Month: May 2020

Der angesehene Sicherheitsexperte Bruce Schneier erklärt, warum er die Corona-Apps jenseits von Datenschutzbedenken für nutzlos hält. (Corona-App, Bruce Schneier)

Site-blocking to disrupt copyright infringement now takes place in dozens of countries around the world, with its supposed benefits currently being aggressively promoted to lawmakers in the United States.

Having been pioneered in the country more than a decade ago, site-blocking is old news in Denmark but is still one of the preferred methods to reduce access to ‘pirate’ sites. Indeed, according to a report published by leading anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, during 2019 alone it managed to have 141 sites blocked by the majority of ISPs in the country.

In tandem with other anti-piracy initiatives, this appears to have had a drastic effect on local visits to pirate sites. According to the group, in 2018 Danes visited pirate sites 239 million times yet in 2019, that figure was down to 146 million, an impressive 40 percent drop.

When copyright groups measure the effectiveness of blockades it’s worth noting that they often measure traffic levels to the domains that have been blocked. When nearly all ISPs in a country participate in blocking, which is the case in Denmark, there will quite clearly be a reduction in visits to those specific domains. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people aren’t still using them or, indeed, alternative platforms.

Indeed, Rights Alliance (RA) notes that despite the reductions in traffic to ‘pirate’ domains, a recent study revealed that the number of pirates in Denmark hasn’t reduced at all.

“According to Mediavision’s annual user behavior survey in the Nordic countries, the proportion of Danish 15 to 74-year-olds who download or stream movies and TV series is stable at 10 percent, which it has been since 2016. This corresponds to approximately 450,000 Danes using illegal sites annually,” RA notes.

“An explanation of the decreased number of visits, but the stable number of users, we partly attribute to the blocking effect, but other causal explanations are also available. Namely, the Mediavision study points out the Danes’ use of so-called VPN connections and the use of alternative DNS providers that allow the blocking to be bypassed.”

When questioned for the survey, 17% of Danish Internet users said they use a VPN. However, when the subset of self-confessed pirates were asked the same question, 44% admitted to using a VPN to access pirated movies. According to RA, this indicates that VPNs are widely used by pirates so the 40% drop in traffic to pirate sites could be overstated.

“The study thus shows that VPN connections are very widespread among those who stream and download illegally so their use of illegal websites is not included in the aforementioned 146 million visits. The figure may actually be higher,” RA adds.

The problem is replicated when looking at how Danish ISPs block their subscribers’ access to pirate sites. Court orders allow them to block by interfering with DNS but users are apparently well aware that if they switch to a DNS provider that isn’t run by their ISP but by OpenDNS or Google, for example, blocking can be bypassed.

“[S]o-called alternative DNS providers are also being used by more Danes who illegally download or stream movies and TV series than the general population,” RA reports.

“Ten percent of Danes who do not stream or download illegally have heard of alternative DNS providers, and out of them, 35 percent use them. If you look at the Danes who stream and download illegally, 23 percent have knowledge of DNS providers and as many as 97 percent use them.”

The end result is that despite widespread blocking and a headline drop in traffic to pirate sites, the number of pirate consumers remains stable, apparently undeterred by the measures. So the big question remains: what can be done to further reduce piracy levels?

On the blocking front, RA is pushing the concept of so-called ‘trusted notifiers’, i.e organizations or groups that have access to a streamlined blocking mechanism, preferably handled by a single court dealing with IP crime. Also on the table is potential action by SØIK, the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic and International Crime, which could require ISPs to block sites without a court process.

In respect of enforcement, Rights Alliance says that it has also identified a number of individuals who have “made extensive use of illegal services.” Data about them and their activities has been passed to the IP Task Force at SØIK but what will become of those referrals remains unclear.

The full report can be found here (Danish, pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also help you to find the best anonymous VPN.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Mit gefälschten E-Mails vom Chef versuchen Betrüger, die Coronavirus-Pandemie auszunutzen und sich Geld überweisen zu lassen. (Social Engineering, Spam)

Die Corona-Krise verschärft Notlagen

NS-Verfolgung: Die Arolsen Archives öffnen ihre Bestände. Millionen Dokumente geben den Toten ihre Identität zurück - und offenbaren minuziös das Ausmaß der Verbrechen

Der Menschenrechtsanwalt Eberhard Schulz über die Corona-App, die Einschränkungen der Grundrechte und drohende Eingriffe ins Arbeitsrecht

Die Treue dem Dienstherrn gegenüber schwindet

In 2018, a group of prominent record labels filed a piracy lawsuit against two very popular YouTube rippers, FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com.

