Anti-Piracy Efforts Are Unlikely to Beat Sci-Hub
Sci-Hub has often been referred to as “The Pirate Bay of Science,” but that description really sells the site short. While both sites are helping the public to access copyrighted content without permission, Sci-Hub has also become a crucial tool that arguably helps the progress of science. The site allows researchers to bypass expensive paywalls so they can read articles written by their fellow colleagues. The information...
Man Tried to Burn Down Telecoms Watchdog to Avenge Pirate Site-Blocking
While copyright holders and many governments see site-blocking as a reasoned and measured response to copyright infringement, some people view it as overkill. People should be able to access whatever content they want without rich corporations deciding what should and should not appear on computer screens, the argument goes. For former student Pavel Kopylov, blocking of pirate sites in Russia has gone too far. So, to make his...
Disney and Charter Team Up on Piracy Mitigation
With roughly 22 million subscribers, Charter Communications is one of the largest Internet providers in the US. The company operates under the Spectrum brand and offers a wide variety of services including TV and Internet access. In an effort to provide more engaging content to its customers, this week Charter signed a major new distribution agreement with The Walt Disney Company. The new partnership will provide the telco’s...
Cloudflare Flags Copyright Lawsuits as Potential Liabilities Ahead of IPO
As a CDN and security company, Cloudflare currently serves around 20 million “Internet properties”, ranging from domains and websites through to application programming interfaces (APIs) and mobile applications. At least hundreds of those properties, potentially more, are considered ‘pirate’ platforms by copyright groups, which has resulted in Cloudflare being sucked into copyright infringement lawsuits due to...
YouTube Forbids Monetizing Short Music Clips Through Manual Content-ID Claims
Millions of people use YouTube to share their creations with the world, as commentary, entertainment, education, or for any other purpose they see fit. In most cases, these videos remain online without any issues. However, for some creators, YouTube’s copyright enforcement is causing a mess, one that severely affects their day-to-day activities. We’ve repeatedly covered problems with YouTube’s Content-ID system...
‘Google Blocked TorrentFreak From Appearing in Search Feature’
At TorrentFreak, we have written hundreds of articles about website blocking and censorship. Today, we’re featured in one ourselves. Leaked Google documents reveal that TorrentFreak.com shows up in one of Google’s previously unknown blocklists, which actively hides our domain from the Google Now service. Google Now was a Google search feature that presented users with informational cards, to provide users with more details...
