Month: March 2016

BREIN Shuts Down Torrent Release Group 2Lions-Team

uploadDutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has been very active recently, targeting various release groups that frequent popular torrent sites.

Yesterday the Hollywood-backed group announced another victory after obtaining ex-parte injunctions against three members of the torrent release group 2Lions-Team.

The three are prohibited from infringing any copyrights of BREIN members in the future, or face a fine of €2,000 per day.

BREIN also reached out of court settlements of roughly €15,000 with five 2Lions-Team members (including the three defendants), for a total damages amount of €67,500.

2Lions-Team has uploaded thousands of files to popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and ExtraTorrent. The group published a wide variety of titles including movies and TV-shows such as The Revenant, Making a Murderer, The Walking Dead, as well as several local titles.

According to BREIN the group is responsible for uploading thousands of torrents, some of which were downloaded over 470,000 times. As part of the settlements, most torrents have now been pulled offline.

Indeed, several “2lionsteam” related accounts and their torrents have now been deleted from The Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent and other sites.

2Lions-Team on TPB before it was removed)

2lions

The release group’s own website is no longer functioning either, but points to a messages from BREIN instead.

“Making copyrighted works available through torrents is an unauthorized reproduction and publication which infringes on the copyrights and related rights of BREIN affiliated rightsholders,” the message reads.

Judging from recent BREIN pursuits, the anti-piracy group is not interested in bankrupting any of the uploaders. For the level of the settlements in this case, BREIN says it took the financial capabilities of the 2Lions-Team into account as well.

Over the past several months BREIN has been pursuing uploaders more aggressively and this trend is expected to continue.

Last week the anti-piracy group was granted permission to monitor IP-addresses of torrent users on a broad scale, suggesting that it will also target individual BitTorrent users who share pirated content on a regular basis.

Update: We’ve clarified that there are five settlements. The fines in the ex-parte order only apply if the defendants continue their work.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

Judges: Geolocation Not Good Enough to Pinpoint Pirates

ip-addressWhile relatively underreported, many U.S. district courts are still swamped with lawsuits against alleged film pirates.

Malibu Media, the Los Angeles based company behind the ‘X-Art’ adult movies, is behind most of these cases. The company has filed thousands of lawsuits in recent years, targeting Internet subscribers whose accounts were allegedly used to share Malibu’s films via BitTorrent.

Like all copyright holders Malibu collects file-sharers’ IP-addresses as evidence. They then ask the courts to grant a subpoena, forcing Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holders.

In most cases the courts sign off on these requests, but two recent orders from the Southern District of California show that matters aren’t always as straightforward.

In a recent case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mitchell Dembin was not convinced that geolocation tools are good enough to prove that the alleged pirate resides in the Court’s district. As a result, he denied Malibu’s request for a subpoena.

“The allegation that the IP address at issue likely resolves to a physical address in this District is not supported in any of the declarations filed in connection with the instant motion,” Judge Dembin writes.

“In its Memorandum of Point and Authorities filed in support of this Motion, Plaintiff again asserts that it employed geolocation technology to trace the physical address of the offending IP address within this jurisdiction, and adds the name of the software employed, but again provides no evidentiary support for its assertions,” he adds (pdf).

Malibu had provided the court with a lengthy memorandum (pdf) explaining how it traced the IP-address to California. Among other things, the company pointed out that it uses a geolocation database from Maxmind, which it believes to be accurate 99% of the time.

Judge Dembin, however, concluded that Malibu fails to provide sufficient evidence, and he is not alone. Late last week Magistrate Judge Ruben Brooks issued a similar order against the adult media company.

“Plaintiff fails to offer any evidence to support its allegation that the infringing IP address was actually traced to a location within this judicial district,” Brooks writes (pdf).

“Nothing in the declarations Plaintiff submitted with its Ex Parte Motion explains what steps Plaintiff took to trace the IP address to a physical point of origin within this Court’s jurisdiction.”

In addition, Judge Brooks also raised questions about the accuracy of a geolocation tool to identify the ISP, concluding that the request for a subpoena should be denied based on a lack of evidence.

Geolocation tools are widely used in copyright lawsuits, so the reservations held by the judges could impact future litigation. Interestingly, when we compared the results of various geolocation tools for one of the IP-addresses involved, the results were different across several databases.

While the orders are good news for the defendants in these particular cases, copyright troll watcher SJD points out that several other local judges have granted similar requests.

That said, the recent decisions do offer hope to those who are targeted by Malibu cases in Southern California, as they now have some additional ammunition to fight back.

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


Source: TorrentFreak

68% of Digital Content Providers Geo-Block in the EU

The European Union wants companies selling digital content to citizens in EU Member States to do so across the entire region. Instead, companies continue to ring-fence their content, making material available in one region and not another.

The practice is known as geo-blocking and is carried out by checking users’ IP addresses and other data against commercial blocklists. A decision is then taken by providers as to which country’s content to serve to the user. This means that when an England-based Netflix user travels to mainland Europe, he can no longer access the same content he can when he’s at home.

In part to discover more about geo-restriction, last year the European Commission launched its Digital Single Market Strategy alongside an antitrust sector inquiry into e-commerce. After sending out questionnaires to both retailers of physical goods and companies offering digital content, the EU Commission has now published its initial findings.

Responses from more than 1,400 companies from all 28 Member States reveals widespread geo-blocking. In respect of physical goods, the EU reports that geo-blocking is often based on the “unilateral business decisions of retailers”, i.e simply not wanting to do business abroad.

“Where a non-dominant company decides unilaterally not to sell abroad, that is not an issue for competition law,” says European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

However, the situation with digital content supply is somewhat different. While the decision not to sell physical goods elsewhere is mainly the decision of the retailers, it was found that agreements between suppliers and distributors are often the cause of geo-blocking of digital content.

While 68% of digital content providers told the Commission that they geo-block users located in other Member States, 59% admitted that they are contractually bound to do so by their suppliers. The Commission says that these kinds of agreements have the potential to restrict competition in the EU Single Market and breach EU antitrust rules.

While all digital content covered by the EU inquiry was found to be affected by geo-blocking, the chart below clearly shows that worst offenders can be found in the fiction TV, films and sports sectors, with almost three-quarters of suppliers of the former engaged in contractual blocking.

eu-geo-blocking

“The information gathered as part of our e-commerce sector inquiry confirms the indications that made us launch the inquiry: Not only does geo-blocking frequently prevent European consumers from buying goods and digital content online from another EU country, but some of that geo-blocking is the result of restrictions in agreements between suppliers and distributors,” Vestager says.

“Where geo-blocking occurs due to agreements, we need to take a close look whether there is anti-competitive behavior, which can be addressed by EU competition tools.”

The Commission notes that if specific competition concerns arise it could open investigations into restrictive practices and abuse of dominant market positions. However, any enforcement measures would need to be carried out on a case-by-case basis.

Margrethe Vestager will offer a more detailed analysis of the inquiry in a preliminary report set to be published and opened for public consultation mid-2016. The final report is scheduled for publication in the first quarter of 2017.

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


Source: TorrentFreak