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Thursday, February 4th, 2021
| Time | Event |
| 8:38a | Police Arrest 14 People Behind 8 Million-User Piracy & Subtitle Site
At the time, the site – which is also known as Renren Yingshi – was described as the most popular dedicated download site for copyrighted content in China, providing links in various formats, including for the popular Xunlei and BitTorrent clients. It rose to fame after being founded in 2004 by a group of Chinese students living in Canada. Notably, the site was also called out for offering crowd-sourced Chinese subtitles for Western content, something that helped boost infringement of US-made movies and TV shows. On the other hand, it allowed local users to easily consume otherwise unavailable content, to the disappointment of both Hollywood and the Chinese government, albeit for different reasons. Chinese Government Takes ActionOn November 22, 2014, visitors to YYeTs and another subtitle-focused site, Shooters.cn, found the platforms in considerable trouble. With Shooters announcing its immediate closure, YYeTs said that it would be offline for a while, ostensibly to “clean up” its site. State-run news services indicated that the sites had been targeted for infringing the rights of foreign companies. YYeTs somehow managed to survive, as it had done previously following similar enforcement action in 2010. This week, however, it became clear that the site is under pressure once again after being targeted by local police. According to local media reports, police in Shanghai arrested 14 people under suspicion of being involved in the operations of YYeTs/Renren Yingshi, which was recently reported to have eight million registered users. “Investigations showed that the suspects set up several companies engaging in the distribution, operation and maintenance of the ‘Renren Yingshi’ mobile app and a related web portal by setting up or leasing servers in China or overseas since 2018,” the People’s Daily reported Wednesday. It’s believed that those arrested in this week’s operation systematically downloaded movies and TV shows from pirate websites located outside China, added subtitles, and distributed the captioned videos from their own servers in breach of copyright. Specific dates for the arrests haven’t been circulated in the media. But, in mid-January, there were several reports that China-based pirate sites had closed their doors to new members. It’s likely those precautionary measures were linked to the current arrests. A report from SCMP notes that China has hundreds of subtitling sites similar to Renren Yingshi that originally used volunteer translators. Over time, however, site operators have chosen to hire translators to generate Chinese subtitles for foreign movies and TV shows, paying around $60 per video. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. |
| 7:51p | Charter Argues That P2P Piracy is No Longer a Problem, Labels Disagree
The cases, filed by dozens of major record labels and music companies, allege that Internet providers fail to terminate accounts of repeat infringers. Stakes Are HighThese lawsuits are serious business. In 2019, for example, a jury found Cox liable for the infringements of its customers, awarding a billion dollars in damages to several record labels. This decision was confirmed recently but will be appealed. With the stakes this high, the lawsuit against Charter is being fought tooth and nail by both sides. The ISP has already fought back, arguing that the record label’s takedown notices were abusive and misleading. That effort failed and meanwhile, tensions remain high. With the trial getting closer the focus has shifted on the core accusations. Over the past two weeks, that resulted in an interesting standoff over P2P piracy including BitTorrent, and whether that is still a problem for the music industry. P2P is No Longer a ProblemThe origin of this issue dates back to a hearing last year over a discovery request from Charter. The ISP requested revenue details from the music companies, with a specific interest in streaming income in recent years. According to Charter’s attorney Erin Ranahan, this information would be relevant to determine the scale of potential damages, if the ISP is found liable. When P2P piracy is no longer a big issue, the amount could be lower from a deterrence perspective. While making this argument, the attorney stated that P2P piracy is indeed no longer an issue. Not just that, with help from ISPs the music companies now make lots of money from streaming. “And just to give you some background, the snippet of time in which this case involves, because of the total length in the claim period, is a time when this P2P issue was at its most pronounced. Today it’s no longer a problem,” Ranahan said. “Today plaintiffs’ clients are making a ton of money off of the Internet streaming capabilities […]. Charter’s Internet is actually giving them a vehicle by which they make a huge amount of money.” Music Companies Demand P2P EvidenceThis argument wasn’t well-received by the music companies. While other piracy threats may be more prevalent than P2P piracy, they still see it as a major problem. To back this up with data, the companies sent a series of new requests to Charter asking for information. They want to show that P2P piracy is still a problem and that Charter financially benefits from this infringing activity. Among other things, Charter was asked to share extensive logs of infringement notices, internal discussions about copyright infringement, as well as monthly revenue statements linked to alleged pirates.  The music companies argue that they need this information to rebut Charter’s claim that P2P piracy is no longer a problem. The ISP could use this claim as a defense during the trial, they fear. Request Denied, For NowCharter refused to provide the information and pointed out that the court already denied a similar request in the past. During a hearing two weeks ago, the Special Master agreed with the ISP and denied discovery. The record labels are not letting the issue go that easily though. This week they were back in court, objecting to the denial. They note that the current request is not related to earlier queries, but is specifically tailored to address the P2P problem comment, which is ‘new’. “Plaintiffs should be permitted this limited discovery to rebut Charter’s argument that peer-to-peer piracy is no longer a phenomenon to which Charter contributes and which contribution must be deterred,” they argue, hoping to reverse the earlier denial. The request was submitted a few days ago and the Colorado federal court has yet to decide whether it will reconsider its position or not. — A copy of the music companies’ objection to the Special Master’s order denying discovery is available here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. |
Internet provider Charter Communications is one of several companies being | << Previous Day |
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