Let's learn about Online Piracy via these 100 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the /Learn Repo to find the most read stories about any technology.
Last night the Twitter account of Netflix in the MENA region suddenly had its 'N' logo replaced with a pirate-themed graphic. Then, in a series of bizarre tweets declaring a hack, followers were asked for recommendations on movie torrents. This morning Netflix apparently regained control and apologized but could there be more to this than meets the eye?
Former Pirate Party Canada leader and Ebook.bike operator Travis McCrea is facing the possibility of crippling sanctions if the plaintiff in his copyright infringement lawsuit has his way. After McCrea failed to produce discovery as ordered by the court, the legal team of author John Van Stry are moving in for the kill, demanding sanctions that have the potential to undermine any chance of McCrea winning his case on the merits.
Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier has been oulining some of the RIAA's successes since he joined the industry group. Interestingly, he went straight to the Kim Dotcom and Megaupload case, which he described as a "huge significant victory". While the case hasn't yet gone to trial, its destruction more than eight years ago may be a good enough result for the RIAA.
Connecting to public WiFi may be unavoidable but it does bring some security risks. These four steps can help protect your data privacy when connected to such.
UK’s Federation Against Copyright Theft published the results of a new survey, finding that 62% of consumers are unaware of the hidden dangers of piracy.
An anti-piracy memorandum aimed at removing allegedly-infringing content from search engines is beginning to have an effect in Russia. That's
according to the chief of the Internet Video Association, an anti-piracy group representing the interests of numerous licensed online video distribution platforms.
In October 2019, Share-Online.biz, Germany's largest file-hosting site, was shut down following police raids around Europe. As the investigation into the platform's operators continues, a cybercrime police representative now says that hunting down former content uploaders and regular downloaders at the site remains a "realistic scenario."
More than two dozen movie companies have sued Grande Communications demanding it should terminate BitTorrent pirates and block sites including The Pirate Bay.
A group of bipartisan U.S. House Representatives has sent a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, urging the company to take copyright infringement seriously.
South Korean authorities say they have rquested their first ever Interpol 'Red Notice' in an effort to apprehend the suspected operator of a torrent site that indexed around 455,000 copyright works. Information released by the Ministry of Culture and National Police suggests that the unnamed person is Australian. Police are demanding his or her arrest and extradition.
Movie studios are increasingly experimenting with shorter release windows or even simultaneous theatrical and digital premieres.
The government of Japan has approved a new bill aimed at reducing the
downloading of pirated content from the Internet. The new law, which is
targeted for Jan 1, 2021, will criminalize the downloading of manga, magazines and academic material with prison sentences of up to two years. Operators of pirate linking sites will also face up to five years behind bars.
Author John Van Stry has won his copyright infringement lawsuit against former Pirate Party of Canada leader Travis McCrea and his long-defunct eBook download platform eBook.bike. After a year of stressful litigation, the court asked the author to consider reducing his $180,000 damages claim to $9,000 to avoid a full trial. Van Stry accepted but with McCrea now
claiming to be broke, it remains to be seen whether the amount will ever be recovered.
A law firm acting for Nintendo of America has shut down a successful Kickstarter campaign for alleged breaches of copyright. According to the gaming giant, the fundraiser used characters and images from the Animal
Crossing series without obtaining the necessary permission.
A report by the UK Intellectual Property Office shows that a quarter of all online entertainment consumers downloaded or streamed content illegally in 2020.
After being shut down by the FBI, Jetflicks and associated site iStreamitAll were described by the US Government as two of the largest unauthorized streaming services in the United States. A new filing in the Jetflicks case now reveals that the giant pirate platform ran alongside a fledgling aviation video service that quite literally failed to get off the ground.
The operator of the popular torrent site YTS has resolved the piracy lawsuit that was filed by movie outfit Wicked Nevada last year. In a consent judgment, which is signed by both parties, the YTS admin agreed to pay $150,000 in damages. The site is no longer allowed to share torrents of the film "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile," but YTS itself remains online for now.
