For years, Tonga's .to domain names have been a popular choice for pirate sites, but that may very well change. Following a restructuring of the domain name operation, the Government of the Kingdom of Tonga appears to have suspended several domains, including the popular German streaming portals S.t…
Bulgaria's highest court has ruled that civil site blocking is legally impossible under current national law. Bulgaria failed to properly transpose the EU directives that authorize blocking injunctions. The decision is a major setback for rightsholders, including the association of music producers, …
Supported by U.S. intelligence, Vietnamese authorities have dismantled a massive network of over 100 pirate sites. Seven suspects have been charged with running a mass copyright infringement operation that included the now-defunct piracy giant HiAnime.to, allegedly earning $12.8 million in advertisi…
Researchers from Delft University of Technology have spent more than two decades building their decentralized BitTorrent client Tribler. The software is designed to be impossible to shut down and the project itself is also going strong, as it recently secured funding up until 2032. New research focu…
Sports broadcaster beIN and the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance propose to expand the European blocking efforts with a blacklist of rogue hosting companies. These companies can then be banned by their ASN, covering a series of IP-address blocks. By implementing the blocking measures across various …
France's Gendarmerie nationale announced that it dismantled the organization behind YggTorrent, France's largest torrent site. Twelve people have been arrested on charges including money laundering. The site itself, however, was already destroyed months ago by a hacker who leaked its data and draine…
For years, rightsholders have pushed for broader site blocking orders, with no direct liability if these result in overblocking. EuroISPA, which represents over 3,300 European internet service providers, is now asking the EU Commission to change that. The association points to a series of overblocki…
After more than fourteen years of legal battles, Kim Dotcom has lost his latest attempt to avoid extradition to the United States. New Zealand's Court of Appeal dismissed the Megaupload founder's challenge to the Justice Minister's surrender order, concluding that a likely U.S. prison sentence of at…
For years, WIPO has tried to starve pirate sites of advertising money. Now it wants to cut off their payments too. A new system called "WIPO Alert Pay" lets rightsholders flag pirate and counterfeit sites to payment providers such as PayPal and Mastercard, who can then act under their own rules. In …
Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Michael' tops the chart, followed by 'Obsession.' 'Mortal Kombat II' completes the top three.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In a series of DMCA takedown requests, "FIFA World Cup" is asking Google to permanently remove various pirate site domain names from its search results. While FIFA certainly is protective of its intellectual property, the seemingly AI-generated notices could be the work of a rival pirate site that's…
After 180 days, Comcast can no longer say which customer was linked to a given IP address. This retention limit has kept old piracy accusations out of reach for years, but that's beginning to change. A series of BitTorrent lawsuits from film companies targets alleged pirates whose identities Strike …
A new report published by the EU Intellectual Property Office shows that the share of major brand advertising on pirate sites increased 80%. The problem is the worst on court-adjudicated pirate sites, where top brands account for more than half of all ads. The data further shows that anti-piracy blo…
One of Latin America's most-visited illegal sports streaming networks has been disrupted by ACE, UEFA, and Mexican authorities. The enforcement action targeted 44 domain names that were operating under popular sports streaming brands including PirloTV. While the enforcement effort appears to have di…
DNS4EU is a relatively young DNS provider that launched last year with European Commission funding. The company is pitched as a privacy-first alternative to Google and Cloudflare, but it also comes with site blocking in mind. DNS4EU has shown an interest in pirate site blocklists, including the one …
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of nearly 400 pirate streaming domain names that offered access to FIFA World Cup matches. This enforcement action, dubbed "Operation Offsides", targets popular brands including "rojadirecta", "koora", and "futbollibre". TorrentFreak tracked down …
With the FIFA World Cup coming up soon, the organizers of one of Mexico's host cities have asked the country's consumer watchdog to warn the public off pirate streaming services, including KaelusTV, ThunderTV, and Sunset TV. The government is not eager to step in to protect the commercial broadcast …
Elon Musk's X Corp has filed a motion to dismiss the multi-million dollar music piracy lawsuit, which was recently amended following the Cox Supreme Court ruling. X says the new complaint is partly based on a tweet that was pulled out of context. It argues that even the full version falls short of …
Less than a month after a New York court issued a default judgment against shadow library Anna's Archive, thirteen major publishers have sued WeLib. The publishers characterize WeLib as a young but popular pirate site that was largely copied from Anna's Archive. The site is allegedly used by tech co…
For the first time in Canada, a site-blocking order has been issued that specifically targets YouTube rippers. The Federal Court has ordered major ISPs to block access to Y2Mate, YTMP3, and Savefrom domains. Interestingly, the order targets copycats, as the original Savefrom site preemptively starte…
The Premier League has requested a DMCA subpoena in an attempt to unmask the operators of 25 pirate sports streaming sites. The domain names were registered through Tucows, which is asked to hand over all personal details of the operators. Interestingly, the football league's own evidence shows the …
Italy's Guardia di Finanza dismantled a piracy system it says it had never seen until now, carrying out more than 100 searches and seizures. The system relied on an app called CinemaGoal that constantly passed on the access codes of legitimate Sky, DAZN, Netflix, Spotify and Disney+ accounts to its …
To keep their piracy lawsuit alive, adult film producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media don't have to prove Meta used their films for AI training. A California federal judge has denied Meta's motion to dismiss, ruling that the alleged torrenting is itself the infringement. Additionally, the…
