Month: September 2022

Nearly a decade has passed since the legal battle between Hotfile and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) was put to rest.

At least on paper, the file-sharing service agreed to pay $80 million, but negotiated a much lower damages amount behind the scenes.

After the lawsuit ended, several movie studios asked the court to keep sensitive records under seal. Through the MPA, Columbia Pictures requested that certain sensitive documents should be sealed indefinitely.

“Defendants have cited two specific pieces of information regarding Columbia’s enforcement policies that, if revealed to the public, could compromise Columbia’s ability to protect its copyrighted works,” the MPA’s lawyers wrote at the time.

Sealed for 10 Years

The MPA and Columbia hoped to keep the information secret forever, but the court didn’t want to go that far. In an order released in 2015, Florida District Court Judge Kathleen M. Williams ordered the information to be kept under seal for ten years.

This ten-year period started when the complaint was filed and officially ended last year. However, when we looked at the docket earlier this month, the information was still under seal. After contacting the court, it appears that this was an oversight so the records were made public shortly after.

Initially, this didn’t provide much information. Many of the unsealed documents are heavily redacted and according to the court, these redactions will stay in place.

Testimony Reveals ‘Secrets’

Ironically, the anti-piracy secrets were revealed through the original request to keep the information sealed, including testimony from Sean Jaquez, Vice President Content Protection at Sony Pictures, the parent company of Columbia.

In the unsealed declaration, Jaquez explains that the sealed documents contain two vital anti-piracy ‘secrets’.

1. Columbia’s decision not to remove infringing content with a specified running length under a minimum threshold. This threshold is longer than the average movie trailer.

2. Columbia’s policy not to send takedown requests for copied movie trailers, despite the fact that these are often copied without permission.

“This confidential information reflects broad policy decisions Columbia has made regarding its copyright enforcement priorities and remains true today. Revealing this confidential information would compromise Columbia’s copyright enforcement system,” Jaquez informed the court.

According to Jaquez, these policies would likely stay in place indefinitely. And indeed, if we look at YouTube today, there are plenty of channels that repost trailers without running into trouble.

Pirates Could Break Up Videos

While these are not the most spectacular anti-piracy secrets, Columbia feared that people would take advantage should the information enter the public domain.

“For example, a potential infringer armed with knowledge about Columbia’s ‘minimum length’ criterion could carry out infringement in a manner that circumvents that limit, such as by breaking up a single infringing work into multiple shorter sections, each too short individually to trigger a takedown notice,” Jaquez told the court.

Indeed, it wouldn’t be hard to generate a YouTube playlist for a film, which simply breaks up the video into several parts.

No Guarantees

The declaration doesn’t specify what the “minimum length” is, nor do we know whether other Hollywood studios have the same policies. However, looking at the many popular “movie summaries” compilations on YouTube, they tend to be quite lenient.

That said, these admissions don’t give the public any rights or assurances. Columbia and other movie studios can change their policies in a heartbeat.

Also, not all countries and rightsholders treat these issues equally. Just a few months ago, three uploaders of movie summaries received suspended jail sentences from a Japanese court.

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A copy of the unsealed declaration of Sean Jaquez, in support of the ‘indefinite’ sealing request, is available here (pdf)

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

What do you do when your trusty, 45 year old calculator finally needs to be retired? If you’re a programmer with a knack for making things — like Simon Boak — you custom build a replacement. This is the SB116, an 8-bit programmer’s calculator powered by an Arduino Nano. It features a 128 x 64 […]

The post This DIY retro programming calculator is powered by Arduino Nano appeared first on Liliputing.

Over the years we have seen dozens of anti-piracy campaigns. Initially, many of these tried to appeal to people’s morals.

You wouldn’t steal a car, right?

This type of messaging doesn’t work for everyone, so more direct tactics are explored as well. These often focus on various risks, with particular concern for the health of pirates’ computers.

