Netflix Focuses Piracy Takedown Efforts on “Orange is The New Black” Leak

Netflix is trying to limit the visibility of the "Orange is The New Black" leaks by sending takedown requests targeted at various websites. The leak is significant enough for the video streaming service to direct one anti-piracy vendor to focus specifically on copies of the leaked files.

Last Friday, Netflix became the key victim in one of the biggest piracy leaks in history.

A hacking group or person calling itself TheDarkOverlord (TDO) released the premiere episode of the fifth season of Netflix’s Orange is The New Black, followed by nine more episodes a few hours later.

Netflix hasn’t said much about the issue in public, aside from the generic response. “We are aware of the situation. A production vendor used by several major TV studios had its security compromised and the appropriate law enforcement authorities are involved.”

However, it appears that behind the scenes something has changed.

While browsing through Google’s public repository of piracy takedown requests, hosted by Lumen, we noticed that the anti-piracy vendor “IP Arrow” suddenly started to submit requests on Netflix’s behalf.

The first request from IP Arrow came in on Saturday, the day after the leak, and there have been at least a dozen more since.

What’s unusual about these notices is that they only target the leaked “Orange is The New Black” episodes, no other content. This is also clearly reflected in a statement by the anti-piracy firm, which comes with the request.

“This is submitted for my client Netflix These links are facilitating piracy of my client’s work. The work can be seen by visiting their site www.netflix.com. The item this is relating to is Orange Is The New Black Season 5,” it reads.

Although Netflix might not believe that the leak is a disaster for its business, which is also reflected in several opinion pieces published in recent days, the IP-Arrow notices suggest the company is focusing part of its takedown efforts specifically on containing the fallout.

Netflix isn’t new to anti-piracy work. With help from Vobile Inc the company started sending takedown requests to Google roughly a year ago. Unlike IP-Arrow’s requests, Vobile targets a wide variety of content.

A few weeks ago we also reported that Netflix has its own “Global Copyright Protection Group” which is tasked with fighting online piracy. Given the recent leaks, we assume that the group has plenty of work to do now.

Source: Torrentfreak.com