Month: April 2024

Potenzielle Angreifer konnten nicht nur persönliche Daten von Clubmitgliedern abgreifen, sondern auch deren Passwörter ändern und Clubdaten manipulieren. (Datenleck, Datenschutz)

Bei diesem beispiellosen Hack sind Therapie-Patienten mit gestohlenen Daten erpresst worden. Um den mutmaßlichen Täter zu überführen, sollen die Ermittler etwas geschafft haben, was als unmöglich gilt. Von Elke Wittich (Cybercrime, Black Hat)

Anti-piracy organization CODA (Content Overseas Distribution Association) is a permanent fixture on the front lines of Japan’s war against online piracy.

CODA represents the interests of around 30 corporate entities doing business in the publishing, media, movie, music, and wider entertainment industries. Members include publishers Kadokawa, Shueisha, Kodansha, and Shogakukan, through to videogame/publishing giants Square Enix and Bandai Namco. From the broadcasting sector, there’s NHK, Nippon, and Nikkatsu, to name just a few.

While these names represent just a sample of the individual companies represented by CODA, the anti-piracy group also has around ten ‘organizational’ members. These are trade groups in their own right and have members of their own.

They include the Japan Satellite Broadcasting Association, Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan, Japan Video Software Association, Japan Magazine Publishers Association, Association of Japanese Animations, plus several others involved in the videogame, software, and content protection legal sectors.

Popularity of Japanese Content Fuels Massive Levels of Piracy

The scale of the content protection challenge faced by CODA is difficult to overstate. The anti-piracy group is refreshingly open with its research and data, which as an observer makes it easier to connect with and appreciate the big numbers, rather than simply reciting them without relevant context.

Japan’s online piracy issues are a constant, much as they are in any other country, but more recent estimates reveal illicit consumption’s startling growth.

A major problem estimated to be worth less than 500 billion yen (US$3.3bn) back in 2019 took just three years to transform itself into a ~2 trillion yen ($13.2bn) piracy nightmare. Videogame piracy skyrocketed in the period leading to 2022, but it’s the products of the publishing and film industries that attract the lion’s share of all piracy, much of it taking place and directed from overseas.

CODA & MPA Officially Extend 10-Year Anti-Piracy Partnership

On March 20, 2014, CODA and the Motion Picture Association (MPA) signed an agreement to develop new strategies to tackle online copyright infringement worldwide, and to strengthen their joint copyright protection activities. The agreement, renewed another five times since then, has just reached its 10th anniversary and the event was marked with another renewal.

Last week at MPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., CODA and the Motion Picture Association signed an official memorandum of understanding (MOU) to extend the term of their agreement until 2026.

“On the day, MPA’s Karin Temple (Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel) and CODA’s Representative Director Takeo Goto signed the agreement, and at the signing ceremony, each pledged further collaboration,” a CODA statement reads.

Image credit: CODA

“CODA and MPA began a business partnership in 2005 to combat physical piracy in the Asian region, and have since built a strong partnership by signing a 10-year MOU starting in 2014. CODA and MPA’s joint enforcement efforts have achieved great results, including implementing many anti-piracy measures in the Asia-Pacific and beyond, resulting in tens of thousands of crackdowns.”

Joint Success, Massive Budget Disparities

CODA data shows that from January 2005 to March 2023, collaboration with the MPA generated thousands of enforcement cases. In China, 13,820 cases led to the arrest of 304 people, in Hong Kong 1,318 cases led to 1,275 arrests, and in Taiwan, 2,233 people were arrested as part of 2,215 enforcement operations.

From physical piracy operations to more recent actions targeting pirate IPTV in Taiwan, CODA deals with problems wherever it finds them.

Image credit: CODA

A major issue faced by CODA relates to its budget for overseas anti-piracy enforcement. Funding for overseas anti-piracy efforts is allocated as a proportion of overseas sales and CODA’s members simply don’t do enough overseas business to compete with the MPA, CODA explains.

Annual dues for the six major studios for piracy-fighting actions carried out by the MPA total $50m. CODA says that Disney’s sales alone out-volume the combined sales of Toei, Toho, Shochiku, and Kadokawa, at a rate of 16 to 1.

Given the disparity, the opportunity to conduct joint enforcement work with the MPA is clearly a massive boost for CODA’s members. At a time when Japanese content is in demand like never before in overseas markets, it’s especially important. As the market stands right now, however, only a minority of overseas consumers actually pay for it.

Enforcement Challenges Broadly Mimic Those of the MPA

In a presentation slide, CODA highlights how a typical pirate can operate if the operator wishes to remain anonymous. The original slide ‘The dark side of identifying operators of pirated sites’ is entirely in Japanese so here we’ve made best efforts to provide a like-for-like translation.

