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ACE Anti-Piracy Expansion in Europe is More Than Just Another New MemberAndy Maxwell, 06 Dec 09:09 AM From a standing start in 2017, the Alliance fo

ACE Anti-Piracy Expansion in Europe is More Than Just Another New Member Andy Maxwell, 06 Dec 09:09 AM From a standing start in 2017, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment is now the largest and most successful anti-piracy coalition on the planet. ACE now reports on developments every few days, but that barely scratches the surface. Official announcements represent just a fraction of its work and behind the scenes, an endless stream of sites, services, and related entities are shutting down under ACE pressure every week. Producing articles on them all isn't feasible but when ACE announced that United Media had joined the coalition this week, it stood out as something worthy of more detailed reporting. United Media: No Stranger to Piracy United Group BV began life in 2000 as a small cable company. Today, the Netherlands/Luxembourg corporation boasts revenues of over €2.43 billion. As part of the United Group, United Media is the leading media company in Southeast Europe, broadcasting around 50 TV channels across several platforms, including the selection below. Nova (Greece) and Nova (Bulgaria) are also part of the United Group, offering channels that, in common with those broadcast by United Media, are regular inhabitants of pirate IPTV playlists worldwide. According to ACE, an estimated 750,000 subscribers of illegal IPTV services in Greece is just one of the problems faced by United Media. ACE reports that one streaming site received more than two million visits in the three months before it was shut down, but how it gained so much traction is unclear. Greece has an aggressive ISP blocking scheme that currently spans more than 600 domain names and more than 600 IP addresses, so running up two million visits in a three-month period shows that blockades might not be a perfect solution. The blocked domains below are all attributable to complaints filed by Nova, but this is just a small selection from a much bigger list handled by ISPs in Greece. In Monday's announcement, Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association and Chairman of ACE, welcomed United Media to the "rapidly growing" ACE coalition. "With each new member, ACE's network grows stronger and better equipped to eradicate piracy and protect the creative economy," Rivkin said. While it's undoubtedly an important step, United Media has been rubbing shoulders with ACE members and affiliated anti-piracy groups for quite some time. United Media Joined AAPA in 2018 In 2018, United Media joined the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) which counts Sky, Discovery, Viaccess, Vodafone, Bein Sports Canal+, Premier League, LaLiga and Liberty Global among its member members. Top-tier anti-piracy specialists Nagra and Irdeto are part of the same group but AAPA membership offers something else too – assistance from powerful law enforcement agencies including Interpol and Europol. In the same year that United Media became an AAPA member, the company chose Friend MTS as an anti-piracy partner, which in turn has close connections to both the Premier League and NHL in Canada. Friend MTS offers dynamic, near real-time blocking of illegal IPTV streams and recent contract renewals (1,2) suggest that expectations are being met. United Media's deal with Friend MTS aimed to protect its flagship channels, including Sport Klub 1, Sport Klub 2, Sport Klub 3, TOP, Grand, N1, and Cinemania. The deal included fingerprint-based automatic content recognition, as well as subscriber-level identification, which aims to pinpoint the source of illegally streamed content. Whether this partnership was responsible for what came next is unclear. "Latest Detection Methods" Led to Arrests in Serbia In 2019, police in Serbia reported the arrest of two men aged 40 and 31. They were charged with criminal copyright infringement offenses in connection with movies and TV shows made available via filmovi24h.com and serije.online. Police seized computer equipment and reportedly found evidence of financial transactions. United Media was behind the complaint and welcomed the involvement of the Serbian government in internet piracy cases. According to news outlet N1 TV, itself part of United Media, the company had used "the latest detection methods to protect its content" and was continuing work with police to track down similar targets. A month later, United Media was behind an operation against the suspected operator of several pirate sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Officers from the High-Tech Crime Department of the Criminal Police Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs seized equipment and took a man in for questioning. United Media-affiliated news outlets unofficially named andrija-i-andjelka.com, filmovitica.com, serijehaha.com, serije.co, filmovi.ws, praveserije.com and serijefilmovi.com, as the sites targeted. ACE Has Experience in Key Areas Two years on from these operations, ACE executed a successful cease and desist action near Belgrade, Serbia. The target was the operator of Premiumcccam, a card-sharing and IPTV subscription service providing access to more than 6,000 TV channels, 3,000 movies and 16,500 TV shows owned by ACE members Sky, Viacom Media, and Canal+. It's likely that United Media indirectly benefited from this operation but as a fully signed-up member, the company will be in a position to encourage further action against targets across its key markets – Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Greece and Bulgaria. "United Media's strategic determinant is to create quality and attractive content. We invest in production, people, technology, we believe in our ideas, and it is our duty to do everything in our power to ensure copyright and legal operations of the entire market," says United Media CEO Aleksandra Subotić. "We believe that ACE is the perfect partner in this mission, and we are looking forward to working together. We are confident that we will strengthen the creative economy with our joint efforts." ACE now has 43 members but notes that in the coming weeks, even more media companies will join the coalition. