Anti-Piracy Lawyer Sues Torrent Sites for 'YTS' Trademark Infringement
Pirate sites regularly get into trouble for breaching copyright law. However, a new case filed in Hawaii is of an entirely different order. A well-known anti-piracy lawyer has filed a lawsuit against several YTS[*] sites because the company he represents obtained a similarly-named trademark this year. The complaint mostly targets 'clones' and the real YTS is not named.
The Hawaiian company '42 Ventures' doesn't immediately ring a bell with most torrent users. However, when we say that it owns the trademarks for 'YTS' and 'Popcorn Time,' interests will pique. Founded last year, the company doesn't operate a pirate site. On the contrary, it's represented by Kerry Culpepper, a well-known anti-piracy lawyer who works with several Hollywood film companies.
Following its inception, 42 Ventures registered several piracy-related trademarks which it uses to target pirate sites and apps, including a popular Popcorn Time fork. The lawyer has used trademark complaints to suspend Twitter accounts, offering to lift the claims in return for a settlement.
As the trademark owner 42 Ventures can do this. However, the method is unusual, to say the least, and some wonder whether it would hold up in court. The Popcorn Time dispute was never litigated though and the developers didn't pay a settlement either. The Twitter handle remains suspended.
A few days ago another trademark issue popped up. This time, 42 Ventures went directly to court where it filed an infringement lawsuit against the operators of YTS.ws, YTS.ms, YST.lt, YTS.tl, YTSag.me, YTS.ae, YTSmovies.cc and YTS-ag.com.
[*] YTS:
YIFY Torrents or YTS was a peer-to-peer release group known for distributing large numbers of movies as free downloads through BitTorrent. YIFY releases were characterised through their HD video quality in a small file size, which attracted many downloaders. The original YIFY/YTS website was shut down by the MPAA in 2015; however, numerous websites imitating the YIFY/YTS brand still receive a significant amount of traffic. 'YIFY' is derived from the name of the website's founder, Yiftach Swery.
Previously: Anti-Piracy Copyright Lawyer Decides to Abuse Trademarks to Shut Down Pirates
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Anti-Piracy Copyright Lawyer Decides To Abuse Trademarks To Shut Down Pirates:
Kerry Culpepper, Hawaiian IP attorney, [decided] to register a bunch of trademarks for piracy related terms and [is] then going around and shutting down accounts for "pirate" services on social media sites.
[...] The idea I suppose is to try to claim that 42 Ventures is suddenly and recently using these marks in commerce, the only way it would have a valid trademark. That, however, is bullshit. The terms and actual content creators were already long using those marks, as were the holders of the social media accounts 42 Ventures is busy taking down. In other words, Culpepper appears to be perfectly willing to abuse trademark law in his efforts to enforce copyright law. That isn't exactly a consistent respect for intellectual property now, is it?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @11:55AM
I have trademarked the term "anti-piracy lawyer". Game over.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @12:29PM
For years I just assumed it was the work of one very dedicated furvert (possibly sarcasm, maybe).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @12:34PM (6 children)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday May 24 2020, @02:24PM (3 children)
They have made a half-assed attempt at using the trademarks:
I don't think the fact that it is primarily a law firm matters.
The trick they want to pull is:
If the defendants are a no-show and the court rubber stamps an injunction, the firm can move to cripple the sites or at least get them blocked by ISPs. Rinse and repeat until someone fights back.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @03:42PM
Popcorn time (tm)
(Score: 1) by zion-fueled on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:03PM (1 child)
So trademark can now be used to stifle speech. Just register the organization name and if they want to reverse the takedown, they'll have to de-anonymize.
Technically a counter suit could be filed but that would require going to court. The guy's offer of settlement is probably not good if someone actually went there: https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/does--prior-art--apply-to-trademarks--1416846.html [avvo.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:23PM
De-anonymization could be a part of the strategy. You see things like the DMCA being weaponized to dox people on YouTube, for example. In the case of torrent and streaming site clones, the operators may be in anti-copyright safe havens* and their identities might not matter much. But they could still be blocked overseas, deplatformed, have accounts frozen, etc., and they probably won't appear in a U.S. court to challenge an injunction.
I think the biggest threat could be to get them off the likes of CloudFlare, and then
pay for them to bewatch them get DDoS'd.*TFA says "The complaint lists them as being in Serbia, Russia, India and China".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @07:53PM
I guess 42 Vultures trademark was taken?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 24 2020, @10:07PM
Yes, this "intellectual property" lawyer is knowingly registering fraudulent "intellectual property".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jasassin on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:03PM (4 children)
I wish anonymous would take this fucking idiot OUT! Hardcore. I hope this prick gets into an accident that leaves him quadriplegic, in utter agony, and lives to suffer to an old age.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday May 24 2020, @05:38PM (3 children)
He's just an individual. MAFIAA and friends will continue to wage war against "piracy" for decades to become. Their actions don't have to be 100% effective, just enough to degrade the illicit streaming and downloading experience (which includes not only the usual free but paid options [firesticktricks.com]) and push people towards "legitimate" services.
Theaters have taken a shellacking from coronavirus, and films are appearing on streaming services on day 1, which means they can be copied and shared in high quality on day 1. So MAFIAA is going to fight even harder to prevent convenient illicit services from eating into revenue. They will get all the lawyers they need to engage in harassment and trolling.
The solution is probably to move towards options that are highly decentralized and render any trademark attack or any notion of protected IP utterly meaningless.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday May 24 2020, @06:27PM
move towards options that are highly decentralized
Most importantly with the ISP. They are the single point of failure.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Sunday May 24 2020, @07:07PM (1 child)
The only thing I can think of is eMule and that was unusably slow.
What about a TOR network Pirate Bay clone? I think TPB (or one of its clones) has an onion link. If someone here has a few onion torrent links it would be appreciated!
In the meantime deleting trackers from a torrent before starting it and using only DHT etc in the torrent clients seems to lessen the DMCA letters to my ISP.
On an off note, qbittorent is the best torrent software I've used. It's free OSS very similar (almost a clone) of uTorrent. It's faster more lightweight than uTorrent and without ads wasting CPU and bandwidth. The installer .exe can be opened with 7zip and extracted to a directory and ran without installing (i.e. portable).
Nowadays I always try to extract .exe installers and run the software without installing. It works on a surprising amount of software and doesn't require admin access to install (I'm always using a normal user account in Windows 10 and cringe when software asks for admin privileges).
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 24 2020, @07:28PM
Torrents themselves are well decentralized, especially with DHT and PEX. Torrent sites are very lightweight due to the use of magnet links.
I use Deluge.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
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