 |  In Italy, piracy-enabled set-top devices are often referred to using the term 'pezzotto'.
In common with many regions, these cheap devices are used by huge numbers of consumers hoping to gain free or cheap access to pirated movies, TV shows, and live sports. Following a massive operation now being reported by Eurojust, the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, successfully operating such a device in Italy and potentially much further afield should now be much more difficult. Massive Police Operation Carried Out Across Europe Raids on pirate services are nothing new, neither are numerous claims that significant resources have been deployed to carry them out. However, Eurojust is now reporting what appears to be a truly huge operation aimed at taking down a major top-tier IPTV supplier at the behest of authorities in Italy. According to the EU agency, the operation involved coordination between law enforcement specialists from around Europe, including in Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Netherlands, and Sweden. After a coordination center was established, meetings were held prior to the crackdown to ensure cooperation across borders. Then, in what is being described as a "day of action", more than 700 police officers from around Europe targeted a piracy streaming operation with servers based in the countries listed above plus Italy and Malta. Eurojust says that in total, 5,500 servers used to illegally transmit TV broadcasts, live sports and films, were shut down following searches at dozens of locations. Operation: The Perfect Storm Began Last Friday According to Italy's Guardia di Finanza (GdF), "The Perfect Storm" got underway last Friday afternoon with the deployment of various technical measures including the "remote shutdown" of platforms, servers, and smart cards being used by the pirates. At this point the accounts of GdF and Eurojust differ in terminology. While Eurojust claims the shutdown of 5,500 servers, GdF says that 5,500 "IT resources" were seized or "blacked out", including transmission servers, management platforms, "showcase" and live-streaming sites, as well as 350 Telegram channels. A pyramid-like system is described, with major TV broadcasters' and OTT providers' content (including Netflix, DAZN and Disney+) being redistributed through data centers all over the world to subscribers of the yet-to-be-named IPTV provider. Alleged Leader Arrested in Italy As Operation "The Perfect Storm" was executed, 23 suspects had already been identified with 30 search and seizure orders also targeting the alleged centers of the pirate operation in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. In addition, 100 house searches were carried out against the IPTV provider's local resellers. Information released thus far indicates there has been at least one arrest in Italy. The suspect is believed to be the person leading the pirate IPTV operation. According to Eurojust, computer equipment, communications equipment and payment processing tools were seized, as well as luxury cars and 334 PayPal accounts. GdF reports that it obtained a search and confiscation order for the equivalent of €10,619,000 (US$12,495,271), an amount also reported by Eurojust as the estimated profit generated by the IPTV provider. Large Amounts of Data Evidence Gathered If early estimates are to be believed, the impact of the operation could be widespread. Italian authorities say that a large amount of evidence has been obtained, including information that could identify millions of subscribers both in Italy and further afield. "In order to fully illustrate the dimensional and international aspect of the operation, the unprecedented impact that the operation 'THE PERFECT STORM' will have on the world audience of illegal streaming should also be emphasized," GdF reports. According to the law enforcement agency, "over 50 million users have already been identified." From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. |  When President Trump took office in early 2017, copyright holders hoped to have found a new ally in their fight against piracy.
The Copyright Alliance made this very clear in a public letter stressing that few presidents, if any, have had a more sizable and diverse copyright portfolio. Today, nearly four years later, Trump is better known for the copyright infringement allegations that have been made against him than the policy he helped to create. With Trump, however, even the copyright infringements appear to be political. Trump's Copyright Infringements In the past, many creators and artists would have been flattered if a US president had used their work in public but with Trump, things are different. Many musicians don't even want to be associated with the president even if they get paid for it. This has resulted in several lawsuits. In addition, there has been a flurry of takedown requests asking Twitter to remove music and other media tweeted by the president. Today we can add another complaint to the list, one with a twist. The takedown notices, which are first reported here, target a tweet published by Trump on election day. It consists of the three words "VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!" and 'retweets' a video compilation of Trump dancing to 'YMCA' from the Village People.  It is no secret that the Village People are not all fans of the president as the group's label 'Scorpio Music' recently threatened to file a lawsuit over the allegedly unauthorized use of their track during campaign rallies. And indeed, soon after Trump tweeted his message, not one but two takedown notices came in. Takedowns Target 'Trump Dance' We tracked down the notices in the Lumen Database. The first one was sent by the anti-piracy company Web Sheriff, which often represents the Village People. Soon after, another one was sent by the Sheriff, this time on behalf of music publishers 'Can't Stop Production' and 'Scorpio Music.' The notices were sent on November 4 but remained unpublished until this week, when Twitter removed the allegedly infringing video as well. The accompanying "VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!" text was deleted too, but likely by Trump himself or someone with access to his account.  By now, this type of takedown hardly comes as a surprise and, given the legal threats, they might even be expected. That said, it is worth highlighting that this is yet another example of selective copyright enforcement. Selective Copyright Enforcement Traditionally, DMCA takedown notices are used to stop copyright infringing activity. In this case, however, they're being used as a tool to distance a song from a controversial person, as the original content remains online. Both takedown notices only target Trump's tweet. This is strange because the Trump account didn't publish it first, it merely shared a message what was posted by SOMETHiNG WiCKËD, which remains online today, including the 'infringing' video. If copyright infringement was the issue here, it would make sense to remove the original tweet as well, not just the one that Trump reposted. But the original video with the YMCA song is still up at the time of writing, with over 45 million views and counting. Not The First Time This is not the first time we've seen Trump's tweets being selectively targeted. Previously, The New York Times asked Twitter to remove one of its photos, which had been used as a popular meme for years. This image was tweeted by numerous other people as well, but these were not removed. The controversial Trump dance video also became a meme by itself, with many people replicating his moves and posting the results on social media. As far as we know, these all remain online too. It appears that even the Village People are not all in agreement on the issue either. According to TMZ, the group's founder Victor Willis says that Trump is free to use YMCA. Willis' company reportedly owns the US copyrights and granted a retroactive nonexclusive license to the Trump campaign. While it's understandable that some people don't want to be associated with certain people or messages, this isn't how Congress envisioned the DMCA takedown process to be used. That said, the rightsholders likely have a valid claim. They just appear to be a bit selective. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. |  After the Premier League obtained a 2017 blocking order compelling ISPs including BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media to block unauthorized soccer streams under Section 97a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, an early template was available for other live content owners to follow.
