The action in Argentina two months ago was announced with a reasonable level of detail. Targeting dozens of IPTV services with an estimated eight million global subscribers, Spanish football league LaLiga described the operation as “historic” and as the dust settled, its importance wasn’t in doubt.

Targeting a Network with Eight Million Subscribers

Following an investigation by the Cybercrime Prosecutor’s Office of San Isidro (UFEIC), most likely fueled by investigations carried out by LATAM anti-piracy group Alianza, MPA/ACE, Nagravision, and others in the region, local police raided four office buildings in Vicente López, Buenos Aires.

The raids were conducted under the authority of San Isidro Guarantees Court No. 4 and images of DDI agents and tables covered with cash were soon circulating online. Publishing a statement containing a long list of branded and ‘dismantled’ IPTV services can end badly; however, LaLiga seemed unusually confident that resurrection wouldn’t play a role here.

LaLiga Seemed More Confident Than Usual

While there were no immediate reports of an existential IPTV crisis in Brazil, complaints about service issues were still quick to arrive and only seemed to increase throughout September.

Services Start Shutting Down

On-screen notices announcing a service’s demise aren’t especially common but since early September, IPTV subscribers in Brazil have been exposed to quite a few of them.

An early casualty was ‘My Family Cinema’ which had been one of the most recognizable IPTV brands in the region. The notice reportedly came via a set-top box update; some reports implied that updates were probably required to get back in the game.

End of the road for “this brand”…

LaLiga’s presumed confidence that services wouldn’t rise from the dead seemed to look a little precarious given the terminology in the shutdown announcement. Indeed, some former customers claimed that My Family Cinema was subsequently “taken over” by another service called VELA.

Intermittent service and other errors were reported there too, at least for a while.

Easy come, easy go….

Reports that My Family Cinema was still partly operational continued through October but perhaps more ominous news had already began to surface.

People keen to renew their subscriptions to various services complained that was no longer possible. Some said that after ‘upgrading’ to VELA and upgrading again to another substitute service (Konex), payments were successful. Or rather, payments went through as expected but resulted in either no service or a service with ads.

With some users preparing to dust off their torrent clients and others mulling the pros and cons of YouTube, heated discussions over consumer rights – including the possibility that the services were executing some kind of exit scam – helped to descend the situation further into chaos.

From a rightsholders’ perspective, mistrust and declining confidence in piracy are valuable commodities. Few things focus the mind more than throwing good money after bad, and if pirates pick up the blame, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Consumer rights failure…

Two Months After the Raids – Why Now?

Official news on how the case is progressing appears to be almost non-existent.

A comment from anti-piracy group Alianza confirmed that the legal process is indeed under seal. The practical issues observed on the ground are probably linked to advances made by the Argentine Public Prosecutor’s Office in its ongoing investigations against the platform’s operators, the theory goes.

Other information provided by Alianza clarifies that the eight million subscriber estimate concerns the network’s peak worldwide. Working on the basis of 6.2 million subscribers more recently, Alianza claims that 4.6 million subscribers can be found in Brazil, together generating between US$150 million and US$200 million.

As for the network’s operational structure, Alianza president Jorge Bacaloni says that management, IT/technical, and financial matters are handled in China.

The investigation in Argentina reportedly concerns a ‘command center’ that controls/coordinates pirate services across the region. An office in Buenos Aires was reportedly responsible for marketing the services and for what could be over US$100m in global piracy sales.

Common Denominator For Popular Brands

Since there are signs that new services are easily launched and if necessary, devices with subscriptions to defunct services can be remotely updated to access another service, common ownership/control seems a reasonable explanation, in broad terms at least.

Proving that’s actually the case to a criminal standard is quite rightly a matter for the prosecutor’s office. However, if there’s a central marketing/sales operation common to some or even all of the named services, that should be much easier to discover.

Since Alianza provided no real clues, we cannot say whether the marketing company apparently used by some of the IPTV services is just a marketing company, or whether it’s THE marketing company referenced by Alianza.

What we can confirm is that in this instance, zero effort was expended to hide the connections, despite that being technically trivial. What that says in the bigger picture, if indeed it says anything at all, is for the prosecutor’s office to determine.

Other signs that the overall business was approached from otherwise legitimate angles, include the trademark applications for ‘My Family Cinema’ filed in Paraguay.

Given that there are copyright complaints filed against several branded services and other entities with links to them, why it took around six years to take action is unclear. Perhaps timing and opportunity are still the most important factors.

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Posted Thursday 6 November 2025 at 3:01 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have one newcomer on the list. “The Long Walk” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on November 03 are:

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

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Posted Wednesday 5 November 2025 at 4:16 am AEST (my time).

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Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related sources.

The site launched in the fall of 2022, just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, to ensure continued availability of ‘free’ books and articles to the broader public.

In the three years since then, Anna’s Archive has built up quite the track record. The site has been blocked in various countries, was sued in the U.S. after it scraped WorldCat, and actively provides assistance to AI researchers who want to use its library for model training.

Despite legal pressure, Annas-archive.org and the related .li and .se domains remain operational. This is a thorn in the side of publishers who are actively trying to take the site down. In the absence of options to target the site directly, they ask third-party intermediaries such as Google to lend a hand.

749 Million URLs

Google and other major search engines allow rightsholders to request removal of allegedly infringing URLs. The aim is to ensure that pirate sites no longer show up in search results when people search for books, movies, music, or other copyrighted content.

The Pirate Bay, for example, has been a popular target; Google has removed more than 4.2 million thepiratebay.org URLs over the years in response to copyright holder complaints. While this sounds like a sizable number, it pales in comparison to the volume of takedowns targeting Anna’s Archive.

Google’s transparency report reveals that rightsholders asked Google to remove 784 million URLs, divided over the three main Anna’s Archive domains. A small number were rejected, mainly because Google didn’t index the reported links, resulting in 749 million confirmed removals.

