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High Traffic Pirate Sites Worldwide Under Investigation, DMCA Subpoenas RevealAndy Maxwell, 09 Oct 10:08 AM When torrent sites were gaining signific

High Traffic Pirate Sites Worldwide Under Investigation, DMCA Subpoenas Reveal Andy Maxwell, 09 Oct 10:08 AM When torrent sites were gaining significant traction in the mid 2000s, discovering information about their infrastructure and even their operators could be a simple affair. Even if domain WHOIS information was secured with an anonymity service, basic searches often revealed where sites were hosted, meaning that platforms could be put under immediate pressure, when the legal environment allowed. Today, things are much less straightforward. Thousands of pirate sites now use Cloudflare to hide information about their platforms. Site IP addresses are obscured behind the service meaning that some investigations are more easily progressed when Cloudflare itself hands over crucial information. The company won't do that without a court order but Hollywood in particular is very familiar with that process. ACE/MPA Obtains DMCA Subpoenas To Unmask Pirate Operators To compel Cloudflare to hand over details of allegedly infringing customers, copyright holders can go to court in the United States and file an application for a DMCA subpoena. Once granted, these compel the CDN provider to hand over requested personal information. It's rare for these to be fought or declined and since they don't need to be overseen by a judge, issuing them is a procedural matter in most cases. Last week the Motion Picture Association acted on behalf of the members of the Alliance for Creativity to file two DMCA subpoena applications at a California court. They name around two dozen torrent and streaming site domains that ACE is clearly investigating and some have massive visitor numbers. DMCA Subpoena 1 – A Mere Starter As is always the case with ACE/MPA's subpoena applications, statements are provided by Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the MPA. The first claim is that two pirate services are breaching Hollywood's copyrights in the movies Jack Reacher and Fast and Furious 9. The domains listed are vibetvapp.com and webplay.tv123.org and the application also references 'backend' link URLs where the movies are apparently hosted. What ACE/MPA are really after, however, are the identities of people behind iptvsubscription.org, a platform that offers pirate IPTV subscriptions plus reselling and restreaming services. "The ACE Members (via the Motion Picture Association, Inc.) are requesting issuance of the attached proposed subpoena that would order Cloudflare, Inc. to disclose the identities, including names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account histories of the users operating iptvsubscription.org," the application reads. DMCA Subpoena 2 – The Main Course The second DMCA subpoena application follows a similar format but is way more extensive, targeting sites with very significant traffic. Pelisplushd.net is perhaps less well known in English-speaking regions but in Latin America it's a true giant. Specializing in movies, TV shows and anime, this streaming platform pulls in an estimated 58 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb stats, making it Mexico's 53rd most popular site. Even then only 33% of its visitors come from that country, with countries like Colombia and Argentina providing significant traffic. Another major site in the list is Mrpiracy.top. Again, this won't be a particularly familiar domain to English-speaking audiences but with more than 21 million visits per month, it dominates a specific region. At the time of writing, 94% of this site's traffic comes from Portugal making it the 14th most popular site in the entire country. On Friday, MrPiracy announced that it had shut down with immediate effect, with the operators citing personal reasons. Interestingly, SimilarWeb data also lists the site as 7th most popular gambling-related domain on the planet, although quite what is going on there remains unclear. Another major player targeted in the subpoena is French torrent giant YGGTorrent. The site has endured domain problems over the years so tends to jump around. Nevertheless, ACE/MPA is interested in obtaining the details of its operators, specifically those behind yggtorrent.li, yggtorrent.si and its new domain, yggtorrent.nz. Just a few months ago this site was attracting more than 18 million monthly visits. Smaller Players Still Have Considerable Traffic Moving down the ACE/MPA targets reveals many other domains that can't match the successes of the above but are still significant players. Watchtvseries.si, for example, enjoys around 5.2m visits per month, 25% from the US, 17% from the UK, followed by Canada with around 13%. Relatively unusually for a site of this size, Watchtvseries.si isn't blocked by ISPs in the UK which makes it a likely candidate for appearance in a future MPA injunction. Up next is Gnula.cc and Gnula.link, which appear to be part of the same streaming operation. Popular in Spanish-speaking countries, the former enjoys around five million monthly visits, with around 50% of users hailing from Spain followed by Argentina, Mexico and Chile. Movieboxpro.app attracts around 4.8m visitors per month, with the majority coming from the United States. The site is also popular in Canada and like Watchtvseries.si, isn't blocked by ISPs in the UK which explains its rapid growth there. The site also has an unusual login system that requires people to associate membership with their Google account. With around four million visits per month, Emovies.io is another fairly large streaming site under the eye of ACE/MPA and the same can be said for sports streaming site Sports24.stream, which currently enjoys around 1.7 million visits per month. Sports24 unexpectedly disappeared from the Internet this week and it's certainly possible that the DMCA subpoena had something to do with that. 123movies.london has roughly the same levels of visitors to its streaming service (1.75m) with a quarter coming from the US. The site is rapidly on the rise in the UK, Ireland and Australia. Again, this service is not blocked in the UK so could attract an injunction in the future. Spanish torrent site Elitetorrent.com also makes an appearance with around a million visitors per