Torrentfreak: “Luxury Watchmakers Target Pirate Smartwatch Faces” plus 1 more

Luxury Watchmakers Target Pirate Smartwatch Faces

Posted: 23 Nov 2014 01:23 AM PST

While digital watches have been becoming more complex in recent years, the advent of a new generation of smartwatches is changing the market significantly. Manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony, Pebble, Motorola and LG all have an interest in the game, with Apple set to show its hand in the early part of 2015.

Currently Android Wear compatible devices such as Motorola’s Moto360 are proving popular, not least due to their ability to display custom watch faces. Fancy Tag Heuer’s latest offering on your wrist? No problem. Rolex? Omega? Cartier? Patek Philippe? All just a click or two away.

Of course, having a digital copy of a watch on one’s wrist is a much cheaper option than the real deal. See that Devon watch fourth from left in the image below? A real-world version will set you back a cool $17,500. The copy? Absolutely free.

While it’s been fun and games for a while, makers of some of the world’s most expensive and well known watches are now targeting sites offering ‘pirate’ smartwatch faces in order to have digital likenesses of their products removed from the market.

TorrentFreak has learned that IWC, Panerai, Omega, Fossil, Armani, Michael Kors, Tissot, Certina, Swatch, Flik Flak and Mondaine are sending cease and desist notices to sites and individuals thought to be offering faces without permission.

Richemont, a company behind several big brands including Cartier, IWC and Panerai, appears to be one of the frontrunners. The company is no stranger to legal action and recently made the headlines after obtaining court orders to have domains selling counterfeit watches blocked at the ISP level in the UK.

Notices seen by TorrentFreak reveal that the company, which made 2.75 billion euros from its watch division during 2012/2013, is lodging notices against watch face sites citing breaches of its trademark rights. Owners are being given 24 hours to remove infringing content.

We discussed the issue with Richemont’s PR representatives but were informed that on this occasion the company could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this week a source informed TF that Swatch-owned Omega had also been busy, targeting a forum with demands that all Omega faces should be removed on “registered trademark, copyright and design rights” grounds. Although the forum would not talk on the record, its operator revealed that the content in question had been removed. Omega did not respond to our requests for comment.

While watchmakers are hardly a traditional foe for those offering digital content, history shows us that they are prepared to act aggressively in the right circumstances.

Mondaine, a Swiss-based company also involved in the latest takedowns, famously found itself in a huge spat with Apple after the company included one of its designs in iOS6. That ended up costing Apple a reported $21 million in licensing fees. The same design is readily available for the Moto360 on various watch face sites.

So how are sites handing the claims of the watchmakers? TorrentFreak spoke with Luke, the operator of leading user-uploaded watch face site FaceRepo. He told us that the site had indeed received takedown notices from brand owners but made it very clear that uploading infringing content is discouraged and steps are being taken to keep it off the site.

“Although some of the replica faces we’ve received take downs for are very cool looking and represent significant artistic talent on the part of the designer, we believe that owners of copyrights or trademarks have the right to defend their brand,” Luke explained.

“If a copyright or trademark owner contacts us, we will promptly remove infringing material. To date, all requests for removal of infringing material have been satisfied within a matter of hours.”

Learning very quickly from other user generated content sites, FaceRepo notifies its users that their content has been flagged as infringing and also deactivates accounts of repeat infringers. A keyword filter has also been introduced which targets well known brands.

“If these [brand names] are found in the face name, description or tags, this will cause the upload to be rejected with a message stating that sharing of copyrighted or trademarked material is prohibited,” FaceRepo’s owner notes.

The development of a new front in the war to keep copyrighted and trademarked content off the Internet is hardly a surprise, and considering their power it comes as no shock that the watchmakers have responded in the way they have. We may be some time from an actual lawsuit targeting digital reproductions of physical content, but as the wearables market develops, one can not rule them out.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Fail: MPAA Makes Legal Content Unfindable In Google

Posted: 22 Nov 2014 11:50 AM PST

The entertainment industries have gone head to head with Google in recent months, demanding tougher anti-piracy measures from the search engine.

According to the MPAA and others, Google makes it too easy for its users to find pirated content. Instead, they would prefer Google to downrank sites such as The Pirate Bay from its search results or remove them entirely.

A few weeks ago Google took additional steps to decrease the visibility of pirated content, but the major movie studios haven’t been sitting still either.

Last week MPAA announced the launch of WhereToWatch.com, a website that lists where movies and TV-shows can be watched legally.

“WheretoWatch.com offers a simple, streamlined, comprehensive search of legitimate platforms – all in one place. It gives you the high-quality, easy viewing experience you deserve while supporting the hard work and creativity that go into making films and shows,” the MPAA’s Chris Dodd commented.

At first glance WhereToWatch offers a rather impressive database of entertainment content. It even features TorrentFreak TV, although this is listed as “not available” since the MPAA’s service doesn’t index The Pirate Bay.

Overall, however, it’s a decent service. WhereToWatch could also be an ideal platform to beat pirate sites in search results, something the MPAA desperately wants to achieve.

Sadly for the MPAA that is only a “could” since Google and other search engines currently have a hard time indexing the site. As it turns out, the MPAA’s legal platform isn’t designed with even the most basic SEO principles in mind.

For example, if Google visits the movie overview page all links to individual pages are hidden by Javascript, and the search engine only sees this. As a result, movie and TV-show pages in the MPAA’s legal platform are invisible to Google.

Google currently indexes only one movie page, which was most likely indexed through an external link. With Bing the problem is just as bad.

It’s worth noting that WhereToWatch doesn’t block search engines from spidering its content through the robots.txt file. It’s just the coding that makes it impossible for search engines to navigate and index the site.

This is a pretty big mistake, considering that the MPAA repeatedly hammered on Google to feature more legal content. With some proper search engine optimization (SEO) advice they can probably fix the problem in the near future.

Previously Google already offered SEO tips to copyright holders, but it’s obvious that the search engine wasn’t consulted in this project.

To help the MPAA on its way we asked isoHunt founder Gary Fung for some input. Last year Fung lost his case to the MPAA, forcing him to shut down the site, but he was glad to offer assistance nonetheless.

“I suggest MPAA optimize for search engine keywords such as ‘download ‘ and ‘torrent ‘. For some reason when people google for movies, that’s what they actually search for,” Fung tells us.

A pretty clever idea indeed, as the MPAA’s own research shows that pirate-related search terms are often used to “breed” new pirates.

Perhaps it’s an idea for the MPAA to hire Fung or other “industry” experts for some more advice. Or better still, just look at how the popular pirate sites have optimized their sites to do well in search engines, and steal their work.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.