Friday, June 25th, 2021

Time	Event
8:16a	Triller Sues Scam Streaming Site AccessTVPro For Jake Paul Fight Piracy Over the past few months Triller has filed a series of lawsuits against people who allegedly copied, streamed, or otherwise distributed the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren PPV fight. The company has amassed a broad range of targets. In addition to suing several YouTubers who allegedly uploaded the fight to their personal channels (1,2,3), Triller has also sued a person who simply claimed he watched the fight without paying for it. The company has also filed complaints against streaming sites and their operators and this week it added yet another lawsuit to its growing collection. New Lawsuit Targets AccessTVPro Streaming site AccessTVPro.co has ostensibly been offering pirated streams of sporting events for some time, reaching around 250,000 visitors per month back in January 2021. Traffic dropped significantly and then leveled off in March according to SimilarWeb data, only to bounce back in April when the Jake Paul fight was aired. Since then its visitor numbers have gone downhill but that’s not the only problem facing the platform. At least according to Triller, AccessTVPro and its operator Mahfuz Alam owe the company significant damages for streaming the fight to its users without permission. At this stage, Triller doesn’t appear to know much about AccessTVPro (ATVP). Aside from naming its alleged operator and tracing him to Dhaka, Bangladesh, Triller admits that it knows nothing about the site’s business structure other than it does business in California – i.e the place where some of its users allegedly watched the fight. “Upon information and belief, ATVP owns, operates, or otherwise controls the Website for the purpose of permitting, encouraging, facilitating, and inducing the sharing of videos and live programing of audiovisual materials between users of the website,” the complaint reads. “Those materials include programming owned and/or controlled by Plaintiff, including the Broadcast, which was offered by ATVP through its illegal uploading and distribution of the Broadcast via the Website.” Triller’s Claims For Damages Following the templates forged in previous lawsuits against FilmDaily, Online2LiveStream and My-Sports.club, Triller is suing AccessTVPro for copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, and violations of the Federal Communications Act. Triller demands statutory damages of up to $110,000 for each violation of 47 U.S.C. § 605(a) and up to $60,000 for each violation of 47 U.S.C. § 553, plus attorney’s fees, interest and costs. Additional damages, including for two types of copyright infringement, should be determined at trial. Triller also demands an injunction to prevent ongoing infringement but at the moment AccessTVPro is showing no signs of being in the streaming business. However, it does appear to have a familiar way of generating money. AccessTVPro Now Generates Money Using a Recently-Reported ‘Scam’ Interestingly, people visiting AccessTVPro.co today aren’t met with anything useful. Its main page is completely blank and shows no signs of activity. However, those who navigate directly to pages elsewhere on the site are met with what appears to be an offer to stream content from the UFC, for example. Those clicking the relevant buttons will be disappointed. Like more than a thousand similar sites, AccessTVPro attempts to fool users into paying for content it simply does not have access to. The site diverts to a payment portal that requests money but as reported earlier this month, that should not be trusted. We are not linking to the page or the scheme but a very detailed investigation carried out by Radio Canada’s program Décrypteurs shows that people should stay away. The initial free trial, when it expires, triggers a $49.95 subscription payment. Many people simply forget to cancel, something which has reportedly made its operators millions of dollars in revenue. That raises the question of whether AccessTVPro ever offered the fight. The site isn’t indexed by Wayback Machine but Google cache data shows pages that link only to so-called ‘subscription traps’. Another tell-tale sign is the lack of DMCA notices filed against AccessTVPro. Sky UK sent a couple of notices to Google in December 2020 and also this month, alleging piracy of the Joshua v Pulev and Mayweather vs Logan Paul fights respectively. However, both of those pages also link to similar scams that simply do not offer the fight. Whether this business model will generate AccessTVPro enough in affiliate fees to settle its case with Triller remains a question. It could argue that it only linked to scams but as Triller’s earlier case against Online2LiveStream demonstrates, the company is also prepared to sue for false advertising. Triller’s latest lawsuit can be found here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. (Comment on this)
