Month: January 2016

Iranian State TV Broadcasts Movie From Pirate Site

iribIn Iran IRIB TV3 is one of the channels operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

It’s often dubbed the youth channel as a lot of its programming attracts a younger audience, including sports events and foreign movies and TV-shows.

Perhaps in line with this philosophy, the television channel broadcasted the 2013 Hong Kong film “Saving General Yang” a few days ago. Not a regular copy though, but a pirated one.

Several Iranian viewers noticed that aside from the IRIB TV3 logo in the top right corner, there was another ‘watermark’ at the bottom. This read Tinymoviez.co, which is a popular site in Iran where people can download pirated copies of movies and TV-shows.

This oddity was picked up in the local media, which shared screenshots of the unusual sight.

Tinymoviez on Iranian national TV (credit)

iribpirate

Ironically, the Tinymoviez website and other Persian pirate sites such as Ganool are censored by the Iranian Government because they contain nudity. However, just like many citizens, Iran’s state TV appears to have found a backdoor.

IRIB TV3 is not the only channel to show pirated movies. According to the Iranian Student News Agency this is quite common as pirate watermarks also appeared elsewhere on movies such as Django Unchained, Tower Heist, and Jack the Giant Slayer.

In addition, TV broadcasters often use music from popular TV-shows such as Game of Thrones and Dexter on their own footage, reportedly without authorization.

Ganool.com mark on The Tower Heist broadcast (credit)

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But there’s more.

Apparently Iranian State TV isn’t limiting its pirate broadcasts to movies and TV-shows. They also broadcasted a soccer match, recorded from Al Jazeera, which prompted FIFA to threaten them with legal action.

While this blatant unauthorized use is quite a shocker in the west, in Iran it’s less of a problem. The country’s copyright law is set up to protect all copyrighted works produced by Iranians, but not necessarily those by creators from other countries.

Since 2001 Iran has been a member of the WIPO, and has acceded to several WIPO treaties. However, the Iranian Government never signed the WIPO copyright treaty and other international copyright agreements that would make copying of foreign products unlawful.

As a result, broadcasting unlicensed media has become quite common.

While ‘piracy’ appears to be rampant in Iran, there have been similar incidents elsewhere too. A few years ago Netflix accidentally used ‘pirate’ fansubs on the Canadian-American science fiction series Andromeda, for example.

Similarly, Saudi Airlines previously listed a pirated movie in its in-flight entertainment system, where passengers had the option to watch “Killers 2010 BDRiP AC3 XViD-ILOVE.”

Pirates all around.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

Pirates Fail to Prevent $38 Billion Box Office Record

piratefishToday, watching pirated movies is arguably easier than it has ever been before.

Pirates can choose from hundreds of torrent, streaming and direct download sites, and there are dedicated applications that allow people to stream the latest blockbusters without paying a cent.

Movie industry insiders are doing whatever they can to contain piracy. This appears to be a near impossible task as many unauthorized sites and services are operated by anonymous owners.

As a result the MPAA and other groups warn that hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake, while the economy is losing billions due to piracy. Illegal downloads, they say, are slowly killing their creative industry.

Interestingly, these stark warnings are not reflected in last year’s box office revenues.

Recent numbers show that the movie industry just broke the magic $11 billion barrier, generating more revenue than ever before at the North American box office. The revenue for 2015 totals $11.3 billion, which is roughly a 9% change compared to last year.

The worldwide grosses also reached an all-time record according to research from Rentrak, which estimates the global grosses at a staggering $38 billion based on data from 25,000 theaters across the globe.

Another sign that business is going well, at least for some, is the increase in the number of tickets that were sold. In 2015 theaters increased their ticket sales by more than 5% in North America.

Of course, the above doesn’t prove that illegal downloads have no effect at all. It could be that the movie industry would make even more money if all pirate sites disappeared overnight, as some studies suggest.

Also, the movie industry isn’t by any means limited to the box office. DVD sales and various streaming platforms impact the bigger picture as well.

That said, piracy has certainly not destroyed the movie business just yet. There are still plenty of people who are going to the movie theater to pay for their entertainment. Perhaps pirates should up their game?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak

BREIN Takes 343 ‘Pirate’ Sites Offline, Warns Uploaders

piratekayAnti-piracy outfit BREIN has been one of the leading pro-copyright groups for many years.

Focusing on piracy in the Internet space, Netherlands-based BREIN has a track record of targeting torrent and other similar sites operating within its jurisdiction.

In recent years BREIN has began producing annual reports detailing its activities of the preceding 12 months. The group has just published its 2015 edition and its clear the outfit has been busy.

Site takedowns

One of BREIN’s main strategies is to take piracy sites offline, something it regularly achieves by threatening their hosting providers. BREIN’s reputation is well-known in the Netherlands so in many cases minimum coercion is required. That results in big headline numbers.

According to BREIN’s report, 343 pirate sites were taken down in 2015. The vast majority (150) are described as “link farms”, forums and similar platforms where links to files on third-party hosting sites are shared.

Streaming sites came in second place with 96 takedowns, with torrent sites in third with 63. Seven of the sites related to Popcorn Time.

BREIN says that pirate sites often try to hide their true locations behind Cloudflare’s services but that doesn’t appear to hinder the group when attempting to shut them down and trace their owners. When they can be tracked to The Netherlands, some are given the opportunity to enter into a settlement.

“A signed withdrawal statement with a penalties for future infringement plus a contribution towards costs and damages must be paid. How high that is depends on the circumstances of the case,” BREIN explains.

Targeting uploaders and other community members

While there has been some activity in the past, during 2015 BREIN made a number of announcements relating to its pursuit of individual file-sharers. Targeting those at the more serious end of the scale, BREIN cherry-picked a few individuals responsible for uploading lots of content.

Among them were three members of release group DRT. They were subjected to a court order and agreed to settle with BREIN. According to the anti-piracy group, they also did some snitching on other members of their group.

In separate action, BREIN targeted the brains behind release group DMT. He reportedly settled for thousands of euros and put up a warning on torrent indexes including KickassTorrents.

Together with another busted colleague the pair subsequently tried to pay their ‘fines’ via a crowdfunding operation. That was eventually discontinued after reported threats from BREIN. The anti-piracy group now confirms that it considered the fundraiser as generating income from illegal activities.

Earlier in the year, BREIN said it also obtained an injunction against “an important moderator” on one of the “largest illegal BitTorrent sites”. In line with BREIN policy, the site itself was not named.

In 2016, BREIN says its pursuit of important pirates will increase and that it has deployed “special software” to help with the task.

“The system is registered with the Dutch data protection authority (CBP) which has issued a certified statement after examination the legality for the processing of personal data in this system by BREIN,” the anti-piracy group reports.

In future, those caught by BREIN will be required to sign a cease and desist agreement and pay a contribution towards costs and damages, which currently amount to around 12,500 euros.

Targeting Google

In 2015, BREIN says it sent more than 5.7 million infringing content reports to Google. That brings its grand total to more than 12.5 million notices since it began its takedown program in 2012.

brein-google

BREIN’s report is available here (Dutch)

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.


Source: TorrentFreak