UK Porn Filters Could Mean Sweaty Palms For Piracy Blockers
Before the dawn of the mainstream Internet, underage access to pornographic content meant trying to sneak a glance over someone’s shoulder at a well-thumbed adult magazine. Or, if you were ‘lucky’, finding a VHS cassette in a friend’s dad’s cupboard, behind the coats and shoes, in a box, inside another box, in an envelope marked “holiday video”. Such things apparently happened. With the dawn...
Top Film Director Sees Piracy as Most Successful Form of Distribution
The vast majority of filmmakers are not happy with online piracy. They would rather see people using paid platforms or services. This is also true for German Director Werner Herzog, who has won many prestigious awards during his more than 50-year career. A few days ago, the director received a lifetime achievement award at the Visions du Réel Film Festival in Nyon. During a masterclass, the topic of piracy came up, which...
‘Game of Thrones Season Premiere Pirated 54 million Times in a Day’
Last Sunday, the long-awaited final season of the hit series Game of Thrones aired in dozens of countries worldwide. The show has broken several piracy records over the years and thus far this week, there has been another piracy bonanza. As usual, the torrent download figures quickly ran into the millions. However, little is known about the traffic that goes to web-based streaming portals, which have outgrown traditional file-sharing...
Germany: Upload Filters Can Only Be Prevented “As Far As Possible”
On Monday, the EU Council of Ministers approved the Copyright Directive, which includes the controversial Article 17 (formerly 13). The law requires platforms like YouTube and Facebook, for example, to sign licensing agreements with creators in order to use their content. If that is not possible, the platforms will have a responsibility to ensure that infringing content uploaded by users is taken down and not re-uploaded to their...
Demonoid Founder ‘Deimos’ is Believed to Have Passed Away
As one of the oldest torrent communities, the Demonoid tracker has gone through many ups and downs over the years. The site has disappeared for months, more than once, but always reappeared. Early last year things were looking quite positive for the site. Founder and operator ‘Deimos’ was committed to rebuilding the site back to the thriving community it once was, but at the end of the summer new problems emerged....
Ukrainian Cyberpolice Unit Announces Launch of “Operation Pirates”
Under pressure from entertainment industry groups and broadcasters, governments around the world are increasingly paying more attention to the issue of online piracy. What was once perceived as an issue for the companies having their content pirated, is now being painted as a threat to national prosperity. Those in power are now warned that online piracy groups are increasingly criminal in nature, their activities deprive states of...
