China Shuts 361 Movie Piracy Sites, 57 Apps, and Arrests 251 Suspects


China is well known for its piracy problems. The country is awash with counterfeit media but in recent years authorities there have displayed a new enthusiasm to deal with the issue.

That includes tackling online platforms that distribute or facilitate access to infringing movies, including torrent sites, steaming portals, and infringing apps.

During a press conference held on Monday, China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said that during the week-long Spring Festival in February, authorities had conducted a major piracy crackdown targeting those involved in movie piracy.

The figures are impressive, to say the least. The MPS revealed that in the process of investigating 25 cases, police had shuttered 361 movie piracy sites, 57 apps. A total of 251 suspects were arrested.

Press conference (credit: NCAC.gov)

While the United States would like China to do more to protect international content, the press conference heard that following the release of local hit movies including Wandering Earth ($557m box office in two weeks), Flying Life, and Crazy Alien ($292m in 13 days), large-scale piracy of the titles became evident. This alarmed Chinese authorities who took immediate action.

“Concerned about the problem, the rapid deployment and deployment of local public security organs carried out a series of project investigations against…film infringement and piracy in the Spring Festival and quickly identified and resolutely destroyed the production source and online communication network of the HD pirated films,” the conference heard.

In one region alone, 59 suspects were arrested and more than 13,600 pieces of equipment were seized, including playback and encryption hardware and servers.

The ‘Twist Film’ app, which was blamed for the greatest illegal transmission of pirated films, was reportedly “destroyed”. It’s claimed the app had more than 100 million users and offered in excess of 150,000 films. Suspects were arrested in China and “overseas”.

The Ministry of Public Security said it deployed local authorities to Beijing and several other areas to “smash a number of pirated websites and apps” that had outstanding infringement issues, including the popular ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Film and TV Alliance’ apps.

Also among the site casualties was a 170,000-member platform called ‘BTBus’, a platform known as ‘Qiu Xia’, and ‘BT Movie Paradise’, a site that’s claimed to have had 3.7 million visitors every day. The full list is lengthy so the above is just a sample.

In comments to China’s National Copyright Administration, Wandering Earth producer Gong Geer said that after being released on February 5th, an illegal HD version appeared online on the 7th. This was immediately reported to the government and the response during the first week of the Spring Festival was described as “an anti-piracy war.”

“As a creator, we must believe that the relevant departments can support us in law and policy. The only thing we can do is to create works with all sincerity,” he said.

“No matter how much we are pirated, we believe that only the best works can attract the audience. As long as we do well, the audience will definitely go to the cinema to watch movies. This is a mutual trust between our filmmakers and the audience. I believe the audience will give us this opportunity.”

The next round of trade war negotiations between China and the United States begin today in Beijing. China’s handling of intellectual property issues are a particularly hot topic.

In March, the National Copyright Administration added US movies Green Room and Captain Marvel to a list of productions that should receive special protection, ordering online content providers not to host them and requiring online storage providers to prevent uploads. The US will want much more.

Last week, as first reported here on TF, Avengers: Endgame appeared online after being filmed in a Chinese cinema, two days before its official US release date. The copies that appeared certainly weren’t in high-quality HD but the illegal appearance of this huge production won’t have gone unnoticed.

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U.S. Places 36 Countries on Annual ‘Piracy Watchlist’


Every year the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes its Special 301 Report highlighting countries that aren’t doing enough to protect US intellectual property rights.

The format remains the same as in previous years and lists three dozen countries that, for different reasons, threaten the intellectual property rights of US companies.

“The identification of the countries and IP-related market access barriers in the Report and of steps necessary to address those barriers are a critical component of the Administration’s aggressive efforts to defend Americans from harmful IP-related trade barriers,” USTR writes. 

The topics reported in the yearly overview are much broader than online piracy. They also cover counterfeiting and other IP related issues, including patents and protection of trade secrets. Our coverage is limited to piracy, however, which remains one of the key issues. 

The USTR highlights stream-ripping as a significant problem, as well as pirate IPTV services and “illicit streaming devices” in general. The latter are sold throughout the world but are often manufactured in China, which is listed on the USTR’s Priority Watch List. 

“Stakeholders continue to report rampant piracy through ISDs, including in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, the Dominican Republic, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan, the UAE, and Vietnam. China, in particular, is a manufacturing hub for these devices,” the USTR writes. 

