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Government-Backed Anti-Piracy Deal Aims to Disrupt Pirate Site Cash FlowErnesto Van der Sar, 25 Oct 10:07 PM In recent years, various copyright hold

Government-Backed Anti-Piracy Deal Aims to Disrupt Pirate Site Cash Flow Ernesto Van der Sar, 25 Oct 10:07 PM In recent years, various copyright holder groups have advocated for initiatives to cut off funding to pirate sites. This "follow-the-money" approach is complex as it requires voluntary cooperation from various third-party services such as payment processors, hosting companies, advertisers, and search engines. In Denmark, local anti-piracy group Rights Alliance has been working on this issue for several years and this week revealed a breakthrough. Together with the Danish Ministry of Culture, the group announced a new anti-piracy deal. Anti-Piracy Codex Agreement The Codex agreement, which is signed by several of Denmark's biggest media agencies, advertising outfits, payment processors, and industry organizations, expands an earlier initiative that was limited to the advertising industry. All parties that signed the deal have agreed to ban pirate sites to the best of their abilities. Ideally, this should lead to fewer ads on pirate sites and decreased payment processing options, among other things. How this is achieved will vary from company to company. The agreement is the result of an initiative by the Ministry of Culture which started in 2013. Through a government-led series of hearings, various key players were brought together, which ultimately led to the cooperation that was announced this week. Danish Minister of Culture Joy Mogensen is happy with the progress made and hopes it will help put a dent in the ongoing piracy problem. "It is important that we stand together to ensure that advertisements for legal services and products do not inadvertently end up on illegal websites and in this way indirectly help to finance illegal activities. That is why I am pleased that there is so much support for the Codex agreement from the key digital players," Mogensen says. Dedicated Anti-Piracy Measures All signatories agreed to a set of anti-piracy obligations. For example, they will distance themselves from pirate services, implement concrete anti-piracy policies, and block known pirate sites wherever possible. From the Codex Agreement The known pirate sites are placed on a "cooperation list" which is intentionally kept secret. In fact, signees are specifically forbidden from sharing it with outsiders. Unpublished Blocklist "As a rule, the Cooperation List is not public in its entirety and is only available to those companies who cooperate on the list so that sites with illegal content are not highlighted unnecessarily," the agreement reads. TorrentFreak reached out to the Danish Rights Alliance to get some more context. Unsurprisingly, the group couldn't share the full blocklist but director Maria Fredenslund informed us that it contains roughly 350 URLs including Thepiratebay.org, Popcorn-Time.is, as well as the defunct Grooveshark.com site. These URLs are based on Danish site-blocking orders, issued by local courts. However, the Rights Alliance would like to see it expanded in the future. For example, sites can be added based on set criteria, similar to WIPO's piracy blacklist. "This list is based on dynamic court orders, however, we believe that it is essential to expand with sites which are illegal based on approved criteria – inspired by WIPO's list," Fredenslund tells TorrentFreak. Will It Work? Time will tell how effective the Codex agreement will be. TorrentFreak reached out to two signees, media and advertising agency OMD and the publishing industry organization Danske Medier, but both said they have no way to directly measure the effects. Allan Sørensen from Danske Medier says that individual publishers always had the option to block campaigns from illegal sites. However, that wasn't always easy, as not all ads are separately approved and it's not always clear what a pirate site is. With the Codex blocklist, this will be easier. "It's safe to say that a lot fewer banners from copyright-infringing sites are being shown as a consequence of this initiative and it has greatly improved the efforts needed from publishers and the legal certainty in the matter," Sørensen says. While that is certainly true, there are always advertising companies who won't shy away from pirate sites. Some even seek them out specifically. And on the payment side, some cryptocurrencies are impossible to cut off. More information on the Codex agreement and other signatories, which also include Microsoft News, Adform, Jubii Media Group, Eurocard, and Xandr, is available on the Rights Alliance website. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ACE Obtains DMCA Subpoena to Unmask Operators of Major Pirate Sites Andy Maxwell, 25 Oct 12:52 PM After launching more than three years ago in June 2017, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) quickly became the most powerful anti-piracy coalition on the planet. Focused on reducing infringement of movies and TV shows, ACE is constantly involved in actions against torrent sites, streaming platforms, infringing apps, file-hosting sites, and everything in between. Rarely a month or even a week goes by without fresh ACE action being uncovered and this week is no exception. As reported last Sunday, ACE is currently in possession of a DMCA subpoena which compels Tonic, the official registry of the .to top-level domain, to hand over all information it holds on S.to, one of the most-visited pirate streaming portals targeting the German market. A second subpoena, recently obtained by ACE, seeks to obtain even more piracy-fighting information. DMCA Subpoena Targets Official Registry of .TO Domains The subpoena application was filed in a California district court by Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association (MPA), on behalf of the members of ACE. Together, they want to find out who is responsible for a list of websites that allegedly exploit ACE members' exclusive rights by offering movies and TV shows without permission. Heading the list is 1337x.to, which in 2019 was the world's most popular torrent index. This year its position fell slightly to occupy the number three slot but the platform still commands significant traffic. According to SimilarWeb stats, 1337x's traffic hit a peak early this year with 75 million visits per month but since June that flow has now steadied to around 52 million. In pure traffic terms, streaming portal BS.to is the next most significant site in the ACE subpoena. With around three-quarters of its traffic coming from Germany, the platform is currently pulling in around 26 million visitors per month and is currently the 127th most popular site in Germany, period. Swatchseries.to, which according to ACE is responsible for offering shows including Grey's Anatomy without permission, was attracting around 30 million visitors per month in April. While that has recently reduced to around 25 million users (with 40% from the United States), the anti-piracy coalition remains keen to unmask its operators. With around 11.5 million visitors per month and 42% of them coming from the United States, streaming site kimcartoon.to is certainly no slouch. ACE accuses the platform of distributing movies including Frozen II and Despicable Me but the site's library goes way beyond those two titles. Interestingly, kimcartoon was also featured in a DMCA subpoena obtained last month by ACE. On that occasion, Cloudflare was ordered to hand over information related to the site. With 'just' six million and four million visits per month respectively, streaming portals 5movies.to and azm.to are significantly smaller than the sites detailed above but their libraries of movies, including the screeners that leaked this week, remain of interest to ACE. The same goes for Vumoo.to, Ololo.to, and seriesflix.to which are also targeted in the subpoena. Germany Focused Sites Make Up Much of the List For reasons that aren't immediately clear, ACE has included a number of sites that tend to focus on the German market. The 4.6 million-visitor Goldesel.to and 3.6 million-visitor Filmpalast.to are two of the more prominent examples but ACE is also looking for more information on two older classics – Kinox.to and Movie4k.to. Only the former can claim visitors in their millions now but both sites have been subjected to law enforcement actions for years, with little to no success. While Cine.to has a 68% audience share in Germany and in excess of 1.4m visitors per month, similar sites also listed include Stream.to, Kinomax.to, HD-streams.to and Cinenator.to, all of which have relatively low levels of traffic. This raises the question of why ACE is so interested in them when there are much larger targets around. Since the .to registry is a popular choice for many pirate sites, there may be an element of pressure here too. Only time will tell what the long term plan is but if the registry cooperates as the law requires, Hollywood and its partners could be just a step away from delivering a fatal blow to one or more of the targeted sites. The ACE DMCA subpoena targeting the Tonic registry can be found here (1,2 pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©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