A Private Company Fighting Online Piracy Can’t Act With Impunity
With the new football season underway in Spain and LaLiga’s blocking order still in force under the authority of a judge, overblocking is still a big problem in Spain according to reports. Last season saw relentless IP address blocking target shared Cloudflare IP addresses again and again. With no obvious urgency to ensure that those blocks were lifted when no longer needed (i.e after LaLiga matches had ended) blocking continued to...
IPTV Piracy is Booming in Norway as Legal Access Becomes More Expensive
In recent years, rightsholders of major sports events have repeatedly complained that piracy of live sports has gone through the roof. Many have called on politicians to tighten legislation and urged law enforcement to take the problem much more seriously. The issues are no different in Norway, where streaming service Viaplay is facing a surge in piracy. According to a recent survey by Mediavision, 1.25 million Norwegians, or 30% of...
U.S. Recommends 57-Month Prison Sentence in ‘Spider-Man’ Piracy and Firearm Case
Three years ago, pirated Blu-ray copies of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ began circulating on pirate sites, weeks before the film’s official release. Shortly before, pre-release discs were offered in an eBay listing, suggesting that someone had managed to get their hands on several pre-release copies of the film. The exact source and circumstances were unknown. Earlier this year, the mystery was partly solved when the U.S. Department of...
Judge Fines Pirate IPTV Man €30,000, Owing Sky €500K is Punishment Enough
Sky’s investigation into the activities of David Dunbar reportedly began in Ireland during November 2024. Investigators had become aware of a social media account selling so-called ‘dodgy boxes’ and with assistance from an anonymous tip provided by the Federation Against Copyright Theft, Sky was able to connect the dots. Papers filed at the High Court describe Dunbar as operating under the brand ‘IPTV is Easy.’ As a reseller, Dunbar...
Apple Revokes EU Distribution Rights for Torrent Client, Developer Left in the Dark
Historically, Apple has banned torrent clients from its iOS devices. In the EU, however, these types of apps have been available for more than a year through third-party app stores. This breakthrough was a direct result of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) that went into effect last year, requiring Apple to allow apps to be installed through third-party stores. AltStore Pal is one of the most popular altstores in the EU. Soon after...
LaLiga Threatens Cloudflare Customer For Using an IP Address Linked to Piracy
The new football season is underway in Spain’s top professional football league which means LaLiga is also back at work doing whatever it can to block illegal match streams. The final few months of last season were marred by a bitter dispute between LaLiga and Cloudflare, triggered by the former obtaining unprecedented authorization to block Cloudflare IP addresses used for piracy, and then doing so en masse. The resulting fallout was...
