Despite the increased availability of legal options, millions of people still stream, rip, or download MP3s from unofficial sources.

These sites are a thorn in the side of the RIAA, one of the music industry’s leading anti-piracy outfits. 

The RIAA has a long history of going after, what it sees as, pirate sites. The problem, however, is that many owners of such sites operate anonymously. The group, therefore, often has to turn to third-party intermediaries to find out more. 

While some services may be willing to voluntarily share information with the music industry group, many don’t. Cloudflare falls into the latter category. While the CDN service does voluntarily reveal the true hosting locations of some of its users, it doesn’t share any personal info. At least, not without a subpoena. 

Luckily for rightsholders, getting a subpoena isn’t very hard in the US. Under the DMCA, copyright holders only have to ask a court clerk for a signature to be able to demand the personal information of alleged copyright infringers. That’s exactly what the RIAA did last week. 

In a letter sent by Mark McDevitt, the RIAA’s vice president of online anti-piracy, the music group informs Cloudflare that it requests personal details including names, addresses and payment information relating to the operators of six domains, which are all Cloudflare users. 

The domains in question include those connected to the file-hosting site DBREE,  music release site RapGodFathers, file-host AyeFiles, and music download portal Plus Premieres. The sites are accused of sharing copyrighted tracks from artists such as Pink, Drake, and Taylor Swift.

“We have determined that users of your system or network have infringed our member record companies’ copyrighted sound recordings. Enclosed is a subpoena compliant with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” the RIAA’s McDevitt writes.

“As is stated in the attached subpoena, you are required to disclose to the RIAA information sufficient to identify the infringers. This would include the individuals’ names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account history.”

The RIAA stresses that the mentioned files are offered without permission and it asks Cloudflare to consider the widespread and repeated infringing nature of the sites and whether these warrant a termination under its repeat infringer policy. 

At the time of writing the sites are still using Cloudflare’s services. However, the allegedly infringing files are no longer available. These were presumably removed by the site owners.

There is no obvious connection between all the targeted sites. However, RapGodFathers is a familiar name when it comes to anti-piracy enforcement. Nearly ten years ago, the site was targeted by the U.S. Government, but the name is still around today.  

It is unclear what RIAA plans to do with the requested information. It could form the basis of a legal complaint, but the music group may also use it to contact the site operators more directly. The letter only mentions that the information will be used to protect the rights of RIAA member companies.

“The purpose for which this subpoena is sought is to obtain the identities of the individuals assigned to these websites who have reproduced and have offered for distribution our members’ copyrighted sound recordings without their authorization.

“This information will only be used for the purposes of protecting the rights granted to our members, the sound recording copyright owner, under Title II of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” the letter adds.

What this “protection” entails remains a mystery for now. 

While the court clerk signed the DMCA subpoena, Cloudflare still has the option to object, by asking the court to quash it. However, thus far there are no signs that the company plans to do so.

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A copy of the letter RIAA sent to Cloudflare, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf).

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Getting the public to stop downloading movies, TV shows, music, software, and other content from the Internet is a huge task.

For at least two decades, the public has been presented with Public Service Announcements (PSA) aimed at doing just that, but nothing seems to do the trick.

Most readers will be familiar with the “Piracy, It’s a Crime” campaign from 2004. It was so over the top it ended up becoming its own meme (before memes had a name) and was eventually lampooned by the IT Crowd.

With this experience in the bank, one would’ve thought that people producing these PSAs might get the message that scare tactics don’t work. However, year after year similar ads have appeared, most of which had the same non-effect on the public but perhaps with fewer laughs.

Reaching out to people to prevent them doing what many perceive as a victimless crime is difficult. But even when PSAs focus on this very aspect, that creators and the entertainment industry can suffer due to piracy, few get even close to the mark.

These days much effort seems to be centered around convincing pirates that they’ll have their devices reduced to virus-infested junk while “cybercriminals” pillage their networks and empty their bank accounts. These are classic scare tactics that work no better than most sex infection videos pumped out in the 80s.

The problem is that while in some cases people might indeed experience malware, few pirates know anyone who has experienced such a thing to the degrees stated. That means that once there’s no evidence to the claims, people simply ignore the entire message and discard it as pure propaganda.

Another issue centers around the over-dramatization of the effects of piracy. Constant claims that films or music won’t be made anymore is already provably false – one only has to look around at all the legal services today for evidence of that.

Furthermore, the average pirate really doesn’t make the connection between piracy and “real” crime, a point overlooked by this recent PSA from Film Ireland. It manages to pack in plenty of drama while also threatening the end of the movie industry.