The comparison to sites such as The Pirate Bay isn’t fair, as Anna’s Archive has many more pages in its archive and uses multiple country-specific subdomains. This means that there’s simply more content to take down. That said, in terms of takedown activity, the site’s three domain names clearly dwarf all pirate competition.

Top targeted domains (Google)

5% of All Google Takedowns, Ever

Since Google published its first transparency report in May 2012, rightsholders have flagged 15.1 billion allegedly infringing URLs. That’s a staggering number, but the fact that 5% of the total targeted Anna’s Archive URLs is remarkable.

Penguin Random House and John Wiley & Sons are the most active publishers targeting the site, but they are certainly not alone. According to Google data, more than 1,000 authors or publishers have sent DMCA notices targeting Anna’s Archive domains.

Yet, there appears to be no end in sight. Rightsholders are reporting roughly 10 million new URLs per week for the popular piracy library, so there is no shortage of content to report.

With these DMCA takedown notices, publishers are aiming to make it as difficult as possible for people to find books on the site using Google. This works, as many URLs are now delisted while others are actively being demoted by the search engine for book-related queries.

That said, the Anna’s Archive website is certainly not unfindable. Searching for the site’s name in Google still shows the main domain as the top search result.

Search: Anna’s Archive

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Posted Wednesday 5 November 2025 at 4:09 am AEST (my time).

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This month, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine archived its trillionth webpage, and the nonprofit invited its more than 1,200 library partners and 800,000 daily users to join a celebration of the moment. To honor “three decades of safeguarding the world’s online heritage,” the city of San Francisco declared October 22 to be “Internet Archive Day.” The Archive was also recently designated a federal depository library by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who proclaimed the organization a “perfect fit” to expand “access to federal government publications amid an increasingly digital landscape.”

The Internet Archive might sound like a thriving organization, but it only recently emerged from years of bruising copyright battles that threatened to bankrupt the beloved library project. In the end, the fight led to more than 500,000 books being removed from the Archive’s “Open Library.”

“We survived,” Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told Ars. “But it wiped out the Library.”

An Internet Archive spokesperson confirmed to Ars that the archive currently faces no major lawsuits and no active threats to its collections. Kahle thinks “the world became stupider” when the Open Library was gutted—but he’s moving forward with new ideas.

History of the Internet Archive

Kahle has been striving since 1996 to transform the Internet Archive into a digital Library of Alexandria—but “with a better fire protection plan,” joked Kyle Courtney, a copyright lawyer and librarian who leads the nonprofit eBook Study Group, which helps states update laws to protect libraries.

When the Wayback Machine was born in 2001 as a way to take snapshots of the web, Kahle told The New York Times that building free archives was “worth it.” He was also excited that the Wayback Machine had drawn renewed media attention to libraries.

At the time, law professor Lawrence Lessig predicted that the Internet Archive would face copyright battles, but he also believed that the Wayback Machine would change the way the public understood copyright fights.

”We finally have a clear and tangible example of what’s at stake,” Lessig told the Times. He insisted that Kahle was “defining the public domain” online, which would allow Internet users to see ”how easy and important” the Wayback Machine “would be in keeping us sane and honest about where we’ve been and where we’re going.”

Kahle suggested that IA’s legal battles weren’t with creators or publishers so much as with large media companies that he thinks aren’t “satisfied with the restriction you get from copyright.”

“They want that and more,” Kahle said, pointing to e-book licenses that expire as proof that libraries increasingly aren’t allowed to own their collections. He also suspects that such companies wanted the Wayback Machine dead—but the Wayback Machine has survived and proved itself to be a unique and useful resource.

The Internet Archive also began archiving—and then lending—e-books. For a decade, the Archive had loaned out individual e-books to one user at a time without triggering any lawsuits. That changed when IA decided to temporarily lift the cap on loans from its Open Library project to create a “National Emergency Library” as libraries across the world shut down during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project eventually grew to 1.4 million titles.

But lifting the lending restrictions also brought more scrutiny from copyright holders, who eventually sued the Archive. Litigation went on for years. In 2024, IA lost its final appeal in a lawsuit brought by book publishers over the Archive’s Open Library project, which used a novel e-book lending model to bypass publishers’ licensing fees and checkout limitations. Damages could have topped $400 million, but publishers ultimately announced a “confidential agreement on a monetary payment” that did not bankrupt the Archive.

Litigation has continued, though. More recently, the Archive settled another suit over its Great 78 Project after music publishers sought damages of up to $700 million. A settlement in that case, reached last month, was similarly confidential. In both cases, IA’s experts challenged publishers’ estimates of their losses as massively inflated.

For Internet Archive fans, a group that includes longtime Internet users, researchers, students, historians, lawyers, and the US government, the end of the lawsuits brought a sigh of relief. The Archive can continue—but it can’t run one of its major programs in the same way.

What the Internet Archive lost

To Kahle, the suits have been an immense setback to IA’s mission.

Publishers had argued that the Open Library’s lending harmed the e-book market, but IA says its vision for the project was not to frustrate e-book sales (which it denied its library does) but to make it easier for researchers to reference e-books by allowing Wikipedia to link to book scans. Wikipedia has long been one of the most visited websites in the world, and the Archive wanted to deepen its authority as a research tool.

“One of the real purposes of libraries is not just access to information by borrowing a book that you might buy in a bookstore,” Kahle said. “In fact, that’s actually the minority. Usually, you’re comparing and contrasting things. You’re quoting. You’re checking. You’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel for Public Knowledge, told Ars that the Internet Archive’s Wikipedia enhancements could have served to surface information that’s often buried in books, giving researchers a streamlined path to source accurate information online.

But Kahle said the lawsuits against IA showed that “massive multibillion-dollar media conglomerates” have their own interests in controlling the flow of information. “That’s what they really succeeded at—to make sure that Wikipedia readers don’t get access to books,” Kahle said.

