September that year, the case had been settled for millions of dollars.

While the Napster craze was over, file-sharing had mesmerized the masses and the cat was out of the bag. Grokster, KaZaa, Morpheus, LimeWire, and many others popped up and provided sharing alternatives, for as long as they lasted. Meanwhile, BitTorrent was also knocking on the door. 

While the aforementioned software was often associated with piracy, Napster had a momentous impact on the development of legal services. People clearly signaled that there were interested in downloading music, so the first download stores were launched, with iTunes taking the lead.

These download portals never came close to what Napster offered though. Many music fans were not interested in buying a few tracks here and there, they wanted millions of files at their fingertips, ready to be played. This included a Swedish teenager named Daniel Ek. 

The Napster experience eventually triggered Ek to come up with a legal alternative that would replicate his first experience with piracy. That application was Spotify, which for its part sparked a music streaming subscription boom. 

Interestingly, music streaming is now the most important source of income for the music industry. These Napster-inspired services are good for roughly half of all the music revenues worldwide, completing the circle, in a way. 

Even the Napster brand, which has switched owners several times, lives on as a music subscription service today, owned by US retailer Best Buy. 

Napster’s founders, meanwhile, went on to create several other successful companies.

Sean Parker is a multi-billionaire now, in part thanks to his early involvement with Facebook. Fanning, aka Napster, is not doing badly either, with a net worth of more than 100 million, much like many other members of the w00w00 IRC channel.

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

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

Whether the site’s operators want it or not, that’s what many of RapidVideo’s users are indeed doing. A few months ago this resulted in a scathing report from Hollywood’s MPAA, which branded the site as a “notorious” piracy haven. 

The U.S. Trade Representative didn’t adopt this recommendation in its yearly overview. Whether RapidVideo’s outspoken response had anything to do with it is unknown. However, the video hosting site has recently taken several measures which are are not typical for a “notorious” site.

In April we reported that RapidVideo had shut down its pay-per-view rewards program, which was one of the MPAA’s main complaints. This week the video hosting service went a step further, by banning referrals from popular pirate video indexing sites.

The site’s operator informs TorrentFreak that referrals from the German sites Kinox.to , Streamkiste.tv , Filmpalast.to and Movie4k.to are now actively blocked. Instead of the requested videos, users now see the following message, translated from German.

“I’m sorry! This portal is temporarily not available based on a copyright protection claim. Unfortunately, this content is not available in your region.”

The message is shown to all visitors from these four video indexing sites. They are shown based on the referring URL but, if these fail, RapidVideo is also considering adding IP-address blockades in the future. 

RapidVideo took the drastic measure because it’s particularly concerned about the German legal concept of ‘Störerhaftung’ (‘interferer liability’). This means that a third party can be held responsible for someone else’s infringements, even when it played no intentional part.

Add in Europe’s proposed Article 17, previously known as Article 13, and you get a volatile mix of potential copyright problems.  

“Article 13 is coming within a few months to 2 years, so the control has to become tougher, because ‘Interferer liability’ and ‘Article 13’ together are a bad combination,” RapidVideo’s operator tells us.

RapidVideo’s operator stresses that there could be more blockades like this when Article 17 is implemented throughout the European Union member states.

It is worth noting that the four targeted sites are all blocked by the German ISP Vodafone as well. This is also what RapidVideo mentioned to Tarnkappe as an additional motivation.

A video hosting service such as RapidVideo blocking ‘pirate’ sites is quite a game changer, to say the least. In the case of Kinox.to it appears to have had some effect already, as the site has removed all links to RapidVideo.

Movie4K seems to have taken another approach. When we tried to access a RapidVideo link from the site it went through an anonymous referrer service, which worked just fine.

But that’s the thing with blockades, there’s always a way around them.

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To ensure that the Internet is able to function to the benefit of the broader public, the Government of Canada appointed an external panel to review Canada’s communications legislative framework. 

The panel is expected to release its findings next month, which will in part be based on input received from public submissions earlier this year. 

Thus far, most submissions have surprisingly been kept from public view. However, University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist filed an Access to Information Act request and will publish the responses he receives. The first one comes from Canadian telco Bell and stretches to 167 pages.

