Social Media ‘Likes’ Serve as Online Piracy Evidence, Judge Concludes
Strike 3 Holdings is a familiar name in U.S. federal courts. As the most prolific copyright litigant, the adult entertainment company has filed over 15,000 lawsuits in federal courts. These lawsuits typically target people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright-infringing content via BitTorrent. Many of these cases result in private settlements and are never heard from again. Occasionally,...
Major VPN Providers Ordered to Block Pirate Sports Streaming Sites
Article L. 333-10 of the French Sport Code enables rightsholders to request blocking measures against named pirate sites if they can demonstrate “serious and repeated infringement” of their exploitation rights. To prevent pirate sites from being accessed on French soil, rightsholders may request that “all proportionate measures” are implemented by any online entity in a position to help. The scope of Article L. 333-10 was always meant...
Italy Fines Over 2,200 Pirate IPTV Subscribers in New Crackdown
A few months ago, Italy paved the way to issue fines against subscribers of pirate IPTV services. A memorandum of understanding between the Prosecutor’s Office, Guardia di Finanza, and AGCOM, established a “collaboration protocol” where information on IPTV users would be shared between agencies. The source of this information wasn’t made immediately clear, but it’s likely that it applies to subscriber details obtained in IPTV raids...
Wrong Logo, No Piracy Proof: French Court Rejects DNS Piracy Blocking Bids
In May last year, the Paris Judicial Court ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to block access to several pirate websites by effectively poisoning their DNS. The order, requested by Canal+, compelled the tech giants to modify their resolvers or take measures that had that effect, to prevent users from accessing unauthorized sports streams. In the months that followed, additional rightsholders such as DAZN and beIN joined in on the...
AI-Powered News Piracy Site Blocked By ISPs After Court Sides With Publishers
On February 11, 2025, a coalition of forty media outlets took legal action in France hoping to slam the brakes on mass piracy of thousands of articles published each day. Under the umbrella groups La Dépêche du Midi, La Montagne, Sud Ouest, Le Télégramme, Publihebdos, and La Nouvelle République du Centre, and together the “Alliance”, the publishers hoped to derail “parasitic” news platform, news.dayfr.com. In operation since 2021, the...
“Never Terminate” Policy: Music Labels Slam Grande’s Supreme Court Piracy Appeal
Late 2022, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications. The record labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers. A Texas federal jury found Grande guilty of willful contributory copyright...