YesPornPlease, an adult-focused video site that was until recently servicing more than 100 million visitors per month, has disappeared following the filing of a lawsuit in the United States. The complaint, filed by Mindgeek-owned MG Premium, also targets hosting site VShare.io, demanding a broad injunction and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Nintendo has launched a new wave of DMCA complaints at Google in an effort to make piracy-enabling devices harder to find. In common with previous efforts, the gaming giant is making strategic use of DMCA anti-circumvention notices, to permanently delete listings from search results.
Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN says it has shut down a music piracy service that offered an illegal pool of 350,000 tracks in exchange for an annual payment of 2
A new paper published by Microsoft's research department proposes to tackle piracy with a blockchain-based bounty system titled "Argus."
An Italian court has ordered 'preventative measures' that requires the websites of 15 'pirate' IPTV providers to be blocked in the country. The complaint was filed by top Italian soccer league Serie A after the IPTV providers reportedly broadcast live matches without permission. How effective the blocks will be remain to be seen, however.
Over a 21-month period the woman sold access to 38 different copyrighted books used in the social worker sector.
Popular YouTuber OMI IN A HELLCAT was raided by the FBI last year in connection with his 'pirate' IPTV service Gears TV.
Following a massive lawsuit filed by adult entertainment giant MG Premium, video site YesPornPlease temporarily shut itself down. It is now operating behind what appears to be geo-based blocking mechanism that promotes the use of a VPN. Meanwhile, MG Premium wants permission from the court to force several US-based service providers including Cloudflare and PayPal to reveal what they know about the site's operators.
A lawsuit filed against BitTorrent owner Rainberry Inc, TRON Foundation's Justin Sun, and one of his colleagues, is based in employment law. However, the allegations it contains could pique interest in Hollywood, with claims that movies including The Lion King were involved in a "fraudulent scheme" to "make a profit from the illegal piracy of those materials."
A law firm acting for Spotify has taken down a piece of Windows software that allows users to download and remove DRM from music tracks while skipping ads. XSpotify, which also carries an ad-blocking feature, is described as a tool that "steals" Spotify encryption keys in contravention of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.
“It’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy.” said Steve Jobs.
Movie and TV show streaming app ApolloTV has shut down following threats from the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. The global anti-piracy coalition hand-delivered a cease-and-desist notice to the developer
behind the software, the terms of which he immediately complied with.
The Montreal-based affiliate network AdCenter has closed shop overnight. Scammers have been around for centuries but, on the Internet, they can reach higher.
A man who was sentenced in 2018 to 4.5 years in prison for selling pirate IPTV devices to pubs and clubs has been ordered to pay £520,000 to the public purse. Failure to come up with the funds will result in John Dodds
having his prison sentence extended by an additional five years. The Premier League, which brought the action, welcomed the judgment.
For several weeks, French Internet users have reported difficulty accessing dozens of unlicensed streaming and torrent sites. It now transpires that
following legal action by several movie industry groups, a Paris court handed down a ruling ordering some of the country's top ISPs to prevent their customers from accessing around 36 platforms.
AMD has filed at least two DMCA notices against Github repos that carried
"stolen" source code relating to AMD's Navi and Arden GPUs, the latter being the processor for the upcoming Xbox Series X. The person claiming
responsibility for the leak informs TorrentFreak that if they doesn't get a buyer for the remainder of the code, they will dump the whole lot online.
CS.RIN.RU is probably the largest forum dedicated to video games piracy on the planet. However, after a reported 17 years in operation, the site's
sponsor has reportedly decided to stop funding the site. As a result, the gaming pirates' paradise will have to rely on user donations to keep going.
The New Zealand Supreme Court has declined Kim Dotcom's appeal in his bid to access private communications captured illegally by the country's spy agency. Dotcom will still be entitled to damages for the unlawful intrusion into his private life but he says this matter is not about money. Instead, he seeks to hold the GCSB agency accountable for its illegal behavior, for the benefit of all New Zealanders.
This week anti-piracy company Rivendell made history by reporting its 500 millionth infringing URL to Google. Speaking with TorrentFreak, the founder of Rivendell and sister company LeakID says that his team works closely with Google and finds the search giant very cooperative and helpful. He credits pirates for being resourceful but loves finding ways to "outsmart" them.
