By Emmanuel Legrand
The European Commission's second Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List, which is the EU's counterpart to the US Special 301 list published by the US Trade Representative, has identified online marketplaces as "the main source of copyright infringements." The report exposes online service providers established outside of the European Union (EU) that engage in or facilitate intellectual property rights infringement affecting European rights holders.
The Watch List reflects the results of stakeholder consultations and lists "examples of reported marketplaces or service providers whose operators or owners are allegedly resident outside the EU and which reportedly engage in, facilitate or benefit from counterfeiting and piracy."
"Infringements of intellectual property rights (IPR), in particular commercial-scale counterfeiting and piracy, pose a serious problem for the European Union (EU). IPR infringements not only cause high financial losses for European right holders and sustainable IP-based business models," reads the report, which covers all aspects of IP-driven businesses' infringement, from fashion and pharmaceutical to music and films, physical and online.
An increase of infringements during the pandemic
Creative industries from the music, audiovisual, publishing, TV broadcasting or software sectors submitted most of the contributions on piracy. The report notes that most respondents from the creative industries that contributed to the public consultation have reported "an increase of copyright and related rights infringements online during the Covid-19 pandemic," as the lockdown measures taken worldwide "have increased users’ demand for access to creative content, often from illegal sources."
"The impact caused by copyright infringements during the pandemic is reported as particularly harmful because a number of other revenue streams for industries, authors and performers, such as theatrical release of films and music concerts, have been interrupted.," reads the report.
The Watch List is described as a Commission Staff Working Document, which are factual and informative documents that "do not have any legal effect and that do not commit the European Commission."
Streaming piracy on the rise
According to the report, various types of online service providers provide access to copyright-protected content, such as music, films, books and video games, without authorisation of the right holders. "These service providers rely on other online service providers such as reverse proxy services, caching services, hosting providers or payment services to carry out their activities," notes the report.
"Certain online service providers also contribute directly or indirectly to copyright infringements by facilitating access to unauthorised content made available by third parties or providing devices and products or services to circumvent technological protection measures used by right holders to prevent or restrict unauthorised acts."
The report adds that several respondents to the public consultation "emphasised the increasing importance of streaming piracy," including of films and live sports events, as opposed to piracy offering the download of content.
Stream-ripping hits music and films
The report lists cyberlockers as key sources of infringement (cyberlockers are cloud storage and cloud sharing service that enables users to upload, store and share content in centralised online servers). Cyberlockers usually offers subscriptions, which constitute the bulk of their income. Cyberlockers named in the list include: Uptobox, Rapidgator, Uploaded, Dbree, 4shared, Wi.to and Ddl.to.
Stream ripping services are also identified as sources of IP infringement. "According to the music and film industries, stream-ripping is currently the most prominent form of piracy globally," notes the report. Services listed include: Y2mate and YouTubeconverter, Savefrom, Flvto and 2conv.
Linking or referring websites that aggregate, categorise, organise and index links to, are also viewed as sources disseminating infringing content. The report says music and film industries "are particularly concerned" with the development of such sites, since they are allegedly linking sites that often make available pre-release content.
Sites do not remove infringing content
"The music and film industries have reported that the listed service providers received notices to take down content or cease and desist letters, but they have reportedly not reacted and have not removed the content upon request," reads the report. Linking sites listed in the report include: Fullhdfilmizlesene, Seasonvar, Swatchseries, Rlsbb, and Rezka.ag.
Peer-to-peer and BitTorrent indexing websites, that use the peer-to-peer file distribution technology to allow users to share content, are also singled out in the report. They include The Pirate Bay, Rarbg, Rutracker, and 1337x.
Last but not least, the report highlights some sites that offer downloads of unlicensed content, such as Music Bazaar, Sci-hub, and Library Genesis. These sites offer direct downloads of content for free or against the payment of a fee.
The reports also lists social media such as V Kontakte or Telegram that are increasingly used to share copyright-protected content without authorisation.
Sites discontinued
The report also highlights a series of sites that have either been discontinued or that have changed their IP policies, among them:> Openload, which used to be one of the most popular streaming cyberlockers worldwide that offered unauthorised copies of films, books and music, shut down in October 201946.
> Torrentz2 was a BitTorrent indexing website that allegedly emerged in 2017 following the closure of Torrentz.eu. It provided access to a range of content, including allegedly unauthorised copies of films, TV programmes, software, videogames and music. It was shut down by Belgian Customs and the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Brussels on 29 June 2020.
> Mp3va, which was a popular website engaged in the unlicensed sale of music content, was removed from this year’s Watch List, because it lost popularity over the past two years after United States credit and payment providers at the request of right holders voluntarily decided to stop providing services to this website.
> 1channel.ch, which was one of the most visited linking or referrer sites globally at the time of publication of the 2018 Watch List, is reportedly offline now.
> Rnbxclusive.review, which was a popular linking site in 2018, is reportedly offline now. A domain name using the word “rnbxclusive” has been active since May 2020, but the link with the site listed in the 2018 Watch List is not confirmed.
Interestingly, although it was reported by several stakeholders for not being responsive to infringement notices, US-based platform Cloudflare is not on this Watch List. The document explains that Cloudflare "has reported that making generally available certain sensitive information about host IP addresses would jeopardise the protection of their clients’ websites from threats or cyberattacks," but that it was taking "appropriate steps, through robust abuse reporting system and a Trusted Reporter programme, to ensure that right holders have the necessary information to pursue complaints of alleged infringements with the hosting providers and website operators able to act on those complaints."
Frances Moore, Chief Executive of the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, welcomed the publication of the report. “This year, in addition to identifying several music stream ripping sites, we are encouraged to see that the report recognises social media platforms as a new category, and that it highlights that companies in this category, such as Telegram, simply must do more to put in place effective measures to prevent large scale copyright infringements on their services," said Moore.
She added: “We hope that the Watch List will raise awareness of these problematic activities and practices and encourage enforcement action and action by intermediaries to prevent misuse of their services. Such steps are vital to protect content for the benefit of our members, artists and their fans.”
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