Month: September 2020

ISP blocking has become a prime measure for the entertainment industry to target pirate sites on the Internet.

The practice has been around for over a decade and has gradually expanded to dozens of countries around the world.

This is also the case in Greece, where the first blockades were issued in 2018. The Greek blocks are overseen by the IPPC, a special commission at the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports that acts following complaints from rightsholders.

The Greek system is different from that of many other countries because it doesn’t involve a court. It’s an administrative procedure which allows copyright holders to swiftly request pirate site blockades, without the need for lengthy and costly legal proceedings.

The most recent blocking request was filed by the Society for the Protection of Audiovisual Works (EPOE), a local anti-piracy group that represents the interests of major Greek copyright holders. The company previously obtained a blocking order against The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and YTS, but requested to expand it.

Blocking Pirate Proxies and Alternaitives

While the original order does its job, Greek pirates swiftly moved to alternative proxy sites. The anti-piracy group, therefore, asked more than 200 of these Pirate Bay, 1337x, and YTS proxies to be blocked as well.

Following careful deliberation, the IPPC decided to expand the Greek pirate site blockade. The Government organization concluded that, for the vast majority of the domains, the database, structure, graphics, and user-interface were substantially similar to the sites that were blocked originally.

In addition to The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and YTS, several subtitle domains, and local pirate sites including GamaTV were targeted as well.

One Request Denied

Before issuing a new order, the owners of the domains were given the option to object to the request. This includes the administrator of subtitle site subs4series.com, who claimed that his site was wrongfully targeted.

The blocking application claimed that subs4series.com was similar to the previously blocked subs4free.info, which the site’s administrator denied. The Government organization agreed and rejected the requested blockade.

“After the relevant research, it appears that the site with the domain name subs4series.com does not redirect to the site with the domain name subs4free.info. Therefore, according to the relevant allegation of the applicant, there is no violation, as it concerns the no. 3/2018 decision of the Commission for the Internet Infringement of Intellectual Property,” IPPC writes.

The blocking order is valid for three years and applies to all Greek Internet providers. They’re given 48 hours to add the 264 new domains to their blocklists, including more than 120 Pirate Bay proxies. If the companies fail to comply they risk a fine of €850 per day.

—-

A copy of the most recent blocking order, issued by IPPC, is available here (pdf) This also includes a list of all targeted domains

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Besitzer der Apple Watch 3 berichten von Abstürzen und Fehlfunktionen nach dem Update auf Watch OS 7. Die Smartwatch wird als günstigstes Modell weiterhin vertrieben. (Apple Watch, Apple)

Oleg Musyka, der den Brand im Gewerkschaftshaus von Odessa am 2. Mai 2014 nur mit Glück überlebte, wird von der "Bild" in einem großen Artikel als "Kreml-Agent" diffamiert und der Wühlarbeit "gegen den Westen und die Nato" bezichtigt

Kein Mensch kann sich stapelweise Passwörter merken, aufschreiben ist keine Alternative. Ein Passwortmanager muss her - aber welcher? Ein Test von Moritz Tremmel (Passwort, Datenschutz)

Die extreme Bevorzugung des Autos durch die Verkehrspolitik grenzt insbesondere auf dem Land viele Menschen aus. Ein Kommentar

US-Wahlkampf: Die Demokraten verlieren beim Streit über die Besetzung des Richterpostens. Die New York Times wechselt auf ein anderes Thema - Steuern bezahlt der reiche US-Präsident wie ein Geringverdiener

Der Streit zwischen US-Präsident Donald Trump und Bytedance geht unvermindert weiter. Nach wie vor droht zum 12. November das Aus von Tiktok auf dem US-Markt. (Tiktok, Microsoft)

Bei der niedersächsischen Polizei fährt seit März 2020 ein Wasserstoffauto. Der Hyundai Nexo überzeugt unter anderem durch seine Reichweite. (Auto, Technologie)

General Motors verkauft in China ein Elektroauto für vier Personen, das 5.000 Euro kostet. In 50 Tagen sind 30.000 Stück bestellt worden. (General Motors, Elektroauto)

Over the past few years, copyright holders have asked Google to remove billions of links to allegedly pirated content.

