When Internet users download or share copyrighted content online, particularly using BitTorrent, they should presume that copyright holders are watching.

Transfers that take place without the protection of a VPN, for example, are easily traced back to ISPs, who have the ability to link that activity to a specific account, when asked to do so.

In many cases this results in an ISP forwarding an infringement notice to a customer on behalf of a rightsholder, to warn that an account may have been used to breach copyright. However, over the years some rightsholders (often referred to as ‘copyright trolls’) have taken things a step further by including demands for cash in their notices.

In Canada, where a so-called ‘notice-and-notice‘ system is in place, this wasn’t well received by the government. So much so that during December 2018, the law was amended to prohibit companies from sending notices containing the following:

(a) an offer to settle the claimed infringement;
(b) a request or demand, made in relation to the claimed infringement, for payment or for personal information;
(c) a reference, including by way of hyperlink, to such an offer, request or demand;

“Such notices are deemed to be invalid under the regime,” government advice reads.

Unfortunately, however, copyright holders are ignoring the new law.

A notice sent by Eastlink, an ISP headquartered in Halifax, Canada, to one of its customers and reviewed by TorrentFreak, reveals a copyright holder breaching every single rule detailed above.

Filed by anti-piracy outfit Digital Millennium Forensics, on behalf of Elevation Pictures, the notice claims infringement of the 2015 movie ‘Into The Forest’. It lists the time and date of the alleged infringement (in January 2019) along with the alleged infringer’s IP address.

What follows is a wall of text, citing various laws and “recent amendments to the Copyright Act, which came into force on November 7, 2012” outlining the rights of Elevation Pictures and warning that the company could seek to unmask the subscriber through the courts, “should this matter remain unresolved.”

Of course, like all such companies, Elevation Pictures doesn’t want to take the matter to court. What it really wants is money.

“In order to help avoid legal action, we have been authorized by Elevation Pictures to offer you a settlement opportunity that we believe is reasonable for everyone,” Digital Millennium Forensics writes.

That offer, of course, clearly breaches rules (a) and (b) detailed above but the notice soon creeps ever closer to a full house by breaching rule (c) too.

“To access the settlement offer for this claim, you have until [a date three weeks after the notice was issued (redacted for privacy reasons)] to visit the provided URL and complete the settlement instructions,” it reads.

TorrentFreak obtained written permission from the Eastlink customer to access the provided URL. Below is a redacted version of the offer to settle, which is clearly in breach of the new government guidelines. (Note: TF has redacted the dollar amount too since it is very specific indeed and may identify the subscriber. However, we can confirm it is between CAD$250 and CAD$300)

It’s no surprise that both copyright holders and anti-piracy companies are failing to respect the terms of the new regime. There are no penalties for sending non-compliant notices, so there’s no incentive for copyright holders and their agents to follow the rules.

Furthermore, while there is no obligation on ISPs to forward non-compliant notices, that is clearly happening at Eastlink. The ISP does inform its customers that any notices falling foul of the rules (a), (b), or (c) are invalid, but sends them anyway.

This is problematic. Not only will some people feel pressured to pay up whether they’re the infringer or not, the notice seen by TF contains references to the “Copyright Act, R.SC, 1985″, and “(i) the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, (ii) the Universal Copyright Convention, (iii) bilateral treaties with other countries including Canada, and/or those copyright laws and regulations as cited herein.”

Legal jargon such as that highlighted above is not easily understood by the layman and can be difficult to comprehend without professional legal advice. It’s not unexpected, therefore, to find recipients who are overwhelmed by notice that simply shouldn’t have been sent.

TorrentFreak wrote to Eastlink asking why clearly abusive notices are being forwarded to its customers. Jill Laing, Head of Public Relations & Media, informed us that the volume of notices being received presents a problem for Internet service providers.

“The federally regulated Notice and Notice regime has resulted in ISPs receiving millions of such notices a year, which presents significant challenges for operators to filter,” Laing said.

“While we are compliant with the federal government’s legislation, we have and continue to provide clear communication to our customers that these specific types of notices are not valid. We fully support and encourage government and industry initiatives that would prevent copyright holders from sending invalid notices such as these.”

While it can indeed be reasonably argued that the government’s recent amendments go some way to dealing with the issue, the loopholes are clear to see and, as predicted, are now being abused by rightsholders.

