FMovies Piracy ‘Mastermind’ Confesses, Authorities Confirm Piracy Prosecution
After eight years of unprecedented uptime and reliability, the collapse and eventual demise of pirate streaming giant FMovies looked much like the demise of any other. Cracks first started to emerge in June 2024 when the site stopped updating with new content. A few weeks later in mid-July, FMovies disappeared entirely, without any explanation from its operators or indeed anyone else. An announcement at the end of August confirmed...
Dutch Court Orders ISP to Block Torrent Site TorrentGalaxy
Pirate site blocking is one of the entertainment industry’s favorite enforcement tools. In recent years, it’s become a common practice in many countries around the world. In the Netherlands, it took over a decade for the first order to be approved. After detours through the Supreme Court and the EU Court of Justice, the final order was issued in 2020, targeting The Pirate Bay. With all the legal paperwork in order, the doors were open...
Google’s “Negligent” Piracy Response Prevented Critic Deindexing Its Own Site
For most of 2024, major football leagues in Spain and Italy have regularly used the media to criticize and then publicly threaten Google. Rightsholders have always criticized Google but this feels a bit different. More recently, flare-ups have coincided with rightsholders demanding that Google implements new, controversial anti-piracy measures, such as remotely deleting apps from users’ phones. Whether any discussions take place in...
Piracy Kingpin Behind ‘Noonoo TV’ and ‘TVWiki’ Arrested in Korea
Like most other countries, South Korea has a persistent piracy problem. Online streaming platforms in particular, have flourished in recent years. Up until a year ago, ‘Noonoo TV’ was one of the leading players. Despite welcoming millions of monthly visitors, the site shut itself down citing bandwidth costs and other ‘pressure’. Noonoo & TVWIKI The self-imposed shutdown was unexpected but it didn’t take long before other streaming...
Per-Song or Per-Album? Record Labels Challenge Court’s Piracy Damages Ruling
In late 2022, several of the world’s largest music companies including UMG, Warner 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. The trial lasted more than two weeks and ended in a resounding victory for the...
DAZN’s Piracy Shield ‘Smart TV’ Block Revoked After IPTV Portal Complaint
While judicial oversight may be initially unavoidable when site-blocking is first introduced to a country, systems with less friction are strongly preferred. The law that supports Italy’s Piracy Shield system allows for blocking with no judicial oversight. An amendment passed quietly last year now allows rightsholders to block online resources without any input from telecoms regulator AGCOM. The system has almost no friction at the...