At one point, the search engine processed close to three million links per day. A dazzling number to say the least.

In recent years this number has slowly declined. This is in part due to Google’s active policy to make pirate sites less visible in its search results. After years of complaining, these efforts were well received by copyright holders.

Three Million Reported Domains

Despite the slowdown in absolute numbers, Google continues to process plenty of takedown notices. This week, the search engine reached a new milestone. Since it started counting, it has now received takedown notices for three million unique domains.

This ‘achievement’ prompted us to take a close look at what this number is made up of. Where are all these alleged pirate sites coming from? Who are the main offenders, and which domains shouldn’t be in this list?

We start with the most targeted domain name, which is 4shared.com. The file-hosting service was once one of the largest websites on the Internet. While its popularity has diminished in recent years, its track record remains clearly visible in Google’s transparency report.

Since 2011, more than 5,400 copyright holders have flagged 68,348,390 ‘infringing’ 4shared.com links to Google. The vast majority of these, 91 percent, were indeed removed from search results.

This makes 4shared the absolute takedown king. The site is followed at a distance by mp3toys.xyz, rapidgator.net, chomikuj.pl, uploaded.net, which were flagged between 27 million and 52 million times. Those are still ‘respectable’ numbers of course.

0.001% of the Domains Recieve 10% of the Notices

While looking through the list of targeted domains it becomes apparent that it’s top-heavy. The 30 domains that were called out the most have nearly 500 million flagged URLs. This means that 0.001% of all targeted domains received more than 10% of all notices.

At the same time, we can say that the majority of the reported domains are only flagged incidentally. These may be smaller pirate sites or sites exploited by scammers to post incidental spam links. However, it’s also very common for legitimate sites to be targeted, often by mistake.

IMDb and Discogs

Two of the most frequently targeted legitimate sites are IMDb and Discogs. Both sites have an elaborate information database of entertainment content, either video or audio. This appears to be quite confusing to some copyright holders. Over the past years, Google was asked to remove 5,077 IMDB links and 8,198 URLs from Discogs. All of these requests were rightfully denied.

Copyright Holders Target Themselves

Intriguingly, copyright holders have also flagged their own websites as piracy portals. HBO famously sent a takedown notice for HBO.com, which was targeted 28 times in total. Pretty much all major copyright holders have had their sites targeted, including Disney.com, Netflix.com, Warnerbros.com, and many others.

The most bizarre mistakes we’ve seen actually don’t involve a domain but an IP-address. Over the past years, several companies reported 127.0.0.1, which points to localhost, meaning that the reporter is flagging its own network.

News Publishers

News sites are frequently labeled as copyright infringers as well. We can look up any random news site and there’s a good chance that it’s been reported. This includes the BBC, which was wrongfully flagged by Warner Bros. The BBC, for its part, mistakenly accused TorrentFreak of being a pirate site as well.

These takedowns are relatively rare but, over time, the numbers add up. The Daily Mail, for example, had 1,991 URLs flagged, The New York Times 803 URLs, The Guardian 785 URLs, and CNN had 727 URLs reported as ‘infringing’.

Millions of Mistakes

Government organizations are not immune to takedown requests either. If we zoom in on the US we see that the sites of the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Senate have all been targeted. Even the White House isn’t safe, as it was called out more than a dozen times.

Although many mistakes come from rightsholders, we should mention that the takedown system is regularly abused by imposters as well. These tend to report many URLs from legitimate domains too.

All in all, it is safe to say that, on the surface, the milestone of three million flagged domains only shows part of the picture. On the one hand, it consists of a small group of notorious pirate sites. However, there are many more sites that don’t really deserve to be reported.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.