Spammers Use Epic Games Website to Promote ‘Piracy’ Scams
A few years ago, Epic Games filed copyright infringement lawsuits against several Fortnite players who allegedly used cheats to gain an unfair advantage. The legal campaign sent a clear signal to the gaming public that people who try to scam the system can get caught. Today, these lawsuits have disappeared from the radar and it’s unknown whether the intended goal was achieved. What we do know, however, is that Epic Games is currently...
RIAA Files Massive ‘Repeat Infringer’ Copyright Lawsuit Against U.S. ISP Altice
On December 14, 2022, a group of music rightsholders including BMG, UMG, and Capitol filed a complaint at a Texas district court, accusing Altice, the parent company of ISP Optimum, of facilitating massive copyright infringement. Just days ahead of that lawsuit’s one-year anniversary, Altice now finds itself fighting a second and substantially similar lawsuit, filed by 49 member labels of the RIAA at the same Texas court. Different...
Piracy Shield: Pirate IPTV Killer Goes Live, No Casualties to Report….Yet
When Italian lawmakers finally passed new law in the summer designed to crack down on pirate IPTV providers once and for all, powerful Serie A football clubs, broadcasters, and influential business associates, breathed a joint sigh of relief. The tools needed to avert the imminent destruction of Italian football had finally been enshrined in law following a massive lobbying and media campaign. Four years earlier, a similar ‘Piracy...
DNS Resolver Quad9 Wins Pirate Site Blocking Appeal Against Sony
In 2021 , Sony Music obtained an injunction that ordered DNS resolver Quad9 to block a popular pirate site. The injunction, issued by the District Court of Hamburg, required the Swiss DNS resolver to block access to a site that links to pirated music. The name of the targeted site initially remained a mystery, but we deduced that Canna.to was the target. That site was, not coincidentally, also targeted by a voluntary blocking...
YouTube, Facebook, & TikTok Won’t Discuss Bad Takedowns? Get Over It, They’re Busy
Back in August we reported how Google had received requests to remove one billion allegedly-infringing links from its search results. A billion is a big number, especially when it refers to takedown demands received over a period of just nine months. A few days before we published that report, Google had just processed its seven billionth removal request, having reached six billion less than a year earlier. At the time of writing,...
Music Rights Group Sues Elon Musk’s X for Copyright Infringement
Similar to other user-generated content platforms, X allows people to freely share content online. This includes text but images, videos, and music are regularly posted as well. In some cases, content is uploaded without first obtaining permission from rightsholders. Over the years, various parties have called out Twitter/X over alleged copyright infringement. Research published by the EU Intellectual Property Office found that the...