Huge scanlation platform MangaDex recently revealed that legal pressures had, among things, restricted its ability to receive donations from users. Following our report, a server administrator connected to several other groups gave us additional insight into these anti-piracy efforts. Amid the hostilities, however, it appears that all the scanlation community really wants is to improve the chances of manga titles arriving in the West.
Adult movie company AMA Multimedia has obtained a DMCA subpoena from a Washington court to help it track down individuals who uploaded content to various 'tube' sites. The subpoena orders Cloudflare to hand over the identities of uploaders and potentially site operators too but given the way the content seems to be delivered, it remains a question whether the former will be possible.
One of the most common recurring questions in respect of downloading, sharing and even streaming, is whether service X or platform Y is 'safe' to use, from a copyright-infringement perspective. Recent developments show that no matter how safe users think they are, security is something that should never be taken for granted.
A federal court in Texas has ordered a former employee of a local phone store to pay $6,250 in piracy damages.
Netflix subscribers in France shared a wry smile over the weekend when a
screenshot from the anime movie City Hunter was shared on Twitter. The
screenshot revealed that the subtitles hadn't been obtained from an official supplier. Instead, they were apparently culled from a 'pirate' file distributed by an IRC channel specializing in anime content, one that could've been dead for some time.
Several takedown notices, reportedly sent on behalf of the NFL, are asking Google to remove VPN-related URLs. According to a recent request, these sites promote the use of VPN services "to illegally stream NFL games." While many of the pages show how VPNs can bypass geographical restrictions, Google has left most URLs in its search results.
Katy Perry's writers lost a $2.8m lawsuit against Christian rapper Flame last year over the use of a handful of notes. Musician Adam Neely published a hit video on YouTube slamming the lawsuit but in a bizarre twist, Perry's publisher Warner Chappell has now filed an infringement complaint against Neely. Not only have they claimed all of the advertising revenue from his video, they've turned the entire matter into an unbelievable trainwreck.
Russia is planning action against apps that facilitate access to pirated content. If app developers don't quickly respond to a request from authorities to cease distribution of their software, telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor will demand action against platforms such as Google Play and Apple's App Store. Failure to respond could result in ISP blockades.
As cinemas around the globe continue their shutdowns in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a number of movies are now enjoying early digital releases. Of course, many of these are also hitting pirate sites, with Bad Boys For Life, Bloodshot and The Gentlemen currently proving most popular with downloaders.
Popular eBook download platform eBookee has lost control of its main .org domain. The suspension was carried out by the Public Domain Registry
France's largest torrent site YggTorrent has lost control over its main domain. According to the site's operators, YggTorrent.ws was suspended by the domain registrar without providing additional information. Given that Alexa reports that YggTorrent is one of the most-visited websites in the whole of France, the disruption is likely to affect millions of visitors.
This morning several news articles celebrated the "return" of Popcorn Time after it apparently went offline a few years ago. This claim simply isn't true,
neither is the assertion that the just released version of the app works as well as the previous one. In fact, Popcorn Time is facing a wave of complaints from users experiencing a wide range of problems that simply didn't exist before.
After falling into third-party hands the main domain of Kim Dotcom's K.im project is set to be reclaimed. The Isle of Man domain recently expired and was quickly snapped up but, following a dispute process, it could be transferred back to the crypto project in a matter of days. Documents reviewed by TorrentFreak reveal that there was an attempt in December to sell the domain back for $100,000.
Media giant ABS-CBN has filed two US lawsuits worth millions of dollars in damages against two men they accuse of supplying pirate IPTV devices to the public. One of the men was arrested earlier this month by Los Angeles
Police Department following an undercover sting operation.
Pirated content is openly available out there on the web!
Who exactly is to blame for it? What's a long term solution for it? Is Piracy justified? Lets find out
The National Emergency Library recently launched by the Internet Archive now finds itself in the middle of a controversy.