At the heart of the Open Library lawsuit was publishers’ market for e-book licenses, which libraries complain provide only temporary access for a limited number of patrons and cost substantially more than the acquisition of physical books. Some states are crafting laws to restrict e-book licensing, with the aim of preserving library functions.

“We don’t want libraries to become Hulu or Netflix,” said Courtney of the eBook Study Group, posting warnings to patrons like “last day to check out this book, August 31st, then it goes away forever.”

He, like Kahle, is concerned that libraries will become unable to fulfill their longtime role—preserving culture and providing equal access to knowledge. Remote access, Courtney noted, benefits people who can’t easily get to libraries, like the elderly, people with disabilities, rural communities, and foreign-deployed troops.

Before the Internet Archive cases, libraries had won some important legal fights, according to Brandon Butler, a copyright lawyer and executive director of Re:Create, a coalition of “libraries, civil libertarians, online rights advocates, start-ups, consumers, and technology companies” that is “dedicated to balanced copyright and a free and open Internet.”

But the Internet Archive’s e-book fight didn’t set back libraries, Butler said, because the loss didn’t reverse any prior court wins. Instead, IA had been “exploring another frontier” beyond the Google Books ruling, which deemed Google’s searchable book excerpts a transformative fair use, hoping that linking to books from Wikipedia would also be deemed fair use. But IA “hit the edge” of what courts would allow, Butler said.

IA basically asked, “Could fair use go this much farther?” Butler said. “And the courts said, ‘No, this is as far as you go.'”

To Kahle, the cards feel stacked against the Internet Archive, with courts, lawmakers, and lobbyists backing corporations seeking “hyper levels of control.” He said IA has always served as a research library—an online destination where people can cross-reference texts and verify facts, just like perusing books at a local library.

“We’re just trying to be a library,” Kahle said. “A library in a traditional sense. And it’s getting hard.”

Fears of big fines may delay digitization projects

President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services have put America’s public libraries at risk, and reduced funding will continue to challenge libraries in the coming years, ALA has warned. Butler has also suggested that under-resourced libraries may delay digitization efforts for preservation purposes if they worry that publishers may threaten costly litigation.

He told Ars he thinks courts are getting it right on recent fair use rulings. But he noted that libraries have fewer resources for legal fights because copyright law “has this provision that says, well, if you’re a copyright holder, you really don’t have to prove that you suffered any harm at all.”

“You can just elect [to receive] a massive payout based purely on the fact that you hold a copyright and somebody infringed,” Butler said. “And that’s really unique. Almost no other country in the world has that sort of a system.”

So while companies like AI firms may be able to afford legal fights with rights holders, libraries must be careful, even when they launch projects that seem “completely harmless and innocuous,” Butler said. Consider the Internet Archive’s Great 78 Project, which digitized 400,000 old shellac records, known as 78s, that were originally pressed from 1898 to the 1950s.

“The idea that somebody’s going to stream a 78 of an Elvis song instead of firing it up on their $10-a-month Spotify subscription is silly, right?” Butler said. “It doesn’t pass the laugh test, but given the scale of the project—and multiply that by the statutory damages—and that makes this an extremely dangerous project all of a sudden.”

Butler suggested that statutory damages could disrupt the balance that ensures the public has access to knowledge, creators get paid, and human creativity thrives, as AI advances and libraries’ growth potentially stalls.

“It sets the risk so high that it may force deals in situations where it would be better if people relied on fair use. Or it may scare people from trying new things because of the stakes of a copyright lawsuit,” Butler said.

Courtney, who co-wrote a whitepaper detailing the legal basis for different forms of “controlled digital lending” like the Open Library project uses, suggested that Kahle may be the person who’s best prepared to push the envelope on copyright.

When asked how the Internet Archive managed to avoid financial ruin, Courtney said it survived “only because their leader” is “very smart and capable.” Of all the “flavors” of controlled digital lending (CDL) that his paper outlined, Kahle’s methodology for the Open Library Project was the most “revolutionary,” Courtney said.

Importantly, IA’s loss did not doom other kinds of CDL that other archives use, he noted, nor did it prevent libraries from trying new things.

“Fair use is a case-by-case determination” that will be made as urgent preservation needs arise, Courtney told Ars, and “libraries have a ton of stuff that aren’t going to make the jump to digital unless we digitize them. No one will have access to them.”

What’s next for the Internet Archive?

The lawsuits haven’t dampened Kahle’s resolve to expand IA’s digitization efforts, though. Moving forward, the group will be growing a project called Democracy’s Library, which is “a free, open, online compendium of government research and publications from around the world” that will be conveniently linked in Wikipedia articles to help researchers discover them.

The Archive is also collecting as many physical materials as possible to help preserve knowledge, even as “the library system is largely contracting,” Kahle said. He noted that libraries historically tend to grow in societies that prioritize education and decline in societies where power is being concentrated, and he’s worried about where the US is headed. That makes it hard to predict if IA—or any library project—will be supported in the long term.

With governments globally partnering with the biggest tech companies to try to win the artificial intelligence race, critics have warned of threats to US democracy, while the White House has escalated its attack on libraries, universities, and science over the past year.

Meanwhile, AI firms face dozens of lawsuits from creators and publishers, which Kahle thinks only the biggest tech companies can likely afford to outlast. The momentum behind AI risks giving corporations even more control over information, Kahle said, and it’s uncertain if archives dedicated to preserving the public memory will survive attacks from multiple fronts.

“Societies that are [growing] are the ones that need to educate people” and therefore promote libraries, Kahle said. But when societies are “going down,” such as in times of war, conflict, and social upheaval, libraries “tend to get destroyed by the powerful. It used to be king and church, and it’s now corporations and governments.” (He recommended The Library: A Fragile History as a must-read to understand the challenges libraries have always faced.)

