Anti-Piracy Outfits Still Target Pirate Sites That Shut Down Years Ago
Predicting whether specific torrent sites, streaming portals, or IPTV services will still be around in five years time, is difficult at best. At worst, almost impossible.
BREIN Shut Down 449 Pirate Sites & Services in 2022
Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has been fighting pirates of all kinds for the last 25 years. BREIN’s latest annual report covering 2022 reveals that it completed 458 investigations and shut down 449 pirate sites. That’s 100 more than BREIN reported for 2021. Pirates are clearly persistent but BREIN is always up for the fight.
Predicting whether specific torrent sites, streaming portals, or IPTV services will still be around in five years time, is difficult at best. At worst, almost impossible.
Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has been tackling pirates of all types for the last 25 years. Not only has it seen huge numbers come and go, BREIN can claim direct responsibility for thousands going offline. A relentless production line of pirate platforms means that BREIN being around in five years’ time seems easier to predict.
458 Investigations, 449 Sites/Services Removed
Published this week, BREIN’s annual report for 2022 covers enforcement actions carried out on behalf of rightsholders across most sectors, including movies, TV shows, music, games, and publishing.
BREIN says it completed 458 investigations in 2022, leading to 449 illegal sites/services being removed from the internet. BREIN refrains from publicly naming its targets but these figures certainly aren’t unusual. BREIN reported the shutdown of 349 infringing platforms in 2021 and 466 in 2020.
While sites returning under new branding may play some role in these persistently high numbers, the fact that full-blown pirate sites can now be deployed in minutes could be a more significant factor. But whatever the circumstances, BREIN has a tool for every occasion.
Preventing Big Sites From Getting Bigger
The Netherlands has long been associated with large piracy platforms but not necessarily because they were operated or hosted there. BREIN’s persistence on the legal front means that some of the largest torrent sites – The Pirate Bay, RARBG, 1337x, YTS, EZTV, LimeTorrents and KickassTorrents variants – are now dynamically blocked by major ISPs under the terms of a Website Blocking Covenant.
At the end of 2022, 196 proxies and mirrors were also blocked by IP address and/or DNS. BREIN further reports that an additional 328 proxies were ‘stopped’ by other means last year.
Until relatively recently the sites mentioned above could still be found in Google’s search results, but BREIN helped to change that too.
In cooperation with Google late 2021, Pirate Bay domains were deindexed from search results. By the end of 2022, Google had deindexed all seven torrent sites mentioned above – 341 unique domains according to BREIN.
For domains and URLs not covered by the above, BREIN sends takedown notices directly to Google. In 2022, BREIN removed 290,324 results from Google search.
Other Strategies and Enforcement Action
In the event that users manage to circumvent the above, landing on a blocked site or any number of larger (and smaller) platforms, BREIN has a number of options available.
One is to interfere with a platform’s ability to generate revenue through advertising. In 2022, BREIN says it “addressed” 36 advertisers doing business on pirate sites and carried out 2,869 interventions against adverts promoting infringing content.
Since all pirate sites and services need people to run them, supply content, and in some cases sell a particular product, BREIN also targets key people in these roles.
Last year, BREIN says it brought the activities of 19 major uploaders, administrators, and ‘scripters‘ to an end. It also stopped 19 traders of IPTV/VOD subscriptions.
During the year, BREIN reached 45 settlements with individuals accused of various types of infringing activity. This included 16 unwelcome home visits, otherwise known as ‘knock and talks’.
In some of these cases, BREIN had already obtained an ex parte court order to restrain infringing activity so not answering the door wouldn’t have helped.
BREIN’s Annual Report 2022 can be found here
Anti-Piracy Outfits Still Target Pirate Sites That Shut Down Years Ago
Pirate sites such as ExtraTorrent, KickassTorrents, and isoHunt disappeared from the web more than half a decade ago. Intriguingly, that hasn’t stopped some anti-piracy groups from going after them, as they’re still asking Google to remove ‘infringing’ URLs of these sites.
Over the past decades, hundreds of popular ‘pirate’ sites have come and gone. This includes the likes of isoHunt, ExtraTorrent, and KickassTorrents.
These shutdowns have a serious impact but, as time passes, estranged users eventually move on. The same can’t be said for all anti-piracy organizations.
Hunting Pirate Ghosts
As it turns out, sites that have long disappeared are still seen as a ‘threat’. That is, judging from the takedown notices they send to Google. While browsing through the Lumen Database this week we spotted a takedown notice targeting NYAA.se, for example.