Some nuance may have been lost, but the common theme is undoubtedly a lack of ‘know your customer’ regimes from domain registration, to server rental, through to use of a CDN such as Cloudflare.

Image credit: CODA

Considered a major irritant, the Njalla domain service is called out alongside Cloudflare.

“Began operations in April 2017. Sells ‘complete anonymity’. Founded by Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay. Users buy the rights to use domains purchased by Njalla. Njalla is the owner of the domain, Njalla does not disclose [user identities],” CODA writes.

“[Cloudflare] operates a distributed server system (user servers are hard to find). When Cloudflare discloses information, the site operator is also notified to that effect. The operator immediately moves the server,” the anti-piracy group contiues, adding:

“If you have basic knowledge of the Internet and can read and write simple English, you can operate a completely anonymous pirate site!”

Takedown Compliance: The Winner is….

In common with many anti-piracy groups, CODA sends large numbers of DMCA-style takedown notices to platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Daily Motion, and sundry local equivalents.

The data shows that CODA achieves a very high rate of compliance, in many cases above 99%. (Original slide in Japanese, our translations appear inside square brackets [ ])

Image credit: CODA

Whether that’s due to CODA’s high-level accuracy (our knowledge of CODA suggests that they take accuracy very seriously) or adherence to strict local law, or even a combination of both, isn’t immediately clear. However, the stand-out figures here are returned by MEGA; every piece of content CODA asked MEGA to remove, was removed, earning the company a 100% compliance rate.

For reference, CODA’s members and their lines of business are listed below.
(Note: some companies may span more than one category but here they are listed only once)

### Anime and Entertainment Production
1. Aniplex Inc.
2. Cygames, Inc.
3. KADOKAWA CORPORATION
4. King Record Co., Ltd.
5. SHUEISHA Inc.
6. SHOGAKUKAN Inc.
7. Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions Co., Ltd.
8. SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.
9. STUDIO GHIBLI INC.
10. TOEI ANIMATION CO., LTD.
11. TMS ENTERTAINMENT CO., LTD.

### Publishing and Media
12. ADK Emotions Inc.
13. KODANSHA LTD.
14. Nikkatsu Corporation
15. Nippon Television Network Corporation
16. Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)
17. Shochiku Co., Ltd.
18. TOKYO BROADCASTING SYSTEM TELEVISION, INC.
19. TV Asahi Corporation
20. TV TOKYO Corporation
21. YOMIURI TELECASTING CORPORATION
22. WOWOW Inc.

### Film Production and Distribution
23. Happinet Phantom Studios Corporation
24. TOEI COMPANY, LTD.
25. TOHO CO., LTD.
26. Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc.

### Music and Record Labels
27. Avex Inc.
28. King Record Co., Ltd.
29. PONY CANYON INC.
30. UNIVERSAL MUSIC LLC

### Broadcasting
31. Fuji Television Network, Inc.

### Miscellaneous
32. FWD Inc. (Various services)
33. YOSHIMOTO KOGYO HOLDINGS CO., LTD. (Entertainment management and production)

Organizational members of CODA listed by category

### Media and Entertainment Associations
1. Japan Satellite Broadcasting Association
2. Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan
3. Japan Video Software Association
4. Japan Magazine Publishers Association
5. The Association of Japanese Animations

### Gaming and Software
6. Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association
7. Association of Copyright for Computer Software
8. Digital Content Association of Japan

### Intellectual Property and Legal
9. Japan Patent Attorneys Association

### Anti-Counterfeiting
10. Anti-Counterfeiting Association

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

Jedes Unternehmen kann Ziel eines Cyberangriffs werden. Dieses Training macht in 5 Tagen zum Certified Ethical Hacker. (Golem Karrierewelt, Sicherheitslücke)

Two billion copyright claims are processed every year through YouTube’s Content ID platform – a staggering figure that underscores the scale of this content management system.

As an enforcement tool, Content ID has often been criticized by creators but rightsholders, at least those who have access to it, are generally happy with its performance.

Aside from addressing copyright infringements in an automated fashion, the Content ID system brings in billions of dollars in revenue. Many rightsholders choose to monetize copyright-infringing videos instead of taking them down, which can be quite lucrative.

This approach was initially controversial but not anymore. In a way, one can argue that YouTube engineered a way to monetize copyright infringement. YouTube itself also benefits from this strategy. After all, a video that’s taken down doesn’t bring in any revenue at all.

Despite the benefits for large rightsholders and YouTube itself, Content ID is unique in its kind. Most other large video services and content storage platforms simply take content offline. Developing a similar technology isn’t easy, but one could argue that this represents missed opportunity.

Fingerprint, Find, and Report

New York-based tech company WebKyte recognizes the potential and has developed a technology that might be able to fill the gap one day.

