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'Copyright Troll' On Route to File Record Number of Piracy Lawsuits This YearErnesto Van der Sar, 05 Jul 11:43 AM Over the past several years, adult

'Copyright Troll' On Route to File Record Number of Piracy Lawsuits This Year Ernesto Van der Sar, 05 Jul 11:43 AM Over the past several years, adult entertainment company Strike 3 Holdings has filed thousands of cases in U.S. federal courts. The company, known for its Blacked, Tushy, and Vixen brands, targets people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright-infringing content via BitTorrent. Track, Sue and Settle These efforts, often referred to as so-called 'copyright-trolling', are pretty straightforward. Copyright holders track down a 'pirating' IP-address and then request a subpoena from the court, compelling ISPs to hand over the associated customer data. Many of these lawsuits result in private settlements, which can be rather lucrative. With minimal effort, rightsholders can rake in hundreds or thousands of dollars per defendant. Other rightsholders have deployed similar strategies over the years but Strike 3 is the only major player still involved today. That doesn't mean that the company is scaling down its business, quite the opposite in fact. 1,660 Lawsuits in 2023 Strike 3 has increased its enforcement efforts in 2023. Looking at the number of new lawsuits filed in the first six months of the year, we see that 1,660 complaints have been filed across various federal courts in the United States. This figure is a 57% increase compared to the first half of 2022, suggesting that the adult company continues to increase its productivity. At the current rate, it will break the record number of piracy cases it filed last year. A few of the 1,600 lawsuits With this level of workload, it's no surprise that most cases are resolved relatively swiftly. Of all lawsuits filed in the first half of the year, more than a third have already been closed. This typically happens when the parties reach an out-of-court settlement. Strike 3 can also drop a complaint for other reasons and occasionally it obtains a default judgment due to a lack of response from a defendant. Rarely ever, do we see one of these cases go to trial. A Trial is Coming While rare, there is currently a trial in preparation at the Middle District of Florida. This proceeding is scheduled to start later this month and both Strike 3 and the accused pirate will get four days to present their arguments. In the leadup to this legal battle, Strike 3 asked the court to ban the term "copyright troll" at trial. The company argued that this language is "derogatory" and "prejudicial" but Judge District Court Judge Mary Scriven denied the request. The trial itself won't be about semantics. Among other things, the defense seems intent on attacking Strike 3's evidence-gathering technology, while the adult company will counter by pointing out that the defendant destroyed important evidence on his computer. Whether the trial will keep Strike 3 busy enough to prevent a new piracy case record has yet to be seen. To reach this milestone, the company 'only' has to file 1,129 complaints in the second half of the year. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ACE Hits Hundreds of Pirate Streaming Sites By Shutting Down 2Embed Ernesto Van der Sar, 04 Jul 07:22 PM In recent years, pirate streaming platforms have surpassed torrent sites and direct download portals in terms of popularity. These portals offer the 'on-demand' convenience many people have grown accustomed to. For site operators, the streaming business also has its advantages. Piracy as a Service The streaming boom has created a new branch of pirate entrepreneurs that offer "piracy as a service". This includes platforms that provide access to a library of pirated content, which streaming sites can subsequently use to embed movies and TV shows. This means that site owners no longer have to source and store content. They simply connect an API to the backend of their public-facing streaming portal. Front-ends can also be bought in the form of pre-packaged scripts and templates, if needed. 2Embed is one of the pirate libraries that has taken the pirate streaming world by storm. The site offered access to a catalog of pirate streaming links for 300,000 movies and TV shows, which could easily be embedded in any website using an IMDb ID for reference. 2embed.to embeds The service has long been a thorn in the side of the movie industry. The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has repeatedly reported 2Embed to the U.S. Trade Representative. In its most recent filing, the MPA wrote that hundreds of streaming sites relied on 2Embed, a service that it had linked to Vietnam, "Pirate site operators can either use 2embed's service for free, in which case 2embed remunerates itself by inserting ads, or use its paid service that allows them to insert their own ads. MPA has evidence of the site's connection to Vietnam." Hollywood's concerns didn't go unheard. Both the U.S. Trade Representative and the European Commission highlighted 2Embed as a notorious piracy source. Vietnamese authorities started to take an interest in the problem as well. 2Embed Shuts Down Last week, representatives from the MPA and the affiliated anti-piracy group ACE visited Vietnam, speaking with local government officials. Around the same time, ACE booked a major success by shutting down 2Embed following negotiations with its Hanoi-based operator. "[T]he service was shut down through direct operator outreach," ACE chief Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak, noting that the action directly impacted hundreds of streaming sites. "Of the 457 streaming sites identified by ACE as using 2Embed as their exclusive source of content, 302 are now unavailable, offline or devoid of content since ACE took the service down. These 302 sites received a combined 2.756 billion visits in the past two years." Domino Effect According to ACE, Fmoviesto.site was the largest site hit by the shutdown. The streaming portal had nearly 15 million visits in May. At the time of writing, Fmoviesto.site appears to be streaming pirated content again, but others still display an error message, as seen below. Refused to connect The 2Embed takedown is a significant blow to the pirate streaming ecosystem. Many of the affected streaming portals may eventually recover using alternative video libraries, such as the copycat service 2embed.cc, but other sites are threatened more directly. Van Voorn explains that the 2Embed operator is also behind