7:13p	Steinberg Wins WIPO Domain Dispute Against ‘VST’ Plugin Pirate Sites Piracy is a complicated problem to tackle and some anti-piracy strategies are more effective than others. Site blocking is fairly common, but determined pirates can usually find a way around it. Targeting the domain names directly can work as well but not all registrars and registries are receptive to complaints. WIPO Domain Disputes When it comes to domain names there is an indirect option too. The World International Property Organization (WIPO) has an arbitration panel that’s specifically set up to resolve domain name disputes. The process, which doesn’t involve any courts, is quite simple. Rightsholders file a complaint against a domain owner who they believe is violating their rights. This only applies to domains that abuse registered trademarks in their name, which often makes it hard to use as an anti-piracy tool. Steinberg Targets VST Pirate Sites The trademark angle means that it can be used in a limited number of cases. German music hardware and software company Steinberg nonetheless decided to go down this road. Specifically, it goes after pirate sites that use its VST trademark, which stands for Virtual Studio Technology, a popular music creation plugin interface. These VST plugins, which can be quite costly, are widely shared on pirate sites. In a recent WIPO complaint, Steinberg singled out crackedvst.net, vscrackofficial.com, vst-mafia.com, vst-torrents.com, vstcracks.net, vstplugs.com, vsttorrents.net, crackedvst.com, and vstland.com. These are mostly smaller sites that have a targeted niche audience. According to Steinberg, their domains clearly violate its trademark while offering pirated content, also that of competitors. Domain Owners Respond In these cases, the WIPO panel always reaches out to the accused party to hear their side of the story. This outreach triggered a short response from one of the registrants, Ghulam Muhuddeen, who appeared to confuse the dispute with a takedown notice. “I am not used your VST name, send me Software List I am removed your software [sic],” Muhuddeen told WIPO in a short response. A more elaborate reply came in later from an Indian lawyer, representing one of the affected domain owners. That letter pointed out that VST is a widely used word and that the trademark in India is owned by a tractor company. Instead, the lawyer accused Steinberg of attempting to steal the domain. The lawyer added that the domain only offered a trial for Steinberg’s Cubase software. However, the response didn’t deny that all domains are related and under common control, which means that they will be treated as one by the WIPO panel. WIPO Panel Sides With Steinberg Domain name disputes are typically decided over three main questions. Are the domains using the contested trademark, does the owner lack a legitimate interest in the domain, and was it registered in bad faith? In this case, all of the questions above were answered affirmatively. “All but one of the Domain Names entirely incorporate the VST mark, and add words like ‘cracks’, ‘cracked’, ‘torrents’, ‘land’, and ‘mafia’,” the panel writes, noting that several of these terms hint at infringing uses. The vscrackofficial.com is an exception, as it only includes the first two letters of the trademark, but the arbitration panel concludes that the addition of the word “crack” helps to tip the scale in favor of Steinberg. Not The First Arbitration Case Also playing a role in that decision is the fact that two of the respondent were already accused in a similar domain dispute earlier, which they lost as well. This pattern of abusive registrations confirms that the domains were registered in bad faith. The response from the lawyer is not convincing either, and the WIPO panel concludes that the current owners don’t have a legitimate interest in the names. “It is apparent from the record here that Respondent is using the Domain Names improperly to increase Internet traffic to its commercial websites by appropriating Complainant’s VST trademark,” the panel concludes. ‘Pirates’ Persist After winning the domain disputes the names were transferred to Steinberg but whether that has completely solved the issue is unclear. Before losing the case, some of the operators already started advertising new domains. For example, Vsttorrents.net said it would move to Looptorrent.com, which remains online today. While that site still offers pirated plugins, it no longer uses the VST trademark in the domain name. A quick Google search for terms such as “VST” and “crack” shows that Steinberg still has plenty of other problems as well. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. (Comment on this)

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