Pirate Site Blockades Get Judicial Scrutiny in Germany, But No Transparency?
In 2021, German Internet providers agreed to voluntarily block the most egregious pirate sites. The ISPs teamed up with rightsholders groups and launched the “Clearing Body for Copyright on the Internet” (CUII), which was in charge of handing down blocking ‘decisions’. Notably, the CUII did not rely on court judgments. Instead, the private organization issued their own recommendations after an internal review process, which assess...
FBI’s Video Game Piracy Crackdown Leads to Domain Confusion
Originally known as Switch-xci, NSW2U has been a thorn in the side of Nintendo for over half a decade. The site was initially active on several platforms, including YouTube. Later on, its primary focus was providing a linking portal for pirated games. The main NSW2U domain had more than two million monthly visits, according to Similarweb, which was enough to warrant a mention on the USTR’s latest list of notorious pirate sites....
Cloudflare Starts Blocking Pirate Sites For UK Users – That’s a Pretty Big Deal
Internet service providers BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, and Plusnet account for the majority of the UK’s residential internet market and as a result, blocking injunctions previously obtained at the High Court often list these companies as respondents. These so-called “no fault’ injunctions stopped being adversarial a long time ago; ISPs indicate in advance they won’t contest a blocking order against various pirate sites, and...
Record Labels: A “Safe Haven for Pirates” Disqualifies ISP from DMCA Protection
In late 2023, a group of nearly 50 music labels, including Warner Records and Sony Music, filed a ‘mass-infringement’ lawsuit against Altice. These music companies, all members of the RIAA, alleged that the ISP failed to take action against repeat infringers on the “Optimum” network, making it potentially liable for copyright infringement. “Despite Altice’s stated policies and despite receiving tens of thousands of infringement...
Helix IPTV Owner Sentenced to 3 Years Prison For Piracy & Money Laundering
As the Kodi ‘addon’ boom scooped up millions of new recruits and Amazon’s ‘Fire TV Stick’ sold out as a result, in 2015, a new wave of casual ‘living room’ pirates were ready for the next big thing. The leap from free but oftentimes unreliable web-based streaming, to cheap and much more reliable illegal IPTV services, was smaller than ever and suppliers were ready to make the transition go as smoothly as possible. A Gap Appears in the...
Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 07/14/2025
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 three newcomers on the list. “Thunderbolts” is the most shared title. The most...