While the NYAA brand is still used today by a different operation, the original NYAA.se site shut down more than four years ago. At the time of writing Google no longer indexes any NYAA.se URLs. However, that doesn’t stop takedown notices from coming in.
This unusual request prompted us to take a deeper dive into the matter to see if other dead sites are still alive in anti-piracy circles. We didn’t have to look very far to get confirmation.
KickassTorrents and ExtraTorrent
Five years ago marked a turbulent time for the torrent ecosystem as some of the top sites were taken offline. This includes KickassTorrents, which was shut down following a criminal investigation from US law enforcement.
At the time, the site was operating from KAT.cr which immediately went offline. While someone else picked up the domain name after it expired, the site never returned in its original form.
When we look through Google’s DMCA takedown database, however, it’s clear that anti-piracy organizations still see a threat. The domain was targeted in dozens of requests this year, filed by multiple reporting agencies. This includes the one below that came in this week.
We see a similar pattern for ExtraTorrent.com, which decided to go offline in 2017, a few months after KickassTorrents disappeared. While Google no longer indexes any ExtraTorrent links after all these years, new takedown requests continue to come in.
Defunct Pirate Bay Domains
We can repeat these findings for pretty much every prominent piracy site that shut down in recent years. Not just that, it also works for domain names that were suspended or abandoned, including those of The Pirate Bay.
Thepiratebay.se domain, for example, was previously the main domain of the notorious torrent site. After a legal battle, it was eventually handed over to the Swedish police in 2017. However, hundreds of new takedown notices come in for this domain every month.
While the reported links lead nowhere, the anti-piracy groups may have a better reason here, as there are still several ancient Thepiratebay.se links indexed by Google’s search engine.
How Far Can We Go Back
Google only started reporting its takedown requests ten years ago so we can’t go back indefinitely. However, we can certainly go beyond 2016, starting with FilesTube, which once was the top target for Google takedown notices.
FilesTube transformed itself into a legal platform in 2014 and later it disappeared completely. Today, takedown notices for FilesTube are rare, but we were still able to spot six separate reports this year. The most recent one was filed last month.
If we go back yet another year, we arrive at 2013, when Hollywood took down Hotfile and isoHunt, which many considered to be pirate sites as well.
After roughly eight years, anti-piracy groups haven’t forgotten about these two either. Both continue to be targeted occasionally. For example, just this week Google was asked to remove an isoHunt.com URL from its search engine, which probably hasn’t been indexed for over half a decade.
The main question we have is why these sites are still being reported?
It’s clear that reporters don’t always confirm that the links are actually live. We will ask some of the reporting agencies to shed a light on this, so perhaps we’ll find out more on that in the near future.
Torrent website RARBG ceases operations
RARBG, which is a highly popular torrent site, has shut down all of a sudden, unexpectedly. Here’s everything you may want to know about its closure.
Last Updated: Jun 01, 2023, 10:28 PM IST
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RARBG, which is one of the world’s largest torrent sites, has closed down. The website owners have cited the COVID pandemic and Ukraine war as the reasons behind the development.
The torrent tracker used to specialize in the pirated releases of movies and TV series. RARBG, which announced its closure recently, was launched in 2008 as a Bulgarian BitTorrent tracker. The site quickly started to cater to an international audience and primarily focused on English-language releases.
In 2008, RARBG was blocked for the first time due to copyright infringement. In 2017, Google also removed it from its search results. The site was blocked presently in many countries. It is one of the few cases where a torrent site has shut down on its own.
While closing operations, the peer-to-peer file-sharing website also posted a goodbye message on its front page. The message read, “Hello guys, We would like to inform you that we have decided to shut down our site. The past 2 years have been very difficult for us – some of the people in our team died due to covid complications, and others still suffer the side effects of it – not being able to work at all. Some are also fighting the war in Europe – ON BOTH SIDES. Also, the power price increase in data centers in Europe hit us pretty hard. Inflation makes our daily expenses impossible to bare. Therefore we can no longer run this site without massive expenses that we can no longer cover out of pocket. After an unanimous vote we’ve decided that we can no longer do it. We are sorry Bye.”
FAQs
Q1:What is RARBG?
RARBG is one of the world’s largest pirate torrent trackers.
Q2:Why did RARBG close down?
RARBG closed down, citing COVID pandemic and the Ukraine war.
( Originally published on May 31, 2023 )
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