Pirate Bay Founder Warns US Govt. Against Mafia-Esque Copyright Lobby

Peter Sunde was one of the key people behind The Pirate Bay in the early years, a role for which he eventually paid with his freedom. While he cut his ties with the notorious torrent site many years ago, his activist nature hasn’t vanished. In recent years Sunde has focused on several other projects. His links to the domain registration service...

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Streaming Site Shuts Down, Offers Unique Perspective on Anti-Piracy Pitfalls

Back in March we reported on an order handed down by a Paris court. It required France’s leading ISPs to prevent their customers from accessing around three dozen pirate sites. In addition to blocking internationally famous torrent sites YTS and EZTV, the order also covered many locally important streaming sites, among them Time2Watch, a site that...

19h

Bing Features Pirated ‘YTS’ Movies and Even Finds Some on YouTube

For years, entertainment industry groups have been frustrated by the fact that “infringing sites” show up in search results. In fact, some see search engines as a fertile breeding ground for new pirates, as they can direct new users to unofficial sites. Most attention goes out to Google, which is the market leader, but Microsoft’s Bing certainly...

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Court Orders GoDaddy to Transfer Piracy Hack Store Domain to Nintendo

Nintendo is doing all it can to stop the distribution of piracy enabling hacks and modchips, including SX Core and SX Lite. Earlier this year, the company sued a group of known ‘offenders’ that sell these tools. After the stores failed to show up in court, Nintendo requested a default judgment and permanent injunction, which was granted soon after....

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MPA Hits MediaBox HD on Github: “Massive” Movie & TV Show Piracy

Preventing the general public from accessing movies and TV shows without paying for them is a monumental task that, if anything, feels even more difficult than it was 15 years ago. In addition to hundreds, perhaps thousands of torrent and streaming sites, copyright holders also have to deal with the growing threat of premium IPTV, which grants access...

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EU Commission Calls For Substantial Law Enforcement Boost to Fight Piracy

While cooperation across borders has been a regular feature of piracy and similar IP crime investigations across Europe, there is considerable momentum in Brussels to make better use of international resources. Recent actions to tackle unlicensed IPTV providers, resellers and related infrastructure reveal that law enforcement entities are able to pool...

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Torrentz2 Suffers Prolonged ‘Downtime’ and Returns a 503 Error

With millions of regular visitors, Torrentz2 is without a doubt the most popular torrent meta-search engine on the Internet. The site took this spot from the original Torrentz site, which shut down unexpectedly during the summer of 2016. Since then, not much has changed. The site has continued to operate quietly like its predecessor by indexing and...

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Researcher Retains EFF To Fight DMCA Takedowns Sent By Proctoring Company

With millions of students working remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic, the use of so-called proctoring software has skyrocketed. The stated aim of this software is to detect and prevent cheating in online tests but in order to do that, invasive systems are deployed. Proctoring software watches students through their webcams, records audio via...

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Tech Giants Protest Nomination for US ‘Notorious’ Markets List

Every year, the US Trade Representative (USTR) issues an updated review of “Notorious Markets” that facilitate copyright infringement. This overview is put together with help from copyright holders and is used to motivate the targets and foreign authorities to take action. Historically, the online part of the list has been limited to “foreign” sites...

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Denuvo’s Anti-Piracy Protection Probably Makes Sense For Big-Selling AAA Titles

Mid-October, news began to surface that the systems of gaming giants Ubisoft and Crytek had fallen victim to a hacker attack. Samples of the companies’ data first appeared on the dark web portal of ransomware group Egregor along with threats that the team could leak more confidential data in the days to come. Indeed, at the start of November, the source...

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