Camcording piracy, where people record films at movie theaters, remains a significant problem as well. Russia, India, Mexico, and China are called out as frequent sources, but the problem applies to other countries as well. 

The USTR notes that countries including Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, and Taiwan do not effectively criminalize unauthorized camcording, and hopes that this will soon change. 

“The United States urges countries to adopt laws and enforcement practices
designed to prevent unauthorized camcording, such as laws that have been adopted in Canada, Japan, and the Philippines,” the USTR writes.

Most of these observations and comments are not new. They are made year after year in some cases. Apparently, it’s a strategy that has some effect. For example, India recently updated is camcording legislation to allow a three-year prison sentence for those who get caught.

The full list of countries which lack proper IP protection totals 36. Eleven are listed on the most severe Priority Watch List with the rest placed on the regular Watch List.

The 301 watch lists

Canada has been downgraded from the Priority to the regular Watch List this year. The most important step forward taken by Canada, according to the US, is signing the provisions in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which will extend the local copyright term to 70-years + life.

However, problems remain as well. Among other things, the US sees Canada’s copyright exception for educational purposes as a grave concern.

“The United States remains deeply troubled by the ambiguous education-related exception added to the copyright law in 2012, which has significantly damaged the market for educational publishers and authors,” the office writes.

Switzerland also remains on the Watch List. While the country generally has strong intellectual property protection, the U.S. remains concerned about its online copyright protection and enforcement, as we’ve highlighted previously. This appears to be the only remaining barrier at this point.

If countries fail to address the issues the USTR has highlighted, the U.S. says it will take appropriate actions in response. No concrete measures are mentioned, but they can include enforcement actions under Section 301 of the Trade Act or pursuant to World Trade Organization rules, for example. 

—

A copy of USTR’s full 2019 Special 301 Report is available here (pdf).

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Exodus Forks Show That Open Source Kodi Add-ons Are Hard to Eradicate


When the pirate streaming box hype reached new heights early 2017, the third-party Kodi add-on “Exodus” was at the center of the action.

Exodus was widely praised as one of the most useful add-ons to access streaming video. This included many pirated movies and TV-shows.

The open source software was maintained by “Lambda,” one of the most prolific developers in the community. However, this meant that when rightsholders started to tighten the screws, Exodus became one of the main targets.

It all started when the popular add-on repository TVAddons mysteriously disappeared. Since Exodus was distributed through the repository, many people experienced trouble updating it.

Initially, it was unknown what was going on with TVAddons but when the site returned more than a month later, it became clear that it was being sued by Bell Canada, TVA, Videotron, and Rogers. This complaint also listed Exodus, alongside 17 other add-ons.

Not much later, development of the Exodus add-on was discontinued. This meant that from one day to another, millions of users found out that their pirate streaming boxes had become useless. At least, in their more recent configuration.

It didn’t take long before others stepped up to fill this void. Interestingly, many of the Exodus alternatives were based on the original Exodus code, which was open source. Even today, nearly two years after the add-on was discontinued, its code lives on.

TVAddons recently published an overview of the various Exodus ‘forks’ that are still online today.

The top one appears to be the aptly named “Exodus Redux,” which is available through GitHub and maintained by a developer known as I-A-C.

However, there are many more add-ons based on the same code. This includes “Yoda,” “Exodus 8,” “Overeasy,” and “13Clowns,” to name a few. All of these allow users to stream video through an easy-to-use interface.

While the open source code is easy to fork, these add-ons can’t operate with complete impunity, of course. Several other Exodus based add-ons have already been discontinued, often following pressure from groups such as anti-piracy group ACE.

The Covenant add-on, developed by Team Colossus, threw in the towel after one of the main developers received a house visit, for example,. The Placenta add-on was discontinued following a cease and desist letter.

This begs the question: if new forks keep appearing, does it mean that rightsholders’ actions are futile?

According to TVAddons, which has banned these forks from its own platform, takedown efforts may help in the short term. However, when open source software is taken down, many alternate versions usually pop-up.

“The Rights holders efforts to destroy dual-use technologies seem to be effective in the very short-term. However, those enforcements only result in software and tools being spread out in a way that becomes uncontrollable in the long term, as we’ve seen with Kodi addons,” a TVAddons spokesperson told us.

