Nintendo’s Yuzu Lawsuit Aims to Pour Banana Peels Over All Emulators
It’s not uncommon for people to wander into some corner of the overall emulation scene with a specific question: Are emulators legal? While not necessarily true, the most common answer is: yes, emulators are completely legal but distributing the games (ROMs) is most definitely not, so don’t request them here. In response to questions from those interested in the DIY approach, gamers are often advised to rip only the games they...
Video of New ‘Masters of the Air’ Episode Leaks on Pirate Sites
Over the years, plenty of TV show episodes have leaked online in advance of their official release. Game of Thrones had several prominent episodes come out early, sometimes several at once, and successor ‘House of the Dragon’ saw the season finale debut early. In most cases, these leaks are broadly advertised by the pirate groups who put them online. Being the first to release a prominent leak, is a key accolade in a business where...
OpenAI: ‘The New York Times Paid Someone to Hack Us’
In recent months, rightsholders of all ilks have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models. The list includes record labels, individual authors, visual artists, and more recently the New York Times. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work without proper compensation. A few hours ago, OpenAI responded to The New York Times complaint, asking the federal court to dismiss several key claims. Not just...
ISPs Request Records to Show How Piracy Fight Blocked Legitimate Sites
When attempting to block pirated content online, there is always a significant risk that legitimate content will be blocked too. Proponents of a tough new law in Italy that granted significant powers to rapidly block sites, waved away such concerns last year. However, after less than a month in full operation, the Piracy Shield system made its biggest blunder thus far last Saturday. Rather than opt for a surgical strike, someone...
Hollywood Used ‘Dynamic+ Injunction’ to Shut Down movie-web and Other Pirate Sites
This weekend, we reported that the open source movie search app movie-web lost control over the domain name of its demo site. Registrar Namecheap suspended the domain following a complaint from several major Hollywood studios and Netflix. Initially, broader context was missing but new information suggests that an Indian order lies at the basis of this intervention. Like many other countries around the world, India’s copyright law...
Piracy Shield Cloudflare Disaster Blocks Countless Sites, Fires Up Opposition
Following a statement that Italy’s all-new anti-piracy system had received top marks from telecoms regulator AGCOM for “working perfectly,” on Saturday the truth came out in all its glory. Piracy Shield has only been fully operational for a few weeks. So, expecting it to work flawlessly, right out of the box, was always unrealistic. There have been reports of unexpected behavior in the ticketing system, for example, plus other issues...
