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Monday, January 14th, 2019

    Time Event
    9:52a
    Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 01/14/19

    This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

    First Man is the most downloaded movie.

    The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

    RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

    This week’s most downloaded movies are:
    Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer
    Most downloaded movies via torrents
    1 (…) First Man 7.5 / trailer
    2 (6) Aquaman (HDTC) 7.7 / trailer
    3 (7) Venom 7.0 / trailer
    4 (1) The Vanishing 6.0 / trailer
    5 (4) Johnny English Strikes Again 6.4 / trailer
    6 (3) Ralph Breaks The Internet (Dvdscr) 5.5 / trailer
    7 (2) The Favourite (DVDScr) 8.1 / trailer
    8 (10) Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald 6.9 / trailer
    9 (5) Bird Box 7.7 / trailer
    10 (…) Ashes in the Snow 7.3 / trailer

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

    10:46a
    Movie Company Tries But Fails to Expose Pirates Through a DMCA Subpoena

    In the early 2000s, the RIAA filed lawsuits against tens of thousands of alleged music pirates.

    The music industry had just defeated Napster, but P2P file-sharing remained a massive problem.

    Millions of people flocked to alternatives such as KaZaA, Morpheus, Grokster, and eDonkey. Since regular education campaigns failed to curb this trend, the lawsuits were supported to alert the public that piracy is not without consequences.

    Filing full-blown lawsuits can be an expensive exercise so the RIAA attempted to take a shortcut by applying for so-called DMCA subpoenas. Unlike regular subpoenas, these are not reviewed by a judge and only require a signature from the court clerk.

    Internet providers were not happy with this trend and objected. They argued that DMCA subpoenas are only valid when an Internet service stores or links to the infringing content (such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook), not when they merely pass on traffic.

    Various courts have agreed with ISPs since and effectively banned the practice more than 15 years ago. If copyright holders want to go after alleged pirates, they have to file a complaint and request a regular subpoena.

    This is well established and copyright holders who have gone after alleged BitTorrent pirates in recent years did so through proper channels. However, late last month the rightsholders of the movie “London Has Fallen” gave it another shot.

    In a request at a Utah federal court, it requested the clerk to sign off on a DMCA subpoena identifying 33 alleged BitTorrent pirates on a Comcast connection.

    The company in question, LHF Productions, is not unaware of how things are supposed to work. It has sued BitTorrent users through the regular ‘copyright troll’ scheme dozens of times in the past.

    This time, however, it opted for the cheaper and easier DMCA subpoena route.

    “[T]he Clerk should expeditiously issue and sign the proposed subpoena and return it to the undersigned for delivery to the service provider,” LHF’s attorney  Todd Zenger wrote in his request.

    Perhaps the company hoped that the demand would slip through or that the court would have other reasons to approve it, but that was not the case. Last week, US District Court Judge David Nuffer denied the request.

    The Judge clarified, once again, that Section 512(h) of the DMCA only allows for prelitigation subpoenas when the targeted Internet services actually host or link to the infringing content.

    “This provision only applies to ISPs that directly store, cache, or provide links to infringing material. It does not apply to ISPs that merely function as a conduit for infringing material.

    “LHF has not identified any material that Comcast should remove or disable, and there is no assertion that Comcast directly stores, caches, or provides links to infringing material,” the Judge writes.

    The order (pdf)

    The film company is not the first to attempt to revive DMCA subpoenas for file-sharing cases. Anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp attempted to take the same shortcut five years ago and also failed.

    LHF tried but probably knew already that their attempt had little chance of success. Whether the company will now file a regular complaint against the alleged pirates is unknown.

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

    4:22p
    Premier League Opens New Office to Fight Piracy

    With English Premier League clubs reporting revenues of £4.5 billion for the period 2016/17, top-tier football is extremely lucrative.

    The Premier League itself has a three-year TV deal which came into effect during the same period, with a record-breaking £5.1 billion paid to the League by broadcasters Sky and BT.

    A new deal, effective 2019 to 2022, netted the Premier League £4.45 billion and the football organization is extremely keen to protect its revenues and that of its customers by tackling piracy head on.

    Maintaining that momentum, today the Premier League announced the opening of a brand new office in Singapore, its first international office and one with the primary aim of dealing with unlicensed consumption.

    Based in Tanjong Pagar, which is located within the Central Business District in Singapore, the office will reportedly provide a base for the Asia-Pacific region. From here, the League will deploy its anti-piracy enforcement program across “multiple” markets.

    In terms of anti-piracy activities, the Premier League is best known for its crackdown on streaming piracy, particularly when it comes to live events.

    In the UK, the League has pioneered and developed “live stream” injunctions which allow it to request that ISPs block illicit streams of matches to disrupt piracy as soon as it takes place.

    The practice mainly tends to cause disruption on Saturday afternoons and although some illicit IPTV providers have deployed some successful countermeasures, there are always plenty of complaints on Saturday about illegal streams going down.

    Until now, these blocking measures have been restricted to the UK but with this expansion and a brand new office focused on piracy, it seems likely that the scheme could be launched in other countries too.

    “The Asia-Pacific region is strategically important for the Premier League and its clubs,” says Premier League Director of Broadcasting Paul Molnar.

    “Singapore provides an excellent location for our first international office and we look forward to using this base to support our many broadcast partners across the region.

    “Equally, it is critical that we now deploy local resource and expertise to combat the increasing threat of piracy which undermines all stakeholders in the creative industry.”

    While the new Singapore office is the Premier League’s first anti-piracy focused overseas base, the company is no stranger to enforcement in the region.

    Last year the Singapore High Court granted an injunction following complaints from The Premier League, Singnet PTE Ltd, Fox Networks Group Singapore PTE Ltd, NGC Network Asia LLC, and Fox International Channels (US) Inc.

    Neil Gane, General Manager of AVIA’s Coalition Against Piracy (CAP), of which The Premier League is a member, told TorrentFreak that the motion was heard on November 2, 2018, with the court subsequently handing down an order against “eight authentication domains.”

    “Singapore has been considered a bastion of Intellectual Property rights across the region, and the court’s decision to block access to popular illegal applications preloaded onto ISDs and sold in Singapore reaffirms this contention,” he added.

    The Premier League referenced this action in today’s announcement, noting that it is also taking criminal action against suppliers of ISDs (Illicit Streaming Devices) and working with Thai authorities to raid those in the supply chain.

    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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