Labels Don’t Want Supreme Court Review to Delay Piracy Lawsuit Against Verizon
Last month, the Supreme Court granted Cox Communications’ petition for a writ of certiorari in a landmark copyright liability battle. The internet provider challenged the $1 billion damages award by a Virginia jury in 2019, which went in favor of a group of major record labels, including Sony, Universal, and Warner. Cox successfully convinced the Supreme Court that the contributory infringement standards, which determine how ISPs...
Jetflix Streaming Piracy Ringleader Sentenced to 7 Years Prison
According to his profile on LinkedIn, Las Vegas resident Kristopher Dallmann became the CEO of Jetflicks, LLC, in June 2007. Fueled by pirated content obtained via sites including The Pirate Bay, RARBG, and Nzbplanet, Jetflicks’ operations came to an abrupt halt in 2017 with an FBI raid on Dallmann’s Las Vegas home following a Motion Picture Association investigation. Disagreement and the Long Haul to Trial Dallmann subsequently...
Pirate Service ‘MagisTV’ Fails to Secure U.S. Trademark, Faces Malware Backlash
Pirate streaming apps and unauthorized IPTV services have become increasingly popular globally in recent years. Latin America is no exception to this trend but unlike other regions, one pirate streaming brand clearly stands out: MagisTV. The MagisTV name is used by dozens of websites, many of which are reseller platforms. While some of these might be related, the name is also used by unrelated entities, simply because the brand has...
Google Sues Operators of a 10 Million Device Android Set-Top Box Botnet
In 2023, Google and its cybersecurity partners teamed up with German law enforcement agencies after discovering BadBox, a botnet comprised of 74,000 Android devices infected with malware. After deploying a range of measures to suppress BadBox, a much larger threat quickly arrived. BadBox 2.0 BadBox 2.0 was discovered by HUMAN’s Satori Threat Intelligence and Research team. Their initial report published in March revealed how infected...
Lawsuits Continue to Put U.S. BitTorrent Pirates in a Financial Hurt Locker
Not long after winning the Oscar for Best Picture in 2010, the makers of the war action thriller ‘The Hurt Locker’ set their eyes on their next prize. With a then-novel legal scheme, they planned to sue tens of thousands of Americans, who shared pirated copies of their film via BitTorrent, in a single lawsuit. “We’re creating a revenue stream and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel,” lawyer Jeffrey Weaver...
Former #1 Movie Piracy Site “Strongly Linked” to Global Infostealer Activity
Generic warnings about malware, identity theft, and other types of fraud have become embedded in the majority of anti-piracy campaigns over the last few years. Yet, no matter how stylishly produced or immaculately directed at the target audience, moving the awareness needle by a few percentage points is just the beginning. Increased awareness of the message doesn’t mean that more people believe in it, or that they’re more convinced...