Rightsholders and anti-piracy groups regularly highlight reports which show that pirate sites are rife with malware and even alert potential pirates-to-be about the dangers of these sites.

While some of these claims are exaggerated, there is no denying that malware is spread through some pirate sites. How common this problem is depends on who you ask and even the estimates from various research outfits vary quite a bit.

New Pirate Site Malware Research

The Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) shared some new research that it carried out in partnership with piracy advertising expert White Bullet and cybersecurity outfit Unit 221B. The group has a long history of publishing anti-piracy research and has highlighted the malware angle before. Despite these efforts, the problem persists.

The findings show that 12% of all ads on pirate streaming sites are linked to malware. In addition, nearly 80% of the researched sites served at least some malware ads.

“Piracy operators lure users to their sites by offering them ‘free content,’ including the latest movies, music, and television shows. Once they come to the piracy site, users are subjected to a deluge of malicious ads […] that employ fear tactics and other deceptions to trick users into clicking on them.”

“[P]iracy operators and malvertisers have created an unholy triangle with pirate site visitors, who have unwittingly entered a perilous game of ‘Pirate Roulette’ by entrusting their cyber-safety to malicious actors,” the “Unholy Triangle” report adds

Piracy Investigators Hit by Ransomware

These comments are pretty scary and to emphasize the threat, the researchers describe in detail how they were hit by a ransomware attack after visiting a pirate site.

“With just a few clicks on a piracy site, investigators were victimized by a ransomware attack that encrypted their computer files. The criminals demanded payment to unlock them. This cyber threat was observed across multiple piracy sites.”

Luckily, the researchers used virtual machines so they didn’t end up paying anything to unlock their test machines. With these data and anecdotes, they warn the public to stay away from pirate sites.

All in all, the report paints a pretty grim picture suggesting that things are worse than they ever were. However, that’s not clear from the previous studies we’ve seen.

80%, 90%, or 100%?

In 2014, a study conducted by the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness found that 90% of the most used film and TV piracy sites contained malware or credit card scams. That’s more that the ‘eight in ten’ sites in the recent DCA study.

A report from OpenText Security Solutions’ Webroot that was released last month also found that 90% of the top illegal streaming sites contain risky content. And according to FACT, the same study found that all of the analyzed sites had “malicious content.”

Based on these rudimentary comparisons, pirate streaming sites were previously much riskier than in this latest report. But that’s impossible to say for sure, as the methodologies and researched sites vary quite a bit.

EU Didn’t See a Malware Piracy Epidemic

Also, it’s worth noting that there is research on the topic that shows quite a different picture. Aside from nuanced remarks from anti-virus experts, the EU Intellectual Property Office also draws a less dystopian conclusion.

Through a detailed study conducted in several EU countries, EU researchers investigated more than 1,000 pirate site domains. They found that less than 10% of these sites linked to malicious content, which includes the less severe “potentially unwanted software.” According to the EU researchers, pirate sites were not particularly problematic.

“At present, suspected copyright-infringing websites and streaming services are not normally considered to be dominant sources of malware or otherwise unwanted software distribution,” the research concluded.

The results from the DCA’s “Unholy Triangle” report are quite different, to say the least. However, with varying methodologies and definitions of ‘malicious’ it’s not easy to compare the findings.

In any case, it’s good to see that copyright holder groups are spending so much time and resources making sure that pirates are warned against malware. Whether that will prevent people from visiting pirate sites is another question, of course.

Perhaps the main purpose of the report isn’t to warn the public at large, but to alert the authorities to take action against piracy. That’s at least in part what the authors hope to achieve, as they call on the DoJ and the FTC to take action.

“As this report shows, malicious actors dangle free content as ‘bait’ to lure users to be victimized. Therefore, it’s vital that the DOJ targets malvertisers and piracy sites that are setting up users to be victimized by ransomware and other harmful software.”

“In addition, the FTC should consider new efforts to alert consumers about the cyber security risks of piracy and the emergence of malvertising on these sites,” the report adds.

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

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