Pirate Site Blocking Agency Reveals How and Why Pirates Circumvent Blocking
This year, major rightsholders are hoping that data from similar programs overseas will persuade Congress that site-blocking is a measured and reasonable response to surging worldwide piracy rates. The usual entrenched positions on whether site blocking is, or indeed is not, a type of censorship in conflict with free speech, will be heard once again. Yet on more neutral territory lies a debate that receives relatively little...
Nintendo DMCA Notice Wipes Out 8,535 Yuzu Repos, Mig Switch Also Targeted
Over the last quarter-century the piracy landscape has regularly received major blows from which many believed it could never recover. While in most cases the doomsday scenario never materialized, not all niches are created equally. Those that require a very specific set of skills usually face more complex challenges. When Nintendo sued the company and ultimately the developers of the Yuzu emulator in February, that was a significant...
Google Removes Pirate IPTV Services From UK Search Results
The United Kingdom is no stranger to website blocking. The High Court granted permission for a blockade against Newzbin2 in 2011; The Pirate Bay and numerous other targets were blocked soon after. A rough inventory carried out by TorrentFreak recently revealed that blocked domains, including subdomains, now exceed 10,000 separate targets. That’s a conservative estimate. While people can still access pirate sites in the UK, it’s not as...
Pirate IPTV Owner’s Conviction First Ever Under Protecting Lawful Streaming Act
Copyright law crafted decades ago to prevent infringement in an analog world has in many cases held up remarkably well in the digital age. Copying or reproduction remains relevant, as does the concept of distribution. In the United States, the existence of a loophole in copyright law had been an open secret for some time. One way or another, file-hosting and BitTorrent sites could be linked to the unlicensed reproduction and...
Newspapers Sue OpenAI for Copyright Infringement and ‘Fake News’ Hallucinations
Starting last year, various rightsholders have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models. The list of complainants includes record labels, book authors, visual artists, a chip maker, and news publications. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work without proper compensation. Keeping pace with the constant stream of legal paperwork is a challenge, but a complaint filed at a New York federal court...
CJEU Gives File-Sharer Surveillance & Data Retention a Green Light
As part of anti-piracy scheme featuring warning letters, fines, and ISP disconnections, France has monitored and stored data on millions of internet users since 2010. Digital rights groups insist that as a general surveillance and data retention scheme, the ‘Hadopi’ program violates fundamental rights. Any program that monitors citizens’ internet activities, retains huge amounts of data, and then links identities to IP addresses, must...
