Popcorn Time, the highly popular and extremely-easy-to-use "Netflix for piracy" service, came back Tuesday after a years-long hiatus. The move comes as people around the world are quarantined or being asked to stay in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. Motherboard reports: Popcorn Time allows people to stream movies using BitTorrent, without actually downloading the movies or worrying about finding a tracker to use. Essentially, it removes any torrenting learning curve, allowing people to (illegally) stream movies and television shows from an easy-to-use app. Because it's so simple to use, Popcorn Time became instantly popular upon its release in 2014 and was immediately targeted by the movie industry. The service was shut down multiple times by court order, police raids, and IP blocks all over the world between 2014 and now; the open source app was forked several times and has worked intermittently, but has been largely offline over the last few years.

Within the last couple days, a new version of Popcorn Time popped up on Popcorntime.app, version 4.0. The new app works just as well as earlier versions of the app, is free, and implores people to use virtual private networks to avoid having their use of the app detected by their internet service providers. The app has been released while many around the world are quarantined, and also comes at a time when piracy is becoming more popular, generally speaking. Other versions of Popcorn Time are also currently active, but the user interface of this one and its release appear to be closely affiliated with earlier Popcorn Time projects, based on domain redirects and urls.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For those who don't want to dive fully into torrents, Plex is a great alternative for streaming television shows and movies for free. Officially, Plex is a "neutral" media player, and it first became popular with people looking to stream content between devices at home, like from their desktop in the study to their laptop in their bedroom. But, with Plex Media Server, users can also share media with other users to stream, creating a virtual free-for-all, and a serious problem from a copyright perspective. CreativeFuture, a pro-copyright coalition boasting more than 560 members, has taken notice and is calling out the platform, along with rival service Kodi.

"Thanks to a rapidly growing media application called Plex, torrent-based piracy is back in vogue, and better than ever (for criminals who have no problem with profiting from content that doesn't belong to them, that is)," the coalition writes in a blog post. Those who pay $4.99 per month for Plex Pass are able to share their libraries with up to 100 users. As Creative Future points out, this isn't always done for the sake of altruism, or so family's can share their legally procured copies of Frozen. Some Plex users actually charge for access to their content -- a more nefarious (though, granted, enterprising) evolution from the totally free world of torrenting. For extra sass, the shared content can be pirated to begin with.

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: The music industry was in crisis just a few years ago. Sales were cut in half from their peak as single downloads, YouTube and piracy made the CD album go virtually extinct. But music has found its white knight: streaming. Last year, recorded music revenues in the United States went up by 13% to $11.1 billion — the highest level since 2006... "The music industry today is healthier than it's been in more than a decade," Josh Friedlander, the senior vice president of research at the Recording Industry Association of America, told CNN Business.

"Revenues from streaming services are more than offsetting decreases in physical sales and digital downloads." Friedlander added "it's hard to overstate the impact streaming music has had on the music industry...." Music streaming — which includes paid streaming, ad-supported streaming and streaming radio — represented about 5% of the music industry's revenues in the US in 2009.

In 2019, that number had grown to roughly 80%, according to the RIAA.

Fortran IV writes: In an attempt to "start a conversation" about copyright and IP theft, one of the largest subreddits on Reddit.com, the horror sub r/NoSleep, has gone private for a week. NoSleep, with nearly 14 million subscribers, is one of the largest collections of horror fiction on the internet; MIT used it to train an AI system to write horror stories. Authors retain copyright to all stories on NoSleep, but piracy remains an ongoing problem, so the moderators have elected to shutter the sub from 02/24/2020 to 03/02/2020 to draw attention to the issue.

In 2018, the owner of Two-Bit History, a site dedicated to computer history, wrote a successful article about mathematician Ada Lovelace, who some credit as being the first computer programmer. Sadly, if you search Google for that article today you won't find it. Some idiotic anti-piracy company had it deleted because it dared to use the word "did." TorrentFreak reports: In 2018, [Sinclair Target, the owner of computing history blog, Two-Bit History] wrote an article about Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron who some credit as being the world's first computer programmer, despite being born in 1815. Unfortunately, however, those who search for that article today using Google won't find it. As the image below shows, the original Tweet announcing the article is still present in Google's indexes but the article itself has been removed, thanks to a copyright infringement complaint that also claimed several other victims.

