piracy

In the world of pirated content, the titles of downloadable videos usually give some indication as to how they were encoded. "h264," for example usually means a video is encoded with the AVC codec, while "CAM, DVDRip, WEBRip, and Web-DL" specify the source of the video (namely, camera footage in...

A recent New Zealand study spotted by TorrentFreak said that "piracy isn't driven by law-breakers." Instead, it's reportedly driven by the availability and reasonably priced legal content. The researchers note that streaming services like Netflix, YouTube and Spotify are effectively doing "what...

Apple's Developer Enterprise Program has gotten quite a bit of scrutiny after both Facebook and Google seemingly violated the program's guidelines. Now, Reuters reports that "software pirates" are abusing the program to distribute modified versions of apps that enable users to "stream music...

In 2016, Trevon Franklin uploaded a pirated copy of Deadpool to Facebook. The viral video was seen 6,386,456 times and the government was seeking a 6 month prison sentence in federal court. After accepting a plea deal where he admitted guilt, the judge sentenced him to 3 weeks in prison. He...

Cox Communications has been hit with an over $1 billion lawsuit after multiple record labels sued the ISP for allegedly ignoring copyright infringement by customers. Under US law an ISP must take certain steps when sent a DMCA take down notice. Cox is accused of limiting the amount of notices...

TorrentFreak is reporting that two men from the UK have just been handed nearly 2 year prison sentences for selling Kodi-powered devices. The boxes, called the OoberStick, were relatively expensive boxes with a custom version of Kodi and various addons, had been on the market since 2016. Glenn...

Apps that enable users to watch IPTV services are nothing new. However now BGR is reporting that two Australian media companies are looking to reduce the use of paid pirate IPTV boxes, not by going after the manufacturers or sellers, but by shutting down the app stores that they use. The stores...

Last year we published multiple articles on Kodi, and all the backlash it faced from Hollywood, the UK, and even Canada, now the software faces a new hurdle. Google has banned the term "Kodi" from it's autocomplete feature according to an article from TorrentFreak. The change means that...

T-Mobile in Austria has blocked several Pirate Bay clone sites following requests from rights holders. In November, the Austrian Supreme Court ruled that The Pirate Bay and other "structurally-infringing" sites could be blocked if rights holders have exhausted all other options. However while...

For the first time in North America, a coalition of Canadian companies is calling for regulators to establish a piracy site blocking program. The coalition called "Fairplay Canada" consists of members including Bell, Cineplex, Directors Guild of Canada, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Movie...

A new academic paper published in the Information Economics and Policy journal shows that piracy can help many artists to sell more music. In a paper titled 'Purchase, pirate, publicize: Private-network music sharing and market album sales' he examined the effect of BitTorrent-based piracy on...

Just one day after it was announced that the latest version of Denuvo anti-piracy software was defeated, TorrentFreak is reporting that Denuvo has been acquired by anti-piracy outfit Irdeto. The article adds Denuvo was founded relatively recently in 2013 and employs less than 50 people. In...

Armstrong Zoom Internet is doing like most ISPs and sending out piracy notices to suspected pirates on their network. These notices usually warn the customer to stop the offending activity or face some sort of sanction. Most of the time this is downgraded service or termination of service...

Netflix, Amazon, and six major studios have gotten together to file suit against TickBox TV as tools for mass infringement. The lawsuit claims the piracy is done from the device linking copyrighted content to streams from the internet. I wonder if the other companies will turn around and sue...

Six people said to be the administrators of 'pirate' movie site Tinymoviez have been arrested by Iranian authorities, reports TorrentFreak. The difference in this case is since Iran has no copyright agreements with the United States, it's possible to be licensed by the state to legally pirate US...

The European Commission has released a new study suggesting that there is no evidence linking illegal downloads of video games and other media affecting legal sales of said content. Conducted by research firm Ecorys across the EU, the survey reports that 51% of adults and 71% of minors in the...

TorrentFreak mentions that the seventh season of Game of Thrones was pirated over a billion times. Getting data published from piracy tracker MUSO, the report suggests that each episode of the seven episode season was pirated 140 million times. Most pirated viewers chose to stream the episodes...

A decision was handed down after almost six years after the complaint was filed by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), with support from Finnish anti-piracy group Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center (CIAPC). Two founder members of the site, were ordered by...

In a press release today the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) praised Netflix and Spotify for their "innovative" streaming models keeping infringement levels "stable". While not mentioning Kodi specifically, they go on to state that the Online Copyright Infringement Tracker, commissioned...

Denuvo has been accused of using unlicensed software by fellow anti-piracy outfit VMProtect Software. It seems that Denuvo needed a way to thwart crackers from reverse engineering their software and VMProtect was the perfect solution. The problem was that VMProtect didn't feel that the...

Movie piracy service Vodlocker has unleashed a new video embedding API that uses a Google like crawler to find the best quality sources of pirated movies on the internet. After entering the desired movie's IMDb code, the service will initiate the crawler to search websites such as Google Drive...

Many people had forgotten that “The Smurfs 2” was released back in 2013, but a piracy group had not, as a torrent of its Ultra HD Blu-Ray home release has been spotted on a private tracker. What makes this torrent exceptional is the apparent – though unconfirmed – circumvention of AACS 2.0...

We saw one example earlier today of Germany's ability to craft boneheaded legislation. To prove that we are not filled with hate of the Germans, here is one that is quite the opposite. Germany has approved a draft law which explicitly protects open Wi-Fi network operators from liability in...

Germany's Federal Court of Justice this week ruled that if parents are aware that their children have committed copyright infringement they must identify them to the court, or pay their fines. This was a ruling in a case stemming from a 2011 distribution of an album by Rihanna by a minor. This...

In 2015 an Italian court ruled against the owners of filmakers.biz, filmaker.me, filmakerz.org, and cineteka.org citing them for running a pirate movie operation and generating revenue through the sale of advertising. In February 2017, the $600,000 judgement against the owners was reversed...

With courts having become more skeptical of piracy suits, and less likely to easily hand rightsholders the massive payouts they once did, the industry is now rethinking its approach. The latest effort appears to be a new round of automated "fines." Instead of taking all discovered pirates to...

If you've been following the conversation regarding copyright infringement lately, you know that rights-holders, citing piracy being on the increase, have been arguing that DMCA style takedown notices have been woefully inadequate in stopping the flow of piracy, and are looking to get even...

Raise your hand. Who here thinks rightsholder groups submit individual thoughtful complaints to Google of actual infringing links for them to remove? Well, here's another one to fuel your suspicions that they don't. According to Alexa mp3toys.xyz's domain ranks 25 millionth most popular...

TorrentFreak has a report up today about a Seattle District Court judge with a refreshing take on piracy suit damage awards. Like in most of these cases, the defendants never showed in court, so the plaintiff requested default judgments of $2,500 from each defendant, plus attorneys fees. The...

Torrentfreak is reporting today that Google and other search engine providers are close to a voluntary agreement with rightsholders on how to best conceal search results pointing to pirated content. While Google has taken many steps to limit showing links to pirated content in the past, and...