The developer behind the Red Dead Redemption: Damned Enhancement Project is fighting back against a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Take-Two. Among other things, Johnathan Wyckoff states that he believes he was working within the rules published by Take-Two, which state that
the company will not generally take legal action against non-commercial single player projects.
TeaTV is one of the most popular 'pirate' video apps around, providing ready access to movies and TV shows. The app received mainstream media attention in 2019 and following on from that exposure, the MPA has been trying to disrupt the application. The movie industry group is now asking code platform Github to take down three versions of the application while considering its repeat infringer policy.
Movie and TV show information portal AlloCiné has reportedly sent a wave of DMCA notices to Google to have allegedly-infringing content taken down. Unfortunately, however, the complaints are littered with clearly erroneous URLs that target everything from Netflix and Amazon listings to news reports from sites like Wired, plus content on rival movie portals such as JustWatch and Rotten Tomatoes.
A judge at a Texas court has ordered two individuals behind the pirate IPTV service Easybox IPTV to pay $9.9m in copyright infringement damages. In a judgment handed down this week, the judge awarded the maximum $150,000 in statutory damages for each of 66 copyrighted works willfully infringed by the defendants via their unlicensed streaming platform.
A viral marketing company is engaging in blatant copyright infringement as part of a new campaign. MSCHF has launched AlltheStreams.fm, a 'pirate radio' site that is currently streaming shows from Netflix, Disney+, HBO Go
and others with zero permission from copyright holders. The company
informs TF that once one network shuts it down, five others will take their place....
Peter Kolmisoppi explains why The Pirate Bay is still alive and some websites aren't.
PortalRoms, a popular index for ROM and emulators for a wide range of gaming systems, has disappeared without trace. Up until a few days ago the site was servicing more four million visitors per month with links to download content via torrents. However, after domain issues hit the site last October, history may now be repeating itself for the ten-year-old site.
Research commissioned by the Australian government says 59% of people faced with a blocked pirate site are more likely to simply give up than try other means.
Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley and Penguin Random House are asking a court to reject Internet Archive's request to access huge volumes of data
Github has revealed that throughout 2019, the coding hosting platform took down more than 14,300 projects following DMCA complaints. Of the total notices received, only a tiny proportion was contested via counter-notice. Interestingly, the Microsoft-owned platform also reveals that one copyright complaint cannot be detailed as it's the subject of a gagging order.
The International Olympic Committee and leading soccer organizations including FIFA and the Premier League are urging the United States Trade Representative to apply maximum pressure to Saudi Arabia over TV piracy. While beoutQ's illegal satellite broadcasts stopped last August, its set-top boxes now present an Internet-based pirate IPTV threat, the sports groups say.
New research published by Synamedia shows that the sports industry can potentially earn billions in extra revenue with a tailored approach to piracy.
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the supervising body and publisher for the Jehovah’s Witness religious group, is using the DMCA to obtain the identity of a self-proclaimed 'apostate'. In a filing at a New York
court, the group demanded that Google should hand over the identity of a person who allegedly uploaded videos of sermons to YouTube without permission.
The ground-breaking anti-piracy deal signed by Russia-based content and Internet platforms in 2018 will not be written into local law any time soon. The agreement, which sees search engines voluntarily delete allegedly-infringing links, was supposed to be formalized in recent months but in the face of complexities and parliament being tied up with other things, will now be extended until 2021.
After falling into third-party hands, the main domain of Kim Dotcom's K.im project has been returned following a settlement agreement. While this progress is being welcomed by the Megaupload founder, even more serious matters lie on the horizon. Will the New Zealand Supreme Court decide against extradition to the US? Dotcom predicts that while close, the judgment will not go in his favor.
New data shared by piracy tracking company MUSO shows that most torrenting movie pirates prefer HD quality releases, even if they have to wait for months.
A draft law in Sweden envisions much tougher penalties for serious copyright infringement. Under current rules, sentences carry fines and/or prison terms up to a maximum of two years. Under the new proposals, serious copyright-related crimes would be treated more harshly, with prison sentences starting at six months and going all the way to a maximum of six years.