Late last year, a coalition including Canada’s major ISPs called on the Government to create a standard for copyright infringement notices. This would make it easier to handle the massive volume of notices. In addition, the companies asked for a meaningful deterrent to stop those who breach the rules.

TF asked Eastlink if it had ever told complainants that sending abusive notices is unacceptable. We also asked whether the company would consider not sending abusive notices to customers in the future. We received no response to either question.

With the loopholes in the new rules clearly being exploited, notice recipients should be aware that the government offers the following advice:

“The Notice and Notice regime does not impose any obligations on a subscriber who receives a notice, and it does not require the subscriber to contact the copyright owner or the intermediary.”

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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Activists associated and allied with the many variants of the Pirate Party worldwide are regularly painted as hardcore Internet pirates.

It’s not hard to see why given the Party’s history, but that’s certainly not the full picture.

Today’s Pirates, of which there are many flavors around the world, are just as likely to lobby in favor of transparency, privacy, free speech and anti-corruption, as they copyright reform and free sharing of information.

But while the former topics are now the focus for many, others are still very much interested in the latter. Take Travis McCrea, the former leader of the Pirate Party of Canada, for example.

Back in 2011, when McCrea was just 21-years-old, he launched Tormovies, a now-defunct torrent site designed for the sharing of movies. Speaking with TorrentFreak at the time, McCrea said he had zero intentions of backing down in the face of opposition. It now transpires that eight years later, he has similar things on his mind.

One of McCrea’s latest ventures (he describes himself as an entrepreneur) is the eBook site, Ebook.bike. Unlike most official eBook platforms offering premium content, everything is without cost to the user. Simply by navigating to the site, choosing a title, and selecting a convenient format, books are downloaded for free with zero DRM.

However, it seems pretty clear that McCrea doesn’t have licenses for the content being offered. Perhaps that’s why the site, according to SimilarWeb stats, is currently receiving more than a million visits per month. While this is great news for McCrea (who previously told us he has both American and Canadian passports), authors and publishers everywhere are extremely unhappy.

Opposition to the site (and its predecessor TUEBL) has been sizzling away for some time now but during the past few days, more and more authors have been attacking McCrea on Twitter over what they see as blatant copyright infringement.

Their position is that the site has no authority to publish their work. McCrea’s position is that his site is an upload platform – much like YouTube – which is protected under the terms of the DMCA. If they want content taken down, they should file a DMCA takedown notice, he says.

At the same time, however, McCrea – in his own inimitable style – admits he has been deliberately provocative on Twitter in response to complaints, something that hasn’t gone down well with authors who’ve found their work uploaded to his site.

McCrea isn’t shy to admit why he’s been behaving the way he has on social media. In what appears to be an honest post, he says that it’s been all about driving traffic to his site.

“Lot’s [sic] of anger, and I’ll admit I am responsible for fanning the flames. The honest truth is trolling you gets you to post links of my website to your fans and we have hit 10K additional unique visitors this week… however, I am realizing I should be more compassionate,” he wrote.

If attention is what McCrea wanted, he’s been successful. An article published on The Bookseller has Joanne Harris (MBE), the author of the award-winning novel Chocolat, calling for publishers to relegate McCrea’s site to history.

“We need to get the site taken down and publishers need to do something about it. It’s certainly possible to do,” Harris said.

“The music industry has done this successfully for many years. But big publishers are sometimes not very quick to pick up on new developments. They need to learn from the film industry and the music industry and be very muscular.

“People say pirate sites are like mushrooms, you take one down then one pops up somewhere else. I can’t help thinking there actually needs to be a court case and a precedent set.”

The author’s stance is receiving plenty of support. The piece indicates that the Society of Authors has filed a copyright infringement complaint with McCrea’s webhost, with publisher Hachette UK refusing to comment on “specific legal actions” but promising to continue its fight against book piracy.

But despite McCrea’s previous connections with the Pirate Party of Canada, he claims his site is in place to help – not hinder – authors.

“Imagine a world where authors can make money by giving digital versions of their books away to their readers, and readers could explore all sorts of books that they may have never even considered reading before. In a nutshell, this is Ebook Bike, the Ultimate Ebook Library,” the site’s promo page reads.

