Pirating “The Pirate Bay” TV Series is Ironically Difficult
The inception and early years of The Pirate Bay are an intriguing chapter of the Internet’s history. Founded by the Piratbyrån group, The Pirate Bay and its founders embraced the power of the new BitTorrent technology: to copy culture en masse. By doing so, they altered the public discourse, openly taunting the entertainment industries in the process. This chapter didn’t end as planned for the lead characters; Fredrik Neij (TiAMO),...
Police ‘Infringing Website List’ Portal Set For a £220K Makeover
The “Infringing Website List” (IWL) was launched in March 2014 as part of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit’s (PIPCU) efforts to combat intellectual property crime. The IWL is a component of Operation Creative, a multi-agency initiative led by PIPCU at City of London Police, with support from partners across the creative and advertising industries. Based on input from industry groups including the MPA, BPI/IFPI, FACT, and...
Cloudflare to EU: Anti-Piracy Measures Shouldn’t Harm Privacy and Security
Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare provides a range of connectivity and security services to customers around the globe. This includes millions of organizations, including 30% of Fortune 500 companies, as well as various government agencies. These customers are generally pleased with the service they receive but Cloudflare has also faced criticism over the years. Copyright holders, for example, have pointed out that the San...
IPTV Piracy Blocking at the Internet’s Core Routers Undergoes Testing
During 2010/2011, opportunity arose for Hollywood to convince the High Court in London that site-blocking would be a proportionate response to tackle a single Usenet indexing site called Newzbin. As rightsholders offered assurances that the action would be carefully targeted and strictly limited in scope, the requested injunction was granted in October 2011. Within 14 days, ISP BT would implement blocking to prevent six million...
Pirate IPTV-Selling ‘Law Enforcement Officer’ Faces Wiretapping Claim
The potential consequences of being associated with any aspect of a pirate IPTV operation are well known. Criminal action rarely ends well for defendants, with similar outcomes seen in private prosecutions and most civil copyright lawsuits. However, since the odds of being investigated and subsequently prosecuted are still relatively low, there’s no shortage of people willing to roll the dice in the hope of hitting the jackpot – and...
Google Asked to Remove 10 Billion “Pirate” Search Results
While search engines are extremely helpful for the average Internet user, copyright holders have also seen a massive downside. In addition to trillions of legitimate pages, there’s a steady supply of pirate sites. These can be hard to ignore for some entertainment-hungry users. This problem is not new. When piracy-discovery became web-based with the surge of BitTorrent in the early 2000s, search engines were unwittingly used as pirate...
