A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies’ scheduled release dates.
According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole “numerous ‘pre-release’ DVDs and Blu-rays” between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly “ripped” the movies, “bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying” and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.
Hale has been charged with “two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods,” the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter.
Among blockbuster movies that Hale is accused of stealing are Dune, F9: The Fast Saga, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Godzilla v. Kong, and, perhaps most notably, Spider-Man: No Way Home.
The DOJ claimed that “copies of Spider-Man: No Way Home were downloaded tens of millions of times, with an estimated loss to the copyright owner of tens of millions of dollars.”
In 2021, when the Spider-Man movie was released in theaters only, it became the first movie during the COVID-19 pandemic to gross more than $1 billion at the box office, Forbes noted. But for those unwilling to venture out to see the movie, Forbes reported, the temptation to find leaks and torrents apparently became hard to resist. It was in this climate that Hale is accused of widely sharing copies of the movie before it was released online.
Evidence instead shows that Meta “took precautions not to ‘seed’ any downloaded files,” Meta’s filing said. Seeding refers to sharing a torrented file after the download completes, and because there’s allegedly no proof of such “seeding,” Meta insisted that authors cannot prove Meta shared the pirated books with anyone during the torrenting process.
Whether or not Meta actually seeded the pirated books could make a difference in a copyright lawsuit from book authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Authors had previously alleged that Meta unlawfully copied and distributed their works through AI outputs—an increasingly common complaint that so far has barely been litigated. But Meta’s admission to torrenting appears to add a more straightforward claim of unlawful distribution of copyrighted works through illegal torrenting, which has long been considered established case-law.
Authors have alleged that “Meta deliberately engaged in one of the largest data piracy campaigns in history to acquire text data for its LLM training datasets, torrenting and sharing dozens of terabytes of pirated data that altogether contain many millions of copyrighted works.” Separate from their copyright infringement claims opposing Meta’s AI training on pirated copies of their books, authors alleged that Meta torrenting the dataset was “independently illegal” under California’s Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA), which allegedly “prevents the unauthorized taking of data, including copyrighted works.”
Meta, however, is hoping to convince the court that torrenting is not in and of itself illegal, but is, rather, a “widely-used protocol to download large files.” According to Meta, the decision to download the pirated books dataset from pirate libraries like LibGen and Z-Library was simply a move to access “data from a ‘well-known online repository’ that was publicly available via torrents.”
Accused by the US of criminal copyright infringement, wire fraud, and money laundering, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova were arrested in 2022. Until last May, they were being detained in Argentina while a court mulled the Department of Justice’s extradition request, and the US quickly moved to seize Z-Library domains.
But according to a translated article from a local publication called La Voz, the pair suddenly disappeared after submitting a request “to be considered political refugees” in order to “avoid being sent to the US.” Napolsky and Ermakova had long denied wrongdoing, and apparently they “ran away” after giving up on the legal process. They reportedly even stopped talking to their defense lawyer.
Ars was not immediately able to reach the DOJ or the Patronato del Liberado—the agency in Argentina that confirmed to La Voz that the couple had escaped—to verify the report.
Officials told La Voz that the Patronato del Liberado was charged with monitoring the Z-Library admins’ house arrest and “were surprised to find that there was no trace of them” during a routine check-in last May.
According to La Voz, officials believed at that point that Napolsky and Ermakova were still in Argentina. However, after the courts were informed of their escape, a judge ordered their international arrest, suggesting that the court suspected they may have planned to leave the country. There have been no reports since indicating that the couple has resurfaced. TorrentFreak, which has been closely monitoring the case, opined that “the pair could be anywhere by now.”
Z-Library defends admins
The court process leading up to the extradition order was tense, TorrentFreak reported, with Napolsky and Ermakova partly arguing that extradition was inappropriate because the US had never specified “which copyrighted works had allegedly been infringed.”
The pair succeeded in removing the original judge from the case after proving he was biased to the US. But the replacement judge, Abel Sánchez Torres, ultimately ordered their extradition “on five charges classified as illegal copyright, conspiracy to commit electronic fraud, electronic fraud, and conspiracy to launder money,” La Voz reported. At that point, Sánchez Torres also ordered that Napolsky and Ermakova remain under house arrest.
