Police Raid IPTV Pirates, Freeze $6m in Assets, Seize Vehicles & Real Estate
Many countries are currently tackling above average piracy rates, usually with a mix of education, site blocking, civil action, and criminal enforcement, but not necessarily in that order. Typically, members of the public are warned that purchasing a pirate TV box risks fueling organized crime. With the threshold for criminality seemingly lower than ever, they could even step over the line themselves. Greece, for example, seems intent...
Piracy Shield Widens Scope to Protect Movie & TV Premieres & Live Music
There hasn’t been much to report on the Piracy Shield front in recent weeks. After Napoli walked away with the title back in May, the Serie A season began winding down ahead of preparations to do it all over again in August. Unlike Serie A’s football players, Piracy Shield didn’t immediately disappear on a luxury vacation. Records show hundreds of fully qualified domains being blocked every two or three days until the second week of...
Canadian Court Rejects Reverse Class Action Lawsuit Against BitTorrent Pirates
Movie studio Voltage Pictures has targeted alleged movie pirates in court for well over a decade. The company and its subsidiaries filed numerous lawsuits against internet subscribers in the United States, Australia, and Europe, using various strategies. In Canada, Voltage and other film companies attempted to target a large group of copyright infringers through a reverse class-action lawsuit, which is relatively rare. The movie...
Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 08/04/2025
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 one newcomer on the list. “28 Years Later” is the most shared title. The most torrented...
U.S. Anti-Piracy Bills See Headline Blocking Claim Squeezed By Democracy
In 2012, America missed a golden opportunity to show the world how site blocking and other internet restrictions could be deployed at scale to protect rightsholders’ revenues. Vast opposition led to the SOPA bill being withdrawn but elsewhere, site blocking was being introduced in one country after another, driven by the same core rightsholders. Claims that the United States needed to catch up led to a new push towards site blocking....
Pirate IPTV Operator Destroys Evidence Then Agrees to Pay Sky €580,000
Rightsholders call them illicit streaming devices, others prefer the catch-all term pirate boxes. Millions are happy with Firesticks, a name so well known that in some cases it’s used to describe other devices, regardless of manufacturer. But of all names used to describe piracy-configured TV devices, the default option in Ireland – dodgy boxes – is short, descriptive, memorable, and on home soil, almost universally understood. For...