Sinclair's article was deleted because an anti-piracy company working on behalf of a TV company decided that since its title (What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Actually Do?) contained the word 'DID,' it must be illegal. This monumental screw-up was announced on Twitter by Sinclair himself, who complained that "Computers are stupid folks. Too bad Google has decided they are in charge." At risk of running counter to Sinclair's claim, in this case -- as Lovelace herself would've hopefully agreed -- it is people who are stupid, not computers. The proof for that can be found in the DMCA complaint sent to Google by RightsHero, an anti-piracy company working on behalf of Zee TV, an Indian pay-TV channel that airs Dance India Dance. Now in its seventh season, Dance India Dance is a dance competition reality show that is often referred to as DID. And now, of course, you can see where this is going. Because Target and at least 11 other sites dared to use the word in its original context, RightsHero flagged the pages as infringing and asked Google to deindex them. In the complaint sent to Google, "the notice not only claims Target's article is infringing the copyrights of Dance India Dance (sorry, DID), but also no less than four online dictionaries explaining what the word 'did actually means," adds TorrentFreak. "Perhaps worse still, some of the other allegedly-infringing articles were published by some pretty serious information resources [including the U.S. Department of Education, Nature.com, and USGS Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey]."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Twitch has been and remains home to illicit sports broadcasts; a late December boxing match attracted over 86,000 viewers -- some of whom spammed ASCII genitalia in chat -- and a mid-January soccer match drew over 70,000 over three livestreams. Although Twitch often stomps them out mid-match, plenty of livestreams posted by throwaway accounts with innocuous names like "Untitled" slip through the cracks and garner tens of thousands of viewers. As the value of sports media rights has climbed to over $20 billion, copyright holders have more incentive than ever to guard their treasure. Yet piracy persists, in part because it's so burdensome for copyright holders to catch it. Stream aggregation site FirstRow Sports lays out a buffet of illicit livestreams for games ranging from ice hockey to basketball and attracts over 300,000 daily visitors, according to data from web analytics firm SimilarWeb. In January 2019 alone, sports fans accessed sports piracy sites 362.7 million times, according to data from digital piracy research firm Muso. On Discord, anonymous benefactors distribute links to soccer livestreams like handfuls of pigeon feed at the park. Once a stream is taken down, another immediately manifests. It's like 40 games of Whac-A-Mole simultaneously taking place in 40 adjacent arcades.

Increasingly, those links lead to Twitch, whose credentials as a mainstream platform make it a relatively safe option -- especially after Reddit shut down the popular soccer piracy subreddit r/soccerstreams. "The older days of streams (5+ years ago) was [sic] littered with ads and viruses," says a soccer stream Discord moderator who goes by Tom. "even though it is considered illegal, I see it being the same as watching porn and being under 18." He adds that some of the hairier-looking piracy sites are still more popular, offer higher-quality streams, and have live chats that utilize Twitch chats' code. Twitch's DMCA guidelines specify that copyright owners can submit takedown requests, and asks the people who submit them to add a "statement under penalty of perjury" that they're authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner. Occasionally, media companies file claims to Twitch impacting legitimate streamers who commentate over or react to games, television, or YouTube clips. Copyright holders can also choose to sue, as the third-largest internet company in Russia did against Twitch in December for broadcasting an English Premier League streams. It's a rare escalation, and one that underscores how serious an issue Twitch sports piracy has become. Twitch "only provides users access to the platform, does not post its own content, cannot change the content posted by users, or track possible violations of rights," says Twitch lawyer Yuliana Tabastayeva.

The live streaming service said it will "continue to, as has always been the case, effectively and swiftly address any violation of its terms of service with the removal of unlicensed copyrighted content."