Plex has become the latest neutral technology to get slammed for not doing enough to prevent movie and TV show piracy. According to pro-copyright lobby group CreativeFuture, which represents more than 560 companies and organizations, Plex - like Kodi - is a "dangerous digital media player" that has joined the ranks of "internet heavyweights who refuse to take responsibility for the criminal behavior on their platforms."
A new copyright-focused initiative has got underway in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. Its goal is to evaluate the 22-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act with a view to modernizing the legislation to better deal with today's Internet following the dramatic changes of the last two decades.
In what appears to be a monumental screw-up somewhere in the game's supply chain, the Denuvo anti-tamper technology deployed on Doom Eternal may have already been compromised. Early purchasers of the game discovered a folder in the game's directory containing an .exe file that can be used to replace the original one protected by Denuvo.
There have been dozens of anti-piracy campaigns over the years but which ones are more likely to work on illicit consumers? According to some of the findings in a government report published in the UK this week, different approaches may be needed to convince both casual and savvy pirates to stop or reduce their activities.
An artist who uploaded a parody cartoon to YouTube and received a strike against his channel following a Warner Bros. complaint has been denied the opportunity to fight his corner. MeatCanyon uploaded a cartoon featuring a creepy 'Bugs Bunny' and later appealed using a DMCA counternotice. YouTube, however, refused to pass the notice on and dismissed the claim.
MalwareBytes persistently blocked an essential element of the Pirate Bay platform due to the presence of "a few" cryptocurrency miners on a secondary domain.
Movie and TV show streaming site Nites.tv hit the mainstream during the past few weeks, with news sites on several continents reporting on the platform seemingly out of nowhere. Now, however, the site is redirecting to the anti-piracy portal of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment
after an apparent seizure. Strangely, a number of things don't add up.
The copyright infringement lawsuit filed by author John van Stry against
former Pirate Party leader Travis McCrea may be edging closer to financial discomfort.
In December 2019 a web-series dedicated to debunking copyright and
copying myths was hit with four copyright complaints over the alleged
illegal use of tracks from Robin Thicke, Marvin Gate, Bee Gees and Michael Jackson. However, the makers of The Creativity Delusion: Geniuses Steal, decided to fight back and have now defeated every single claim against their video. Fair use, they say, is worth fighting for.
New York-based photographer Mark Seliger has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against NBCUniversal demanding millions of dollars in damages.
CDN company Cloudflare is displaying an extremely rare 'Error 451' to German visitors who attempt to access a music piracy site. The message currently affecting DDL-Music.to states that the site has been rendered "Unavailable for Legal Reasons'. Contrary to Cloudflare's own error code guide, no explanatory legal demand specifics have been published.
In response to the many Call of Duty Warzone leaks appearing online, Activision has been filing aggressive takedowns on copyright grounds. According to documents obtained by TorrentFreak, the gaming giant has also obtained a DMCA subpoena from a US court, which compels Reddit to hand over the personal details of a user who allegedly posted a leaked image to the site.
The Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment has been quietly comandeering more pirate site domains, presumably as part of settlement arrangements with their former owners. One domain relates to a previously announced case but three others, all connected to pirate IPTV, are reported today for the first time.
Last week the Internet Archive responded to the coronavirus outbreak by offering a new service to "displaced learners". Combining scanned books from three libraries, the Archive offered unlimited borrowing of 1.4 million
books, so that people can continue reading while in quarantine. What
followed was a huge backlash from publishing and pro-copyright groups,
with the Copyright Alliance decribing the actions of IA's operator as "particularly vile."
A lawsuit filed by US broadcaster DISH Network against Easybox IPTV looks set to end with significant cost to the men behind the unlicensed IPTV provider. In a motion for final judgment and permanent injunction, DISH is demanding $9.9m in damages for direct copyright infringement of 66 copyrighted works, broadcast by Easybox without permission.
A dark parody cartoon depicting a washed-out Bugs Bunny as a sex offender has been hit with a DMCA complaint by Warner Bros. MeatCanyon, a channel with more than 66 million views, has responded with a new animation in which characters mourn his passing, stating that since Warner claimed the content as its own, they have now confirmed that "Bugs was a struggling rapist all along."
