Like most regions in the world, Russia has an online piracy problem, with millions of citizens regularly using pirate sites to access free movies, music, TV shows, and other content.

Russia is already a world-leader when it comes to site-blocking but if new proposals are written into law, life for pirate site owners could become much more difficult.

Back in 2018 the Ministry of Culture began mulling amendments to copyright law and this week it became clear that it has a tightened site-blocking regime in mind, along with other significant changes.

Local publication RBC had the opportunity to review the draft, which includes measures for the blocking of sites where pirated content is made available, without rightsholders having to go to court as they do now.

Instead, they will be able to go directly to the web hosts of sites making content available without a license, with instructions to block platforms, if they are unresponsive to takedown demands.

Furthermore, if the amendments are approved, owners of platforms where pirated content is made available will be compelled to sacrifice their anonymity. All such sites will be required to publish the names, addresses, and other contact details of their owners.

It isn’t yet clear how this requirement will be enforced, or how contact details will be checked for authenticity. However, it seems unlikely that company names and/or home addresses (in the case of individuals) will be willingly given up, particularly when site operators are already breaking the law by knowingly hosting or linking to infringing content.

The draft amendments were agreed by the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor, and the Ministry of Economic Development, after consultation with entertainment industry companies, RBC reports.

News of the amendments arrives just days after authorities held talks with major rightsholders, hosting platforms, and search providers, with the aim of writing the terms of an anti-piracy memorandum into law.

The currently voluntary agreement aims to create an ever-growing centralized database of infringing content to enable hosting platforms and search engines to take down media and links both quickly and efficiently.

According to comments made this week by Sergey Selyanov, head of the Association of Film and Television Producers, the memorandum is working as planned.

Finally, local search giant Yandex has reportedly developed and launched its own set of tools for detecting pirated content online. Using information being made available in the recently-established piracy database, Yandex is using machine learning to “clean up” its own search results. The company is currently declining to offer any additional details.

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YouTube downloaders, often called stream rippers, are seen as the largest piracy threat to the music industry. As such, record labels are doing their best to shut them down.

In 2017, YouTube-MP3, the world’s largest ripping site at the time, went offline after being sued, and several others folded in response to increased legal uncertainty.

Last summer, a group of major record labels, helped by the RIAA, targeted two of the larger stream-rippers that remained online. FLVTO.biz, 2conv.com, and their owner Tofig Kurbanov were sued for copyright infringement at a Virginia District Court.

While the record labels hoped for an easy win, their lawsuit didn’t go as planned. Kurbanov, who resides in Russia, fought back with a motion to dismiss. He argued that the Virginia federal court lacked jurisdiction over a site that’s managed from abroad.

The Court agreed with this assessment. In a verdict released this January, US District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed the case. The Court carefully reviewed how the sites operate and found no evidence that they purposefully targeted either Virginia or the United States.

“As the Websites are semi-interactive, the interactions with the users are non-commercial, and there were no other acts by the Defendant that would demonstrate purposeful targeting, the Court finds that Defendant did not purposefully avail himself of the benefits and protections of either Virginia or the United States,” the verdict read.

The record labels and the RIAA were disappointed with the outcome and swiftly announced they would appeal. This week they submitted their opening brief which argues that the District Court came to the wrong conclusion.

The record labels state that the site owner’s contacts with Virginia or with the United States are well established. The stream ripping sites transmit hundreds of millions of infringing files to U.S. devices and are monetized by ads which are partly targeted at U.S visitors.

If the current verdict stands, the companies fear that Internet pirates will have “carte blanche” to facilitate copyright infringement, as they will remain out of the reach of U.S. courts.

“The result of the district court’s ruling is that the only court in which U.S. record companies can bring suit to challenge millions of instances of U.S.-based online piracy is in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, where Kurbanov purportedly resides,” the labels write. 

“The district court’s decision thus gives carte blanche to Internet pirates to set up shop outside of the United States, safe in the knowledge that they are  effectively immune from the reach of U.S. courts seeking to vindicate the rights of U.S. plaintiffs for violations of U.S. copyright law, even as they cater to U.S. users.”

In their opening brief the labels reiterate that FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com have millions of US-based users, including hundreds of thousands in Virginia. The interactions with these users are repeated and interactive, they say.

The District Court previously ruled that the number of U.S. users is irrelevant, as the sites’ contacts with these people are “unilateral” and “non-commercial. The site does generate income from US users through ads, but that was not enough to be seen as a commercial contract.

