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ISPs Say They'll Happily Cut Pirate IPTV Streams as Quickly as Law Allows ItAndy Maxwell, 08 Feb 10:15 AM In the early 2000s, powerful entertainment

ISPs Say They'll Happily Cut Pirate IPTV Streams as Quickly as Law Allows It Andy Maxwell, 08 Feb 10:15 AM In the early 2000s, powerful entertainment industry groups were demanding action to prevent "wholesale theft" of their content online, much of it at the hands of regular customers of the world's ISPs. That very little content was available to buy legally online not only helped to fuel the crisis, in this underdeveloped market many ISPs still had just one key product to sell; internet access and the bandwidth it consumed. Broadly speaking, ISPs were concerned by the threats; on balance, however, putting customer interests last wouldn't have been an ideal strategy in a rapidly growing market. Epic Battle For The Internet In 2004, Belgian music rights group SABAM made an extraordinary move designed to force ISPs into compliance. Targeting local ISP Scarlet, SABAM sought a declaration that the ISP's subscribers infringed its members' rights, demanding that the ISP should be compelled to filter and block all piracy traffic. For the next seven years, through local courts and the European Court of Justice, Scarlet fought SABAM and the notion that an ISP could be forced to proactively monitor, block and filter to protect SABAM's members' rights, but at the expense of internet users' fundamental rights. Scarlet's landmark victory in 2011 remains one of the most important of its kind but in the 13 years that followed, entertainment companies changed and consumption of pirated content changed. While the legal principles underlying Scarlet's victory did not, attitudes towards acceptable filtering and blocking were on the move. ISPs Develop Tools to Block IPTV, Can't Wait to Use Them In 2008, Scarlet was acquired by telecoms giant Belgacom Group, which later rebranded as Proximus. Today the Scarlet brand is associated with the cheapest prices available in Belgium but, for owner Proximus, the availability of cheap bandwidth shouldn't be seen as a green light to consume cheap pirate IPTV services. Indeed, the company not only disapproves of pirate IPTV services, but it's also eager to play a more active role to ensure that its customers can't consume them. Right now, only paperwork is holding that back. "We are just waiting for the legal framework to be able to cut the streams. We don't have the right to do that today. But we have the capacity," CEO Guillaume Boutin revealed in a recent interview. "The cycle between when the link is spotted and when we receive permission to cut it takes too long. Afterwards it abounds in all directions. More links are coming. This procedure is of no use today." Boutin says that if he spots an illegal stream, under the current framework he can't simply decide to block it. "However, it is critical to be able to stem the phenomenon. Honestly, this IPTV situation is intolerable, for the rights holders, for the distributors, and for Proximus too. This is an enormous evaporation of value for the sector. This is unacceptable." Hearing an ISP use language and reasoning typically associated with rightsholders is rare; in some regions, it's completely unheard of. It suggests that these former rivals not only have much more in common, but may also stand to benefit from common policy in specific areas of business. Elsewhere in Belgium, another ISP appears to be singing from exactly the same sheet. CEO of Orange Completely Agrees Telecoms company Orange Belgium is a Proximus competitor albeit a little more expensive according to online comparisons. Yet in an interview with La Libre (paywall) published early February, comments by CEO Xavier Pichon are so closely aligned with those of Proximus chief Guillaume Boutin, there's little to set them apart. "We have the technological means to massively block these streams, and the content publishers who lose money are just asking for that, but for the moment, it is blocked because of administrative and judicial consistency. But that will change," Pichon said. "Illegal IPTV seriously threatens the entire economic model of publishers, copyrights and media. Telecommunications companies invest considerable resources in acquiring the rights to content and, at the same time, in the sizing and quality of the network necessary to carry content traffic over the network. "On the contrary, illegal service providers do not contribute to copyright and threaten the entire economic model of the media," Orange's CEO added. New Law in Place But Awaiting Royal Decree Both Proximus and Orange say that they're waiting (impatiently, in the case of the former) for implementation through a royal decree of a draft law published in 2022. The ISPs believe that the law will authorize the type of immediate blocking needed to properly tackle pirate IPTV providers. Pichon also believes that today's 'pirate IPTV' platforms will eventually find themselves usurped; the term IPTV will live on, though, at least after work to polish its image. "But let's remember that IPTV, which is a product of piracy, will be a product of the future," he said, alluding to success for a legal alternative. "We will have to 'unbrand' the term IPTV." From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Lawsuit Accuses Anna's Archive of Hacking WorldCat, Stealing 2.2 TB Data Ernesto Van der Sar, 07 Feb 07:43 PM Anna's Archive is a meta-search engine for book piracy sources and shadow libraries. Launched in the fall of 2022, just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, its self-stated goal is to ensure and facilitate the availability of books and articles to the broader public. A few months ago, the search engine expanded its offering by making available data from OCLC's proprietary WorldCat