Sure enough, around 18 months later, Matchroom – the owner, manager, and promoter of various sporting events – joined in on the action, going to the High Court in an effort to prevent boxing fans from viewing the 2018 bout between Anthony Joshua and Alexander Povetkin via illegal online streams. Bell Sounds on Existing Order, New Round Begins The order handed down by the High Court in Matchroom's favor was extended and modified by a sealed order on May 22, 2019. It required ISPs Sky, BT, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, EE and Plusnet to block the IP addresses of pirate servers in much the same way as the orders previously obtained by the Premier League had pioneered. However, it also had a so-called "sunset clause" which meant it ceased to have effect on October 1, 2020. Anticipating the bell, Matchroom filed a new application on September 28, 2020, which reached Justice Birss in the High Court in the week of October 12, 2020. Given that Matchroom had a boxing event scheduled for October 17, the promotion requested a two-year extension which would expire on October 1, 2022. None of the named ISPs objected to the application and Sky actually filed evidence in support of it, as it had done previously with similar Premier League blocking orders. However, the Judge wasn't prepared to grant an extension and instead treated it as a brand new application, broadly along the lines of the secret website blocking system deployed by the Premier League that gained court approval back in July 2020. Judge Was Satisfied With Expert Opinions on Blocking In considering the Matchroom application, Judge Birss noted that Robert Kiessling, Head of Cloud Engineering at Sky, reported that "blocking has worked smoothly in practice" and has not resulted in the "blocking of access to any legitimate content". This latter claim was made on the basis that no customer made any complaints to Sky about restricted access to legal content. Interestingly, Sky also presented ISP traffic map evidence to show that blocking made a "significant contribution to reducing unauthorized streams of Matchroom Content transmitted to customers using Sky's broadband network." This appears to add yet more weight to the theory that Sky does indeed appear to be watching its customers' piracy consumption habits. Temporary Blocking Order Handed Down October 15, 2020 Given the urgency, Judge Birss handed down an order to help protect the event scheduled for October 17 but he wasn't prepared to hand down a two-year order without a more careful examination. The temporary order timed out on October 30, the day before the Oleksandr Usyk vs Derek Chisora fight at Wembley on Halloween. During a hearing on October 23 to consider the new application, the Judge informed counsel for the applicants that he was satisfied that an order along the lines of the one sought could be handed down. However, there was also the matter of which parts of the order should remain confidential, to prevent interested third-parties from attempting to circumvent its measures. The Judge determined that the list of target IP addresses belonging to 'pirate' servers should not be made public. Furthermore, after initially believing that there would be no harm in publishing a broad outline of the "detection conditions and requirements which an IP address must satisfy in order for that IP address to be notified so that it will be blocked", he later changed his mind. Disclosure "bears a tangible risk" of undermining blocking and assisting infringers, he argued. New Blocking Order Handed Down to Expire October 1, 2022 The new order allows for Matchroom and its agents to block IP addresses when they are being used to transmit Matchroom footage during events or during a "pre-monitoring period" immediately preceding those events. Affected hosting providers must be sent a notice explaining that their IP addresses have been blocked due to a court order and given the opportunity to discharge or vary that order. If any website, video streaming service, or ISP customers are adversely affected by the order, they too have the same rights to complain. Since the order was handed down by the High Court before being published this week, the bout between Oleksandr Usyk v Derek Chisora on October 31 was already covered by the order. The upcoming rematch between Alexander Povetkin and Dillian Whyte scheduled for November 21, 2020, will be the next test for the new and improved court-sanctioned blocking efforts but coverage will continue for additional bouts beyond that. ISP Blocking System Names Revealed Finally, a note about the systems being deployed by the various ISPs involved in the blocking action. According to the High Court order, BT and Plusnet are currently using systems known as Hawking/Cleanfeed. EE deploys a blocking system known as Wolf, Sky's system is called Hawkeye, Virgin has Web Blocker 3, and TalkTalk's system has no specific name beyond IP 'blackholing'. The High Court order can be found here From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. | | |
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