In 2019, companies lost about $9.1 billion to password piracy and sharing. From a report: On Dec. 9, Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge took aim at the "content companies" entering the direct-to-consumer streaming business. The cable executive told a roomful of investment bankers in Manhattan that these new streamers are "creating havoc in the ecosystem." Rutledge wasn't talking about the proliferation of content or the fight to secure exclusive deals with talent. He was targeting the lax security and rampant password sharing that's prevalent across the streaming landscape. "Half the people in the country live in houses with two or less people in them, and yet these services have five streams," Rutledge added. "There are more streams available than there are homes to use them." Password sharing has serious economic consequences. In 2019, companies lost about $9.1 billion to password piracy and sharing, and that will rise to $12.5 billion in 2024, according to data released by research firm Parks Associates.

For now, many streamers -- including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Amazon Prime -- seem content to allow the practice to continue, even while they crack down on illicit password sales. But as services mature, priorities will likely change. "When the growth starts to flatten and you start to look at the balance sheet, you are going to be looking for revenue," says Jean-Marc Racine, chief product officer of video delivery and security firm Synamedia. The company (which counts Disney, Comcast and AT&T among its clients) conducted a study of two anonymous video providers and said Jan. 6 that it found they were losing more than $70 million annually from password sharing.

Over the past few years, record labels have been suing ISPs for not removing music pirates from their services, and this week, the record labels may have hit a tremendous victory. From a report: A US District Court jury has found Cox Communications liable for piracy infringement of more than 10,000 musical works, and as a result, has awarded $1 billion in damages to Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and EMI. Essentially, the recording industry just showed that a jury will buy its argument that an ISP should be held liable for failing to kick a music pirate off its network. And similar lawsuits like the one Cox lost today have been filed against Charter, Charter subsidiary Bright House Networks, RCN, and Grande Communications, so there's a chance that rulings against those companies could go similarly.

Russia's third-largest internet company is suing streaming service Twitch for 180bn roubles ($2.8bn) over pirate broadcasts of English Premier League games. From a report: Rambler Group alleges its exclusive broadcasting rights were breached by the service more than 36,000 times between August and November. It is seeking to permanently ban the Amazon-owned platform in Russia. Twitch's lawyer has called Rambler's case "unfounded." Russia is the third-largest user of Twitch, which has more than 15 million daily active users worldwide. Its terms and conditions state users cannot share content without permission from the copyright owners, including films, television programmes and sports matches. The streaming giant's lawyer, Julianna Tabastaeva, told Russian-language news website Kommersant Twitch "only provides users with access to the platform and is unable to change the content posted by users, or track possible violations." She added the company took "all necessary measures to eliminate the violations, despite not receiving any official notification from Rambler." Further reading: Why Twitch Is Still the King of Live Game Streaming.

An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: Two programmers in Las Vegas recently admitted to running two of the largest illegal television and movie streaming services in the country, according to federal officials... An FBI investigation led officials to Darryl Polo, 36, and Luis Villarino, 40, who have pleaded guilty to copyright infringement charges for operating iStreamItAll, a subscription-based streaming site, and Jetflix, a large illegal TV streaming service, federal officials said Friday.

With roughly 118,000 TV episodes and 11,000 movies, iStreamItAll provided members with more content than Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Vudu, according to prosecutors. Polo urged members of iStreamItAll via email to cancel licensed services in favor of pirated content, according to his plea agreement. He also admitted to earning $1 million from his piracy operations, officials said. He also admitted to downloading the content from torrent websites. "Specifically, Polo used sophisticated computer programming to scour global pirate sites for new illegal content; to download, process, and store these works; and then make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada," officials said.

Long-time Slashdot reader shanen writes: If you don't watch YouTube, then more power to you, but if you do watch it, then I bet you have noticed more and more intrusive and noisy and much longer ads along with frequent reminders that you can pay up and make the noise go away.