month. Other Less Popular Targets Several other domains in the ACE/MPA list trigger severe malware warnings including topflix.vc, ymovies.to, pelisplus.so, and France-focused site Fandefilm.com. In common with waklov.com, bambip.com, jogiiasd.xyz, pornoman.cc and kinomax.to, site traffic is relatively low, making them interesting targets for copyright holders who probably wish to prevent their growth. The subpoenas and supporting documents can be found here 1,2,3 (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Pirate IPTV Lawsuit Could've Led to Millions in Damages, Judge Says $14,000 Andy Maxwell, 08 Oct 11:31 PM In August 2019, US broadcaster DISH Network and partner NagraStar were maintaining their momentum against unlicensed streaming services. Together they sued the alleged operators of pirate IPTV platform IPGuys, a popular TV streaming service that sold subscriptions through a network of resellers, which enabled illegal access to DISH satellite programming. The complaint named Canada-based Tomasz Kaczmarek as the person acquiring DISH satellite broadcasts and retransmitting them via the IPGuys service. It further named New York-based husband and wife team John and Julia Defoe, who were accused of creating and maintaining DISH subscription accounts used to supply content to the IPGuys service. Seven of the so-called "seeder accounts" (the official subscriptions that allegedly provided the content to IPGuys) shared one or more credit cards as the source of payment and all had either the same passwords or password hints, DISH claimed. The same credit cards were also used to pay for at least twenty additional DISH subscriber accounts established with false information. One of the twenty accounts was held in the name of John Defoe, DISH said, adding that Kaczmarek sent Julia Defoe "tens of thousands of dollars", while specifically mentioning DISH. DISH demanded a broad injunction plus damages of between $10,000 and $100,000 for each breach of the Federal Communications Act carried out by the defendants. DISH said the number of violations was equal to the number of pirate subscriptions allegedly sold by IPGuys (estimated at 12,731) leading to a potentially massive damages award. After nearly two years of litigation, things haven't really gone DISH's way. Defoes Responded to Complaint, Kaczmarek Did Not Early October 2019, the Defoes responded to the DISH lawsuit by broadly denying most of the allegations and claiming insufficient knowledge to answer the remainder. Subsequent attempts at mediation failed and in June 2020, the Defoes' lawyer asked to withdraw from the case, citing irreconcilable differences with his clients. Soon after, the case appeared to lose direction and in February 2021, DISH moved for a default judgment. The matter was referred to Magistrate Judge Sanket J. Bulsara and in June 2021, he recommended that the complaint against Kaczmarek should be dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction. Judge Bulsara also recommended that a default judgment should be entered against the Defoes in the amount of $7,000 – a tiny fraction of DISH's demands. DISH Files an Objection This July, DISH filed an objection against Judge Bulsara's recommendations, arguing that he was wrong to find that the court lacked jurisdiction over Kaczmarek and that his statutory damages calculation was deficient. In a memorandum and order, United States District Judge Eric Komitee has now sweetened things for DISH a little but nowhere near the level the broadcaster had hoped for. Court Lacks Personal Jurisdiction Over Kaczmarek Summarizing the findings of Judge Bulsara, Judge Komitee notes that the Defoes' role in the operation was that of a supplier. They purchased DISH subscription 'seeder accounts' and resold access to that programming to Kaczmarek who "advertised, packaged, and sold it to customers." However, that begged the question of whether and how Kaczmarek exercised control over the Defoes. That's a question that DISH has not answered satisfactorily. DISH claimed that control was shown in the facts that IP addresses associated with Kaczmarek were used to make payments on the seeder accounts maintained by the Defoes and that the Defoes and Kaczmarek have a history of working together to facilitate the unauthorized reception of DISH programming. That didn't go far with the Judge. "Neither of these allegations suffice to establish agency: the fact that an ultimate purchaser makes direct payments on behalf of its supplier is evidence of cooperation, perhaps, but not control. And the same is surely true of the parties' 'long history'," he notes. As a result, Judge Komitee concludes that the Court lacks personal jurisdiction against Kaczmarek, a major blow to the damages award. Question of Damages 47 U.S. Code § 605 (unauthorized publication or use of communications) provides for statutory damages of $1,000 to $10,000 for each violation. Judge Bulsara based his calculations not on the number of IPGuys subscriptions sold (12,731 according to DISH) but on the number of seeder accounts – seven in total. DISH objected to Judge Bulsara's methodology but Judge Komitee found that his colleague's conclusion was correct. However, he did consider the $1,000 award per violation to be too low. "[T]here are indications that the Defoes engaged in the infringement scheme for years. The seeder accounts, though just one part, was integral to the scheme's success. The Defoes' conduct also made it harder for Plaintiff to uncover and address. They created the seeder accounts using false contact information, and they did this business with an international partner, against whom it would be harder for the victim of the infringement to seek redress," Judge Komitee writes. "I therefore assess $2,000 per violation of 47 U.S.C. § 605(a). I do not, however, apply the $100,000 enhancement for willfulness under 47 U.S.C.§ 605(e)(3)(C)(ii) that DISH requests." Judgment in Favor of DISH, No Injunction In conclusion, the Judge dismissed the case against Kaczmarek for lack of personal jurisdiction and found the Defoes liable for seven violations of the Federal Communications Act. He ordered the pair to pay $14,000 in damages but refused to hand down a permanent injunction. The memorandum and default judgment can be found here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2021 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