TorrentFreak's Latest News

YouTube Rejects Movie Piracy Claims and Content ID CritiqueErnesto Van der Sar, 15 Apr 09:57 AM Last year, Spanish-born movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo

YouTube Rejects Movie Piracy Claims and Content ID Critique Ernesto Van der Sar, 15 Apr 09:57 AM Last year, Spanish-born movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo sued YouTube over various piracy related claims. The actor and producer own the rights to the world's largest collection of Mexican and Latin American movies, many of which are illegally shared on YouTube. The lawsuit accused YouTube of not doing enough to stop people from uploading pirated content. Those allegations aren't new, but the movie tycoon also said that YouTube would not allow him to join the Content ID copyright protection program unless he agreed to specific terms, including a revenue share agreement. Vasallo refused these terms and chose to send standard DMCA notices instead. YouTube processed them, as it should, but the movie tycoon complained that this did little to stop pirates. New copies were uploaded constantly and banned users reportedly returned using new names. The movie tycoon also pointed out that YouTube's repeat infringer policy resets copyright strikes after 90-days, after which the same users can upload copyright-infringing content again. YouTube and Google responded to these allegations by filing a motion to dismiss, which was decided on last month. While the Florida federal court dropped the antitrust claims, the copyright allegations remained, meaning that YouTube must answer these in court. YouTube Responds to Piracy Claims Yesterday, the Google-owned streaming service submitted its response, denying many of the allegations. According to the company, Vasallo's copyright claims lack specifics and amount to an attempt to obtain a tailored Content ID agreement. "Plaintiff, through its representative Carlos Vasallo, was offered YouTube's copyright management tools in 2015, including Content ID, but Plaintiff refused them. Plaintiff opted instead to use YouTube's DMCA-compliant notice-and-takedown system. "Now, seven years later, Plaintiff seeks an injunction against Defendants to force YouTube to provide Plaintiff with a non-existent version of Content ID tailor-made to Plaintiff's preferences. Plaintiff's claims of entitlement to Content ID are badly misguided; its claims of copyright infringement even more so," YouTube notes. Content ID is Not for Everyone YouTube doesn't plan to offer special treatment to the movie tycoon. The company maintains that its DMCA process and policy comply with the law. The Content ID system is an extra option that should only be used by trusted parties who agree to certain terms. "Precisely because YouTube's novel copyright management tools are so powerful, they must be used with care," YouTube writes. If the Copyright ID system ends up in the wrong hands, it can lead to misuse and censorship. "Misused or put in the wrong hands, these tools can be used to censor videos that others have every right to share through YouTube. These tools can also enable users to wrongfully claim ownership rights in others' content or to take for themselves revenue that rightly belongs to others." YouTube's answer doesn't include much detail. The company simply denies many of the allegations and only admits the most straightforward claims, such as the statement that it has a notice-and-takedown system. DMCA Matching? The specific allegations will be argued as the case progresses. These include Vasallo's complaint that YouTube only removes videos from specific URLs listed in takedown notices, without searching for other matching copies on its platform. This "matching" process is not part of the DMCA process, but it appears that the movie tycoon would like YouTube to implement this feature nonetheless. In addition to responding to Vasallo's claims, YouTube also lists a series of defenses. Among other things, the company says that the DMCA's safe harbor shields it from liability for user-uploaded content. And if any infringing content does appear, Vasallo could simply take it down with a DMCA notice. — A copy of Google/YouTube's answer to the complaint and its affirmative defenses is available here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ACE Shuts Down Massive Pirate Site After Locating Owner in Remote Peru Andy Maxwell, 14 Apr 08:17 PM In October 2021, TorrentFreak learned that the Motion Picture Association and its anti-piracy partner Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment had taken an interest in one of the world's most popular pirate streaming sites. In a DMCA subpoena application filed at a California court, MPA/ACE asked Cloudflare to hand over all information held on several pirate platforms including movie, TV show and anime streaming site Pelisplushd.net. The site was not particularly well-known in English-speaking regions but in Latin America, its status as a giant was undisputed – 58 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb data. In the following months the site grew by millions more visitors but in the third week of March, locals reported problems accessing the site. We now know why. ACE Claims Victory Over Pelisplushd.net In a statement published Wednesday, ACE officially announced that it was behind the closure of Pelisplushd.net. The anti-piracy group labeled the platform the second-largest Spanish-language 'rogue website' in the entire Latin American region with 383.5 million visits in the past six months and nearly 75 million visits in February 2022. In Mexico alone, the site had more visitors than hbomax.com, disneyplus.com and primevideo.com, a clear problem for those platforms which are all ACE members. "This is a huge win for the ACE team based in Latin America as we work to protect the legitimate digital ecosystem throughout the region," said Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association. "The successful action against the operator of Pelisplushd.net was only made possible because of evidence that we gathered from previous operations conducted in other countries in Latin America. "This speaks volumes about ACE's ability to crack current cases utilizing years of past gathered intelligence and highlights the global, strategic approach that determines our actions around the world." Where Was The Site's Operator? The operator of Pelisplushd is yet to be named but ACE reveals that after a positive identification, the anti-piracy group tracked him down to the "remote countryside of Peru." That took place in March and soon after, ACE says the operator agreed to turn over his domains. As far as we can tell the main domain at Pelisplushd.net is not yet completely in ACE/MPA hands but a full transfer will probably take place later. In the meantime, ACE members including Netflix continue to send DMCA takedown notices to Google, even after the platform's demise. Overall, 175 copyright holders filed similar takedown notices against the Pelisplushd.net domain, suggesting that the scope of ACE's takedown will be welcomed far beyond its regular members. The domain was also mentioned in a recent submission to the European Commission's 'Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List' by the MPA but following its shutdown, that domain can probably be crossed off the list. That being said, several other Pelisplus-branded sites are still around, together worth tens of millions of views per month. They include Pelisplushd.to, a domain that appears to have increased its traffic by more than 500% in the last month. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2022 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