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2.5 Billion Visits: ACE Targets 9anime Among Several Pirate Anime SitesAndy Maxwell, 26 May 10:40 PM In the face of legislation designed to thwart i

2.5 Billion Visits: ACE Targets 9anime Among Several Pirate Anime Sites Andy Maxwell, 26 May 10:40 PM In the face of legislation designed to thwart its growth, seizures, prosecutions, dozens of arrests and countless prison sentences have done little to prevent piracy. Anti-piracy enforcement actions, including dozens by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, have taken hundreds of sites out of the game. That's a solid base for arguing that piracy volumes could've been much worse without so much enforcement. The reality is that sites continue to emerge with some notable examples generating extraordinary levels of traffic, at a scale never seen before. History tells us that won't continue indefinitely; pirate sites may come and go but Hollywood is in for the long haul – and then some. 9anime: Huge, Successful, and a Prime Target One of the current batch of piracy behemoths is 9anime, a free streaming platform dedicated to Japanese cartoons. It currently receives in excess of 214 million visits per month, an incredible 2.5+ billion per year. A DMCA subpoena application filed at a California court on Thursday shows that ACE has not given up on its plan to reduce 9anime's traffic to zero. Like many times before, ACE – via the MPA – wants Cloudflare to give up information on its customers, 9anime included. This information typically includes names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and payment information. However, ACE also seeks additional information relating to account updates and histories, which could help to fill in some crucial blanks when combined with intelligence obtained elsewhere. There's no doubt that 9anime will remain a priority enforcement target. At the time of writing the 9animetv.to domain is ranked #164 globally and with over 30% of that traffic coming from inside the United States, it represents one of the squeakiest wheels in the entire online piracy market. Sites Under The Spotlight Also mentioned in Thursday's applications is allanime.to, a site offering anime, manga (Japanese comics) and associated music. The domain became popular in February and since then traffic has increased considerably, to a current level of around 4.7 million visits per month. In common with 9anime, over a third of allanime's traffic comes from the United States, assisted by social media referrals, the majority on YouTube. Two other anime-focused domains – animefreak.site and animet.site – also get a mention. The former receives under half a million visits per month according to SimilarWeb, with the latter apparently receiving just a couple of thousand. With no obvious public web presence and a domain that won't resolve, Anifastcdn.info receives no traffic at all by most accounts, but that's certainly not the case. While the platform uses Cloudflare in the United States, its servers appear to be on the other side of the Atlantic and not that difficult to find either, certainly for an operation like ACE. Cloud Storage Two other platforms attracting ACE interest have more visible levels of traffic. Ninjashare.to heads the list as a growing platform; after pulling in 11.8m monthly visits in February, the cloud storage platform received 15.8 million in April. Also mentioned in the DMCA subpoena application is rapid-cloud.co, a storage platform sporting Vidcloud branding and around 4.5 million monthly visits. According to ACE, specific content accessed via rapid-cloud actually came from betterstream.cc, which also has no obvious public web presence but does have significant traffic. When Cloudflare hands over information to ACE, it may prove informative but there's a reasonable chance the data won't amount to some big reveal. But it might eventually, so as long as these and similar sites are in business, ACE can return to court again and again to obtain subpoenas just like this one, for less than $50 a pop. It will probably continue to do that, for as long as it takes. Image Credit: Pixabay/geralt From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Court Orders Instagram to Expose Pirates, Boot Their Accounts, and Purge URLs Ernesto Van der Sar, 26 May 01:23 PM Similar to any other online platform that deals with user-generated content, Instagram processes copyright complaints on a daily basis. Most of these arrive in the form of DMCA notices, in which rightsholders requests the removal of a specific image, video, or URL. The number of removals runs in the hundreds of thousands during a typical month, without getting noticed by the public at large, but if Instagram users continue to post copyright infringing content, they risk losing their accounts. Takedown Trouble Triggers Lawsuit This takedown policy is widely accepted as the standard for social media services but every now and then, disputes can arise. In India, one such dispute turned into a legal battle in which the Bombay High Court issued a broad injunction earlier this month. The lawsuit in question was filed by Applause Entertainment, the Indian company behind the TV-series "Scam 1992". The series covers the 1992 Indian stock market scam, adapted from Debashis Basu's book The Scam. The TV production is licensed to Sony LIV and was a huge success. However, as often happens with popular media, pirated footage was readily available too. Not just on pirate sites, but also on otherwise legitimate social media platforms. Applause Entertainment wasn't happy with this pirate activity so it approached several platforms to take down infringing clips and snippets of the show. Instagram was one of the recipients but, instead of taking immediate action, the platform asked for proof of ownership. The company responded to this correspondence with relevant ownership documents but, apparently, Instagram still wasn't convinced. This standoff prompted Applause to take the matter to the Bombay High Court, where it requested an ex-parte injunction. Court Issues Broad Injunction The High Court concluded, after reviewing the evidence, that the studio does own the rights so Instagram must take action. This isn't out of the ordinary but the court went further than simply asking the infringing posts to be removed. As highlighted by the law blog SpicyIP, the court issued a so-called dynamic injunction, which goes much further than a simple takedown request. In addition to removing the pirated clips, Instagram must also terminate the accounts of 33 affected users, while handing over their personal details including email addresses, phone numbers, and physical locations. Specifically, Instagram must disclose personal user data, "including but not limited to the contact details, mobile numbers, email addresses, IP addresses and physical locations / addresses of Defendant Nos. 2 to 34." The injunction's scope doesn't stop there. In addition to removing the reported posts, Instagram must also remove other infringing URLs from its platform. This implies broader filtering and could affect other users who shared similar links. The same applies to other "rogue handles" that the users potentially used. A Blunt Anti-Piracy Tool? According to SpicyIP, the court appears to put Instagram users in the same category as pirate websites. Previously, the court ordered flagrantly infringing pirate sites and their 'mirrors' to be blocked, but social media accounts might require a different treatment. There are no signs that the court investigated the user accounts, so it's possible that some posts were relatively innocent. Alternatively, they may be classified as fair use. "There is the possibility that of these defendants a few of could have been genuine social media handles that have several legitimate pieces of content, and that there was a 'mere re-sharing' of the content in question in one shared reel or post. "There is also the possibility that the handles, used the 'short audio-visual' clippings to make Instagram reels. This could have included licensed content from other sources, or fair dealing uses," SpicyIP adds. The court order doesn't go onto detail on the nature of the posts, so it's hard to draw any strong conclusions. In any case, the High Court has shown once again that copyright infringement matters are taken rather seriously in India. Whether Instagram plans to challenge the injunction is unknown. Telegram previously did so when it was ordered to expose alleged copyright infringers, but that challenge failed. — A copy of the order issued by the Bombay High Court is available here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2023 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