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Bungie Wins Powerful Disclosure Order to Identify Anonymous Cheat Makers
Andy Maxwell, 01 Dec 11:37 AM

Destiny 2Bungie's interest in individuals linked to Destiny 2 cheat maker and distributor, Ring-1, became public in 2021.

A lawsuit filed at a California court named four defendants as suspected operators with an additional 50 'Doe' defendants to be unmasked as the case progressed.

Six causes of action including copyright infringement, trafficking in circumvention devices contrary to the DMCA, trademark violations, and unfair competition, encouraged three defendants to settle with Bungie. However, with Ring-1 still in business, more work lay ahead.

New Lawsuit, New Determination

Filed at a Washington court early August 2023, a new complaint alleging copyright infringement, breaches of the DMCA, and civil RICO violations, among others, targeted up to 50 developers, marketers, customer support staff, and sellers of Destiny 2 cheating software offered by Ring-1.

According to the complaint, Bungie's investigative work had already identified several defendants by name, while others were known only by their online handles. During September and October, identified defendants were served in West Virginia, Delaware, and Ontario, Canada, but in order to identify and serve more, on October 27, Bungie requested assistance from the court.

"Like the cheat itself, the Enterprise is sophisticated and its members go to great lengths to conceal their identities," Bungie's motion for expedited discovery explained.

"Many Defendants do not provide any contact information such as a physical address, email address, or phone number, and conduct their transactions entirely pseudonymously. Defendants also use privacy protection services to hide their names and contact information from the public domain name WHOIS database."

Third Parties Likely to Hold Identifying Information

While those personal details had proven evasive up to that point, Bungie informed the court that it had been able to identify several third parties with past, current, or ongoing relationships with those it hoped to identify. Those parties, Bungie said, were likely to have records "uniquely attributable" to the unidentified defendants, and these would either directly or indirectly allow Bungie to identify and then serve its targets.

In respect of the Ring-1 website, Bungie named Nice IT Services Company (host), Digital Ocean (payment-related subdomains), and Telegram (support) as service providers that allow it to operate.

In connection with six alleged operators of Ring-1 ("Hastings," "Khaleesi," "Cypher," "god," "C52YOU," and "Lelabowers74"), Bungie identified a further seven third party service providers upon which the Ring-1 operators reportedly rely; Twitch and YouTube (advertising), Streamlabs (enhance revenue, broaden reach) and Steam, where the defendants allegedly play Destiny 2.

Other providers include Yahoo and Live (where Hastings has email accounts), Google (where Khaleesi has a Gmail address), and Discord; according to Bungie, the alleged Ring-1 operators used to chat there before deleting their server in July 2021.

Bungie's investigations reportedly identified accounts at ISPs connected to Hastings and Khaleesi; the former at Verizon and Comcast in the United States and the latter at Virgin Media and Sky Broadband in the UK. Five Ring-1 resellers identified by Bungie operated various services including Discord servers, websites, plus Twitter and YouTube accounts.

As a result, these third parties plus domain registrars Squarespace and GoDaddy, and e-commerce platform Sellix, are likely to hold identifying information, Bungie informed the court (sample of proposed order below).

Bungie-Poposed order Ring-1 Oct23

Order Granted in Part, Denied in Part

Having considered Bungie's rather broad motion, United States Magistrate Judge Michelle L. Peterson handed down her order this Wednesday.

While most of Bungie's requests were found to be "narrowly tailored" to seek identifying information, requests to serve third-party subpoenas to Cloudflare, Storely, Selly, and "any other third-party Plaintiff identifies to be providing services of any kind to any one or more of the Defendants" were described as unsupported or overbroad.

Even with these denials and especially considering the number of services involved, Bungie's narrowly tailored request could prove pivotal for the entire case. As such, unless extreme caution was exercised at all times, it will only be a matter of time before Bungie begins serving additional defendants.

ring-1-subpoena-order- Nov23

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Malware Threats Can Be An Effective Anti-Piracy Strategy, Research Suggests
Ernesto Van der Sar, 30 Nov 08:41 PM

DangerOver the years, we've witnessed dozens of anti-piracy campaigns. Initially, these pointed out that piracy is illegal and immoral, hoping to change people's views.

