Copyright Scammers Weaponized Meta’s Rights Manager with Backdating Exploit
Similar to other social media platforms, creators on Facebook and Instagram have to battle a constant stream of copyright infringing material. To facilitate this process, the company has rolled out several anti-piracy initiatives in recent years. Both Facebook and Instagram use a “Rights Manager” tool, which is an automated system that runs copyright checks. After rightsholders upload reference files, the system detects infringing...
Meta Confirms ‘Data Engineer’ is Behind Key IP Address in Adult Film Piracy Lawsuit
Last summer, adult content producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta, alleging that the tech company downloaded thousands of their films via BitTorrent to train AI models. After Meta’s motion to dismiss was denied last month by U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee, Strike 3 filed an amended complaint expanding its claims to 2,973 films, up from the original 2,396. With that many...
X and Music Publishers Settle Three-Year Copyright Clash After SpaceX IPO
In a complaint filed at a Nashville federal court in 2023, Universal Music, Sony Music, EMI and others, accused X Corp of ‘breeding’ mass copyright infringement. The social media company allegedly failed to respond adequately to takedown notices and lacked a proper repeat infringer policy. The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) claimed it had sent over 300,000 formal infringement notices, many of which didn’t lead to...
Canada’s ‘Expanded Scope’ Blocking Order Targets Existing and Future Pirate Sites
Canada’s approach to pirate site blocking has evolved quite a bit since the Federal Court issued the first ‘GoldTV’ order in 2019. That original order targeted a specific service and a fixed set of domain names. If rightsholders wanted to add a domain to the blocklist, they had to go back to court. Later orders against Soap2Day and, more recently, various stream-ripping sites, went a step further. Instead of targeting specific...
DNS Bypass Tweets Keep Uptobox Employee’s €197K Frozen in Disney Piracy Case
At the height of the cyberlocker boom in the early 2010s, Uptobox was already an established name. The platform remained online despite a fierce anti-piracy crackdown that led to the demise of Megaupload, Hotfile, and many other file-hosting services. Uptobox eventually met its fate in September 2023, when a coalition of entertainment companies including Disney, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Paramount, and Warner Bros. obtained a court...
Hollywood Wants Vietnam to Slay the Piracy Hydra
Earlier this month, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security announced it had dismantled the network behind the high-profile HiAnime piracy ring. While the associated site already closed its doors in March, the action is vital for Vietnam since the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) recently classified it as “Priority Foreign Country,” because of its lacking anti-piracy enforcement. Last month, USTR formally started a Section 301...