Feels like extortion to me and I'm not going to pay a blackmailer. But someone must be paying up. Is it you? Or do you even know anyone who is paying?
The original submission also shares shanen's argument that Google is exploiting copyright loopholes to monetize other people's copyrighted content. "It wouldn't even matter how much pirate video is uploaded to YouTube if the Google didn't make it easy to find... If the Google actually wanted to stop the piracy, the algorithm is obvious... The famous content has famous keywords and the searches for those keywords can be whitelisted. Pirate results can be disappeared and replaced with results that belong to the actual creator with legitimate exceptions for fair use." (But instead, the argument goes, they're just asking you for money to remove their ads on that content...)

That's shanen's opinion -- but what's yours? And would you pay to subscribe to YouTube?

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has released a new study which suggests that piracy is dropping in Europe. While the research is limited to site-based piracy, it has some interesting findings. Countries with a lower average income per person visit pirate sites more often, for example. In addition, the study shows that awareness of legal options doesn't always decrease piracy.

A group of major broadcasters and telco giants, including Rogers and Bell, have obtained the first Canadian pirate site blocking order. TorrentFreak reports: Last year, a coalition of copyright holders and major players in the telco industry asked the Canadian Government to institute a national pirate site blocking scheme. The Fairplay coalition argued that such measures would be required to effectively curb online piracy. Canada's telco regulator CRTC reviewed the request but eventually denied the application, noting that it lacks jurisdiction. The driving forces behind the request, Bell, Rogers, and Groupe TVA, were not prepared to let the blocking idea slip away, however. A few months ago the companies filed a lawsuit against the operators of a 'pirate' IPTV service GoldTV.ca. The companies argued that the service provides access to their TV content without licenses or authorization. Among other things, the rightsholders requested an interim injunction to stop the operators, who remain unidentified, from continuing to offer the allegedly-infringing IPTV service. This was granted, but despite the order, some of the infrastructures remained available.

This resulted in a follow-up request from the media giants, which became the setup for the first-ever pirate site blocking order in Canada. Specifically, the companies requested an interlocutory injunction order that would require several Canadian ISPs to block GoldTV domain names and IP-addresses. Late last week this request was granted by a Federal Court in Ontario. An order, issued by Judge Patrick Gleeson, requires most of Canada's largest ISPs, including Cogeco, Rogers, Bell, Eastlink and, TekSavvy, to start blocking their customers' access to GoldTV within 15 days. The order is unique in North America and relies heavily on UK jurisprudence, can be extended with new IP-addresses and domain names, if those provide access to the same IPTV service. The court doesn't prescribe a specific blocking method but mentions DNS and IP-address blocking as options.

An anonymous reader shares a report: A simple glance at torrent websites shows that plenty of people are stealing from the brand new steaming services -- episodes of The Mandalorian and Dickinson all have hundreds or thousands of seeders and are among the most popular shows on torrent sites. I reached out specifically to Disney, Apple, and Netflix to ask what their policy was on going after pirated content, and haven't heard back, but it's obvious that these companies assume that at least some of their viewers aren't paying the full price for their services. Given that you can watch as many as six simultaneous streams with Apple TV+, and four with Disney+ and the top Netflix package, the more common form of piracy -- password sharing -- is built into the system. But for pirates who don't have any access to the legit services, what makes stealing content particularly appealing in this age is that there are few if any people who face consequences for the crime.

Since the discontinuation of the "six strikes" copyright policy in 2017, there's been lax enforcement of copyright laws. Rather than going after individuals for exorbitant fines for downloading a handful of songs like copyright holders did a decade ago, enforcement these days has focused on the providers of pirated content, with the much more efficient goal of taking down entire streaming sites rather than just a few of their visitors. Of course, as the continued resilience of The Pirate Bay shows, the current strategy isn't particularly effective at stopping piracy, either. But it does mean that those who only download already-stolen content are safer than they've ever been.