While the above may have some effect on casual pirates, the fact that it currently has less than 400 views on YouTube shows, bluntly, that no one cares about this type of PSA. There are zero comments too, which seems to show that it’s not even controversial. Cruelly, perhaps, it’s quite boring.

The problem is that the vast majority of ads and campaigns fail to see the issue of piracy from the user’s perspective. Hardcore pirates are unlikely to be moved to “correct” their ways no matter what they see, but there’s a huge population of casual and potential pirates that, given a bit of thought, might reconsider.

Given these people make up the bulk of the entire media-consuming public, a new anti-piracy PSA produced by content-awareness group Agorateka in conjunction with the EU Intellectual Property Office caught our attention.

Instead of all the scare tactics, they appear to have sat down and actually considered what the average person (who isn’t highly proficient in piracy techniques) might encounter when looking for content to watch online. In fact, it doesn’t mention piracy directly at all and instead focuses on the end goal – getting people to use legal sites.

In summary, the PSA seems to suggest that regular Internet users and casual, non-technical pirates have a choice. They can spend a long time looking around trying to sort the wheat from the chaff, or they can go straight to a legal source and enjoy content immediately.

There’s no malware suggested, no decaying cinemas, no dying actors, and no police raids. Piracy itself doesn’t even get a mention.

Of course, there will be no shortage of people viewing the video noting that it only takes them a few minutes to find whatever they want on their favorite pirate sites, so this doesn’t apply. There’s no arguing with that, but skilled pirates do not make up the bulk of the public.

So what this video attempts to do, it appears, is ask the viewer a simple question – what do you value more? Is time your most precious commodity or are a few euros, dollars or pounds spent online each month an effective trade? For many, especially those with the cash to spare, time can invariably come out on top.

The message may even ring true with some proficient pirates too.

Many reports show that pirates have access to Netflix or similar services, so it seems unlikely that many will head over to the nearest streaming site or legally questionable platform when the legal variant is so much more simple. Kodi add-ons might be the weapon of choice for some ordinarily, but none guarantee a flawless trip.

In short, the PSA won’t be for everyone but it’s definitely not annoying, it’s non-judgmental, and it doesn’t come over as propaganda. It merely suggests that an easy and quick alternative to piracy are legal resources and they can be found via the Agorateka portal.

That’s a great starting point for those who want to prevent people from downloading a car but don’t want to alienate them.

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Last year, a group of prominent record labels filed a piracy lawsuit against the Russian operator of YouTube-ripping sites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com.

The labels hoped to shut the sites down, but this effort backfired.

In January, US District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed the case due to a lack of jurisdiction. The Court carefully reviewed how the sites operate and found no evidence that they purposefully targeted either Virginia or the United States.

Many copyright cases against foreign operators result in default judgments. However, this lawsuit transformed into a landmark case that will determine when such operators can be sued in the United States.  As such, the record labels swiftly appealed the District Court’s dismissal.

Tofig Kurbanov, the Russian operator of the stream-ripping sites, is not backing off though. With help from his US-based legal team, he maintained that US courts have no jurisdiction over the matter. If the record labels want a legal battle, they should come to Russia instead.

In a reply brief filed at the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit this week, the record labels counter the defense’s arguments. The operator of the stream-ripping sites argued that his contacts with the U.S. were “random, fortuitous, or attenuated,” but the music companies state that the opposite is true.

The labels note that the site operator knows exactly where all users are located. Millions are in the U.S., and together these people ripped close to 100 million streams last year. Many of these ripped streams were of copyrighted content, the music companies argue.

“Appellee knows down to the person the geographic location of the 32 million U.S. users and more than half-a-million Virginian users who visited the Flvto.biz and 2conv.com websites in 2018. Those users engaged in almost one hundred million stream-ripping sessions,” the reply brief reads.

“During a substantial number of those sessions, the websites transmitted illegal copies of appellants’ sound recordings to users’ home computers in the U.S. and Virginia. Indeed, the United States is appellee’s third largest market globally, both by number of users and number of stream-ripping
sessions conducted.”

The United States is the third largest market for the stream ripping websites, the labels argue. Not just that, but it’s also a market that’s specifically targeted with geo-located advertisements.

In his defense, Kurbanov stressed that the advertisements are outsourced to third-party advertising brokers. However, the labels counter that the website owner willingly hired these and that he, therefore, bears responsibility.

