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Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement<br />

FIG. 2: IPR-Infringing Websites: Tactics Used to Build Resilience Against Enforcement Activity.<br />

Build Redundancy<br />

Register hundreds or thousands of<br />

domain names to support “mirror<br />

sites” to drag rights holders or law<br />

enforcement into “whack-a-mole”<br />

pursuit<br />

Establish Diverse<br />

Geographical Footprint<br />

Register domain names in<br />

numerous jurisdictions to facilitate<br />

domain-name hopping<br />

Ascertain Safe Havens<br />

Register domain names in<br />

jurisdictions with weak IPR<br />

protections or enforcement, while<br />

utilizing service providers that will<br />

not assess the veracity of<br />

submitted complaints of<br />

unlawful actitivity<br />

For example, a study commissioned by the European<br />

Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), through the<br />

European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual<br />

Property Rights, identified various infringement-based<br />

business models employed to intentionally benefit from<br />

and exploit copyrighted digital content on the Internet,<br />

including by way of linking, torrent, streaming, and<br />

cyberlocker sites. 25 The illicit online business models<br />

appear to be structured to achieve three primary<br />

objectives: (i) to shield and conceal identities; (ii) to<br />

establish operational redundancies so as to ensure<br />

resiliency in the face of enforcement actions; and (iii) to<br />

maximize dissemination of infringing third-party content.<br />

Examples of some of the tactics employed to realize these<br />

objectives are summarized below.<br />

Entities engaged in the unlawful exploitation<br />

of copyrighted content are reported to conceal or<br />

otherwise mask identifying information by providing<br />

false or inaccurate registration information when<br />

registering a domain name. 26 An operator of a website<br />

engaged in illicit activity may also employ one or<br />

more evasive registration tactics (FIG. 2,3) such as<br />

the registration of hundreds of names across various<br />

jurisdictions, in order to increase resilience against any<br />

enforcement actions directed at the illicit enterprise. 27<br />

Once domain names have been secured, reporting<br />

suggests that the entity seeking to exploit unlicensed<br />

third-party content for commercial profit often employs<br />

various additional hosting and operational schemes<br />

(FIG. 3) in an attempt to shield the illicit enterprise from<br />

effective enforcement.<br />

Illicit actors use legitimate encrypted technologies<br />

and proxy connections such as the TOR browser and<br />

virtual private networks (VPNs to “cover the tracks”<br />

of traffic to an IPR-infringement-based site, attracting<br />

individuals seeking to obtain pirated content undetected.<br />

FIG. 3: Evasive Tactics Used to Offer or Access Unlicensed Content.<br />

SECTION 1<br />

Use of an anonymizing<br />

service, such as a nologging<br />

virtual private<br />

network (VPN) service<br />

Use of reverse proxy<br />

sites to re-route traffic<br />

to bypass a court<br />

injunction<br />

Hosting infringing<br />

content in multiple<br />

offshore havens in an<br />

attempt to stay<br />

beyond reach of<br />

enforcement<br />

Use of peer-to-peer<br />

(P2P) networking<br />

technology, including<br />

via BitTorrent protocol<br />

Ecouraging seeding of<br />

third-party content<br />

22

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