Kahle told Ars he’s not “black and white” on AI, and he even sees some potential for AI to enhance library services.

He’s more concerned that libraries in the US are losing support and may soon cease to perform classic functions that have always benefited civilizations—like buying books from small publishers and local authors, supporting intellectual endeavors, and partnering with other libraries to expand access to diverse collections.

To prevent these cultural and intellectual losses, he plans to position IA as a refuge for displaced collections, with hopes to digitize as much as possible while defending the early dream that the Internet could equalize access to information and supercharge progress.

“We want everyone [to be] a reader,” Kahle said, and that means “we want lots of publishers, we want lots of vendors, booksellers, lots of libraries.”

But, he asked, “Are we going that way? No.”

To turn things around, Kahle suggested that copyright laws be “re-architected” to ensure “we have a game with many winners”—where authors, publishers, and booksellers get paid, library missions are respected, and progress thrives. Then society can figure out “what do we do with this new set of AI tools” to keep the engine of human creativity humming.

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Posted Tuesday 4 November 2025 at 5:04 am AEST (my time).

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The major Hollywood studios of the MPA, which in recent years now includes Netflix and Amazon, are well known for obtaining site blocking injunctions at the High Court in London.

While blocking of new domains continues at a considerable pace, applications for all-new injunctions are relatively rare. Since they tend to operate in groups while adopting familiar branding, the most persistent pirate sites are identified quite quickly, and then blocked under the scope of previously obtained injunctions.

Outliers certainly exist, but the recent addition of Cloudflare shows that the landscape can shift quite quickly and in unexpected directions. New rightsholders are also getting involved.

Warner Bros. Discovery & TNT Sports

During the past few years, surging interest in live sports coupled with rising prices for already expensive official packages, have combined to give pirate IPTV services the conditions in which they thrive. Pressure on the European Commission increased last week with demands that include the introduction of pan-European blocking orders.

In the UK, the Premier League has been going about its blocking business relatively silently, with parallel action from Sky targeting persistent IPTV providers. Following an application for a Section 97a blocking injunction at the High Court in October, a pair of established albeit rebranded rightsholders will soon enter the fray.

Known as BT Sport until 2023 and now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery and BT Group, TNT Sports is a group of premium TV sports channels operating in the UK and Ireland.

The six defendants are instantly recognizable as the UK’s leading internet service providers. Having been put on formal notice that their subscribers are accessing pirate sites and services offering TNT Sports content illegally, they will be required to block the illicit platforms under Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Specific Content Currently Unclear

WBD Sports has an impressive range of sports rights; the Olympics, tennis Grand Slams, cycling Grand Tours, PGA Tour, World Snooker, FIM Speedway GP, plus various winter sports.

In the UK and Ireland, TNT Sports airs everything from the Premier League and FA Cup to UEFA Champions, Europa, and Conference Leagues, to Premiership Rugby, MotoGP, Cricket, UFC, and boxing.

Which of these assets the companies aim to protect is currently unclear. As the exclusive rightsholder, Premier League has been obtaining site blocking injunctions in the UK since 2013, initially targeting platforms including First Row Sports, Drakulastream, and Rojadirecta. Running parallel to its work blocking IPTV providers under the authority of renewable blocking orders, more recently Premier League began blocking web-based platforms including TotalSportek, FootyBite and VIP League.

A similar picture emerges for UEFA; also an exclusive rightsholder, UEFA obtained its first injunction in 2018 and returns to court to ensure rolling protection whenever the granted period is due to expire.

With a deal that secured exclusive live broadcasting rights for TNT Sports until the end of the 2030/31 season, Premiership Rugby seems among the most obvious candidates for piracy protection.

Worth around £84 million, the deal comes at a time when average audiences are reportedly up 10% in the current season, where live-to-live scheduling with Premier League matches is reportedly driving a 39% audience increase over events with no lead-in.

The World is Getting Smaller

Several of the defendant ISPs have direct interests in sports broadcasting remaining as piracy-free as possible. British Telecommunications owner BT Group owns claimant TNT Sports in partnership with claimant Warner Bros. Discovery.

Those interested in watching TNT Sports channels can do so via streaming platform Discovery+. Or, if they prefer, via defendant EE Limited’s EE TV platform, or using satellite and cable broadcasts made available via defendants Sky and Virgin Media’s networks respectively.

The TNT Sports package available via defendant TalkTalk includes the four main TNT Sports channels, leaving Plusnet the only defendant ISP without a TV offering. It’s ultimately owned by BT Group, however.

A wider plan to obtain blocking injunctions valid all over Europe is the type of consolidation we’re likely to see more of in the coming months and years. Rightsholders are becoming increasingly averse to duplication of effort in multiple member states but whether the European Commission believes that’s appropriate remains unclear.

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Posted Tuesday 4 November 2025 at 5:03 am AEST (my time).

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The Internet is littered with cheap IPTV services that offer access to a lot of content, for very little money.

These deals often seem too good to be true, and in most cases they are, at least for those who prefer to stay on the right side of the law.

The operators of these services often remain in the shadows, but anti-piracy groups are actively trying to pin them down. For example, members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) identified Mechanicsburg resident Brandon Weibley as the alleged operator of several commercial IPTV services offering pirated streams.

Studios Sue U.S. IPTV Operator

In a complaint filed at a Pennsylvania federal court in March, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, Paramount, and other major Hollywood studios accused Weibley of widespread copyright infringement through various IPTV brands. The companies alleged that Weibley has a long history of illegally profiting from pirated content.

The operator’s infringing activity dates back to 2017, when he allegedly registered the domain beastmodebuilds.com and began selling subscriptions to infringing streaming services. In the years that followed, the defendant was linked to various IPTV brands, such as Beast Mode Live, BTV, Viking Media, and GreenWing Media.

While the defendant made efforts to conceal his identity, investigators followed a digital trail that led to his personal email address.