A New Jersey district court has issued a devastating order against Strike 3 Holdings, the most active filer of piracy lawsuits in the US. In four separate cases, the court denied a request to obtain identities of alleged BitTorrent pirates. The court argues that the underlying complaints are futile. Even if they held up, other issues such as the privacy of the accused and Strike 3's failure to use other enforcement tools, would warrant a denial. TorrentFreak reports: Last week, New Jersey District Court Magistrate Judge Joel Schneider denied Strike 3 expedited discovery in four cases. This means that it's not allowed to subpoena ISPs for the personal details of account holders whose IP-addresses were used to share pirated videos via BitTorrent. In a very detailed 47-page opinion, the Judge takes apart various aspects of Strike 3's enforcement efforts. He makes it clear that these cases should not be allowed to go forward, as the complaints are futile. "The most fundamental basis of the Court's decision is its conclusion that, as pleaded, Strike 3's complaints are futile. The Court denies Strike 3 the right to bootstrap discovery based on a complaint that does not pass muster," Judge Schneider writes.

The futility lies in the fact that the complaints themselves include very few facts. The only thing that the company really knows is that an IP address is associated with downloading copyrighted works. Strike 3 doesn't know whether the subscriber is involved in the actual infringements. Courts have previously ruled both in favor and against allowing discovery to expose the account holders in these situations, but the New Jersey Court clearly sides with the latter. "The Court sided with the cases that hold it is not sufficient to merely allege in a pleading that the defendant is a subscriber of an IP address traced to infringing activity. Consequently, the Court will not authorize Strike 3 to take discovery premised on a futile John Doe complaint." The decision is partly based on the aforementioned "Cobbler" ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. However, the Court makes it clear that even if there was a properly pleaded infringement claim, the requests for expedited discovery would still be denied. In the opinion, Judge Schneider sums up the other issues as follows:

(1) Strike 3 bases its complaints on unequivocal affirmative representations of alleged facts that it does not know to be true.
(2) Strike 3's subpoenas are misleading and create too great of an opportunity for misidentification.
(3) The linchpin of Strike 3's good cause argument, that expedited discovery is the only way to stop infringement of its works, is wrong.
(4) Strike 3 has other available means to stop infringement besides suing
individual subscribers in thousands of John Doe complaints.
(5) The deterrent effect of Strike 3's lawsuits is questionable.
(6) Substantial prejudice may inure to subscribers who are misidentified.
(7) Strike 3 underestimates the substantial interest subscribers have in the constitutionally protected privacy of their subscription information.

Adobe has received a U.S. license allowing it to restore its services to users in Venezuela, which it was due to shut down to comply with a U.S. executive order that prohibits trade with the country. Reuters reports: Venezuelans said they were resorting to piracy after San Jose, California-based Adobe said it planned to halt access to its products to comply with sanctions. "After discussions with the U.S. government, we've been granted a license to provide all of our Digital Media products and services in Venezuela," wrote Chris Hall, Vice President and General Manager for Customer Experience, in a blog post. "Users can continue to access the Creative Cloud and Document Cloud portfolio, and all of their content, as they did before." Adobe had said its software would stop working in Venezuela on Oct 28.

From a report: Switzerland's National Council has passed amendments aimed at modernizing the country's copyright law to make it more fit for the digital age. While services that host pirate sites or distribute content can expect a tougher ride moving forward, users will still be able to download pirate content for personal use. Furthermore, Swiss Internet service providers will not be required to prevent their customers accessing pirate sites.

Steven Fabrizio, a top executive at the Motion Picture Association of America, has been fired following charges of second degree sexual abuse and blackmail. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Techdirt report, written by Mike Masnick: Beyond being the MPAA's top legal attack dog for nearly a decade, the Sony Pictures email leak showed that Fabrizio was the mastermind behind Hollywood's Project Goliath to use MPAA/Hollywood Studio funds to pay for having state Attorney's General and news media owned by those studios, to attack Google to try to pressure it into some sort of "deal" with the studios. Fabrizio was also formerly the top litigator at the RIAA, and led its charge against Napster. Fabrizio was deeply involved in key copyright lawsuits, including the fights against Grokster, Hotfile, and Aereo. Basically, much of the history of "anti-piracy" litigation and "anti-piracy" efforts regarding the internet, was somehow touched by Steve Fabrizio. And, of course, the usual line that people would give in supporting these positions is that it was necessary is because "piracy is illegal" and so on.