In 2019, 'pirate' IPTV supplier One Box TV found itself on the wrong end of a DISH Networks lawsuit. Filed in a Florida court, the complaint alleged that the IPTV supplier was transmitting DISH programming unlawfully via the Internet. After failing to put up a defense, One Box TV and its owner have now been ordered to pay $3.8 million in damages.
Two men who sold piracy-configured set-top boxes and coached the public on how to use them to access infringing content have been sentenced to one-year prison terms under the Fraud Act, suspended for two years. The pair, who supplied 'BlackBox.tv' devices, must also do 120 hours of unpaid work.
A decision by Universal Pictures to quickly make movies available on VOD services due to the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the inevitable. Titles including The Invisible Man, Emma, and The Hunt, which are still in
their theatrical windows, are now all available for download on pirate sites, just hours after release.
In 2018, four of Japan's largest manga publishers filed a motion at a Tokyo court demanding that Cloudflare stop providing services to several 'pirate'
sites, including Mangamura replacement Hoshinoromi. The companies now reveal that a settlement has been reached with Cloudflare to "stop the
replication" of the sites on its Japan-based servers, if a court declares them illegal.
With the world still grappling with the new coronavirus outbreak, an unofficial paywall-free archive of scientific papers is spreading hope, not disease, to the scientific community. Speaking with TF, the operators of the project reveal that since its launch under a week ago, visitors from all over the world to the 5,300+ study resource have consumed almost half a terabyte of bandwidth.
The trial of six defendants who allegedly operated the 'pirate' streaming service Jetflicks will now take place in July 2020. The delay is in response to Canadian authorities handing over masses of discovery data, including subscriber information and support tickets of the defunct service. The original request for information was made around 22 months ago.
Since early 2019, author John Van Stry has been spending huge sums of money in an effort to bring the former operator of download site eBook.bike to justice. The site itself has been down for months but legal costs are mounting to the point that Van Stry feels there might be an effort to bankrupt him. As a result, a practical win for either side seems a distant proposition.
On January 9, action thriller movie 'Darbar' enjoyed its theatrical release in India. Bizarrely, just three days later, a pirated copy of the hit production was illegally aired on cable TV. The makers of the movie immediately filed a complaint with police who, according to local reports, have now arrested the channel owner and begun the process of confiscating equipment.
A UK man who leaked pre-release movies online has been sentenced to 27 months in prison after pleading to one count of conspiracy to defraud. Malik Luqman Farooq of Halifax was part of a group that obtained copies of movies from a post-production company in the United States. In 2018,
Farooq was indicted by a federal grand jury in a related case that is yet to go to trial the US.
Facebook-owned Instagram has taken down an independently developed API claiming that it violates the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. The complaint claims that the tool 'Instagram-API' allows unauthorized access to Instagram users' posts, which the company says are copyrighted works to which it grants protected access.
A judge at the Federal Court of Australia has handed down a site-blocking
injunction against 86 piracy-related sites accessible from 115 domains. The application, filed by the MPA including Netflix, plus Roadshow Films and several other studios, targets torrent sites, streaming portals, subtitle sites, and various related unblocking/proxy platforms. All must be rendered inaccessible by 50 local ISPs.
Learn how free streaming and online free movies websites could negatively affect your security
Two men who sold piracy-enabled TV boxes and encouraged buyers to access content without an appropriate subscription have been found guilty after a four-day trial in the UK. The individuals, who will be sentenced later this month, face potentially lengthy sentences under the Serious Crime Act 2007 and Fraud Act 2006.
The UK's Intellectual Property Office has published the latest edition of its
Online Copyright Infringement Tracker report. Illicit consumption of movies increased considerably over the previous period, with a new category of live sports leaping almost to the top of the infringement tables. Interestingly, the report also highlights a significant decrease in hardcore pirates.
A man from the US became a hero last year when a video of him subduing a man who had headbutted someone in the face went viral. The video has been reposted numerous times since but is regularly taken down following
bogus copyright complaints. However, the censorship efforts massively
backfired this week when someone tried to delete a Reddit thread using a DMCA anti-circumvention notice. Duh...
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