Bell’s submission deals with a wide variety of topics ranging from online video regulations to online privacy requirements. For the purposes of this article, however, we focus on the company’s suggestions when it comes to piracy and copyright infringement.

One of the Government’s prime policy priorities, according to Bell, should be to combat content piracy.  

“Canadian creators, the Canadian broadcasting system, and the Canadian
telecommunications system do not have effective tools to protect the content that is central to the creative and digital economy against the rampant growth of digital piracy,” Bell writes.

The submission goes on to cite various piracy studies that support this claim. It reports, for example, that 26% of all Canadians admit to having accessed pirated content online. In addition, it mentions that 15.3% of all Canadian households use set-top-boxes with piracy add-ons or access piracy subscription services. 

According to Bell, now is the time to address the online piracy issue and it provides two concrete proposals. The first one is aimed at tackling pirate online streaming services, including the previously mentioned streaming sites and set-top boxes. 

Bell equates this relatively new type of piracy to the boom in black market satellite piracy roughly three decades ago. At the time, lawmakers responded by updating the Radiocommunication Act to criminalize the decoding of encrypted signals and the possession and sale of devices intended for that purpose.

“This stimulated law enforcement activity in the area of satellite piracy, which contributed to the investigation and shutting down of piracy operations and also had a significant deterrent effect,” Bell notes.

The telco stresses that a similar response is now required to deal with the online streaming epidemic. Most pirate streaming services no longer rely on encryption but are based on rebroadcasting content over the Internet instead. 

This type of streaming activity should be criminalized in the Broadcasting Act, Bell recommends. Not just the services and sites that do the ‘broadcasting,’ but also people who advertise or sell related products.  

“Accordingly, we recommend that a provision be added to the Broadcasting Act making it a criminal offense for anyone subject to an exemption from the requirement to hold a license to knowingly operate, advertise, supply, or sell or offer to sell access to a distribution undertaking that retransmits broadcasting without lawful authorization from a programming undertaking.”

“Such an approach would concentrate criminal liability on commercially-motivated operators engaged in organized crime and would stimulate additional law enforcement activity to address this pressing threat,” Bell adds.

This measure doesn’t appear to be aimed at end-users but will certainly affect pirate streaming sites, vendors of pirate set-top boxes, as well as those who promote them.

The second anti-piracy proposal put forward by Bell is to make it possible for ISPs to block pirate sites more easily. This is the same plan proposed by Fairplay Canada Coalition last year, but with a twist. 

“By far the most important tool that modernized legislation should adopt is the ability for an independent authority to grant orders requiring all Internet service providers (ISPs) to disable access to sites that are blatantly, structurally, or overwhelmingly engaged in piracy,” Bell writes.

This Fairplay blocking proposal was denied by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) last fall, which noted that it lacks jurisdiction. According to Bell, this is something the Government could change through an update of the Telecommunications Act.

Specifically, it wants the Government to amend current legislation to authorize the CRTC to approve and require Internet providers to disable access to sites that are blatantly, overwhelmingly, or structurally engaged in piracy. 

That blocking is not a perfect solution, shouldn’t matter. Even a partial reduction in traffic to pirate sites, as has happened in other countries, should already be rather effective, Bell argues.

“A policy that reduces the total level of piracy by up to 40% from the level that would otherwise have prevailed, and that substantially increases the legal consumption of content, can only be considered incredibly effective. The fact that it does not eliminate 100% of piracy is not a justification for inaction,” the telco writes.

Website blocking also finds support in a separate submission from Shaw Communications, another major Canadian telco.  Similar to Bell, Shaw believes that an update to the Copyright Act is required to achieve that. The company, however, rejects a proposal to tax ISP subscriptions to support copyright holders.

By criminalizing pirate streaming services and blocking pirate sites, Bell hopes to make a significant dent in Canada’s piracy rates. Whether the government’s expert panel will adopt these recommendations has yet to be seen. 

Many copyright holders are likely to side with Bell,  but there is plenty of opposition as well. Michael Geist, for example, characterizes Bell’s submission as “self-serving in the extreme,” noting that it poses shocking risks to many stakeholders in Canada’s communication industry.

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