In theory, this is indeed true. TVAddons listed just seven active Exodus forks, but there are many more out there. It’s a problem that’s hard to eradicate. 

However, the continued efforts from rightsholders to shut down these add-ons may have a more subtle effect. While hardcore pirates will always find a new fork, there’s also a group of people who will get frustrated by the repeated shutdowns, and give up eventually. 

If we take a look at the popularity of the Google search term “Kodi add-ons” we see that interest started to drop after the major enforcement efforts started. This may be a coincidence of course, but it could also be a sign of people giving up. 

Google searches for “Kodi add-ons”

It’s hard to deny that open source software can’t be easily eradicated, but the ease of access also play a role. 

We’ve also seen that with other popular open source applications, such as Popcorn Time. When one of the most popular forks was taken out following pressure from Hollywood, others remained available. Still, as time went on, interest began to wane. 

Similarly, when Limewire shut down years ago, the Frostwire fork remained available. However, this never reached the same audience as its predecessor. 

All in all, it’s safe to conclude that, while Exodus has left the scene a long time ago, its code still thrives. Whether the total audience is still as large as it once was, remains a question.

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75-Year-Old Can’t Sleep Following Accusations of Hardcore Porn Piracy


The practice of copyright-trolling is now well-established in many countries around the world.

The companies involved often gather IP addresses from BitTorrent swarms, then via the courts, obtain identities of users from their ISPs.

What follows are threats to the account holder, warning that if he or she doesn’t pay a ‘fine’, then court action will follow. This, of course, is boosted with claims that if the process gets this far, things will get much more expensive.

In reality, however, copyright trolls rarely take cases to court and when they do, they tend to head for the hills when people put up a spirited fight. That was demonstrated again earlier this week when a troll targeted an IT specialist, then backed away after claiming his technical knowledge would allow him to cover up any infringement.

Considering the main evidence in most trolling cases is a simple IP address, captured way before the rightsholders even write to a defendant, it raises the question of whether even the trolls have faith that an IP address alone is enough to prosecute a case. Some courts certainly don’t.

Yet that evidence alone appears to form the basis of claims detailed in a letter received by a pensioner in Sweden during March 2019.

The 75-year-old man was told that his IP address (allocated by his ISP TeliaSonera) had been used to share the hardcore porn movie “The Creepers Family Part 7”, which was produced by Girlfriends Films and licensed to MIRCOM International, a company with a long history of involvement in similar cases.

The company doing the tracking was Media Protector International GmbH, which has been providing data for similar cases for more than a decade.

While there can be no doubt that many IP addresses caught in the dragnets of these companies were indeed used to download and share copyrighted content, innocents are regularly caught in the crossfire. The pensioner from Sweden says that’s the case with him.

He shared his story with Bahnhof, a Swedish ISP which acts as a competitor to TeliaSonera and one that offers a sympathetic ear to people targeted by copyright trolls.

“The infringement occurred on Friday February 2, 2018 at 6:43:17, that is, a time that I as a pensioner sleeps,” he told the ISP.

“I am 75 years old and I do not know much about technology, and I wonder if there is anything I can do or if I should just pay?”

This, of course, is exactly the strategy of copyright trolls. Whether their targets are guilty or innocent, they hope their strongly-worded letters will break the resolve of recipients and make them cave in, parting with cash to make the nightmare go away.

“I sleep poorly and feel great concern because of this, I just want it to stop. My wife wants to pay to get rid of the problem, but if we do will it just make things worse?” he added.

“I am afraid that the bills will continue to come from other agencies and companies, it seems to be a business idea that is better than selling movies. This can be my ruin.”

While the mainstream media has largely given up about worrying about those targeted by copyright trolls, history has shown us that cases against pensioners are rarely well received by the public or those in power.

Two years ago, for example, an 83-year-old grandmother from the UK went to the press after being accused of pirating the Robert Redford film The Company You Keep. That attracted the attention of her local member of parliament, who branded the practice “disgusting” and raised the matter with the government.

It is not known whether the woman ever paid up but given the negative publicity and outcry, it seems unlikely. The case certainly never went to court, which is common when those accused by copyright trolls fight back and/or tell their stories in the media and complain to politicians.

For Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, not enough is being done to protect those wrongly targeted, with citizens currently left to fight for themselves.

