by Ellen Seidler | Film, Piracy
As the pirate world turns….
The mystery (and confusion) deepens over the fate of the popular pirate movie site Movie2k.to. Two weeks ago it suddenly disappeared from the web. Speculation was that it had something to do with efforts in the UK to block pirate websites. A few days later the site appeared to be reborn as movie4k.to but now, according to a report on a German-language site www.20min.ch the real site is now found at movie2k.tl and the site owners claim movie4k.to is a fraud. Imagine that, a pirate site subjected to fraudulent behavior. Karma….oh, but I digress. Here’s the skinny (translated badly from the original German):
Recently, Movie2k.to than Movie2k.tl again on the net. The operators claim to be the real Movie2k. At the same time they warn other websites Movie2k look confusingly similar. A name is not mentioned, but apparently Movie4k is meant. There, one could be captured viruses, write the supposedly real Movie2k operators.
The virus problem generally applies to free download and streaming portals: “The problem is the integration of advertising banners, the malicious code redirects or contain” says Marc Rubin of the Swiss Pirate Party.
Despite similar design, there is a marked difference between the two competing streaming sites: English-language series and porn movies no longer offers Movie2k.tl the time being.
What’s particularly rich in this story is that it appears, from what I can tell reading the translated account, it seems that the movie2k.to site was actually pirated by the operators of movie4k.to. I must admit, you have to chuckle just a bit when pirate sites start eating their own. Here’s more from the 20min.ch story:
The question remains in the room, why the supposedly real Movie2k-founder no longer use their old web address. An explanation: In Movie4k.to and Movie2k.tl it could be to free-riders, who want to benefit from the popularity of the name. A similar assumption has MarcRubin of the Pirate Party: “. Anyone can copy web content, embed the links to the movie streams and can refer to its own Internet address on” Mostly supervising a team a site like Movie2k. “Maybe there were quarrels and one of the sides is an offshoot,” speculated the pirate.
No matter how this all plays out, it’s nice to see a pirate website getting a taste of its own medicine.
by Ellen Seidler | Film, Piracy
Notorious pirate site Movie2k.to is gone…at least for now
Much to the chagrin of many on Twitter, the popular pirate movie portal http://www.movie2k.to is offline thanks, it seems, to a court order issued in the UK. According to a story in Torrent Freak earlier this month, a number of UK ISPs were served with a court order that requires them to block the sites or be legally liable for the infringement that occurs. It’s not clear at this point how that effort has affected the site’s availability in places like the United States.
No matter the reason, this is good news for filmmakers. Not only did Movie2k.to list illegal download links for thousands of films, but the site also ignored DMCA takedown requests.
Since the site itself didn’t respond, sending notices to Google was the only way content creators could take action to prevent their work from being stolen. In February when I checked the Google transparency report for Movie2k.to I found the search giant had received 37,764 takedown requests to have related search results removed.
At the time I demonstrated how the popular film “Silver Linings Playbook” download links were easy to find via Google search on Movie2k.to.
Dozens of download links to pirated copies of Silver Linings Playbook on Movie2k
It’s important to note that studio films were not the only ones victimized by Movie 2k. The site offered links to illegal streams and downloads of hundreds of indie films too.
Whether its disappearance is permanent remains unknown. For now, however, there’s cause to celebrate as another pirate site bites the dust….
Update: On Saturday, June 1st Torrent Freak is reporting that another popular pirate site, letmewatchthis.ch has gone missing too. Again, it’s unclear as to why this is happening, but suffice it to say that it’s good news for filmmakers.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
The RIAA is not pleased with results of Google’s efforts to downgrade pirate websites in search results. According to a story by Stuart Dredge published today on Musically.com, the RIAA says Google’s not doing all it can to demote infringing sites:
The RIAA says it’s been monitoring the results, and it’s not happy. “Six months later, we have found no evidence that Google’s policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy. These sites consistently appear at the top of Google’s search results for popular songs or artists,” it says in a statement.
Specifically, the RIAA claims that the “serial infringers” sites that it analysed “still managed to appear on page 1 of the search results over 98% of the time in the searches conducted – in fact, these sites consistently showed up in 3 to 5 of the top 10 search results.”
I’ve found the same scenario with searches I’ve done. Earlier this month (2-11-13) did a search for an indie film “A Perfect Ending” that was released on DVD in early February. I searched the “past 24 hours” and used the search term: “a perfect ending” download. The results were not surprising. At the top of the list, after a paid Netflix placement, was a link to a Pirate Bay torrent.
Today I did a search for the Academy Award nominated “Silver Linings Playbook.” This time a I used a more general search term: silver linings playbook download and didn’t limit it by date. In this instance the first non-commercial result was the site www.movie2k.to. When I checked the link, I found more than 30 links to illegal downloads/streams. The first link was an active/embedded stream of the movie.* I checked the second link on the list and found it to be an active download.
When I checked Google’s Transparency Report for reported takedown request Google received over the past month for links to www.movie2k.to I found 37,764 URLS had been reported.
Now the top domain reported was Filestube.com with more than 400,000 takedown requests, but 37,764 is not an insignificant amount. BTW, this site itself is impervious to takedown requests. If you are a rights holder who wants the infringing links removed, you have to click each link and click often through a myriad of pop-up ads to report the file. Even then, some of the sites don’t respond. Lip-service to the contrary, Google remains a top dog in facilitating piracy. From Musically.com:
“There is a staggering amount of copyright infringement taking place every day online and much of it is facilitated by Google, as their own data shows,” wrote the MPAA’s SVP Content Protection, Internet, Marc Miller.
Earlier this week I wrote about Google’s disingenuous move to pressure payment providers to cease doing business with pirate websites. Once again I have to ask, why doesn’t Google clean its own house before shifting the focus to others? Seems like they still have plenty of their own work to do.
*In my experience the streams offered via this site (stream2k) are impervious to DMCA takedown requests.