“Moreover, appellee earns huge revenues from the advertisements his U.S. users view while conducting their stream-ripping sessions—advertisements specifically targeted to users’ geographic location in the U.S. because of the geotargeting technology that appellee uses. Appellee knows full well this geo-targeting is occurring,” the reply brief reads.

The record labels also point out that the site operator cited various contacts with the U.S. to then argue that, in isolation, these are not sufficient to warrant jurisdiction. However, the rightsholders say that a different picture emerges when all elements are taken together.

Looking at the big picture, a US Court should be allowed to take on this case, the record labels conclude.

The alternative would be to sue the site operator in Russia. This is what the defense has suggested, admitting that this would be somewhat burdensome for the U.S. companies. The record labels, however, believe that would be absurd.

“In short, nothing in the Constitution requires that U.S. copyright holders travel to Rostov-on-Don, Russia to sue for violations of U.S. law that occur in the United States and that generate huge profits for appellee from ads targeted at U.S. users.

“The decision of the district court should be reversed,” the labels add.

It is clear that both sides have a completely different take on the matter and with various rightsholder groups and EFF jumping in as well, the gravity of this case is obvious.

It is now up to the Court of Appeals to weigh the arguments from both sides and come to a conclusion.

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A copy of the record labels’ reply brief is available here (pdf).

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This week, 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 board 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. The proposal follows years of discussions with various stakeholders and has bipartisan support.

The House version of the bill (HR 2426) was introduced by Representatives Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Doug Collins (R-GA) and an identical Senate version of the CASE Act (S. 1273) was tabled by  Senators John Kennedy (R-LA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Mazie Hirono (D-HI).

The idea behind the legislation is to lower the barrier for smaller copyright holders with limited resources, who usually refrain from going to court. Filing a federal case with proper representation is quite costly, while the outcome is rather uncertain.

The newly proposed copyright claims board is a cheaper option. It will have three judges who can hear cases from all over the country. They can award damages awards of up to $15,000 per infringement, or $30,000 per case.

The introduction of the bill this week has received broad support from various copyright holder groups.  The Copyright Alliance, for example, says that it will empower creators with smaller budgets to protect their rights.

“The CASE Act is a legislative priority for hundreds of thousands of photographers, illustrators, graphic artists, songwriters, and authors, as well as a new generation of creators including bloggers and YouTubers across the country,” Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid said yesterday.

“Today, they have rights but no remedies. The CASE Act will go a long way to restoring their faith in the copyright system.”

The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) is also pleased with the introduction of the CASE Act. Many photographers have to deal with people and companies who use their work without permission. However, filing a court case can be more expensive than the compensation demanded.

Tom Kennedy, executive director of ASMP, stated that the new bill will correct this “historic inequity” in copyright law.

“Under this legislation, these artists will have a viable alternative to the often prohibitively expensive federal court system, and their creative efforts will be appropriately protected so that they are incentivized to continue producing works that change how people see their world,” Kennedy said.

At the same time, there are also concerns. Digital rights groups Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)  warn that the bill could do more harm than good. One of the main concerns is that it may make it easier for copyright trolls to go after alleged file-sharers.

The EFF and various attorneys and other experts shared several of their concerns in a letter sent to lawmakers last week.

One issue highlighted in the letter is that the CASE Act will allow the Copyright Office to issue subpoenas to obtain the identity of an account holder whose connection is believed to have been used to download copyright-infringing material. At the moment, such requests have to be signed off by a federal judge.

The letter further points out that the CASE Act may in fact make it easier for copyright trolls to go after alleged pirates without solid evidence, just when federal courts are starting to limit these types of abuse.

“The federal courts are reining in these abuses by demanding specific and reliable evidence of infringement—more than boilerplate allegations—before issuing subpoenas for the identity of an alleged infringer,” the letter reads.

“Some federal courts have also undertaken reviews of copyright troll plaintiffs’ communications with their targets with an eye to preventing coercion and intimidation. These reforms have reduced the financial incentive for the abusive business model of copyright trolling.

“The CASE Act threatens to derail this progress by creating an alternative forum where these carefully crafted protections will not apply,” the letter adds.

It is worth noting that participation in the small claims board is voluntary and potential defendants can opt-out. However, if they fail to do so, any order against them can still be binding and enforceable through a federal court.

While opting out is an option, less knowledgeable defendants may not be aware of the risks and safeguards of either choice. As such, potential copyright troll targets may see a small claims board as a safer option, while that’s not necessarily the case.

Both the House and the Senate bill have yet to go through the legislative process where the text can still be refined or rejected. Opponents will likely request changes to protect the public from frivolous claims, while rightsholders want to ensure that their interests are protected.

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