Friday, July 30th, 2021

Time	Event
8:26a	BREIN Pulled 466 Pirate Sites and Services Offline Last Year When it comes to civil anti-piracy enforcement, BREIN is without a doubt one of the best-known players in the industry. The group, which receives support from Hollywood and other content industries, has shuttered hundreds of smaller sites and services in recent history. It was also responsible for taking down Mininova, once one of the largest torrent sites online. Despite the COVID pandemic, BREIN continued these enforcement actions in 2020. The group has just published a detailed overview of last year’s accomplishments, which provides a clear insight into the group’s anti-piracy priorities. BREIN Dealt With 466 Pirate Sites and Services Looking at the numbers we see that the anti-piracy group has closed the books on a rather productive year. In total, it completed 479 investigations which resulted in the shutdown of 466 illegal sites and services. These targets include torrent and streaming sites but also open directories, Facebook groups, and sellers of illegal IPTV subscriptions. In addition, over a million links to pirate sites were removed from third-party search engines such as Google. BREIN often starts its investigations based on referrals from copyright holders. Interestingly, some referrals point to scam sites. These are fake pirate sites that try to trick people into handing over credit card details or other info. In 2020, BREIN received 154 of these tips from copyright holders. The sites don’t offer pirated content so BREIN doesn’t have to take action. However, the group was kind enough to report them to ScamAdviser.com, so people can avoid these traps in the future. Dynamic Pirate Bay Blockade One of the most prominent achievements is the Pirate Bay blockade. After a legal battle of more than ten years, the court ruled that Dutch ISPs have to block access to the torrent site and all proxies that pop up. This ‘dynamic’ blocking order allows BREIN to add any new IP-addresses and domain names that may appear online. It doesn’t just apply to the main Pirate Bay site. In total, 180 proxies and mirrors were added to the blocklist. According to BREIN, this measure resulted in a significant decrease in Dutch Pirate Bay visitors. The group hopes to extend its reach in the near future, by requesting more blocking orders from the court. “The blocking of access to the illegal bittorrent site The Pirate Bay has led to a drop of more than 95% in Dutch visitors. Now that it has finally been granted by the Dutch courts in 2020, BREIN is focusing on obtaining blocking of other popular illegal sites as well,” BREIN notes. In addition to these measures, the anti-piracy group also took direct action against the operator of the proxy site provider Piratebay-proxylist.net, which had millions of monthly visitors. BREIN took over the domain and the operator agreed to pay 280,000 euros in compensation. Settlements, Warnings, and Potential Prosecutions As every year, BREIN also goes after uploaders and other people who make pirated content available. Just last week, it announced a settlement with a large-scale uploader of Dutch comic books, who was tracked down through open-source intelligence. In 2020, the group signed a total of 42 settlements with copyright infringers, and efforts to tackle other major uploaders will continue. BREIN also started to warn large-scale torrent uploaders. The group is not interested in casual pirates, but tracks down the big fish and asks Internet providers to forward a warning to these subscribers. This warning campaign is still at an early stage but BREIN hopes that it will have a significant impact in the long run. Finally, BREIN is also hinting at possible criminal prosecutions. Generally speaking, copyright infringement isn’t a priority for Dutch law enforcement. However, that may change when there’s an annual turnover of 100,000 euros, or when there’s an organizational layer involved. The Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) is currently processing a case referred to it by BREIN, and more referrals are in the pipeline. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. (Comment on this)
6:34p	Jake Paul Fight Piracy: Judge Dismisses Triller’s Lawsuit Against YouTuber Ever since the Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren fight was streamed illegally online, Triller has been filing copyright infringement lawsuits against the alleged culprits. The campaign began with a $100m complaint against multiple “business entities” but a judge dismissed all but one of the parties from the action, warning that by joining all of them as cooperating parties, the illegal conduct of one defendant could be wrongly attributed to another independent defendant. In response, Triller began filing separate actions against each entity. One of those suits targeted YouTuber ‘ItsLilBrandon’, later identified as Brandon T. Williams. Allegations Against Williams Triller’s complaint alleged that Williams is the operator of the ‘ItsLilBrandon’ YouTube channel, which seemed a reasonable conclusion to draw, adding that Williams publicly displayed the Jake Paul fight and asked followers to “help out” by donating to mobile payment processing service Cash App. However, without any supporting evidence, the company also went on to claim that Williams owns and operates a number of torrent and streaming websites and accused Williams of utilizing the ‘ItsLilBrandon’ branding as a shell to avoid liability to Triller. Following up on these somewhat grand allegations, Triller accused Williams of copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, violations of the Federal Communications Act, conversion, and violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Williams Was Served, Triller Seeks Default Judgment The case docket reveals that 19-year-old Williams was served with the summons and complaint during the morning of June 7. Triller’s representative couldn’t locate the defendant at the expected address but Williams later accepted service at an address in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. On July 1, Triller applied for entry of a clerk’s default against Williams, stating that Williams had failed to answer or otherwise respond to the complaint within 21 days of being served. A day later, the clerk entered default against Brandon Williams and ItsLilBrandon, ordering Triller to file a motion for default judgment no later than July 20, 2021. United States District Judge Fernando M. Olguin informed Triller on July 6 that its motion should include detailed information, such as the damages and injunctive relief sought, and any claim for attorney’s fees. One of the basic requirements was that any claim for damages must be “supported by detailed, clear, and thorough calculations” that cite the “underlying admissible evidence, such as contracts, spreadsheets, and declarations.” The Judge warned that failing to file for a motion for default containing the information detailed in his order could result in the motion being denied. It could even see the case against the defendant being dismissed for failure to prosecute and/or failing to comply with a court order. Triller Fails To Comply With The Judge’s Instructions In minutes dated July 26, Judge Olguin notes that Triller had been ordered to serve a motion for default judgment no later than July 20 and had been warned that failure could result in the action against Brandon Williams and ItsLilBrandon being dismissed. Triller failed to comply with that order. Noting that dismissal is a severe penalty and an extreme remedy, the Judge adds that relevant factors have to be weighed before dismissal including the public’s interest in expeditious resolution of litigation, the court’s need to manage its docket, and the risk of prejudice to defendants and respondents. “Plaintiff’s failure to file the motion for default judgment hinders the court’s ability to move this case toward disposition and indicates that plaintiff does not intend to litigate this action,” Judge Olguin writes. “Thus, having considered the Pagtalunan factors, the court is persuaded that the instant action should be dismissed for failure to comply with a court order and failure to prosecute.” The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning that a new complaint can be filed at a later date. However, in light of the Judge’s demands that a detailed damages claim is required (no evidence supporting such a claim has been presented to the court), it’s open to question whether Triller is genuinely interested in pursuing this matter any further. The supporting court documents can be found here (1,2,3 – pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. (Comment on this)

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