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Amazon Joins Pirate Bay and FMovies on US Govt's "Notorious" Markets ListErnesto, 30 Apr 05:01 PM Every year the United States Trade Representative

Amazon Joins Pirate Bay and FMovies on US Govt's "Notorious" Markets List Ernesto, 30 Apr 05:01 PM Every year the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes an updated list of its "Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets." Drawing on input from copyright holders, the report includes a non-exclusive overview of sites and services that are believed to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting. The targets traditionally include popular piracy portals such as well known torrent sites, cyberlockers, and streaming portals. However, in recent years we have also seen domain registrars, hosting companies, and advertisers thrown into the mix. That is also the case this year. As expected, the USTR mentions cyberlockers such as 1fichier and Uploaded, streaming portals including FMovies, and the torrent sites RARBG, Rutracker, The Pirate Bay, and 1337x. The latter site is a new addition, of which there are a few. BestBuyIPTV, for example, which sells access to pirate IPTV services, and the streaming site Cimaclub.com, which is very popular in Saudi Arabia. The most surprising new additions are in another league, however. For the first time ever, the USTR has listed an advertising company as a notorious market. The report calls out Propeller Ads for its role in funding piracy websites and spreading malware. "Right holders identify Propeller Ads as providing significant advertising revenue for many popular torrent sites, cyberlockers, and other pirate websites. Propeller Ads has also been linked to serious 'malvertising' operations whereby malware is distributed through online advertisements," USTR writes. The malware angle plays an important role, as it's the USTR's special focus this year. The report cites a broad list of articles that highlight the malware risks on pirate sites. However, it also references a TorrentFreak article that describes some of these claims as overblown. It's a significant step for the USTR to add an advertising company to the report, but this is largely overshadowed by Amazon's surprise appearance. As a US-based company, Amazon.com can't be listed as a notorious market, because this list is exclusively meant for foreign actors. However, the USTR bypassed this restriction by calling out Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.in. The world's largest online retailer is being labeled a notorious market because it reportedly provides a platform for copyright infringers, counterfeiters to be precise. While that is true for many online retailers, Amazon's response to these infringers has apparently been below par. The USTR mentions that copyright holders complain that sellers are not vetted, that the removal process is burdensome, while the counterfeiting problem continues to grow. Amazon should change its policies to address these issues. "[Rightsholders] ask that Amazon take additional actions to address their concerns, including by collecting sufficient information from sellers to prevent repeat infringers from creating multiple storefronts on the platforms, making detailed information about the real seller of a product obvious to consumers and right holders," the USTR writes. Responding to the listing, an Amazon spokesperson characterized the company's inclusion as being part of a personal vendetta of the Trump administration against the company. "This purely political act is another example of the administration using the U.S. government to advance a personal vendetta against Amazon," the company informed Politico. Vendetta or not, Amazon was reported to the Government by the American Apparel & Footwear Association, which specifically asked for a listing of the foreign Amazon domains. Amazon is not the only online retailer that's listed. The US Government also sees the Chinese platform Taobao, India's Snapdeal, and the Indonesian store Tokopedia as notorious platforms. Below we have compiled a full list of all the online sites and services that are mentioned. Although some harsh language is used, the USTR stresses that its overview doesn't "make findings of legal violations" and that these are merely "illustrative." Most importantly, perhaps, the report is used to send a clear warning to the sites and companies involved, suggesting that it might be a good idea to implement some changes. That's not likely to impress sites such as The Pirate Bay, but others may be more susceptible. — A copy of the USTR's 2019 overview of notorious markets (published yesterday) is available here (pdf). The full list of highlighted online sites/service, including those focused on counterfeiting, is as follows: -1337x.to -1Fichier.com -Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.in -Bestbuyiptv.com -Bukalapak.com -Carousell.com -Chomikuj.pl -Cimaclub.com -DHgate.com -Dytt8.net -FlokiNET -Flvto.biz and 2Conv.com -FMovies.is -Hosting Concepts B.V. -MP3juices.cc -Mp3va.com -Mpgh.net -Newalbumreleases.net -Phimmoi.net -Pinduoduo.com -Private Layer Hosted Sites -Propellerads.com -Rapidgator.net -RARBG.to -Rutracker.org -Sci-Hub and LibGen -Seasonvar.ru -Shopee.sg -Snapdeal.com -Taobao.com -Thepiratebay.org -Tokopedia.com -Torrentz2.eu -Turbobit.net -Uploaded.net -Uptobox.com -VK.com -Warmane.com From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also have an annual VPN review. German Anti-Piracy Outfit GVU Files For Bankruptcy, Despite Many Historic Victories Andy, 30 Apr 09:08 AM While the vast majority of movie and TV show piracy occurs on the Internet today, back in the mid 1980s it was VHS and Betamax tapes causing headaches for copyright holders. Desperate to rein in what then-MPAA head Jack Valenti described as the Bostom Strangler of the movie industry, the video cassette recorder (VCR) found rivals on both sides of the Atlantic. In Germany, that role fell to Gesellschaft zur Verfolgung von Urheberrechtsverletzungen (GVU), the Society for the Prosecution of Copyright Infringement. Between 1985 and 2010, GVU grew to become a major anti-piracy force in Germany. Boasting around 50 members, including the major Hollywood studios, music industry groups and video games companies, GVU's reputation was certainly on the up. In 2011 it played its biggest role yet as a key player in the Europe-wide raids targeting Kino.to, one of Germany's most infamous piracy portals, and the prosecutions that followed. Since then GVU has been involved in various major actions, including against the alleged operators of Kinox.to, a site that stepped in following the demise of Kino.to. In 2014, GVU upped the ante again with an investigation and subsequent anti-piracy operation targeting pirate linking forum Boerse.bz during which a reported 121 homes were raided. Even beyond then, GVU kept its foot on the gas. In 2019 and following a GVU-led investigation, two men were jailed for a total of 66 months for running a Usenet portal and during the same year, the anti-piracy group was the driving force behind the operation that took down Share-Online.biz, Germany's largest file-hosting site. In the background, however, all was not well at GVU. In 2018, the MPAA (now MPA) withdrew its significant funding from GVU. The move wasn't entirely unexpected as two years earlier the Hollywood group had withdrawn funding for the UK's Federation Against Copyright Theft, instead choosing to pursue its copyright-infringing adversaries via the nascent Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment. Danger signs became more obvious at the end of March 2020 when German news outlet Tarnkappe received news from several sources that GVU was in trouble and might even cease to exist in the near future. Despite repeated attempts, GVU had effectively become unreachable and this week, the anti-piracy group's fate was confirmed. According to a posting on the Berlin Consumer Protection forum, an insolvent GVU filed for bankruptcy at the start of April, appointing a Berlin lawyer as an insolvency administrator. While the loss of the Hollywood studios as major financiers of GVU would've come as an extreme blow to the organization, Tarnkappe speculates that GVU's focus on criminal cases was a key factor in rendering the outfit financially unviable. While the cases pursued by GVU were sometimes dramatic, even historically so, they always took a long time to come to fruition and with no enforcement in the civil realm to bring in settlements and similar types of revenue, the writing was already on the wall when a more powerful and versatile ACE began to make waves all over the Internet. Indeed, on what would've been GVU's exclusive stomping ground, ACE recently shut down several German-based piracy giants including Openload, Steamango and VeryStream, all with civil settlements that fell outside of GVU's remit. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. 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