The labels clearly disagree with this conclusion, calling it absurd.

“To isolate the content from the revenue generating advertisements as the district court did here would be to say that Google, Facebook, Snapchat, and countless other Internet companies’ relationships with their users is non-commercial. That position is absurd,” they counter.

The labels further point out that the sites used a U.S.-based advertising firm, U.S.-based domain registrars and, until recently, U.S.-based servers. In addition, the site owner registered a DMCA agent with the U.S. Copyright Office, which isn’t typical for a site that doesn’t target the U.S.

“Appellee has, for example, registered a DMCA agent with the U.S. Copyright Office—the only purpose of which is to seek to qualify for the DMCA’s safe harbor defense to claims of copyright infringement in U.S. courts,” the brief reads.

Based on these arguments the labels ask the appeals court to overturn the District Court’s verdict. Or, as an alternative, vacate it to allow for jurisdictional discovery.

Tofig Kurbanov and his legal team have yet to respond to the accusations. They don’t believe that U.S. courts have jurisdiction over the sites and its owner, and will likely make that clear during the weeks to come.

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

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Distribution and uploading of copyrighted content without an appropriate license is illegal in most countries of the world.

It is seen as the most damaging form of infringement, largely on the basis that this fuels illicit downloading.

Straightforward downloading of movies, TV shows and other unlicensed content is rarely, if ever, policed, even when such activity is proscribed under law, as is the case in the EU following rulings from the European Court of Justice.

In Japan, however, new legislation under consideration by the government would’ve taken things to a whole new level. Criminalizing the unlicensed downloading of all content – including the pasting of lyrics or taking of screenshots – struck fear into Internet users and experts alike.

With serious punishments under consideration (up to two years in prison and fines of two million yen – US$18,000), serious alarm bells were sounded, with academics coming out strongly in opposition. Now, however, the government has become sufficiently unsettled and has shelved the proposals altogether.

The planned copyright amendments were set to be submitted to the Diet on March 8, 2019 but Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP or Jimintō) put the brakes on the proposals the day before they were due to be submitted.

Early this morning the Japanese government took the decision not to submit the bill to the Diet at all, after executives failed to approve it.

“We have yet to eliminate the worries of both copyright holders and [internet] users,” said House of Councillors lawmaker Masaaki Akaike, as cited by Mainichi. “We should work on it anew.”

The proposals also contained measures to deal with ‘pirate’ indexing sites (known locally as “leech sites”) which don’t host any infringing content themselves but provide hyperlinks to content hosted elsewhere. Estimates suggest that around 200 such sites exist in Japan.

The aim was to criminalize the act of knowingly linking to copyrighted content, or linking to the same when site operators should “reasonably be expected” to know that the content is infringing. Unlike the anti-downloading provisions, plans to criminalize site operators with sentences of up to five years in prison were met with little opposition.

If approved, the revisions to Japan’s copyright law were set to take effect on January 1, 2020, but it’s now unclear whether that target will be met.

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With Bollywood, India has a thriving movie industry that’s worth billions of dollars and is known all around the world.

At the same time, the country also has one of the highest piracy rates, which is seen as a major threat to the industry.

Pirated copies of films swiftly make their way onto the Internet and are sold on physical media around the country. In many cases, these leaks occur just hours after a movie premieres in theaters.

In an effort to curb this activity, India’s Government recently amended the Cinematograph Act, making it illegal to record or transmit movies and movie audio without permission. Those who do, face a three-year prison sentence.

As with any law, the effectiveness depends on implementation and enforcement. This is something that has yet to be fleshed out and various prominent voices from the local movie industry are calling on the Government to take strict action.

“Everything boils down to implementation. Police feel piracy is not a priority. If the government can ensure plastic ban overnight, why not show the same vigor in this issue,” movie producer G. Dhananjayan told the Times of India.

The local newspaper ran an article last week on the new anti-piracy measures. Aside from the calls for stricter enforcement, the publication also delivered a bombshell. Apparently, movie piracy is frequently facilitated by the industry itself.

According to a Tamil cinema DVD seller, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, piracy is mostly an inside job. The source explains that movie companies are leaking each other’s films, as a competitive move.

“People from rival production companies or those from the creative department secretly release the movie online or circulate it as DVDs to hit the collection at the box office,” the source said.

