Gaming Companies Flag ‘Highly Skilled Hackers’ as Emerging Piracy Threat
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has submitted its latest overview of “Notorious Markets” to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR). These submissions serve as input for the USTR’s yearly overview of piracy ‘markets’ which helps to shape the Government’s global copyright enforcement agenda going forward. The ESA, which represents video game companies including Activision Blizzard, EA, Epic Games, Nintendo, Sony,...
Sky Asked Govt. to Target Pirate IPTV Resellers via New Dedicated Police Unit
While the continued proliferation of cheap albeit illegal pirate IPTV subscriptions is a problem for Sky, the broadcaster’s engagement with governments suggests that allocation of public crime-fighting resources would make things more manageable. A public/private partnership featuring Sky and police forces across England has seen significant resources deployed to tackle various players in the IPTV ecosystem. Sky provides police forces...
Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 10/23/2023
The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources. This week we have one newcomer on the list. “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is the most...
Pirate Infrastructure: The CDNs and Hosting Companies Under U.S. Scrutiny
Early October the Motion Picture Association (MPA) submitted its latest overview of ‘notorious’ piracy platforms to the US Trade Representative. In common with submissions filed in previous years, the MPA mentioned many well-known consumer-facing platforms in the web, IPTV, torrent, and direct download categories. More recently, however, Hollywood’s complaints have expanded to encompass the platforms upon which pirate services rely to...
UNC3T and INTERPOL Awarded for Taking Down Piracy Group EVO
Piracy release group EVO was long considered one of Hollywood’s main targets, publishing thousands of movie and TV show titles including several high-profile releases. The piracy group repeatedly opened “screener season” by releasing leaked copies of upcoming films. These included Oscar contenders, but also several Netflix titles that originated from festival screenings. EVO was also the first to release an early Blu-ray copy of...
Shopify Files Lawsuit over Illegal DMCA Takedown Abuse
The DMCA takedown process gives copyright holders the option to remove infringing content from the web. It’s a powerful, widely-used tool that takes millions of URLs and links offline every day. This often happens for a good reason, but some takedown efforts are questionable. Takedown Abuse Shopify was targeted by a series of problematic DMCA requests earlier this month. The e-commerce platform typically receives thousands of takedown...