“It’s a corrupt system promoting copyright trolls and legal firms that thrive on blackmail. Unfortunately, there is not enough political momentum to change the situation. It’s an ongoing scandal, and I believe that this affects the justice system as a whole,” Karlung told TorrentFreak.

“The only solution is to make this problem as visible as possible. People should also start asking their telecom operators why they save data for time spans of 24 months – Bahnhof only saves for 24 hours.”

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Victims of Prenda Law ‘Copyright Trolls’ Can Now Register for Restitution


In an effort to turn piracy into profit, copyright holders have chased alleged BitTorrent pirates through courts all over the world.

This so-called copyright troll scheme was also used by the firm Prenda Law. However, the lawyers involved started to break the law themselves.

The firm was accused of all sorts of wrongdoing including identity theft, misrepresentation, and even deception. Most controversial was the shocking revelation that Prenda uploaded their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.

This eventually caught the attention of the US Justice Department. In 2015 we first reported that two Pirate Bay co-founders had been questioned by Swedish police, acting on behalf of the FBI. The feds were interested in the honeypot evidence, to build a case against Prenda.

A year later the investigation was finished, resulting in a criminal indictment against Prenda attorneys Paul Hansmeier and John Steele. The US Government accused the two of various crimes, including money laundering, perjury, mail, and wire fraud.

Since then both defendants have both signed plea agreements. They now face years in prison. While it is by no means illegal to go after file-sharers, the Prenda attorneys crossed a line by repeatedly lying to or misleading the courts.

The US prosecutor recently recommended a 12.5-year prison sentence for Paul Hansmeier, who instructed his brother to upload torrents of videos he produced himself. In doing so he misled the court, as he made it appear as if the videos were from a third-party company.

In total, Prenda Law generated roughly $3,000,000 from the fraudulent copyright lawsuits they filed at courts throughout the United States.

Thus far very little has been said about the victims of the scheme but with the final sentencing coming up, this has changed. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Minnesota is now allowing people who were targeted by the scheme to register for restitution.

“HANSMEIER and STEELE were charged and convicted of orchestrating a multi-million dollar fraud scheme in which they obtained payments from victims to settle sham pornography film copyright infringement lawsuits,” the Attorney’s Office writes.

“At the sentencing hearing, the Court may, but is not required to, order HANSMEIER and STEELE to pay restitution to the victims of their scheme.”

The list of potential victims includes everyone who paid a settlement to any of the related companies, including Steele Hansmeier Law, Prenda Law, Alpha Law, Anti-Piracy Group, AF Holdings, Ingenuity 13, Guava LLC, Livewire, and LW Systems.

The Attorney’s Office encourages all potential victims to fill out a form, so it can identify whether they were indeed defrauded by the defendants. The information provided will be shared with the court, but it won’t be available publicly.

The sentencing for both defendants is scheduled for June 4, before Judge Joan N. Ericksen in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here, it will be decided whether the two defendants must pay restitution, which is not a given.

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Premier League & Broadcasters Win Judgment in Landmark Pirate TV Box Case


Piracy-configured set-top boxes are the latest in a long line of problems facing copyright holders and broadcasters.

When pre-loaded with custom software they become easily accessible yet formidable piracy tools, providing access to the latest movies, TV shows, live TV programming and live sports broadcasts.

While successful prosecutions have been possible in some regions under existing copyright law, there are plenty of countries that still require a test case. One of those was Singapore, a country that has reportedly become swamped with pirate devices.

In January 2018, it was reported that telecoms, broadcasting, and sporting giants SingTel, Starhub, Fox Networks Group and the Premier League, had teamed up to launch a pioneering private prosecution against those involved in the supply chain.

The complainant in the suit is Neil Gane, who works as General Manager at the Coalition Against Piracy. However, CAP is not involved in this case.

The legal action targeted set-top box distributor Synnex Trading and its client and wholesale goods retailer, An-Nahl. The rightsholders also named Synnex Trading director Jia Xiaofen and An-Nahl director Abdul Nagib as defendants in their private prosecution.

This week, more than a year after the case was filed, Abdul Nagib pleaded guilty to willfully infringing the rightsholders’ copyrights for commercial gain, with a second charge taken into consideration. He originally intended to fight the case.

According to CNA, the 58-year-old admitted to selling a single Android TV box and helping the buyer of that device to access unauthorized copies of copyrighted content, which included soccer matches provided by the Premier League.

