French Court Orders Cloudflare to ‘Dynamically’ Block MotoGP Streaming Piracy
The frontline of online piracy liability keeps moving, and core internet infrastructure providers are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs. In a significant ruling last week, the Paris Judicial Tribunal ordered Cloudflare to actively block access to pirate MotoGP streams, confirming that third-party intermediaries can be required to take responsibility. The ruling follows a complaint from French entertainment powerhouse...
LaLiga/Cloudflare Crisis: ISPs Urged to Action Amid Mass Overblocking
When rightsholders feel that conditions are optimal, site-blocking measures are presented to countries as a proportionate, precise, and entirely reasonable response to rampant piracy. Should there be a need for new legislation, care should be taken to provide room for rightsholders to maneuver, to ensure that adaptive pirates are placed under maximum continuous pressure. Under intense pressure itself by an impatient United States...
Unfinished Copy of ‘A Minecraft Movie’ Leaks on Pirate Sites
More than a decade ago, Mojang Studios announced that it was working on a Minecraft movie together with Warner Bros. The film had been scheduled for a 2022 release, but was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic among other factors. Today, ‘A Minecraft Movie‘ will finally see its American box office premiere. While it’s too early to say whether it will be a blockbuster hit, the film already has the dubious honor of being linked to an...
EFF Vows to Fight Back Against U.S. Site Blocking Bills
After a decade of focusing efforts overseas, the push for website blocking has landed back on American shores. The fierce backlash against SOPA effectively shelved domestic site blocking initiatives in the U.S., but that hesitation appears to have evaporated. With Representative Zoe Lofgren’s introduction of the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) in February, the controversial mechanism of court-ordered blocking against foreign...
Training AI Using ‘Pirated’ Content Can Be Fair Use, Law Professors Argue
In the race to build the most capable LLMs, several tech companies have sourced copyrighted content for use as training data, without obtaining permission from content owners. Many of those companies are now being sued for alleged copyright infringement. The list includes Meta, which faces a class action lawsuit filed by authors Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, among others. This case has a clear piracy angle,...
Advertising Banned on All Sites Blocked in Russia Starting September
If people insist that most things on the internet must remain ‘free’, the mechanisms that allow that to happen must continue too. Invariably that means more advertising alongside diminishing privacy, at least for those lucky enough to still have any left. Yet life could still be a lot worse, oddly enough by restrictions on advertising designed to hurt certain platforms while ensuring people are unable to profit from them. Blocking...
