How Hollywood Keeps Breeding New Pirates

For online media consumers, things have improved significantly over the years. More content is made available globally than ever before. The music industry continues to be at the forefront of this transformation. In most countries, legal services are plentiful and affordable. However, the same can’t be said for online video. While there has been...

13h

GitHub Reinstated YouTube-DL But Restoring Forks is Apparently a Problem

Last October the RIAA infuriated many players in the open source community by targeting YouTube-ripping tool youtube-dl in a DMCA takedown notice filed at GitHub. What followed was a broad backlash against the RIAA, the likes of which hadn’t been seen for many years. The music industry group’s claims of DMCA violations due to the software allegedly...

1d

Reckless DMCA Takedown Purges Legitimate Websites from Google Search

Over the past few years, copyright holders have asked Google to remove billions of links to allegedly pirated content. Most of these DMCA notices are pretty accurate but occasionally mistakes are made as well, which can do serious harm. This week our eye was drawn to a request that RightsHero filed on behalf of the company Vuclip Middle East, which...

1d

Nintendo Wins US-Wide Injunction Against Seller of RCM Loader ‘Piracy’ Device

Nintendo is currently engaged in a war of attrition against individuals and groups who help people to pirate and play unlicensed Switch games. Products and individuals involved with the infamous Team-Xecutor became targets last summer and alongside, Nintendo has been chipping away at other sellers of similar circumvention devices. Lawsuit Filed Against...

2d

UK Pirates Remain Driven by Convenience, Availability and Cost

Every year the UK Government publishes a new edition of its Online Copyright Infringement Tracker. This report is the result of an annual survey that polls the piracy habits of people twelve years old and above. Earlier this week the UK Intellectual Property Office published the tenth wave of the report. As always, there are some positive changes...

2d

Plex Plans To Place All Legal Streaming Options (and Piracy) Into One Interface

Since being founded in 2009, the Plex media server and service has grown from strength to strength and with 25 million users worldwide, is now a force to be reckoned with. Early adopters know Plex as a powerful media server capable of transforming local movie, TV show, and other libraries into a beautiful Netflix-style entertainment experience. Playable...

3d

Canada Proposes New Regime to Block and Deindex Pirate Sites

The Canadian Government is exploring if and how current copyright law should be amended to better fit the present landscape. To this end, Canada’s Innovation, Science and Economic Development department launched a consultation asking for feedback on a wide range of proposals. The ultimate goal is to deter piracy by helping copyright holders better...

3d

Hackers Use Software Cracks and BitTorrent Client to Steal Cryptocurrency

It’s no secret that scammers are constantly trying to trick people into downloading malicious content from pirate sites. These files are generally easy to spot for seasoned pirates and they are often swiftly removed from well-moderated sites. However, for casual downloaders, malware can be a serious problem. Novices are often directed to dubious portals...

4d

Philippines Government & ISPs Reach Agreement to Rapidly Block Pirate Sites

Alongside various initiatives to discourage Internet users from visiting pirate sites, including improved legitimate offerings, governments, rights holders and service providers are pressing ahead with their site blocking plans. Broadly speaking, site blocking takes place under two regimes – court-ordered injunctions and voluntary arrangements between...

4d

‘Pirate’ Law Firm Pressured Cooperative Housing Project to Settle Porn ‘Lawsuit’

When copyright trolls scour BitTorrent swarms looking for IP addresses, they have absolutely no idea who sits behind them. ISPs can eventually be forced to hand over the subscribers’ personal details but even then there’s no solid proof of who carried out the infringement, if there was one. Cases tend to get decided on the balance of probabilities,...

5d