Month: March 2019

Like the majority of commercial broadcasters around the world, Sky has genuine competitors, eager to capture the company’s market share.

However, with the rise of unlicensed IPTV providers, which are offered either directly or through a staggering number of re-sellers and affiliates, Sky also faces huge competition from pirates. It is not difficult to see why.

While Sky subscriptions start at somewhat affordable prices, enhanced packages that involve premium movies and sports can escalate to sums that many households simply cannot muster. Pirate IPTV services, on the other hand, are cheap and offer channel packages that eclipse all legal offers.

To that end, companies like Sky are keen to wipe such platforms from the map but there’s currently a huge deficiency in what can actually be done to take them down. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop Sky from trying to make a dent in the volume of eyes landing on their websites.

During the past few weeks, Sky has been sending takedown notices to Google targeting many thousands of URLs that make up the websites of pirate IPTV providers servicing customers everywhere.

A single notice here, for example, attempts wipe 500 URLs belonging to EpicIPTV, Enjoy-IPTV, TalentIPTV, BestIPTV, and many, many more. Another, sent just this week, targets the websites of a dozen more, systematically attempting to delist every URL. A third, sent at the beginning of February, attempts to remove 500 pages belonging to just a single provider.

The list of notices (mainly sent by Sky in Italy, followed by Sky UK) goes on and on (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) but most have something in common. Despite the fact that a regular DMCA takedown notice should list URLs containing infringing content, the vast majority of those sent by Sky do not.

Instead, they target the sales portals, information databases, FAQs, and other ancillary pages that support infringing activity carried out elsewhere. None of the services targeted appear to offer pirate streams from the websites listed in the takedown notices, meaning that from a strictly technical perspective, none should be removed by Google.

While Google does indeed reject some of the notices for reasons unknown, many have been removed as requested. All that being said, it’s somewhat difficult to criticize Sky for not playing strictly by the rules when so many illicit services aren’t playing by them in any capacity.

So, as things stand, it looks like the strategy of targeting providers’ web presences will continue, since it often removes them from view and, as this forum post shows, can cause significant irritation and loss of profits for some people (re)selling IPTV services.

That being said, this removal of web presences does little to stop the underlying IPTV services from continuing, business as usual. That makes this a game of whac-a-mole that will never end, unless the underlying services are dealt with.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Like the majority of commercial broadcasters around the world, Sky has genuine competitors, eager to capture the company’s market share.

However, with the rise of unlicensed IPTV providers, which are offered either directly or through a staggering number of re-sellers and affiliates, Sky also faces huge competition from pirates. It is not difficult to see why.

While Sky subscriptions start at somewhat affordable prices, enhanced packages that involve premium movies and sports can escalate to sums that many households simply cannot muster. Pirate IPTV services, on the other hand, are cheap and offer channel packages that eclipse all legal offers.

To that end, companies like Sky are keen to wipe such platforms from the map but there’s currently a huge deficiency in what can actually be done to take them down. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop Sky from trying to make a dent in the volume of eyes landing on their websites.

During the past few weeks, Sky has been sending takedown notices to Google targeting many thousands of URLs that make up the websites of pirate IPTV providers servicing customers everywhere.

A single notice here, for example, attempts wipe 500 URLs belonging to EpicIPTV, Enjoy-IPTV, TalentIPTV, BestIPTV, and many, many more. Another, sent just this week, targets the websites of a dozen more, systematically attempting to delist every URL. A third, sent at the beginning of February, attempts to remove 500 pages belonging to just a single provider.

The list of notices (mainly sent by Sky in Italy, followed by Sky UK) goes on and on (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) but most have something in common. Despite the fact that a regular DMCA takedown notice should list URLs containing infringing content, the vast majority of those sent by Sky do not.

Instead, they target the sales portals, information databases, FAQs, and other ancillary pages that support infringing activity carried out elsewhere. None of the services targeted appear to offer pirate streams from the websites listed in the takedown notices, meaning that from a strictly technical perspective, none should be removed by Google.

While Google does indeed reject some of the notices for reasons unknown, many have been removed as requested. All that being said, it’s somewhat difficult to criticize Sky for not playing strictly by the rules when so many illicit services aren’t playing by them in any capacity.