Ars could not immediately reach the Z-Library team to comment on the admins’ reported escape, but Z-Library has long defended Napolsky and Ermakova as innocent. In a Change.org petition, the Z-Library team wrote that both were “project participants who ensure the operation of the platform” and were “not involved in uploading files” the US considered copyright-infringing, calling their detention “unfair and unacceptable.”
“Their detention occurred without compliance with legal norms and with numerous procedural violations, and the FBI request contained knowingly false data on the existence of a court sanction for arrest,” the Z-Library team wrote, clarifying that “a court sanction for arrest has been issued after the arrest” but not before.
The petition is addressed to US Attorney General Merrick Garland and Argentine officials, requesting access to seized Z-Library domains to be restored. It currently has 146,000 out of 150,000 signatures sought, with Z-Library fans defending the platform as providing critical access for people without financial means to knowledge and diverse educational resources.
“Without a doubt, blocking Z-Library seriously hinders academic activity and impedes scientific development,” the petition said, insisting that the US has ignored that “Z-Library contains many unique books and documents that may become inaccessible to the public. This would be a serious blow to the cultural and scientific heritage of humankind.”
The Z-Library team thinks that the US should be pursuing each copyright infringement case on its site separately, rather than targeting the whole platform for takedown.
“We call for the restoration of Z-Library and for a fair solution that takes into account both the rights of authors and the need for people to have free access to educational resources,” the petition said.
Enlarge / Disney+ promotional art for The Fable, an anime series that triggered Animeflix takedown notices.
Disney+
Thousands of anime fans were shocked Thursday when the popular piracy site Animeflix voluntarily shut down without explaining why, TorrentFreak reported.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the closure of Animeflix,” the site’s operators told users in a Discord with 35,000 members. “After careful consideration, we have decided to shut down our service effective immediately. We deeply appreciate your support and enthusiasm over the years.”
Prior to its shutdown, Animeflix attracted millions of monthly visits, TorrentFreak reported. It was preferred by some anime fans for its clean interface, with one fan on Reddit describing Animeflix as the “Netflix of anime.”
“Deadass this site was clean,” one Reddit user wrote. “The best I’ve ever seen. Sad to see it go.”
Although Animeflix operators did not connect the dots for users, TorrentFreak suggested that the piracy site chose to shut down after facing “considerable legal pressure in recent months.”
Back in December, an anti-piracy group, Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), sought to shut down Animeflix. Then in mid-May, rightsholders—including Netflix, Disney, Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros.—won an injunction through the High Court of India against several piracy sites, including Animeflix. This briefly caused Animeflix to be unavailable until Animeflix simply switched to another domain and continued serving users, TorrentFreak reported.
Although Animeflix is not telling users why it’s choosing to shut down now, TorrentFreak—which, as its name suggests, focuses much of its coverage on copyright issues impacting file sharing online—noted that “when a pirate site shuts down, voluntarily or not, copyright issues typically play a role.”
For anime fans, the abrupt closure was disappointing because of difficulty accessing the hottest new anime titles and delays as studios work to offer translations to various regions. The delays are so bad that some studios are considering combating piracy by using AI to push out translated versions more quickly. But fans fear this will only result in low-quality subtitles, CBR reported.
On Reddit, some fans also complained after relying exclusively on Animeflix to keep track of where they left off on anime shows that often span hundreds of episodes.
Others begged to be turned onto other anime piracy sites, while some speculated whether Animeflix might eventually pop up at a new domain. TorrentFreak noted that Animeflix shut down once previously several years ago but ultimately came back. One Redditor wrote, “another hero has passed away but the will, will be passed.” On another Reddit thread asking “will Animeflix be gone forever or maybe create a new site,” one commenter commiserated, writing, “We don’t know for sure. Only time will tell.”
It’s also possible that someone else may pick up the torch and operate a new piracy site under the same name. According to TorrentFreak, this is “likely.”
Animeflix did not reassure users that it may be back, instead urging them to find other sources for their favorite shows and movies.
“We hope the joy and excitement of anime continue to brighten your days through other wonderful platforms,” Animeflix’s Discord message said.
ACE did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.