other popular sites. This includes Zoro.to, which has over 200 million monthly visits and is currently the 180th most visited website in the world. ACE is in discussions with the Vietnamese operator to shut this site down as well. These negotiations ran into complications earlier today when Zoro.to announced that the site had been "acquired" by a new dev team. The domain now redirects to Aniwatch.to, which is probably not the resolution ACE was aiming for. Vietnamese Connections MPA and ACE are not likely to let this issue go easily, though, especially at a time when they're strengthening their relationships with Vietnamese authorities. A few days ago, the anti-piracy group met with officials from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), to discuss future cooperation. ACE/MPA meeting with Vietnamese officials (photo) Through this meeting, Vietnam's Deputy Minister of Public Security, Le Quoc Hung, asked MPA and ACE to share intelligence going forward so that both sides can cooperate in their efforts to curb online piracy and copyright infringement. According to Van Voorn, who was present in Vietnam, the job is not done yet. "There is much to do in Vietnam, which has become a major global source and exporter of pirated content. But engagement with the government, particularly the Ministry of Public Security, is progressing," Van Voorn tells us. It's unclear which 'Vietnamese' sites and services are next on the list to be targeted. However, the MPA previously linked Fmovies.to, Myflixer.to, BestBuyIPTV.store, Abyss.to and Fembed.com to the Asian country. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Zoro.to: World's Largest Pirate Site Suddenly "Acquired" & Rebranded Andy Maxwell, 04 Jul 01:20 PM Here's a curious conundrum: given its extraordinary traffic and likely position as the world's largest pirate site, why does Zoro.to feature so rarely in rightsholders' public complaints over piracy? One explanation could be the site's age; at just over two years old, it's possible that established sites are considered more of a priority. Another factor could be that Zoro.to focuses on Japanese anime rather than mainstream Hollywood movies. But with over 205 million visits per month, all mainstream movie piracy sites are left behind in a cloud of dust double their size. Zoro.to – Gone for good…. Based on average traffic levels reported by SimilarWeb, Zoro.to should receive over six million visits today alone. Those visitors are in for a surprise because starting a few hours ago, Zoro.to unexpectedly ceased to exist. Zoro.to is Dead, Aniwatch.to Takes Over Visitors to the Zoro.to domain are currently redirected to a new one; Aniwatch.to. The transition is seamless via a redirect, but the culture shock shouldn't be too great for former Zoro.to users. Old logins appear to work on the new domain and apart from a new color scheme, the design is very familiar indeed. Aniwatch.to is the new Zoro.to User reactions to the sudden change range from "nooooo what did they do to my boy zoro" to "WHAT THE **** IS ANIWATCH????" The most predictable center around a common theme: "why zoro turn into aniwatch?" As questions go, that's a good one. Zoro.to Was "Acquired" By a New Dev Team Pirate sites are known for moving to new domains. Domain seizures or suspensions can often play a part in sudden changes, but domain jumping has served two additional purposes more recently. Anti-piracy groups have spoken of the difficulties domain jumping can cause during investigations, but the second relates to search engine visibility. Receiving too many DMCA notices can cause Google to derank sites from search results, but in this case it appears that the Zoro.to domain hasn't yet reached the threshold. At the time of writing, Google reports the removal of around 43,700 URLs and it's rumored that 50,000 may be the limit. A new domain may have been required shortly anyway but the reasons for today's switch are reportedly different. In response to some Zoro.to users having a meltdown over the domain and palette changes, a staff member explained that there is no need to panic over a management issue. "Everyone calm down, Zoro is acquired by a new dev team, they will now handle the whole website and social network accounts. Do not worry, all the data will remain the same, the old staff will keep supporting the server. Thank you," the message reads. There Are Things Users Don't Need to Know On the basis that telling users anything about internal site operations is always a terrible idea, a couple of decades of history show that announcements like this one aren't intended to provide useful updates to pirates. More likely than not, this is a message intended for those who would prefer to see Zoro.to consigned to history and already had a plan in place for that to happen. Whether the cosmetic changes on display here will make much difference to the future of Aniwatch.to will remain to be seen, but it's certainly possible that this move hasn't been at the serious planning stage for very long. Activity on the new domain dates back around three months but development work related to the new domain/site that wasn't secured from public view only dates back around 72 hours. Tip of the Iceberg The final factor worth mentioning is the large number of sites in operation today that look very much like zoro/aniwatch and have broadly the same functionality. These operate from separate domains but as a sample of just four shows, originality appears to be a problem. The reason that so many of these similar-looking sites exist is pretty straightforward. The days of having to make your own site and obtain content from somewhere are well and truly gone. Today it's simply a case of buying a template, installing the script on a server, and waiting for thousands of movies to be pumped through as part of the package. Of course, it's not ideal for lots of sites to rely on a third party to supply all of the content; if that entity bites the dust, it's game over. But while it was game over for Zoro.to this morning, the appearance of Aniwatch.to shows that when a situation requires creativity, solutions are never too far away. That also applies to advertising; Zoro reportedly didn't have too many ads but complaints about the rebranded platform are already coming in. — Update: Zoro.to's owner presumably 'sold' the site after ACE shut down one of their other services 2Embed. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Are you looking for a VPN service? TorrentFreak sponsor NordVPN has some excellent offers. ©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