MarkScan India New Delhi Digital Content Protection Movie Case Study
In this 10 day project, we found significant levels of piracy 5042 source links & 3044 infringing links Daily Detection Infringing & Source Links 1400 1200 1000 800 600 819 Release Date 1201 1175 451 601 935 696 471 808 Infringing Links Source Links 400 200 319 227 219 164 0 12-Feb 13-Feb 14-Feb 15-Feb 16-Feb 17-Feb 18-Feb Infringing Links: These URLs refer to webpages that provide links to the pirated content (e.g. blogs) Source Links: These URLs refer to the actual pirated content on the internet Note: Our primary objective is to detect all source links as they form the focal point of piracy 1
Most of the pirated content was available in downloadable files, streaming links were limited, negligible piracy in top websites Direct Downloads top websites 70 79 90 108 135 2253 2735 Pirated Content by filetypes Torrent top websites 63 73 82 84 85 782 1169 Streaming top websites 56 56 75 101 172 678 1138 Others uptobox.com clicknupload.com hugefiles.net 180upload.com zippyshare.com 285 out of these 2735 links were from WAP/mobile sites Others itorrents.org thepiratebay.to yourbittorrent.com torcache.net limetorrents.cc Torcache.net is a file storage server, its links are embedded on several torrent sites Others cloudy.ec dailymotion.com vodlocker.com nowvideo.sx novamov.com Dailymotion contributed to 3% of the total source links detected 2
To control piracy we carried out an intense exercise ~1800 DMCA notifications and ~500 escalations across the internet ecosystem Notifications & Escalations Breakup of Escalations Level 1, 2 & 3 192 30 Escalation Type Name of Entity # of Communications 12 Hrs 318 Level 1 (Webhost, Domain Registrar) Netelligent 22 V-sys 22 Others 274 1789 49 17 Level 2 (ISP, Domain Registry Operator) OVH 17 Root S.A. 4 Others 171 Webhost Domain Registrar ISP, Domain Registry Operator Regional Internet Registry Level 3 (Regional Internet Registry) RIPE 30 DMCA Notice Email Response Phone Calls Escalation - Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Total 451 540 Note: The email responses, Phone Calls, & Escalation emails were sent by a Sr. Analyst with the help of a legal expert 3
We tackled several global rogue cases, getting domain registration cancelled, and removing >4k pirated media from these websites Enforcement Highlights Party Involved Websites Impacted Action Details Net Impact CogentCo, USA (Network Provider) Cloudy.ec No response received from the website, host & ISP Issue escalated to Cogent via email 9 links taken down Leaseweb, Netherlands (Webhost) clicknupload.com 180upload.com upgrand.com kingfiles.net keeplinks.eu yourvideohost.com The websites refused to comply to the notices Escalated to the Netherlands based host 254 links taken down across 6 noncooperative websites Government of Tokelau, Tokelau (Registry Operator) mvibuzz..tk The website refused to comply to the DMCA notice sent by us The registry operator, the Government of Tokelau (a country in the south pacific) accepted our notice Domain registration cancelled Swedish Police Thepiratebay.to No response was received from the DCMA agent of the website Issue was escalated to the Swedish police via email 28 links taken down Note: In addition to the highlighted cases, 41 similar cases have resulted in a takedown of ~1000 links over & above the standard DMCA process 4
Our reworked enforcement strategy paid dividends we ensured takedown of 80% of the total source links Cumulative Takedown Ratio Source Links Level 2,3 escalations 72% Project closure 74% 80% 40% 45% 51% 55% First round of escalations complete 27% 1 st DMCA processing complete 13% 14-Feb 15-Feb 16-Feb 17-Feb 18-Feb 19-Feb 20-Feb 21-Feb 22-Feb Note 1: Most intermediaries require DMCA notices to be sent to the website operators before the escalation can be filed with them. Note 2: The takedown percentage includes the source URLs that have gone inactive during the course of the project 5
In addition, we removed 90% of results from Google, reducing the overall access to pirated content by 97% Search Result Removal - Google Impact on User Access 91% 90% 90% Pirated content visible through search engines (Total 10%) 3% 89% 14-Feb 15-Feb 16-Feb 17-Feb 18-Feb 19-Feb 20-Feb 21-Feb 22-Feb 23-Feb This content is still available in search engine results and the pirated media files have not yet been removed Active pirated content available on the Internet (Total 26%) Note: This calculation was done, assuming that active pirated content not reachable through search engines is inaccessible for the end user 6
On an average it took us ~35 hrs to get pirated content removed, we kept up the pressure on cases taking time by multiple escalations TAT Intervals for Takedown Websites with High TAT for Takedown >3 days 898 Website TAT for Takedown Average # of Emails per link mylinkgen.com 166:39:13 6 48-72 hrs 434 cloudy.ec 160:44:41 50 limetorrents.socialtorrent.net 151:23:14 8 36-48 hrs 629 us.archive.org 148:50:56 1 rg.to 148:50:56 6 Median: 35hrs 09 mins divxstage.eu 142:50:14 2 24-36 hrs 237 hon3yhd.com 142:50:14 2 nosvideo.com 142:50:13 2 12-24 hrs 1494 limetor.com 142:50:13 8 video.tt 142:50:12 6 <12 hrs 351 Total: 4043 Note: Websites with higher TAT for takedown, in most cases, required multiple rounds of notifications & escalations (emails & phone calls) to several intermediaries 7
Globally, in addition to India, 8 countries account for 40% of the total online audience of pirated content Countries with High Number of Users of Pirated Content (except India) N. America Canada, 2% USA, 3% Asia UAE,7% Saudi Arabia, 2% Pakistan,21% see p10 Nepal, 2% Bangladesh, 2% Pakistan 21% UAE 7% USA 3% Bangladesh 2% UK 2% Canada 2% Saudi Arabia 2% Nepal 2% Europe 40% UK, 2% < 1% 1% - 2% 2% - 10% >10% of global users Note: India accounts for 47% of the total users of pirated content users across the globe 8
In India, users of pirated content were spread across Tier 1, 2 & 3 cities Piracy Map of P2P Users in India Tier 1 Cities and % viewers in India Delhi 22% Mumbai 18% Kolkata 12% Bangalore 5% Hyderabad 4% Pune 3% Ahmedabad 2% Jaipur 1% Lucknow 1% Bhubaneswar 1% Total Tier 1: 57% Tier 2 Cities and % viewers in India Total Tier 2: 20% Tier 3 Cities and % viewers in India <2% 2% - 5% 5% - 10% >10% of India users Nagpur 0.8% Indore 0.7% Kolhapur 0.7% Jalandhar 0.5% Vadodara 0.5% Tier 1: Metropolitan Cities Tier 2: State capitals & other commercially important cities Tier 3: Consists of 385 cities that are not categorized under Tier 1 & 2, & user data has been captured during per our research Total Tier 3: 23% 9