I Came, I Typed, I Downloaded – How a Pirate Librarian Became an FBI Target
In April 2011, a modest Russian‑language news portal, ‘bal‑con.ru’, ran an interview with two young entrepreneurs. The men were quietly working to solve a problem, identified by both as a barrier to book consumption in Russia. “We found it strange that existing book websites on the Russian internet had plateaued at the level of the mid-20th century. They were incredibly inconvenient to use, requiring users to wade through vast lists...
LaLiga Seeks Google’s Help to Expose ‘Notorious’ Pirate Streaming Service FlujoTV
Pirate streaming apps and unauthorized IPTV services have become increasingly popular globally in recent years. Latin America is no exception to this trend, with MagisTV establishing itself as one of the top piracy brands. Earlier this year, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative added MagisTV to its latest list of notorious piracy markets. Soon after, MagisTV rebranded as FlujoTV and both names remain widely used today. In...
Previously-Convicted IPTV Pirates Arrested For Running $10m IPTV66 Service
Up until a few years ago, rightsholders complained that cable operators in the Dominican Republic broadcast their content without permission. After HBO repeatedly pointed this out to the U.S. Government, the Dominican authorities eventually stepped in and put an end to the unauthorized activity. However, as in many countries around the world, Dominicans had plenty of other options to access pirate streams. With the boom of illicit...
Filmmaker Tries to Unmask Private Torrent Tracker Owners through Cloudflare
Private torrent sites, or private trackers as they are commonly known, have a special place in the piracy ecosystem. These sites tend to be more community-oriented than public torrent and streaming sites, which most people simply visit with a hit-and-run mentality. Many private trackers have come and gone over the years, but some have been going for decades. With most anti-piracy enforcement focused on public platforms, predominantly...
New Pirate IPTV Police Operation Raises Stakes For Resellers & Customers
Law enforcement operations against pirate IPTV networks are now a regular occurrence, particularly inside the EU. Yet those that manage to physically take down or seriously disrupt an entire supply chain are very rare indeed and in practical terms, increasingly unlikely to happen. The fact that international law enforcement collaboration can be very effective is undisputed, with the caveat that success often extends only as far as...
DAZN, SKY & Serie A Prepare Action Against IPTV Pirates Already Fined By the State
When Italy passed new anti-piracy legislation in the summer of 2023, football fans were warned that anyone involved in the supply, sale or consumption of illicit IPTV streams should consider themselves a target for enforcement. IPSOS research had previously estimated that around 25% of the adult population consume pirate streams in Italy. On one hand, that means there are millions of potential targets for fines starting at around...