In mitigation, Abdul Nagib’s lawyer Mr Srijit said that his client believed that the content offered through the devices, which came with an annual subscription, was licensed by pay TV and IPTV provider Astro Malaysia. He had immediately stopped offering the devices after he received a cease-and-desist notice in 2017.

While Abdul Nagib’s fine of just S$1,200 (US$883) is relatively small given the scale of punishments handed down in other jurisdictions, Mr Srijit said his client had already paid a heavy price after selling his home to finance his defense.

Despite the small fine, the case is also important since this is the first and only successful prosecution of a ‘pirate’ TV box seller in Singapore. However, it is not yet over as the case against Synnex Trading and director Jia Xiaofen is yet to be settled.

Jia allegedly offered to pay Abdul Nagib a small commission for every device sold and an additional fee when customers also purchased a copy of the popular Kodi media player. Abdul Nagib is now reportedly assisting in the prosecution of Jia.

Commenting on the plea and judgment, Louis Boswell, CEO Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA), said that progress against piracy needs to be a team effort.

“In order to combat the serious and growing problem of content theft, a holistic solution is required,” Boswell told TorrentFreak.

“If all stakeholders, government, content producers, distributors, industry associations and intermediaries work together, we believe serious progress in reducing video piracy can be achieved.”

While today’s guilty plea will prove useful to AVIA’s members and other rightsholders, the action is just one of the avenues available to combat piracy.

Last September, Singnet, Fox Networks Group, NGC Network Asia, Fox International Channels (US) Inc, and the Premier League obtained an injunction from the Singapore High Court which required several local ISPs to block access to popular ‘pirate’ apps.

In May 2018, ISPs blocked dozens of torrent and streaming platforms (including The Pirate Bay plus KickassTorrents and Solarmovie variants) following a successful application from the MPAA.

The Hollywood group later obtained a so-called ‘dynamic‘ blocking order which granted it the ability to block sites more efficiently should they attempt to circumvent the earlier order.

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Zippyshare Shows ‘Forbidden’ Message to German Visitors


File-hosting site Zippyshare has been online for more than 12 years, serving millions of users every day.

Stats from SimilarWeb indicate that traffic to the site has remained stable for some time, hovering around the 100 million visits per month mark. That positions the site well within the top 500 sites on the whole Internet, making it a major player in the file-hosting market.

The site is utilized by users all over the world but last month those in the UK suddenly found the platform inaccessible. At least initially, there was speculation that local Internet service providers had blocked the site but given the circumstances, that seemed unlikely.

The error messages received by users when attempting to access the site’s domain indicated that ISPs weren’t to blame and Zippyshare itself had probably begun blocking UK visitors. Even those using some UK-based VPN servers couldn’t access the platform either.

It’s been more than month since that unexplained problem first raised its head and the situation doesn’t appear to have changed for those in the UK since. Indeed, a new problem seems to have raised its head elsewhere in Europe.

This week, users of Zippyshare attempting to access the site from Germany began reporting that they too are experiencing the same issues, with visitors seeing the same “403 Forbidden” notice, as shown below;

Tips received by TorrentFreak from users in Germany indicate that the site cannot be reached from several ISPs including Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, M-net, Pyur, Unitymedia, and others.

Changing DNS settings to point to other providers (such as Cloudflare or Google) doesn’t seem to help matters but we did manage to access the site using VPN servers located in Berlin and Frankfurt.

Zippyshare did not respond to our earlier request for comment and the site hasn’t made any announcements that would explain the ‘forbidden’ errors now being displayed across the EU’s most powerful countries.

While that’s a strange situation for a platform of Zippyshare’s scale and reach, stats provided by SimilarWeb reveal that the highest volume of visitors to the site are from Indonesia (13%) followed by Japan (9%), the United States (8%), Brazil (7%) and then India (4%).

This data suggests that countries in the EU are fairly insignificant in terms of traffic, which could explain the apparent apathy. Or, of course, Zippyshare might simply not want to talk about the problem in public, either voluntarily or otherwise, for a number of reasons.

Until the platform comments, speculation will continue.

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Mobdro Pirate Streaming App Slammed in Malware Report


In recent years, millions of users around the world have turned to Android-based applications for their piracy fix.

They’re mostly free and easy to install, quickly providing access to the latest movies, TV shows, live sports, and PPV events.