"Don't Copy That Floppy" and "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" are prime examples of these early attempts. While these campaigns captured the interest of a broad public, mostly for amusement purposes, they did little to stop piracy.

In recent years the tone of anti-piracy campaigns has changed. Instead of focusing on legal aspects and financial losses, they now place emphasis on pirates themselves being at risk, by associating piracy with ransomware, credit card theft, and other evils.

Just in the past month, two public service announcement campaigns were launched, both with a strong focus on security threats. In addition to rightsholders, these campaigns include State Attorneys General and the U.S. Government's IPR Center, each adding extra weight to the messaging.

Is Cyber Hygiene a Remedy to IPTV Infringement?

Anti-piracy groups must have a good reason to focus on security issues instead of copyright law. Perhaps the former is more effective?

A new paper titled "Is cyber hygiene a remedy to IPTV infringement?" suggests that this could indeed be the case.

With this study, researchers from the University of Oxford, Bournemouth University and Hamad bin Khalifa University researched how psychological factors, including risk-taking and security behaviors, impact people's tendency to use shady IPTV services. Put differently, what determines whether people are more likely to use 'risky' piracy services?

After completing several questionnaires, the UK-based respondents were presented with a mockup of an IPTV service. There were several mockup versions, ranging from a clean interface to ones with popups, even spy- or ransomware. For each version, respondents had to rate the perceived risk level, and their risk-taking inclination.

The resulting scores allow the researchers to see how much risk people are willing to take, with the built-in assumption that unlicensed 'pirate' streaming services generally have more risky signs.

Internet Addicted Pirates with Psychopath Personalities

The researchers hypothesized that people who score higher on Internet addiction traits tend to be less reluctant to use risky piracy services. The same should apply to people with dark personalities, which is a combination of the personality traits narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.

The results of the study confirmed these predictions, showing that people who score higher on Internet addiction and dark personality traits are more likely to see risky streaming platforms as less problematic.

Vasilis Katos, Computer Science Professor at Bournemouth University, informs TorrentFreak that this is both good and bad news for anti-piracy advocates. Dark personality traits are relatively fixed and hard to change, but digital addiction can be addressed.

"Our findings show that people's propensity to risk taking – in our case viewing AV content with a risk of getting infected by malware – is dependent on two main aspects: one's dark personality traits and the degree of digital addiction."

"The former is considered pretty constant and stable over time, as the dark personality traits have genetical and biological components, therefore less prone to change. For digital addiction, however, we accept that there are interventions where people can adopt in order to heal," Katos says.

Cybersecurity Behavior

There is an important caveat, as the researchers stress that addressing Internet addiction might not only affect online piracy, but also legal consumption. After all, binge-watching on official streaming platforms is also a form of addiction.

A more straightforward option to deter pirates lies in the online security realm. The study reveals that people's cybersecurity practices and behaviors, mediate the link between digital addiction and risky IPTV viewing.

iptv risk study

This mediating effect suggests that when people are warned or educated about the risk of malware, fraud, and other evils on pirate sites, they are less likely to use these services.

"[I]n order to reduce the likelihood of someone consuming illegal IPTV content, we can address their digital addiction and/or improve their cybersecurity behaviour and hygiene," Katos notes.

Piracy Genes?

Put differently, the anti-piracy campaigns that focus on security awareness aspects, which we have seen pop up repeatedly in recent years, can be an effective strategy; perhaps even more effective than legal threats.

That said, the researchers stress that piracy is a complex issue that no single measure can solve. People who are born with dark personalities, particularly the psychopathy trait, are genetically predisposed to take more risks online.

No matter how many malware threats there are, some people are simply willing to take the risk; just like there will always be people who step in to launch new piracy services. It's in their genes, apparently.

"[A]lthough these [security-focused] campaigns could contribute to the decrease of risky IPTV viewing practices, they will not eliminate the problem, as there is always the portion of the population that are risk takers and perhaps seek thrills, as part of their psyche," Katos concludes.

A copy of the preprint article covering the research in detail is available below. The results have not yet been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as such.

Shah R, Cemiloglu D, Yucel C, Ali R, Katos V. Is cyber hygiene a remedy to IPTV infringement? A study of online streaming behaviours and cybersecurity practices. Research Square; 2023.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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