database. Anna's Archive scraped several terabytes of data over the course of a year and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free. These records contain no copyrighted books or articles. However, they can help to create a to-do list of all missing shadow library content on the web, with the ultimate goal of making as much content publicly available as possible. The people behind the site are not oblivious to the legal risks involved. However, they believe these are worth taking for the greater goal; creating a barrier-free global digital library. "We believe that efforts like ours to preserve the legacy of humanity should be fully legal, and that copyright is way too strict. But alas, this is not to be. We take every precaution. This mission is so important that it's worth the risks," 'Anna' previously told us. WorldCat Sues Anna's Archive It is no secret that publishers fiercely oppose the search engine's stated goals. The same also applies to OCLC, which has now elevated its concerns into a full-blown lawsuit, filed this month at a federal court in Ohio. The complaint accuses Washington citizen Maria Dolores Anasztasia Matienzo and several "John Does" of operating the search engine and scraping WorldCat data. The scraping is equated to a cyberattack by OCLC and started around the time Anna's Archive launched. "Beginning in the fall of 2022, OCLC began experiencing cyberattacks on WorldCat.org and OCLC's servers that significantly affected the speed and operations of WorldCat.org, other OCLC products and services, and OCLC's servers and network infrastructure," OCLC's complaint notes. "These attacks continued throughout the following year, forcing OCLC to devote significant time and resources toward non-routine network infrastructure enhancements, maintenance, and troubleshooting." The non-profit says that it spent roughly $68 million over the past two years developing and enhancing WorldCat records, which are an essential part of its operation. Having a copy of the data publicly available through Anna's Archive is a direct threat to its business. OCLC claims that Anna's Archive unmasked itself as the "perpetrator of the attacks on WorldCat.org" when it publicly announced its scraping effort. This includes a detailed blog post the operators published on the matter, encouraging the public to use the scraped data. The Announcement In addition to harvesting data from WorldCat.org, the defendants are also accused of obtaining and using credentials of a member library to access WorldCat Discovery Services. This opened the door to yet more detailed records that are not available on WorldCat.org. OCLC says that it spent significant time and resources to address the 'attacks' on its systems. "These hacking attacks materially affected OCLC's production systems and servers, requiring around-the-clock efforts from November 2022 to March 2023 to attempt to limit service outages and maintain the production systems' performance for customers. "To respond to these ongoing attacks, OCLC spent over 1.4 million dollars on its systems' infrastructure and devoted nearly 10,000 employee hours to the same," the complaint adds. Torrenting Terabytes The complaint recognizes that Anna's Archive doesn't host any copyrighted material. Instead, it links to third-party sources and offers torrent downloads. The WorldCat data is also made available through a torrent, which ultimately leads to 2.2TB of uncompressed records. "Defendants, through the Anna's Archive domains, have made, and continue to make, all 2.2 TB of WorldCat® data available for public download through its torrents," OCLC writes. The complaint accuses the defendants of encouraging users to download and analyze the data. For example, the search engine launched a 'minicompetition for data scientists' and called on visitors to help seed the torrents. OCLC further highlights that, similar to its own business, the non-profit element of Anna's Archive doesn't mean that no revenue is involved. The search engine offers subscriptions to its users that come with various perks. "For example, a $5 per month subscription will give a visitor '20 fast downloads per day,' while a $100 per month subscription grants a visitor '1000 fast downloads per day' and naming rights to a torrent file on Anna's Archive ('Adopt a torrent')." Subscriptions Defendants and Damages Following the alleged hacking efforts, OCLC tried to identify the perpetrators. In their complaint, Maria Dolores Anasztasia Matienzo, purportedly of Seattle Washington, is the only named defendant. The complaint notes that Matienzo describes herself as an "archivist" and uses the handle "anarchivist". She allegedly works as a software engineer at an AI startup and previously worked as a catalog librarian at a direct competitor of OCLC. The defendant allegedly teamed up with unnamed co-conspirators. These "John Does" are believed to reside in various foreign countries, including Israel and Brazil. Before taking legal action, OCLC sent cease-and-desist requests via various email addresses and the X account of Anna's Archive, which has since been removed. However, these notices didn't result in the desired outcome. Through the lawsuit, OCLC hopes to stop the site from linking to the WorldCat records. Among other claims, the defendants stand accused of breach of contract, unjust enrichment, tortious interference of contract and business relationships, trespass to chattels, and conversion of property. As compensation for OCLC's reported injuries, the company seeks damages, including compensatory, exemplary, and punitive damages. At the time of writing, the defendants have yet to respond to the allegations. — A copy of OCLC's complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, is available here (pdf) 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. ©2024 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