Court Rejects Law Firm’s Bid to Directly Obtain BitTorrent Users’ Identities
In many countries around the world there are long-established, well-worn legal processes that allow rightsholders to obtain the personal details of suspected pirates. Requirements vary from region to region but when certain conditions are met, few courts deny genuine copyright holders the ability to enforce their rights under relevant law. One of the most fundamental requirements is that the entity making the claim has the necessary...
Cox Sues Insurers for Failing to Cover Landmark Piracy Lawsuit
At the end of 2014, a novel type of lawsuit appeared on the docket of a Virginia federal court. BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music sued Internet provider Cox Communications for failing to terminate the accounts of pirating subscribers. This was the first in a series of “repeat infringer” lawsuits which continue to this day. Most notable thus far is the $1 billion damages award against Cox in favor of several major record...
Pirate IPTV Seller Domain Names Taken Over in Bulk By ACE/MPA
A shrug of the shoulders, accompanied by “a couple of hundred”, used to be considered a reasonable ballpark estimate of the number of meaningful pirate sites operating at any one time. It could’ve been treble that, of course, nobody is omnipresent. Best estimates today range from “thousands” to “tens of thousands” but that’s to a background of massive site blocking measures with perhaps 60/80,000 domains blocked to date and no end in...
WOW Asks Court to Throw Out Filmmakers’ Expanded Piracy Liability Lawsuit
In 2021, Colorado-based Internet provider WOW was sued by a group of movie companies, including Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures. The filmmakers accused the ISP of failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who were repeatedly flagged for sharing copyrighted material. These type of lawsuits have resulted in multi-million dollar judgments against Cox and Grande; a fate WOW hopes to avoid. The ISP challenged the claims and...
MPA Ramps Up Efforts to Disrupt Pirate Sites’ Use of Internet Intermediaries
After more than a decade at the MPA, including his tenure as Chief of Global Content Protection while heading anti-piracy coalition ACE, Jan van Voorn recently left the Hollywood anti-piracy group to lead his own venture. That raised questions of who might be a good fit for his former position or whether the MPA would seize the opportunity to try something a little different. Late last week the MPA announced it had hired Jesse Martin,...
Viking IPTV Defendant Avoids Immediate Prison But Faces Millions in Damages
Last December, Swedish anti-piracy group Rattighetsalliansen (Rights Alliance) reported that a local prosecutor had filed an indictment against a man suspected of being behind Viking IPTV. In the Scandinavian pirate market, Viking IPTV is a well-known brand and according to Rights Alliance, business appears to have been brisk. A police cryptocurrency expert reported that clusters of bitcoin wallets that could be connected to the...