The movie studios used this lead to confront Weibley in 2023, but instead of shutting down, he switched the operation to a different domain name, vonwik.com. Meanwhile, he continued to offer thousands of TV channels through the rebranded services ‘Shrugs’ and ‘Zing’.

Shrugs and Zing (Vonwik.com)
 

“Weibley now provides subscribers to the Current Infringing Services with access to more than 9,000 pirated channels, featuring Plaintiffs’ television series and movies, as well as international content and live sports events. This is infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works on a massive scale,” the plaintiffs wrote in their complaint.

Defendant Ghosts Lawsuit, IPTV Services Remain Online

Weibley was served in person but filed no answer and failed to appear in court. As a result, the movie studios have now requested a default judgment and $9 million in damages.

In a motion submitted to the Pennsylvania court earlier this month, they note that, despite the lawsuit, the infringing IPTV services remain operational.

“Weibley has known since at least 2023 that his services infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights, yet he continued to operate them. Indeed, even after being personally served with the Complaint and knowing about this action, Weibley continues to operate the Current Infringing Services,” they write.

In an associated declaration, MPA Chief Content Protection Officer Larissa Knapp noted that the defendant is still believed to be in charge of the operation.

From Knapp’s declaration

The plaintiffs hope that a default judgment will change the status quo but if that’s not sufficient, an injunction will help to take the IPTV services offline.

Studios Seek $9 Million and an Injunction

The movie studios request the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work for a small sample of 60 copyrighted works, totaling $9,000,000. This is the maximum statutory penalty for “willful” infringement, which they argue applies to Weibley’s conduct.

According to the plaintiffs, the operator made the decision not to put up a defense. Therefore, the infringing activity was willful and punitive damages are appropriate.

$9,000,000 (proposed order)
 

The rightsholders realize that the lack of response is an indication that the defendant might not be inclined to pay any damages. Therefore, they also request a permanent injunction to compel domain registrars and registries to sign over vonwik.com and related domains.

In addition, the proposed injunction compels all related hosting providers to stop serving the IPTV services.

“Plaintiffs similarly seek an order directing the hosting providers of the Infringing Domains […] to suspend services to such domains and to prevent the content on the websites associated with the domains from being transferred to another domain name or hosting service,” the studios write.

At the time of writing, the court has yet to sign off on the motion for default judgment. It will be up to U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane to review the arguments and decide whether the $9 million award and permanent injunction are warranted.

The current lawsuit is one of two parallel cases filed by the ACE coalition back in March. The defendant in the other lawsuit, ‘Outer Limits IPTV’ operator Zachary DeBarr, also failed to formally answer the complaint. In August, a California federal court granted the studios’ motion for default judgment, awarding them $15 million in statutory damages.

—

A copy of the memorandum in support of the motion for default judgment is available here (pdf) and the proposed order can be found here (pdf). Knapp’s declaration is available here (pdf).

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Posted Sunday 2 November 2025 at 3:34 am AEST (my time).

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In October 2022, over 100 rightsholders, powerful media groups, and various organizations, demanded decisive action from the European Commission to tackle IPTV piracy of live sports and similar events.

Familiar names, including the MPA, UEFA, Premier League, Sky, beIN, LaLiga, and Serie A, demanded legislative change from the European Commission to ‘End Live Piracy Now’. That didn’t happen, and with no legislative instruments or European-wide regulation on the table, the EC launched a new consultation. Advice on how to use a ‘toolbox’ of existing measures appeared in a subsequent recommendation.

In October 2025, a full three years after their initial demands failed to elicit the preferred response, a coalition of rightsholders is once again demanding urgent action from the European Commission.

Coalition Demands New Legislation

In a letter addressed to Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen and Commissioner Glenn Micallef, top-ranking executives representing some of the most powerful corporations, sports leagues, broadcasters, and other rights holders make it clear that patience has run out.

After emphasizing their significant contribution to European entertainment, culture, and the wider EU economy, the coalition reports that the investment required to produce content of the highest quality, is still under threat from criminals operating illegally in the market.

“Our investments continue to be threatened by organized criminal enterprises. For years, rightsowners have raised the alarm. Today, piracy has reached scales that can no longer be ignored,” their letter to the EC notes.

“While we acknowledge the important work undertaken by the European Commission in addressing this challenge through the 2023 Recommendation on combating online piracy of sports and other live events, its implementation has yet to deliver tangible results. We therefore look forward to seeing further legislative steps being taken to achieve the objectives set out in the Recommendation.”

Billions of Euros in ‘Losses’

The scale of the problem is highlighted with reference to estimated losses to rightsholders running to many billions of euros. In most cases these figures concern revenue predictions for a hypothetical market free of piracy, so not actual losses per se, but still unrealized potential, in part due to unlicensed and illegal competition.

These ‘losses’ include €1.5 billion in France (actually €1.2 billion according to official data), where recent reports indicate that under existing legislation, IPTV piracy has already been contained.

The inclusion of €2.2 billion in estimated ‘losses’ in Italy appears to run counter to the claimed success of the Piracy Shield blocking system. That said, the figure receives at least partial support from reports that damages are soaring because Piracy Shield isn’t effective.

The letter also references a recent report indicating that the effectiveness of takedown notices has plummeted to an all-time low. As previously reported, the report seemed positioned to demand more action from EU lawmakers against intermediaries.

A deterioration in compliance rates would’ve been useful in negotiations, but taken in context, the figures paint a different picture.

Demands for Legislative Change

To tackle the threat posed by criminal competition, failing anti-piracy measures, and a EC Recommendation that had no measurable effect, the coalition is demanding the European Commission to urgently implement the following:

1. Ensure that, upon receipt of a notice, infringing content is taken down as near to immediately as possible and in all cases within a maximum time frame of 30 minutes. The urgency of live event piracy justifies a far shorter timeframe which is further supported by the fact that such removal can already be effected in a significantly shorter timeframe using the technology solutions available today.

