Human beings have a tendency to want things they can’t have. A modest interest in a particular item or activity can inexplicably soar when it’s recognized as rare or unavailable. When strictly forbidden, even regular fruit can prove irresistible. Spotify offers 100 million tracks to hear right now, including the vast majority of the greatest […]readmore
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March 19, 2023
Predicting whether specific torrent sites, streaming portals, or IPTV services will still be around in five years time, is difficult at best. At worst, almost impossible. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has been tackling pirates of all types for the last 25 years. Not only has it seen huge numbers come and go, BREIN can claim […]readmore
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March 17, 2023
As part of its relentless campaign to shut down as many pirate sites as possible, on Wednesday the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment reported yet another big win. The anti-piracy coalition’s latest victim is Streamzz, a stream hosting platform that reportedly supplied over 75,000 movies and 15,000 TV episodes, which helped to fuel more than […]readmore
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March 17, 2023
In recent years, site blocking has emerged as a preferred anti-piracy solution in dozens of countries. These blocking measures are not bulletproof but pose a hurdle for casual pirates, which can bring down overall piracy rates. In many countries blocking is a relatively new measure, but Denmark has years of experience. The first Danish blocks […]readmore
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March 16, 2023
Brazil’s crackdown against pirate sites, IPTV services, infringing apps, and other mechanisms delivering illegal content to the masses, continues to press ahead. In the wake of similar operations in previous years, including action reported in August 2022, a new phase of Brazil’s ‘Operation 404’ anti-piracy initiative was announced on Tuesday. Operation 404.5 – Phase 5 […]readmore
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March 16, 2023
Every day millions of people download or stream pirated movies, which are readily available online through hundreds of dedicated sites. To the broader public, pirate sites and services are the gateways to a darker side of the entertainment world. In turn, however, these sites are heavily reliant on the crucial ‘suppliers’ at the top of […]readmore
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March 13, 2023
In the wake of the music industry’s destruction of Napster, hopes of a file-sharing vacuum were overwhelmed by a laundry list of protocols and software clients, some pre-existing, some new. DCC, Gnutella, Freenet, eDonkey2000, Kazaa/FastTrack, WinMX, Bearshare, Grokster, Morpheus – the list went on and on – but with no social media, various news and […]readmore
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March 13, 2023
As Reddit fights to protect the identities of users who simply participated in piracy-related discussions, two new cases filed last Friday may also prove controversial. On February 17, 2023, Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania officially kicked off ‘Phase 5’ of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Distributed by Disney to lukewarm reviews, the movie took […]readmore
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March 11, 2023
After reading hundreds of copyright reports, anti-piracy studies, lobbying documents, and submissions to government and law enforcement agencies, anything that strays from the norm tends to stand out. Last month the Industry Trust For IP published ‘Taking a Whole Society Approach to Infringement in the UK’, a report promoting ‘collaboration’ and ‘understanding’ to reduce piracy […]readmore
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March 11, 2023
Millions of subscribers to Western streaming services will testify to the South Korean content explosion of recent years. The ‘Korean Wave’ cultural phenomenon, boosted by movies and TV shows such as Squid Game, Train to Busan, and Parasite, is something to behold. From the successes of BTS and Psy’s Gangnam Style to the magnificent ‘Oldboy’ […]readmore
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March 9, 2023
In 2021, Sony Music obtained an injunction ordering DNS resolver Quad9 to block the popular pirate site Canna.to. The injunction, issued by the District Court of Hamburg, required the Swiss DNS resolver to block its users from accessing the site to prevent the distribution of pirated copies of Evanescence’s album “The Bitter Truth“. Quad9 Appeals […]readmore
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March 8, 2023
In May 2022, Elon Musk declared overzealous use of the DMCA a “plague on humanity.” As CEO of Twitter, Musk understands that his platform has certain obligations if it wishes to maintain protection from liability under copyright law. On receipt of a properly formatted and submitted takedown notice, allegedly infringing content must be taken down. […]readmore
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March 7, 2023
Over the years, copyright holders have tried a multitude of measures to curb online piracy, with varying levels of success. Site blocking has emerged as one of the preferred solutions. While blocking measures are not perfect, they can pose a large enough hurdle for casual pirates to choose legal options instead. Argentinian Blocklist Expanded Blocking […]readmore
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March 6, 2023
When an opponent fails to defend themselves in an ordinary fight, things tend to be over pretty quickly. The same isn’t true for copyright lawsuits. In early October 2021, MG Premium – a subsidiary of adult entertainment giant MindGeek – filed a copyright complaint at a district court in Washington. It targeted Daftsex.com, an adult […]readmore
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March 4, 2023
When people use search engines to find pirate sites or pirated content, the results they receive today represent a massively edited subset of what is actually out there. In response to DMCA notices sent by rightsholders, billions of URLs have already been removed from Google’s search results. Every week, millions of new URLs are processed […]readmore
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March 3, 2023
Mid-February, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) announced that MyCima, one of the largest pirate streaming sites in the Middle East, had been shut down. Reportedly operated from Alexandria and offering 12,000 movies and 26,000 TV series, MyCima enjoyed around 50 million visits per month. Following an ACE referral, Egyptian authorities took action to […]readmore
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March 2, 2023
In an effort to make ends meet, many people in the UK are cutting back on luxuries. Fewer nights out or perhaps none at all. Downgrading Netflix or even dumping it altogether. Subscription television is even more expensive and often demands longer-term commitments people simply can’t afford. To some, cheap but illegal streaming services might […]readmore
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February 28, 2023
Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has built quite a reputation over the years. For many Netherlands-based file-sharers, BREIN was considered a mortal online enemy. Passions don’t run anywhere near as high today, but not because BREIN took its foot off the gas. Anyone involved in the Dutch piracy scene still risks running into BREIN, and while […]readmore
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February 27, 2023
From February 28, 2023, availability of Western content on Russia’s legal streaming portals is set to nosedive. Following the invasion of Ukraine a year ago, new video content produced by major Western companies mostly disappeared from Russian cinemas and online platforms. Older content covered by existing licensing agreements remained in place, but in a matter […]readmore
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February 27, 2023
Over the years, copyright holders have tried a multitude of measures to curb online piracy, with varying levels of success. Site blocking has emerged as one of the preferred solutions. While blocking measures are not bulletproof, the general idea is that they pose a large enough hurdle for casual pirates to choose legal options instead. […]readmore