Anyway, that's why it's a bit shocking to discover that Fabrizio has now been arrested in DC (and fired by the MPAA) for alleged sexual assault and blackmail. Variety's story on the charges is really quite incredible: "According to a police affidavit, Fabrizio is accused of threatening a woman he met on a 'sugar daddy' dating site. The police allege that Fabrizio and the woman had consensual sex once on Aug. 19, after which he paid her $400. After that, she did not want to see him again. According to the affidavit, Fabrizio sent numerous texts insisting on a second meeting, and threatening to expose her if she did not comply. 'I know where you live,' he allegedly wrote. 'I know where you work. Don't think -- Hospital would be happy to know that it's young nurses are having sexual for money / Same for your landlord.' Fabrizio allegedly used those threats to coerce her into having sex again, according to the affidavit. The police allege that he then sent additional texts threatening to tell her parents if she did not continue to have sex with him a couple times a month. The woman called the police. After arranging for another meeting, Fabrizio was arrested outside the woman's apartment on Friday morning, according to the document."

Disney and Charter Communications are teaming up to fight account sharing in an attempt to prevent multiple people from using a single account to access streaming video services. Ars Technica reports: The battle against account sharing was announced as Disney and the nation's second-biggest cable company struck a new distribution agreement involving Disney's Hulu, ESPN+, and the forthcoming Disney+. Customers could still buy those online services directly from Disney, but the new deal would also let them make those purchases through Charter's Spectrum TV service. If you buy a Disney service through Charter, be aware that the companies will work together to prevent you from sharing a login with friends. Disney and Charter said in their announcement yesterday that they have "agreed to work together on piracy mitigation. The two companies will work together to implement business rules and techniques to address such issues as unauthorized access and password sharing."

The crackdown could target people who use Charter TV account logins to sign into Disney services online. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge has complained about account sharing several times over the past few years while criticizing TV networks for not fully locking down their content. "There's lots of extra streams, there's lots of extra passwords, there's lots of people who could get free service," Rutledge said at an industry conference in 2017. He argues that password sharing has helped people avoid buying cable TV. ESPN has also complained about account sharing, calling it piracy. Another possibility is that Charter could monitor usage of its broadband network to help Disney fight account sharing. For example, Disney could track the IP addresses of users signing in to its services, and Charter could match those IP addresses to those of its broadband customers.

Slashdot reader pgmrdlm quotes Bloomberg: Pornography producers and sellers account for the lion's share of copyright-infringement lawsuits in the U.S. -- and judges may have seen enough. The courts are cracking down on porn vendors that file thousands of lawsuits against people for downloading and trading racy films on home computers, using tactics a judge called a "high tech shakedown." [Alternate link here.] In one case, two men were jailed in a scheme that netted $6 million in settlements.

The pornography companies have "a business model that seeks to profit from litigation and threats of litigation rather than profiting from creative works," said Mitch Stoltz, a senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group that has waged a campaign against companies it thinks abuse the copyright system.

Two companies that make and sell porn are responsible for almost half of the 3,404 copyright lawsuits filed in the U.S. in the first seven months of this year, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Law's Tommy Shen... The companies say they are protecting their movies from piracy and infringement under U.S. copyright law, as major movie studios have done for decades, and suggest that the content of their films is the reason for the wrath of the judges. But some of the tactics used in their infringement suits to identify targets and force settlements have critics -- and some jurists -- up in arms and may require congressional actions to fix.

The suits don't initially name names. They identify the Internet Protocol addresses using peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent to download or distribute the movies and then file suits against âoeJohn Doesâ and ask the courts to order internet service providers, like Verizon Communications Inc. or Comcast Corp., to identify the account subscribers. Those people are then contacted by the porn company lawyers.
One lawyer notes that the lawsuits target users in wealthier areas, reports Bloomberg, which adds that in December one district judge even refused to grant the request for identities, ruling that the porn company "treats this court not as a citadel of justice, but as an ATM."

And last month a federal judge cited that ruling when refusing to enter a judgment in another case.