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Filmmakers Want to Link ISP Subscriber Data to 'Pirating' YTS and Reddit Users Ernesto Van der Sar, 05 Dec 09:52 PM WOW! is being sued by a group of smaller movie companies, including Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures. The filmmakers accuse the ISP of failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who were repeatedly flagged for sharing copyrighted material. They want to hold WOW! liable for these pirating activities, which could lead to millions of dollars in damages. The ISP challenged the claims and filed a motion to dismiss the case. Among other things, it argued that an IP address is not sufficient to prove that subscribers downloaded or shared any infringing material. The filmmakers opposed this motion, which has yet to be decided on by the Colorado federal court. Filmmakers Want Subscriber Details In the meantime, another issue has raised its head. Both sides are gathering evidence to prepare for the case moving forward. As part of that process, the filmmakers have demanded the personal details of roughly 14,000 subscribers whose WOW! accounts were allegedly used to pirate content. WOW! objected to this request, arguing that the names and addresses of its subscribers are irrelevant to the core question of whether it reasonably implemented a repeat infringer policy. The filmmakers disagreed, noting that the information can be cross-checked to determine whether the ISP notified its subscribers and terminated accounts in response to infringement notices. After hearing both sides, the Court eventually came up with a compromise. The filmmakers offered to reduce the targeted IP-addresses to the 375 top pirating unique IP addresses. The Court saw this as a reasonable request, especially considering the damages at stake. 168 Objections The Court said that objections from subscribers would be dealt with at a later stage. That time has come. Over the past several months, 168 subscribers filed objections and the filmmakers and WOW! disagree on how these should be handled. The subscriber's arguments are not available to the public, but the filmmakers suggest that aside from two subscribers who passed away, they boil down to straightforward denials. The filmmakers are not convinced by the objections. They want WOW! to hand over the data nonetheless, as these will allow them to check whether the 'repeat' notices were sent to the same subscribers each time. "[T]he subscriber names are relevant because they will show whether the IP address was assigned to the same subscriber during the duration of the notices," the filmmakers informed the Court. Links to YTS and Reddit Users? The filmmakers also want to check if the subscribers had accounts with the popular torrent site YTS. The companies previously obtained data from the YTS user database as part of a settlement with the torrent site. Since then, this information has been used as evidence in several lawsuits. On top of that, the movie companies argue that they may be able to link the publicly available data of two Reddit users. These anonymous Redditors claimed to use WOW!'s service to pirate content. "Moreover, the subscriber names are relevant because Plaintiffs can compare the subscriber names to the email addresses of the users that registered for accounts with the piracy website YTS or to those that have boasted on social media how Defendant allows them to pirate content without any problems." If the filmmakers find any links to YTS or the two Reddit users, they may argue that the subscribers in question are deliberate and repeat infringers. One of the Reddit comments WOW! Can Help without Exposing Subscribers WOW! doesn't agree with the filmmakers' reasoning. The ISP believes that it's not necessary to share the personal details of subscribers, as there are alternative means available. For example, the Internet provider says that it can check its own systems to establish whether a particular IP address was assigned to one subscriber or multiple subscribers over time. Instead of handing over the names and contact information, WOW! can simply share the associated account number, which would suffice. The ISP can also help to determine whether any of the objecting subscribers were YTS users, by cross-referencing data on their end without exposing their personal information. No Signs of YTS and Reddit Users Thus far there are no signs of YTS users. The filmmakers previously shared an exhibit with nine IP-addresses and emails of YTS users, but none of these matched the objecting subscribers. "None of those IP addresses corresponds to an Objector, and Plaintiffs do not suggest otherwise," WOW! writes. "Plaintiffs could obtain information concerning the alleged YTS users without involving Objectors or other third parties, for example by serving discovery on WOW regarding whether WOW's subscriber records include any of the nine email addresses referenced in Plaintiffs' exhibit." Similarly, the ISP argues that there's no public information that suggests that the two Redditors are among the objecting subscribers. "There is no reason to believe these two users are among the Objectors. In fact, from the objections the Court has received, it is apparent that none of Objectors' names have any passing resemblance or connection to 'Servalpur' or 'rickselest'." In addition to the arguments discussed above, the parties also disagree on the type of notice that's required before any data is handed over. After hearing all parties involved, the Court now has to decide how to move forward. Does WOW have to hand over all data, or are objections warranted? — A copy of the filmmakers' motion to compel is available here (pdf) and WOW!'s objections can be found here (pdf) and here (pdf) 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