Entertainment industry groups have long insisted that users of these applications are putting themselves at risk of malware and similar issues, but it’s fairly uncommon for them to go into much detail.

That changed today with the publication of a study carried out by the Digital Citizens Alliance in conjunction with network security company Dark Wolfe Consulting. Some of the key findings concern the popular live streaming application known as Mobdro.

The researchers say that after installing the Android application, it forced an update and then forwarded their Wi-Fi name and password to a server that identified as being located in Asia. Mobdro then started to seek access to media content and other legitimate apps on the researchers’ network.

“Researchers observed that the app that sent the user’s wireless name and password up to an external server in Indonesia then began probing the network and talking to any file-sharing services on the Local Area Network. It also ‘port knocked,’ a process to look for other active malware,” they write.

“[A]fter the initial update, the device accepted commands from a threat actor. Those commands may come from the app itself or from the movie streams. With each selection of content, the user opens the door to a new set of commands and malicious payloads from a threat actor to a device in use.”

It’s not explained how the video streams themselves could contain malware. Mobdro is believed to scrape the web for content, much like Kodi add-ons do, and security experts haven’t seen malware in video streams.

However, the researchers state that the “commands in the apps or from the movie streams” were “either encrypted or encoded, making it difficult to analyze for infection.” It’s a vague statement that the study builds on, noting that encrypted commands could perform an update, retrieve malware, take part in a DDoS attack, or obtain files stored on the device or network – such as images, movies or documents.

There’s little doubt that the behavior highlighted above is not something the average person would expect from a video streaming app. However, it should be noted that the Mobdro software actually asks the user to grant permission to their photos, media, files and device location.

Most will blindly grant those permissions instead of declining, of course, and it sounds like the researchers followed that lead.

Furthermore, in view of the researchers’ findings, it’s also worth highlighting the chaotic situation that surrounds Mobdro and many similar apps that facilitate access to illicit streams of movies and TV shows. Crucially, these aren’t allowed on official platforms like Google Play.

So, where it was once pretty obvious where the ‘official’ app could be obtained, there are now a large number of ‘fake’ sites also offering ‘hacked’ variants of the software, any one of which could have experienced tampering. The researchers do not reveal the source of their installation files.

Another point of interest is raised when the researchers note that the software they installed also makes it possible for a “threat actor” to log in to a user’s device and then navigate away from the device to the Internet, effectively posing as the user online.

While this initially seems like a shocking claim, anyone who reads the official app’s EULA before installing the software will see for themselves that Mobdro is pretty upfront about this unpopular ‘feature’. Users of the software that choose not to see adverts find themselves agreeing to become peers on the (in)famous Luminati network, meaning that their bandwidth and IP address can indeed be used by others.

It’s far from ideal (who wants their connections used by others apart from Hola users?) but the site that hosts the software makes this clear, to those who bother to read the small print at least. Which is probably very few people indeed, sadly.

TorrentFreak requested comment from the operators of the official Mobdro client but at the time of publication, we were yet to hear back.

The full report, ‘Fishing in the Piracy Stream: How the Dark Web of Entertainment is Exposing Consumers to Harm’ also contains information previously covered in earlier TorrentFreak articles. It can be found here (pdf)

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BREIN Goes After ‘Pirate’ Plex Share With Thousands of Movies and TV-Shows


Plex is a multifunctional media server that allows users to easily organize all their entertainment in one place. 

Whether it’s movies, music, TV-shows, or photos, Plex can organize and index, making the content ready to stream on a wide variety of supported devices. 

The technology itself is content-neutral, which means that it can be used both legally and illegally. In this case illegally, due to the often copyright infringing content. Much like the Kodi platform, Plex seems to be rather popular among pirates. 

There are a variety of places where access to “Plex shares” are being offered, sometimes in exchange for a small fee. Those who sign up can then stream from a library of movies and TV-shows that’s regularly updated by the owner. 

While sharing a small Plex library privately with a few friends isn’t going to be noticed easily, things change when access to a treasure trove of pirated videos is offered in public places. This is what a Dutch Plex user learned the hard way. 

Earlier this week the man in question informed fellow Plex users on Tweakers that he was approached by local anti-piracy group BREIN, which had become aware that he was running a Plex share with 5,700 movies and 10,000 TV-shows. 