 

2. Ensure EU-wide live dynamic blocking orders (including IP blocking) that address mirror sites and successor domains are made available in all Member States.

 

3. Ensure intermediaries (including but not limited to platforms, hosts, VPN, CDN and app stores) introduce and maintain robust Know Your Business Customer (KYBC) policies.

The Proposals: Good For Rightsholders, Bad For Everyone Else

Proposal 1 doesn’t appear to demand much from a legal perspective. It aligns with existing copyright law, the principle of rapid action to mitigate harm, and discards ambiguous terms in existing legislation (such as “expeditiously”) by defining a specific timeframe.

If we assume that the coalition wants the 30-minute maximum enshrined in law, that’s a fairly clear sign that in the absence of prosecutions against the operators of pirate IPTV services, liability would likely shift to intermediaries.

The significant burden of compliance warrants a reference to Piracy Shield’s 30-minute requirement and the fact that since its inception, ISPs have received nothing in exchange for compliance and have paid all costs from their own profits.

Proposal 2 concerning EU-wide live dynamic blocking orders, is much more complex than a short paragraph of text could ever hope to explain. On one hand, EU law already obliges member states to allow rightsholders to defend their rights, but specifying the means through which that should be achieved is something new.

A broad, results-based definition might work, but the fact that the coalition is insisting on legislation, suggests potential pushback from governments and/or local ISPs against implementing such measures. The reasons behind the reluctance may be quite complex, but it’s possible that aspects of national copyright law that align with the requirements of the EU cannot (or are not required to) accommodate the specific requirements of the major rightsholders.

The demand for IP address blocking to be enshrined in law disregards the findings of a highly competent study which details the failures of Piracy Shield. The study found that IP address blocking caused significant levels of collateral damage, with the knock-on effects still continuing today.

Proposal 3 calling for “robust KYC policies for intermediaries” is nothing new, but once again, intermediaries face the burden of compliance.

Based on the assumption that compliance would be enforceable, new legal obligations would ensure that the cost of compliance would come right off intermediaries’ bottom lines. Or, more likely, increase the costs for the 99%+ of customers for whom formal identification would be of no benefit, leaving less than 1% of potentially criminal customers to identify using fake or stolen documents, as many do already.

It’s important to note that the proposals in the letter are exceptionally brief and lack key details and nuance that will only develop in time. That being said, at face value the most cynical part of the proposal concerns app stores, CDNs, and VPNs.

Since app stores already require developers to comply with rules under the Digital Services Act, the mention here raises questions of who the proposal targets. The prospect of ~740 million European citizens having to show their papers to gain access to mobile apps would be an extraordinary proposal. The negative effect on privacy, amplified by increased risk of data breaches and other cybersecurity threats, would be unquestionably disproportionate.

Introduce the same concept to many VPN providers, for whom the privacy model plays a central role in everything from hosting choices to online marketing, mandatory KYBC rules would undermine their entire business and the privacy of millions of customers.

The requirement would almost guarantee that subscribers would immediately seek alternatives and spend their money outside the EU.

None of the proposals directly specify their targets, so may be subject to change or interpretation. But for the purpose of identifying a vanishingly small number of potential bad actors, each with a limitless supply of stolen data to identify as someone else, the proposal seems destined to fail.

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Posted Saturday 1 November 2025 at 3:06 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

For major companies like Nintendo, tackling online piracy isn’t just about punishing individual infringers; it’s about strategic deterrence.

Filing lawsuits against casual gamers who may have made an isolated mistake is not a good look and could potentially backfire. Nintendo understands that and carefully picks its battles.

The case against Jesse Keighin, better known under his gaming handle “EveryGameGuru” exemplifies this approach. Filed in a Colorado federal court last November, Nintendo’s complaint lists many alleged wrongdoings, including pre-release game streaming using pirated ROMs and distribution of circumvention tools.

“I Run The Streets”

Defending a lawsuit filed by a multi-billion dollar company can be a frightening prospect but based on messages posted online, the defendant seemed undeterred.

Instead of trying to avoid a legal disaster, Keighin apparently went on the offensive, showing no signs of giving in. Quite the contrary.

“You might run a corporation. I run the streets,” Keighin wrote in a Facebook post addressing Nintendo’s legal team. They should have done more research before taking him on, the gamer wrote.

The streets
 

The defendant reportedly destroyed evidence and evaded Nintendo’s attempts to serve him personally. Due to these complications, the court eventually allowed service via email and the home addresses of his mother, grandmother, and partner.

Nintendo Requests Default Judgment

Despite his defiant stance, Keighin did not respond to Nintendo’s allegations so the company requested a default judgment to continue the case without him.

The gaming giant requested $17,500 in damages for copyright infringement, including streaming pre-release games and sharing links to emulators. This was a relatively modest request, as potential maximum damages could have easily exceeded $1 million.

In addition to the modest monetary damages, Nintendo also requested a broad permanent injunction to restrain the defendant from any infringing activities going forward, including the use of emulators such as Yuzu or Ryujinx.

Nintendo said the injunction should apply to third parties working in concert with the defendant and require all infringing hardware and software to be destroyed.

Court Hands Nintendo the Final Win

In early October, Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak recommended granting Nintendo its requested $17,500 in damages and an order enjoining Keighin from future infringement.

At the same time, the Magistrate wrote that two of Nintendo’s broader requests should be denied. The demand to “destroy all circumvention devices” was rejected as “unclear” and “unreasonable,” as the tools in question are mainly software applications available online.

From the recommendation
 

The request to apply the injunction to “third parties” working in concert with Keighin should also be denied as Nintendo did not specify any third parties who worked with the defendant.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Gordon P. Gallagher formally adopted this recommendation, effectively handing Nintendo the win.

