New Pirate IPTV Crackdown, Déjà Vu, and the Resilience of Organized Crime
Italy generates more headlines concerning boots-on-the-ground anti-piracy operations than any other country in Europe. If we consider volume of events, no other member state comes anywhere close. If the claimed number of subscribers of every service allegedly shut down in the last decade were added together, the whole of Europe combined couldn’t mount a credible challenge. Yet, the larger the subscriber numbers, the more difficult it...
U.S. Rightsholders Urge China to Take Action Against ‘Export-Only’ Piracy Services
The American copyright industry generates billions of dollars in annual revenue and its content is generally viewed as one of the country’s primary exports. Whether they produce movies, music, software, or content for the publishing sector, U.S. companies are among the market leaders. U.S. companies also have a clear presence in China, and with more than a billion potential consumers, it’s a massive market. This offers enormous...
Kocowa Seeks Domain Takeovers to Permanently Shut Down Dramacool Pirates
Dramacool and several associated sites suddenly shut down last November, with the operators mentioning copyright pressure as a prime reason. The move disappointed millions of Asian drama and anime pirates but the nature of Dramacool’s legal troubles was initially unknown. A few months later, legal paperwork eventually revealed that a U.S. court order, obtained by Wavve Americas (wA), the owner of legal streaming platform Kocowa, was...
Men Who Uploaded Movies to Extract Cash From Pirates Have Been Acquitted
When studying law in Taiwan back in 2019, Kevin Lin learned that law firms were doing good business in the anti-piracy space. After he graduated, he aimed to do the same. Around June 2022, reports emerged that Lin was a suspect in what was described locally as a “copyright cockroach” case. After teaming up with a like-minded former classmate who happened to be a lawyer, Lin founded Truth Intellectual Property Consulting Co, a company...
Streameast Reclaimed Domain Name Previously Seized By the U.S. Government
Authorities in the United States have seized many domain names over the years, including those associated with online piracy. In some cases, domains are seized as part of a criminal prosecution. Megaupload.com, for example, was taken down thirteen years ago and remains under the control of the United States which renews its registration annually. Not all seizures are treated equally, however. In some cases, domains are simply let back...
BitTorrent’s DHT and the Leading ISP Networks Helping to Keep it Alive
Nearly a quarter of a century after its debut, internet users stocking up on the latest multi-GB Linux distros can still do so with help from the BitTorrent protocol. Able to download chunks of even the largest files, distributed among other users who could be anywhere on the planet, BitTorrent’s file transfer skills are two decades old yet never fail to impress. For those yet to sample the magic of magnet links, the whole process...