McCrea says his platform is based on the idea that when people are favorably exposed to authors’ work, they go on to become good customers, buying physical copies of books while promoting the same content to friends and family. He also says that his platform has more to offer.

“We want to give authors even more though, so we provide analytics to authors who want them so they can learn where their users are coming from and other useful information which they can then use to target book sales, advertise, and market themselves more effectively. We also have user feedback, so authors can learn what people like and don’t like in their writing,” he adds.

McCrea claims that his site has “1,500+ confirmed partner authors” who are “excited about bringing change to the way people consume their books.”

While that may very well be the case, those authors are not currently making themselves known on social media, or perhaps they’re simply being drowned out by the opposition. McCrea did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

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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Two years ago, Strike 3 Holdings had never filed a single lawsuit, but today the company has thousands of cases on its record. 

These lawsuits were filed across the United States, targeting people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright infringing content via BitTorrent. 

In the case of Strike 3, this refers to adult videos which are made available via the Blacked, Tushy, and Vixen websites. The company’s legal campaign has kept the courts busy and contributed to the record-breaking breaking number of piracy lawsuits that were filed last year. 

Many of these cases were handled by veteran lawyer Lincoln Bandlow, who’s a partner at the law firm Fox Rothschild LLP.  While the attorney, who’s also a visiting professor at USC, has plenty of experience it turns out that handling dozens of cases at once can be quite a challenge.

Last November, Bandlow was slapped on the wrist for failing to meet the court’s deadlines. The attorney explained that this was due to calendaring issues or incorrectly reading the court’s orders. He apologized and promised to take steps to prevent similar issues going forward. 

However, it didn’t take long before more deadlines were missed in two dozen cases at the Eastern District of California. This time the attorney forgot to submit status reports. Again, the court requested clarification, asking Bandlow why he shouldn’t be sanctioned for failing to follow its orders.

In this reply, Bandlow attributed the failures to a variety of reasons including technical issues such as an overactive email spam filter, as well as a lack of personnel over the holidays. The attorney also highlighted his track record by noting that he was never sanctioned in 25 years.

This reply didn’t convince the court. In an order issued last week, US Magistrate Judge Carolyn Delaney wrote that Bandlow’s excuses and explanations are unavailing, especially since he was already reprimanded just weeks earlier. 

The technological ‘issues’ are no excuse, the Judge writes, noting that people were already practicing law long before there were computers. 

“The practice of law predates the computer. Computer and technological problems do not justify failing to comply with court-ordered deadlines, especially under the specific circumstances of these cases. 

“Once Mr. Bandlow became aware of his technological problems, he could have—and indeed should have—manually calendared and tracked all deadlines,” Judge Delaney adds.

In addition, Strike 3’s attorney’s explanation that 19 out of the 24 cases with missed deadlines were the result of inadequate staffing, is both “unacceptable and inexcusable”. Especially since Bandlow explained that his law firm Fox Rothschild LLP employs 900 lawyers.

Taken together, the Magistrate Judge concludes that the attorney’s actions are not mere mistakes, but willful disobedience of the court.

“After he was reprimanded for failing to meet deadlines in related matters, Mr. Bandlow was on notice of problems with his calendaring procedure and he was explicitly warned to make sure that he properly calendared all future deadlines.

“Instead of doing so, Mr. Bandlow failed to comply with court-ordered deadlines twenty-four additional times. Mr. Bandlow’s conduct constitutes willful disobedience of court orders, which is tantamount to bad faith,” Judge Delaney notes. 

So, after 25 years of practicing law Bandlow now has his first sanction.  

The good news for the attorney is that the “bad faith” is not the worst of its kind. Also, the court believes that his apology is sincere. Nonetheless, this type of conduct is unacceptable, especially for an attorney with over twenty-five years of experience. As such, a $750 sanction is warranted.

While this amount can easily be recouped via a single settlement against an alleged pirate, it’s not good for one’s reputation. In any case, Law.com quotes the attorney saying that the $750 will be paid “immediately.”

Whether the massive volume of cases has anything to do with it is unclear. It wouldn’t be a surprise. However, Bandlow is not slowing down much in the new year and has already filed more than 100 new cases on behalf of Strike 3 in 2019.

—

A copy of Magistrate Judge Carolyn Delaney’s order is available here (pdf).