The labels, including Universal, Warner Bros, and Sony, hoped that the legal pressure would shut the sites down, but this plan backfired. At least in the short term.

The Russian operator of the sites, Tofig Kurbanov, fought back with a motion to dismiss. He argued that the Virginia federal court lacked personal jurisdiction as he operated the sites from abroad and didn’t target or interact with US users.

The district court agreed with this assessment. In a verdict released early last year, Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed the case. The Court carefully reviewed how the sites operated and found no evidence that they purposefully targeted either Virginia or the United States.

The record labels and the RIAA were disappointed with the outcome and swiftly announced an appeal. The landmark verdict also raised the interest of other groups, including the Motion Picture Association and EFF, which both filed amicus briefs, supporting the opposing sides.

After several months had passed, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held a remote oral hearing this week, giving both sides the opportunity to share their arguments.

First up was Ian Heath Gershengorn, attorney for the record labels, who described FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com as sites that help millions of people to infringe the copyrights of his clients.

“Defendants operate wildly popular websites that engage in and facilitate massive infringement of plaintiffs U.S. copyrights in the United States. The United States is defendant’s third-biggest market, and each year defendants make handsome profits by sending hundreds of millions of infringing music files to their U.S. users,” he said.

This is no different than copies of hundreds of millions of vinyl records or CDs, the attorney informed the judges. The record labels believe that the district court made a grave mistake by ruling that it doesn’t have jurisdiction, one that provides “a roadmap” for pirate sites to “operate with impunity.”

According to the music companies, the lower court’s judgment should be overturned for various reasons. This includes the sheer volume of the infringements, the interactive characteristics of the sites, their commercial advertising agreements, and the sites’ failure to block US visitors.

In addition, their attorney points out that the sites had a registered DMCA agent listed at the US Copyright Office, which shows that he subjected himself to US law.

“The only point and I guess the principle point of that DMCA agent is to invoke the protections of the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And so they have literally invoked the protections of U.S. law. The district court concluded otherwise,” Gershengorn said.

The attorney for FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, Evan Fray-Witzer, has a completely different take on the case. He told the judges that the district court was right and that his client should not be dragged into a US lawsuit.

He describes Tofig Kurbanov as a Russian citizen from a small city in southern Russia who has never traveled to the United States and hasn’t done any business there. Kurbanov simply made a site that allows users to download audio from YouTube, which the attorney equates to a modern-day version of a tape recorder.

“Mr. Kurbanov created two Web sites, which he has operated entirely and exclusively from Russia. These Web sites, your honor, are the modern-day equivalent of an old fashioned tape recorder,” Fray-Witzer said.

Much of the discussion revolved around the interpretation of current personal jurisdiction precedents and how these apply to this case. That includes the advertisements that third parties placed on the site, the availability of the site in the US, and the absence of any geo-blocking restrictions.

The attorney stressed that Kurbanov simply made his websites available worldwide and did nothing to target the US specifically. He doesn’t decide which ads are served where, and what users do with the sites is up to them.

On top of that, he pointed out that the site has many different uses. This includes the option to download free lectures for offline use.

“And that’s really, I think, probably the best case argument here. Mr. Kurbanov has done nothing to target the United States. The websites are content-neutral,” Fray-Witzer said.

While the sites have a DMCA agent the attorney argues that they are not bound by the DMCA, which the site’s terms of service clearly state. In addition, he argues that registering a DMCA agent doesn’t automatically mean that a site subjects itself to US jurisdiction.

At the and of the hearing the microphone went back to the music companies’ attorney who, among other things, wasn’t convinced by the other side’s arguments. This includes the tape recorder analogy.

“If you had an old fashioned tape recorder and you recorded hundreds of millions of songs and then you sent those out to users across the world, including more than 100 million in the United States, yes, you would be subject to jurisdiction in the United States for that misuse and abuse of your tape recorder,” he said.

The music companies hope that the appeal court will agree. If not, then the US may have little recourse to deal with foreign pirates sites going forward.

“Then this court has created the recipe for infringement that every pirate Web site will adapt and it will eviscerate the U.S. copyright laws. That is not the purpose of personal jurisdiction. And it’s a perversion of due process,” the music companies’ attorney concluded.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, torrent sites and more. We also help you to find the best anonymous VPN.

… und die kommende Revolte? Der Gesetzesentwurf zum Gesundheitsnotstand enthält einschneidende Überwachungs- und Verfügungskompetenzen