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Hollywood, Netflix & Amazon Agree $40m Judgment With Pirate IPTV Provider Crystal Clear MediaAndy Maxwell, 13 Nov 10:15 PM Back in August, members o

Hollywood, Netflix & Amazon Agree $40m Judgment With Pirate IPTV Provider Crystal Clear Media Andy Maxwell, 13 Nov 10:15 PM Back in August, members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy coalition featuring the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies, filed a lawsuit against US company TTKN Enterprises, LLC. Better known online as IPTV service Crystal Clear Media (CCM), TTKN and owners Todd and Tori Smith of Florida were accused by Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Warner, Universal, Netflix, Columbia and StudioCanal of operating a pirate service providing access to thousands of live and title-curated television channels in breach of their copyrights. "Blatantly Infringing Service" Citing blockbusters including Disney's Frozen II, Warner Bros' Harry Potter collection, Columbia Picture's Bad Boys for Life, and Universal's Mr. Robot, the companies alleged that TTKN/CCM's operators had gone to great lengths to hide their roles in an operation that had illegally streamed these titles and more to the public. Domains including mediahosting.one, crystalcleariptv.com, ccmedia.one, ccbilling.org, cciptv.us, ccreborn.one, ccultimate.one, superstreamz.com, and webplayer.us, were mentioned as supporting the operation. Describing CCM as a "blatantly infringing service", the entertainment companies noted that despite being acutely aware that rival service Vaders had previously come to an untimely end for similar actions at the hands of the same plaintiffs, CCM continued to provide an illegal VOD service to the public. Furthermore, the service also continued to expand its reach via a network of resellers. "Defendants' reseller program plays a pivotal role in their infringing enterprise. Defendants' resellers market and promote CCM as a substitute for authorized and licensed distributors," the lawsuit claimed. Alleging willful direct copyright infringement, the plaintiffs demanded the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work plus the same amount per work as a result of CCM inducing others by "encouraging, and promoting" the use of CCM for copyright infringement purposes. Parties Reach Settlement Agreement While these kinds of cases have the potential to roll on for some time, it transpires the plaintiffs and TTKN/CCM plus named defendants Todd and Tori Smith have agreed to settle their dispute. The agreement was reached on November 2, 2020, and as a result, they are together asking the court to sign off on a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding a permanent injunction and damages. In respect of the injunction, the defendants comprehensively agree not to distribute any copyrighted content owned by the plaintiffs or their subsidiaries in any manner, including via streaming. All operations of Crystal Clear Media must be completely shut down within five days of any injunction and its operators are barred from distributing or otherwise releasing any of its source code, domain names, trademarks and other assets. "Defendants irrevocably and fully waive notice of entry of the Permanent Injunction, and understand and agree that violation of the Permanent Injunction will expose Defendant to all penalties provided by law, including contempt of Court," it reads. "Defendants consent to the continuing jurisdiction of the Court for purposes of enforcement of the Permanent Injunction, and irrevocably and fully waive and relinquish any argument that venue or jurisdiction by this Court is improper or inconvenient." Proposed Judgment Includes a Massive Damages Award The original complaint included references to the now-defunct Vaders IPTV service that was also targeted by the same plaintiffs in a largely secret lawsuit in Canada. However, while the Vaders/Vader Streams matter ended in a $10 million damages award in favor of the studios, TTKN/CCM has agreed to pay substantially more than its former rival. "Damages are awarded in favor of Plaintiffs and against Defendant TTKN Enterprises, LLC d/b/a Crystal Clear Media, in the total amount of forty million dollars ($40 million)," the proposed judgment reads. While the proposed consent judgment and permanent injunction are yet to be signed off by Judge George H. Wu in a California court, the nature of the agreement means that is likely to be a formality in the days to come. The proposed orders can be found here (1,2,3 pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Google Takes Down Repositories That Circumvent its Widevine DRM Ernesto Van der Sar, 13 Nov 10:41 AM With more ways to stream online video than ever before, protecting video continues to be a key issue for copyright holders. This is often achieved through Digital Rights Management, which is often referred to by the initials DRM. In a nutshell, DRM is an anti-piracy tool that dictates when and where digital content can be accessed. Google is an important player in this area. The company owns the Widevine DRM technology which is used by many of the largest streaming services including Amazon, Netflix and Disney+. As such, keeping it secure is vital. Widevine DRM Widevine DRM comes in different levels. The L1 variant is the most secure, followed by L2 and L3. While the latter still protects content from being easily downloaded, it's certainly not impossible to bypass, as pirates have repeatedly shown. Despite its vulnerabilities, Google doesn't want to make it too easy for the public at large. This became apparent a few hours ago when the company asked the developer platform GitHub to remove dozens of "Widevine L3 Decryptor" repositories. The code, originally published by security researcher Tomer Hadad, is a proof-of-concept code Chrome extension that shows how easy it is to bypass the low-security DRM. Google was aware of this vulnerability and previously informed Krebs Security that it would address the issue. Google Targets Widevine L3 Decryptor Code One option would be to patch the security flaw but, for now, Google appears to be focusing on the takedown route. In a DMCA notice sent to GitHub, the company requests the immediate takedown of dozens of "Widevine L3 Decryptor" copies. "The following git repository [sic] contain circumvention technology that enables users to illegally access video and audio works protected by copyright," Google writes. "This Chrome extension demonstrates how it's possible to bypass Widevine DRM by hijacking calls to the browser's Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) and decrypting all Widevine content keys transferred – effectively turning it into a clearkey DRM," Google adds. Google sees the code, which was explicitly published for educational purposes only, as a circumvention tool. As such, it allegedly violates section 1201 of the DMCA, an allegation that was also made against the youtube-dl code last month. The takedown notice includes a long list of repositories that were all made unavailable by GitHub. This doesn't cover the original code from Tomer Hadad, who already removed his version in late October, citing "legal reasons." Google views this vulnerability as a serious matter and the company says that it has also filed a Sensitive Data takedown request to prevent the Widevine's 'secret' private key from being publicly shared. Sensitive Data Request "In addition to this request, we have filed a separate Sensitive Data takedown request of this file: /widevine-l3-decryptor as it contains the secret Widevine RSA private key, which was extracted from the Widevine CDM and can be used in other circumvention technologies." That last mention is interesting as private keys, which are simply a string of characters, are not seen as copyrighted or private content by everyone. "If you distribute your key with the software, then whatever form it is in, I would not consider it "private" at all," a commenter on Hacker News points out. Googling the AACS Key This 'key controversy' is reminiscent of an issue that was widely debated thirteen years ago. At the time, a hacker leaked the AACS cryptographic key "09 F9" online which prompted the MPAA and AACS LA to issue DMCA takedown requests to sites where it surfaced. This escalated into a censorship debate when sites started removing articles that referenced the leak, triggering a massive backlash. At the time, the controversial AACS key was still readily available through Google's search engine. In that regard very little has changed. Despite Google's sensitive data takedown request, the Widevine RSA key is easy to find through its own search engine. 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