Final order

The Judge’s order notes that, since no party filed objections, a full de novo review was not required. After finding ‘no clear error’ in the recommendation, Judge Gallagher adopted it in full. This means that the damages award and the partially granted injunction are now final.

While this is likely not the outcome Keighin had hoped for, without putting up a defense, it was mostly a lost case from the start.

—

A copy of Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak’s recommendation is available here (pdf) and U.S. District Judge Gordon P. Gallagher’s final judgment can be found here (pdf).

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Posted Friday 31 October 2025 at 5:12 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

After calling out pirate sites including Vidsrc, HydraHD, and Cineby in a submission to the USTR’s Notorious Markets review, Hollywood’s next targets were put on notice.

The MPA’s use of the term ‘hydra’ was a reference to sites that have a tendency to respawn and multiply in response to site blocking measures. In the case of VidSrc, a platform that excels at making piracy simple for many other sites reliant on its services, VidSrc represents the body of a hydra in a piracy-as-a-service wrapper.

Providing a constant flow of content to sites facing potential decapitation is always a threat, but the new action required VidSrc to show some regenerative powers of its own.

Weapons Built in India

With site blocking measures back on the agenda in the United States, seeking an injunction on home soil capable of eliminating or even seriously disrupting a site like VidSrc, would introduce unnecessary risk for very little gain.

A relatively weak injunction would probably have little or no effect, while a big win could call into question the need for new law to support a formal site blocking regime on home soil. When balanced against the benefits of obtaining an injunction in India, of the kind that U.S. courts would be unlikely grant, no better option exists anywhere else.

The injunction obtained at the High Court of New Delhi late September featured members of the MPA and ACE. Beyond Universal City Studios, identifying the rest of the plaintiffs was more difficult than it should’ve been, but we can now confirm them as follows:

• Universal City Studios Productions LLLP (United States)
• Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (United States)
• Netflix US, LLC (United States)
• Disney Enterprises Inc. (United States)
• Apple Video Programming LLC (United States)
• Crunchyroll, LLC (United States)
• SBS Co. Ltd. (Republic of Korea)
• CJ ENM Co. Ltd (Republic of Korea)
• SLL Joongang Co. Ltd. (Republic of Korea)

The scope of the injunction certainly made it stand out. The initial order covered the blocking of 248 domains by local ISPs but also compelled domain registrars worldwide to suspend them within 72 hours.

Framework for Follow-Up Blocking and Suspensions

The real power is the injunction’s ability to tackle any number of replacement domains that subsequently appear to circumvent blocking. The first additional wave of submitted domains is detailed in a follow-up order designed to disrupt VidSrc by blocking and suspending ‘all’ of its domain names at the same time.

In addition to the 248 domains listed in the original injunction (pdf), blocking can also be applied against sites, services, and domains meeting the following criteria:

1. Any site which appears to be associated with any of the previously blocked sites, based on factors including;

• Site name, site branding, site operator’s identity
• Source of the infringing content
• Provision of additional/alternate access to blocked domains

2. Any other site, site owner or anyone else discovered to have been infringing the Plaintiffs’ exclusive rights and/or any other right, including but not limited to hosting, streaming, making available, communicating to the public, or facilitating the same.

That led to the plaintiffs submitting the following domains; the overwhelming majority are linked to VidSrc and most fulfill all blocking criteria, not just one as required.

The corresponding domain name registrars (DNR) identified by name “and other DNRs, their directors, partners, employees, and all others acting in the capacity of principal or agent acting for and on their behalf,” are directed to;

• Lock and suspend the domains within 72 hours of receiving the order
• Gather personal details relating to the registrant of the domains, including;
• Know-your-customer data, credit card details, mobile number etc.
• Supply that information to the plaintiffs within 72 hours

Precisely when or if these instructions were received by the registrars is unknown.

VidSrc Takes Refuge in Russia

With no obvious signs of enforcement action against its domains and zero element of surprise, VidSrc had plenty of time to take evasive action. In hindsight, it probably responded far more quickly than necessary.

On the front pages of the domains listed for blocking/suspension, notices state that users need to switch to a new set of domains.

While obscured in the image above, the domains are clearly visible when visiting the domains supplied by the rightsholders. All replacement domains are linked to Russia; one carries the .ru ccTLD and the other three use .su, the ccTLD previously allocated to the Soviet Union.

The switch to Russia-linked domains isn’t entirely unexpected. Convincing US-based registrars to suspend domains on behalf of US-based rightsholders, seems more likely to return better results than attempting the same in Russia.

That said, TorrentGalaxy lost control of a .su domain in April 2023. The domain is no longer linked to a torrent site, but it does remain active. If nothing else, it suggests that .su domains aren’t necessarily a stable option. As a long-term option, they’re not suitable at all; the .su ccTLD is expected to be completely phased out by 2030.

Demanding the suspension of the single .ru domain, using the legal avenues available in Russia, to protect U.S. rightsholders brandishing an injunction issued in India, doesn’t sound like an ideal recipe for success. Whether the South Korea-based rightsholders SBS Co. Ltd, CJ ENM Co. Ltd, and SLL Joongang Co. Ltd. continue to do business in Russia is unclear, but beyond local site blocking measures, options for enforcement seem minimal.

Reaction Time Undermined The Order

If the Court’s instructions had been followed to the letter within the 72 hours allocated, the outcome may have been different.

The reasons for the delay at domain registrars is currently unknown. However, it appears the volume of site-blocking instructions handed down by Indian courts, collectively affecting at least tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of domains in recent years, is becoming a problem.

The plea is fairly self-explanatory, and while it makes a lot of sense on the ground, it also introduces additional complications.

Under the IT Act, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) could simply order the companies hosting pirate sites to cease doing so. Since that renders the sites immediately inaccessible, blocking at 2,700 ISPs wouldn’t be required, thus easing the administrative load. In the event a site is located outside India, blocking at the gateway level could achieve a similar effect.