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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In recent years copyright holders, with help from advertisers and other key players, have worked hard to cut off revenue streams to pirate sites.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group, an anti-piracy certification program operated by giants including Google, Facebook, Disney, and Warner, has been very active on this front, for example.

The basic idea behind this “follow the money” approach is that once the revenue sources of pirate sites dry up, their operators will eventually throw in the towel. While that may work on paper, DMCAForce appears to take the direct opposite approach.

The anti-piracy outfit, which works with a wide variety of clients including Dreamroom Productions, Liberty Media, and Udemy, is actively seeking cooperation with pirate sites.

Over the past several years, the company has regularly asked torrent sites, hosting platforms, and streaming services to remove content, and still does. But, in an email to the prominent torrent site LimeTorrents, DMCAForce also included a “revenue sharing” opportunity.

“DMCAForce recently launched a new way for File Sharing sites to work with content creators. Where you as the file sharing site can distribute their content for free, but in exchange provide the advertising space around the product,” the email reads.

“In the case of direct products, we can provide you affiliate tracking links, where instead of REMOVING the content, you can KEEP the content up, and we direct that user together back to the product on a commission basis,” the company adds.

The anti-piracy outfit explains that it has already made deals in the adult space. This worked well, with one of the producers currently generating $15,000 in advertising revenue per month from a single site.

“This has encouraged content creators to keep their content up and build a better relationship,” DMCAForce notes.

The operator of LimeTorrents, who’s not interested in the deal, was asked to reply within three days to find out how it can monetize the content. If not, the anti-piracy outfit said it would proceed with a regular DMCA takedown notice.

The revenue sharing program is fairly new. In addition to reaching out to file-sharing sites, DMCAForce also invites its clients to join the program.

“If you have a product you are selling, and want to ask these pirate sites to put advertising around your stolen content or replace the stolen content with linkbacks, we offer that as well,” DMCAForce informed its clients recently.

It’s quite unique for an anti-piracy company to offer a monetization option to what it sees as pirate sites. We, therefore, would love to find out more about the details of the program. Unfortunately, however, DMCAForce did not immediately reply to our request for comment.

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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Like the majority of commercial broadcasters around the world, Sky has genuine competitors, eager to capture the company’s market share.

However, with the rise of unlicensed IPTV providers, which are offered either directly or through a staggering number of re-sellers and affiliates, Sky also faces huge competition from pirates. It is not difficult to see why.

While Sky subscriptions start at somewhat affordable prices, enhanced packages that involve premium movies and sports can escalate to sums that many households simply cannot muster. Pirate IPTV services, on the other hand, are cheap and offer channel packages that eclipse all legal offers.

To that end, companies like Sky are keen to wipe such platforms from the map but there’s currently a huge deficiency in what can actually be done to take them down. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop Sky from trying to make a dent in the volume of eyes landing on their websites.

During the past few weeks, Sky has been sending takedown notices to Google targeting many thousands of URLs that make up the websites of pirate IPTV providers servicing customers everywhere.

A single notice here, for example, attempts wipe 500 URLs belonging to EpicIPTV, Enjoy-IPTV, TalentIPTV, BestIPTV, and many, many more. Another, sent just this week, targets the websites of a dozen more, systematically attempting to delist every URL. A third, sent at the beginning of February, attempts to remove 500 pages belonging to just a single provider.

The list of notices (mainly sent by Sky in Italy, followed by Sky UK) goes on and on (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) but most have something in common. Despite the fact that a regular DMCA takedown notice should list URLs containing infringing content, the vast majority of those sent by Sky do not.

Instead, they target the sales portals, information databases, FAQs, and other ancillary pages that support infringing activity carried out elsewhere. None of the services targeted appear to offer pirate streams from the websites listed in the takedown notices, meaning that from a strictly technical perspective, none should be removed by Google.

While Google does indeed reject some of the notices for reasons unknown, many have been removed as requested. All that being said, it’s somewhat difficult to criticize Sky for not playing strictly by the rules when so many illicit services aren’t playing by them in any capacity.

So, as things stand, it looks like the strategy of targeting providers’ web presences will continue, since it often removes them from view and, as this forum post shows, can cause significant irritation and loss of profits for some people (re)selling IPTV services.

That being said, this removal of web presences does little to stop the underlying IPTV services from continuing, business as usual. That makes this a game of whac-a-mole that will never end, unless the underlying services are dealt with.

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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