Since these were offered without permission, BREIN requested a €750 settlement plus an additional €500 for each day the share remained online. The user in question, who publicly stated that he downloaded the videos through Usenet and torrents sites, admitted his wrongdoing and swiftly complied.

This is the first time we’ve seen this type of settlement with the owner of a Plex share, but it may not be the last. According to BREIN Director Tim Kuik, his organization keeps an eye on all kinds of piracy-related activity, also on Plex. 

“BREIN and its participants are alert on any kind of server being used to give unauthorized public access to content. In this matter we received information from a third party which enabled us to determine widespread infringement by the person in question,” Kuik informs TF.

Interestingly, the audience of the Plex server, as described by BREIN, differs quite a bit from the user’s own account. 

The Plex user, who has removed his initial posting, said he shared with two friends and his parents. However, BREIN, which had an informant with access to the server, said the audience was substantially larger. In addition, it was being advertised in public places such as Discord and Reddit.

“The customer base consisted of visitors who – for a fee or not – were given access to the media server’s library to view films and/or series,” the anti-piracy group wrote in an announcement.

“Customers were also given the opportunity to submit requests for films and/or series that they would like to see, which were subsequently made available,” BREIN added.

BREIN’s statement is backed up by readers from Tweakers. In response to a news report, they posted links to Reddit posts that suggest that the user in question, or someone linked to this person,  indeed offered his share with a much larger group. However, the user in question denied this. 

Whether the owner had just a few users on the Plex share or many more is ultimately irrelevant. The person in question admitted to downloading the files through torrents and Usenet, which in itself is against the law.

The question remains how BREIN obtained the personal details that were used to send the registered letter.

According to the user, the address in the letter contained a typo he made in his PayPal account. He also used a different name with PayPal, which was mentioned in the letter as well. This suggests that BREIN somehow received this information via the payment provider, but this remains unconfirmed. 

Plex doesn’t appear to be directly involved in the matter, as it generally informs users following copyright complaints, which hasn’t happened. We reached out to the company, which informed us that it respects user privacy as well as rightsholders’ rights.

“We take our customers’ privacy extremely seriously. Per our terms of service and privacy policy, libraries are owned and managed by our customers, and we have no access to the contents of their files,” a Plex spokesperson informed TorrentFreak.

“Our terms of service are very clear that we respect copyright holders’ rights and customers agree that they must have rights to the content in their libraries,” the company added.

Finally, BREIN itself stresses that there’s nothing wrong with using Plex, as long as people do so legally. That is, using it to access files for which they have obtained permission.

“It is permitted to use Plex with legally obtained material,  as long as it’s for your own use,” the anti-piracy group notes. 

Those who share thousands of movies and TV-shows and share these in public, on the other hand, risk being caught at one point or another.

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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Kodi 19 gets a codename


It’s that time again. After unleashing Kodi v18 Leia into the wild, it’s time to give the upcoming Kodi 19 a codename.

As usual, our users suggested a myriad of names, most right up our alley, some less… erm… “appropriate”. After compiling suggestions from the community thread, Facebook and Twitter, we arrived at the top 10 list:

  • Magneto
  • Mars
  • Marvel
  • Marvin
  • Matrix
  • Megatron
  • Merlin
  • Metropolis
  • Mordor
  • Morpheus

At first glance it seems a consensual list. Nothing out of the ordinary and, with the possible exception of “Mars”, all science fiction related. Next, we needed to decide what to do: follow the users’ top suggestion as we’ve done in the past? Have team members vote to decide the name? Or maybe pick a completely different codename for Kodi v19 – Kodi “Muppet”, maybe? With so many great suggestions, we decided a team vote was the way to go.

So we did, and “Matrix” won the vote. And then all hell broke loose. Some team members argued we should be less predictable and geeky, that we could use some out-of-the-box thinking, choose something completely different, etc. What ensued was truly horrific. Geeks cursed each other, pizza boxes got thrown, beer was spilled, perfectly-formatted CSS insults flew, moms’ basements destroyed all over the world. I mean, spilled beer! Utter madness.

Bottom line – with such a great list of suggestions and a team vote, we still couldn’t reach an agreement. And, for a while, we actually contemplated settling for Kodi “MultiPass”.

Nahh, just kidding! The users have spoken, the team has voted and, in the end, geekiness has won!

Kodi “Matrix” it is.

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Community Updates

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