This sounds like a Wild West story, but the allegations don’t stop there. Another source said that the local censor board and distribution houses are also on the piracy bandwagon.

“Another industry source said insiders in the censor board and distribution houses sell these copies for up to `5 lakh. The copies are uploaded on private portals that have dedicated passkeys,” the Times of India reports.

“For a few lakhs of rupees, these copies can be downloaded and replicated on DVD,” the newspaper adds.

When it comes to recording video and audio at movie theaters, it is believed that some movie industry insiders work in tandem with theater owners to leak high profile films. As a result, some films appear online just hours after their official premiere.

At TorrentFreak, we can’t verify any of these claims independently, but it does put the various arrests of Indian movie theater owners in a different perspective.

Indian police have apprehended several theater owners in the past. Late last year the Indian Film Exhibitors Association called on the Madras High Court to put a halt to these overbroad crackdowns, stressing that the arrestees were innocent.

However, based on the sources referenced by the Times of India, there are some rogue cinema owners out there.

All in all, it is clear that Bollywood’s piracy problem is rather complex, and that shutting down a few websites is certainly not going to cut it. The new anti-camming law may help, but if the industry itself is corrupted, there’s still a long way to go.

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Once upon a time, people with an interest in music production could get into the game cheaply.

Back in the 80s, Amiga users (like myself) could mess around with tools like SoundTracker or OctaMED for hours, producing music at home that could be potentially fit for human consumption, if it wasn’t for a lack of talent.

Later, software like Cubase began to gain traction, since it was often bundled (in cut down form) with PC sound cards. But, of course, times moved on and in the short years that followed an avalanche of amazing tools became available; Fruity Loops and Reason, to name just two.

These days users are spoiled for choice but great production software in the 2010s often has great prices attached too, meaning that many turn to torrent and similar sites for their fix. Anyone who’s visited a back street studio will also let you know – they are often rammed with pirate software.

While controversial, pirate software gets many people into the music production business and, in common with those familiar with Windows or Adobe products, also trains people to stick with products when they can afford to pay. Some, however, forget to clean up the mess after.

Earlier this month, K-pop star Jeon So-yeon (Soyeon) learned that lesson the hard way. The rapper, singer, songwriter and general all-round star is signed to Cube Entertainment, which had put out a video on the label’s official YouTube channel (now deleted) which included a snapshot of her desktop. That turned out to be a big mistake.

Not only is Soyeon’s workspace the most cluttered in human history, eagle-eyed fans noticed that the star had some interesting additions that should’ve been kept away from the public eye.

The revelations in the video left the star having to explain why she had cracked copies of Native Instruments’ Komplete, Kontakt, and several other pieces of pirated production software on her desktop.

Like many before her, Soyeon’s excuse was that she made mistakes with pirated software before she became famous a few years ago, and forgot to clean up the free stuff she’d trained herself with.

“First of all, I would like to sincerely apologize for causing any worry due to such disgraceful news,” she said, as translated by Asian Junkie.

“I remember using many different programs back when I first started learning how to compose music. For reasons that I neither deleted nor organized these files in the past, and for not even having consciously thought about it, I sincerely reflect back on it with remorse.”

While it’s certainly not unusual for starting musicians to learn their trade using pirated software, it becomes a bigger issue when they use that software to sell records. Soyeon, however, insists that wasn’t the case with her.

“Ever since I began in earnest to produce music, up to the recent songs that I have made, I have only used official programs, but I apologize once again for worrying you with an ignorance of copyright issues as a creator, no matter what the circumstances. From now on, I will study and act more carefully, never to use or own any kind of illegal file in the future.”

In an apology, Cube Entertainment sang the same tune.

“The program in question were downloaded when Soyeon was a trainee and was just beginning to learn about composing music in the process of her using various programs and learning about them. The program was never used again after Soyeon began seriously committing to musical composition,” the company said.

“We have confirmed that all of Soyeon’s compositions that have been released till now were created with a licensed Logic program, instruments we own, as well as Splice, which requires a monthly subscription fee.”

Fans don’t seem to be too concerned about Soyeon’s use of pirated software but of course the news will be an embarrassment to her label which will have piracy issues of its own. That said, she certainly isn’t the first artist to get caught using pirated production tools.

Stars including Kanye West, Avicii (rip) and Martin Garrix have all been caught using less-than-licensed software in the past. They certainly won’t be the last.

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