WebKyte is certainly not a newcomer to the copyright scene. The company, formerly known as WebKontrol, was founded over a decade ago and has offered fingerprinting and takedown services for a long time. It’s one of several companies in this business, but one with an interesting pitch.

One of the services on offer is WebScan, which allows copyright holders to search for pre-indexed content on 12 large video sharing platforms: Aparat, CDA, Chomikuj, Dailymotion, FC2, Mail.ru, OK, Rumble, Videa.hu, Vimeo, VK, and Webshare.

Several of these services have been listed in the USTR’s overview of notorious piracy markets. However, they all aim to operate legally and, if rightsholders report pirated content, the platforms will take it down.

With WebScan, rightsholders can fingerprint their content and instantly ‘scan’ for content matches on these sites. If any matches are found, the associated URLs can be targeted through takedown notices.

While we would never vouch for the accuracy of any fingerprinting filter, WebKyte provided us with access to their platform, allowing us to upload files and check the accuracy. After uploading a copy of TPB-AFK to the system, near-instantly it found over 2,000 matches across the dozen platforms.

These don’t need to be taken offline, but as far as we could see, the detected links were indeed pointing to copies of the TPB-AFK documentary. Whether it missed any links is unknown, of course.

A Platform-Independent Upload Filter

While WebScan is a handy tool for rightsholders, WebKyte has a service for online platforms too. The latter refers to the ContentCore platform, which offers a Content ID-like tool ‘as a service’.

“ContentCore is a ready-to-use YouTube Content ID ‘as a service’ for UGC platforms of any size to detect illegal content among user-generated uploads,” WebKyte’s elevator pitch reads.

In essence, it’s a copy of the earlier mentioned WebScan technology, installed directly at the online platforms to automate takedowns. Put more bluntly; it’s an upload filter.

While pirate sites are not necessarily eager to install upload filters, plenty of legitimate platforms might find them useful. In addition to appeasing rightsholders, ContentCore also helps to ensure that UGC platforms comply with Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive.

ContentCore essentially automates the takedown process. Currently, most rightsholders find content and then report it to the platform, which has to process the request and take action. Under the automated system, copyrighted content is fingerprinted and added in advance, so pirated copies can be flagged when they’re uploaded.

Errors and Nuance

Upload filters are not perfect and generally lack ability to factor-in the nuances of copyright law, such as fair use. WebKyte hasn’t solved this problem but CEO Olia Valigourskaia believes that, when dealing with full videos, rightsholders can detect copies with ‘100%’ accuracy.

The technology can also find partial clips and even modified videos, but that opens the door to inaccuracies. The company’s internal tests on public datasets reveal that the current error rate is about 2.7%.

WebKyte notes that it minimizes the risk of overblocking. That said, when dealing with millions of takedowns, a relatively small percentage will result in big numbers. This means that platforms that use this service may want to build extra safeguards against overblocking, including fair use.

At the moment, several user-generated and social media platforms are using ContentCore but none of these would like to have their name mentioned in public. WebKyte did say that, for one ContentCore client, it currently checks 173,000 user-generated videos for copyright infringements every month.

Monetizing Piracy

To illustrate the scope of the ‘piracy’ problem online platforms must deal with, WebKyte shared a selected dataset with us. This shows that copies of a Hollywood film that premiered in December 2022 were uploaded over 3,000 times to the Polish file-hosting platform Chomikuj in one year.

Rightsholders usually want this content taken down, but there’s increasing interest in monetization, perhaps in part due to YouTube’s success with this strategy.

At the moment, no independent platform has a full Content ID equivalent with monetization capability. That’s the “holy grail” for WebKyte, as that would create a win-win situation for rightsholders, platforms, as well as WebKyte itself.

Valigourskaia says that rightsholders have shown an interest in monetization, so it may only be a matter of time before it is rolled out more broadly.

“From our experience, rightsholders are on board with varying approaches to monetization policies. For instance, major Hollywood studios are eager to monetize clips like trailers and behind-the-scenes videos that get posted on various UGC platforms,” WebKyte’s CEO says.

“Other rightsholders, such as Bollywood studios, seek ways to monetize full-length content on AVOD platforms. ContentCore is the tool that will enable platforms outside of YouTube to explore new revenue streams by enhancing the experience for users, rightsholders, and advertisers.”

Of course, other parties in the equation might not ‘win’ in this scenario. Pirates, for one, won’t be happy with automated upload filters and legitimate content creators whose content is inaccurately flagged, won’t be pleased either.

Online platforms are aware of these concerns and that may be part of the reason they’re hesitant to use it, or publicly admit that they do. If ContentCore is indeed more broadly adopted, we’ll keep a keen eye on the results, good or bad.

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

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