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Hellboy Makers Want $270,000 in Piracy Damages from MKVCage OperatorErnesto, 05 Mar 10:09 PM A group of movie companies, operating under the parent

Hellboy Makers Want $270,000 in Piracy Damages from MKVCage Operator Ernesto, 05 Mar 10:09 PM A group of movie companies, operating under the parent company Millennium Funding, has broadened its anti-piracy efforts over the past year or so. Where the makers of films such as Hellboy, Hitman's Bodyguard, and Mechanic: Resurrection previously focused on individual pirates, they have upped the ante by targeting site owners as well. These efforts enjoyed some success including the shutdown of the popular app Cotomovies and settlements with torrent site YTS. While the latter remains online, this can't be said for another well-known torrent site, MKVCage. After the makers of the movie 'Hellboy' filed a lawsuit against MKVCage at a Hawaii District Court last summer, the site became unreachable. At the same time, the MKVCage uploader stopped pushing torrents to other sites as well. There was a brief comeback in October but soon after it went offline again. By effectively shutting down the site, Hellboy's makers (HB Productions) achieved part of their goal. However, in addition to stopping the infringing activity, they also want to see cash from the site's alleged operator, a Pakistani man named Muhammad Faizan. A few weeks go Hellboy's attorney Kerry Culpepper submitted an amended complaint to the court. This was notable as it mentioned Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde as a "notorious copyright thief" whose domain registration service Njal.la worked with MKVCage. While Sunde is not part of the lawsuit, the complaint was a precursor to a request for a default judgment, which was submitted to the court this week. As Faizan failed to respond to the complaint, Hellboy is asking for $270,902 in damages, as well as $4,410 in fees and costs. Hellboy doesn't ask for statutory damages, which are capped at $150,000 per infringed work. Instead, it calculated its losses based on the purchase price of the movie and the number of "instances of infringement" that were logged in torrent swarms. "The certain sum of $270,902.58 […] was calculated by multiplying the number of instances of infringement in the United States logged by Plaintiff's agent by the price for purchasing a copy of the motion picture in Hawaii," attorney Culpepper explains. The Hawaii court has yet to sign off on this request. While it's likely that Hellboy will come out as the winner of this case, it may be a hard for the company to recover the damages from a foreign defendant. — A copy of HB Productions' motion for a default judgment against Muhammad Faizan is available here (pdf). Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review. French ISPs Block Dozens of Pirate Sites Following Movie Industry Action Andy, 05 Mar 12:47 PM In common with at least 30 countries all around the world, France is becoming ever more receptive of site-blocking as a means to mitigate copyright infringement. France has been blocking 'pirate' sites for more than five years on behalf of the music and movie industries but last year academic publishers Elsevier and Springer Nature also got involved. As a result, a court in Paris ordered several of the largest French ISPs to block access to 57 domain names related to pirate scientific libraries LibGen and Sci-Hub. Later that year, France broke fresh ground again. Following a complaint from anti-piracy group SCPP, a court handed down the very first European order compelling local ISPs to block file-hosting services. Several weeks ago, Internet users in France reported fresh difficulties accessing many 'pirate' sites, mainly platforms that in some way offer access to streaming movies and TV shows. It now transpires that a new wave of blocking has hit the country following legal action initiated by movie industry groups. According to NextInpact (paywall), the National Federation of Film Publishers (FNEF), the Syndicate of Digital Video Editing (SEVN), the Union of Film Producers (UPC) and the National Cinema Center (CNC) teamed up back in October 2019 to request the blocking of dozens of pirate sites. Reports on the sites' activities were compiled by local anti-piracy group ALPA, which noted that torrent site YTS reportedly made available 11,676 movies without permission from rightsholders, "the vast majority of which are legally available in theaters, digital or online." TV torrent index EZTV was accused of offering 4,781 on the same basis. Streaming platform Allostream reportedly offered more than 1,300 movies and close to 900 TV shows. Overall, it was estimated that almost three-quarters of the content on the site was pirated. When compared to the other sites this was relatively low, however, with most others clocking up 85% unlicensed copyrighted content. This evidence was enough to convince the court. "[The rightsholders] have established with sufficient evidence that the disputed sites allow internet users, via the aforementioned paths, to download or continuously access works protected works via hypertext links, without having the authorization of the rights holders, which constitutes an infringement of copyright or neighboring rights," the court ruling reads, per NextInpact. In common with similar blocking applications around Europe, the French court considered not only the intellectual property rights of the movie companies but also the rights of the Internet service providers to do business and their customers' rights to send and receive information on the Internet. In the end, the rights of the content companies outweighed the interests of the other parties. As a result, the Paris court handed down an order on January 16, 2020, which compelled ISPs including Bouygues Télécom, Free, Orange, and SFR to prevent their users from accessing 36 platforms listed in the complaint. The vast majority appear to be streaming-related sites with the addition of torrent indexes YTS and EZTV.(full list below) While there are 36 headline sites, the court recognized that these platforms can operate from many more domains. In respect of TV torrent platform EZTV, for example, the site's .io, .it, .ch, .re and .ag domains are listed for blocking. For movie index YTS, three domains appear – yts.lt, .am and .ag. As a result, 79 domains are detailed overall in the order handed down by the Paris court, which is valid for 18 months. Despite the comprehensive attempt at covering all domains, it's likely the platforms will seek out new ones in response to the order. Should evasive action be taken by the sites, the complainants will have to obtain permission from a judge to update the list of domains. The full list of sites blocked by ISPs following the latest order is as follows: Allostream Annuaire-telechargement-ec Annuaire-telechargement-fr ATFUT DivxTOP DPSTREAM DPStreaming ETOPOP EZTV Filme-Streaming Filmcomplet FilmStreamingg1 FilmStreaming1FV Filmz FRStream Full-Serie HDS-Streaming HDSS LibertyVF N1Streaming Papystreaming Planet-Streaming1 Radego Serie-Streaming Seriecomplete SKStream Streamcomplet Streamdirect Streaming-VOSTFR StreamingDIVX1 Time2watch VKStreaming Voir-Films-Series VOSTFRSerie Wikiserie YTS The related court order can be found here (pdf) Drom: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review. ©2020 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company