So, as things stand, it looks like the strategy of targeting providers’ web presences will continue, since it often removes them from view and, as this forum post shows, can cause significant irritation and loss of profits for some people (re)selling IPTV services.

That being said, this removal of web presences does little to stop the underlying IPTV services from continuing, business as usual. That makes this a game of whac-a-mole that will never end, unless the underlying services are dealt with.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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Ein erfolgreicher Start ist noch kein erfolgreicher Flug. Dem Raumschiff Dragon, noch ohne Crew, steht auf einer Mission zur Internationalen Raumstation die erste große Bewährungsprobe bevor. Von Frank Wunderlich-Pfeiffer (SpaceX, Nasa)

Die Produktion seiner Wearables Band und Band 2 hat Microsoft schon längst eingestellt, jetzt ist auch das Dashboard dran: Ab Ende Mai 2019 können keine Daten mehr synchronisiert werden. Wer sein Wearable erst kürzlich verwendet hat, kann aber mit großzügigen Rückerstattungen rechnen. (Microsoft, Server)

Flat-Handys kann man knicken, weil sie unausgereift sind. 5G ist kaum mehr als heiße Luft. Auf dem MWC in Barcelona gab es diesmal vor allem Visionen. (Golem-Wochenrückblick, Urheberrecht)

With millions of visitors per month, Uploaded is one of the largest file-hosting services on the Internet.

Like many of its ‘cloud-hosting’ competitors, the service is also used to share copyright-infringing material, which is a thorn in the side of various copyright holder groups.

This led to all sorts of trouble for Uploaded’s parent company Cyando AG. It was sued in Germany, called out by the US Government, and subjected to a criminal investigation in Switzerland, where it’s believed to operate from.

The company’s whereabouts are not really a secret. Uploaded clearly displays the Swiss ‘base’ on its website. Switzerland is widely known for its strict data protection regulations, something Uploaded’s parent company also highlighted in a sponsored post on Gizmodo.

“The big cheese – sorry – in Swiss cloud computing is Cyando AG. Cyando AG is the name behind Uploaded.net, the file hosting service with millions of worldwide users. It’s growing quickly, and so is its reputation: individual and corporate users alike know that they can trust Uploaded.net with their most precious data.”

The apparent Swiss link prompted the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) to include it in its latest report to the US Trade Representative. By offering a home to these types of sites, Switzerland poses a threat to the interests of American copyright holders, it argued.

However, Switzerland doesn’t agree. A few days ago, the country submitted a rebuttal to the USTR. The Swiss point out that proposed updates to copyright law will alleviate many current concerns, and they also suggest that Uploaded.net is not their problem.

Local law enforcement authorities completed a criminal investigation into the site, but concluded that there are “no real ties” to Switzerland, unlike the IIPA suggests.

“IIPA seems to be unaware that a criminal proceeding has been conducted against Cyando AG/Uploaded.net. The investigation showed that there are no real ties to Switzerland and that the operation is very likely conducted from a neighboring EU member state,” Switzerland’s rebuttal reads.

“While the investigation proved unsuccessful for lack of ties to Switzerland, it nevertheless proves the ability and willingness of the Swiss authorities to act against Internet piracy,” it adds.

IIPA also mentioned Oboom, another file-hosting service which has a “Swiss made” logo on its homepage. However, according to the response from Switzerland’s Government, this site is no longer a problem either.

“Concerning Oboom, consulting the Commercial Register shows that the company is being liquidated and is therefore no longer a threat to copyright owners,” the Swiss write.

While the company may be liquidated soon, it’s unclear whether the site will also disappear. At the time of writing it is still fully functional, with no hint that anything is about to change soon.

The Swiss Government believes that their enforcement efforts and the proposed changes to the copyright law should put an end to criticism directed against Switzerland as a host country for infringing sites.

As such, they hope that the US Government won’t list the country in its upcoming Special 301 Report, which provides an overview of countries with lacking copyright regulations.

“Despite the erroneous picture the industry submissions convey, enforcement of copyright protection in the online context is possible in Switzerland,” the Swiss write in their letter.

“Given the steady progress made in the ongoing legislative process, Switzerland considers a further inclusion on the Watch List to be unjustified and inappropriate,” they add.

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A copy of Switzerland’s submission to the United States Trade Representative is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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