The IT Act in India allows the government to block sites under Section 69A on specific grounds, such as national security or public order. The Copyright Act is very clearly not the IT Act, and attempting to find common ground fails at the first hurdle.

The request for the plaintiff to carry out a trace route to each site’s web server, to determine their location, may be well-intentioned. Yet in practical terms, it’s completely baffling. The overwhelming majority of pirate sites use Cloudflare, which ordinarily prevents web servers from being located. In fact, the use of reverse proxies and similar anonymizing technologies were among the main reasons rightsholders turned to blocking injunctions in the first place.

With Indian courts more than happy to grant extraordinarily broad injunctions, at times covering tens of thousands of domains, India has become the website-blocking capital of the world. On paper, at least.

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Posted Thursday 30 October 2025 at 12:12 pm AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

Over the past two years, rightsholders of all kinds have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

With billions in potential damages at stake, these cases have also drawn the interest of Strike 3 Holdings.

As the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States, the adult film producer has filed tens of thousands of lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates. This summer it expanded its scope by taking aim at Meta.

2,396 Movies, $359 Million in Damages

Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media, which are known for popular adult brands including Vixen, Tushy, Blacked, and Deeper, filed a copyright infringement complaint at a California federal court. The companies allege that Meta downloaded at least 2,396 of their films since 2018, allegedly to aid their AI video training.

The adult producers discovered the alleged infringements after Meta’s BitTorrent activity was revealed in a lawsuit filed by several book authors. In that case, Meta admitted that it obtained content from pirate sources.

This prompted Strike 3 and Counterlife Media to search for Meta-linked IP addresses in their archive of collected BitTorrent data. This scan revealed that forty-seven IP addresses, identified as owned by Facebook, allegedly infringed their copyrighted works.

If Meta is indeed found liable for these alleged infringements, the adult content producers could seek as much as $359 million in damages. However, this week the company returned fire, asking the court to dismiss what it describes as a ‘nonsensical’ complaint for various reasons.

Meta Hits Back at “Copyright Troll”

This week, Meta responded to the complaint by filing a motion to dismiss. The tech giant describes Strike 3 as a prolific copyright litigator that some have labeled a “copyright troll”. These lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates also served as inspiration for one of Meta’s defenses.

Taking a page from the BitTorrent piracy defense playbook, Meta counters that the IP address evidence presented by the plaintiffs is meaningless without context. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit previously ruled that an IP address alone is not sufficient to prove who the ‘direct’ infringer is. Rightsholders need “something more“.

IP address is insufficient
 

According to Meta, there is no evidence that the alleged infringing activity on its corporate network is centrally orchestrated. This would be “nonsensical”, it counters, noting that Strike 3 already logged infringing activity in 2018, years before Meta started training its video models.

“Plaintiffs do not explain how sporadic torrenting activity that purportedly commenced in 2018— years before Meta allegedly ‘began researching Multimodal Models and Generative Video’ in 2022 could have been intended for ‘purposes of acquiring content to train’ such models,” Meta notes.

“Plaintiffs’ supposition that Meta must have instigated these downloads for AI training is implausible on its face. All Plaintiffs have are IP addresses, which is insufficient to state a claim.”

Likely for “Private Personal Use”

Meta clearly denies that the adult video downloads were used for AI purposes. Since there is no evidence that Meta directed this activity, it can’t be held liable for direct copyright infringement.

The tech company doesn’t just deny the allegations; it also offers an alternative explanation. Meta suggests that employees or visitors may have downloaded the pirated videos for personal use.

The personal use angle also makes sense considering that the download volume was rather small, especially for AI training purposes.

“[T]he small number of downloads—roughly 22 per year on average across dozens of Meta IP addresses—is plainly indicative of private personal use, not a concerted effort to collect the massive datasets Plaintiffs allege are necessary for effective AI training,” Meta writes.

Private personal use
 

The complaint also referenced thousands of IP addresses outside of Meta’s network that were allegedly used to conceal its BitTorrent activities. These addresses showed correlational activity, which the plaintiffs painted as more evidence of wrongdoing.

Meta, however, refutes this allegation, noting that the timing of this activity also points to personal use instead of an orchestrated scheme.

“And there is yet another conundrum Plaintiffs fail to address: why would Meta seek to ‘conceal[]’ certain alleged downloads of Plaintiffs’ and third-party content, but use easily traceable Meta corporate IP addresses for many hundreds of others, including 157 of Plaintiffs’ works?”

“The obvious answer is that it would not do so; Plaintiffs’ entire AI training theory is nonsensical and unsupported,” Meta concludes.

Contributory or Vicarious Infringement?

Meta does not rule out that its network was used to download the pirated adult videos. However, the company again cites jurisprudence from other BitTorrent piracy lawsuits, to argue that it is not secondarily liable for this activity.

The rightsholders’ vicarious copyright infringement claim fails, Meta argues, because the company has no financial interest in these ‘personal use’ downloads. Nor was it required to supervise or intervene, as the Ninth Circuit ‘Cobbler’ case made clear.

Meta uses the same Cobbler precedent to counter the contributory infringement claim. This falls flat, as Meta says that it has no “knowledge” of the pirating activity, nor did it materially contribute to it.

All in all, Meta sees no reason why this case should go any further and asks the court to dismiss the complaint in full.

“[T]hese claims fail not only for lack of supporting facts, but also because Plaintiffs’ theory of liability makes no sense and cannot be reconciled with the facts they do plead. The entire complaint against Meta should be dismissed with prejudice,” Meta concludes.

Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media have the opportunity to oppose the motion to dismiss within two weeks, after which Meta will be allowed to file a follow-up response. After that, the California federal court will decide whether this case moves forward, or if it ends here.

—

A copy of Meta’s motion to dismiss, submitted at the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf).

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Posted Thursday 30 October 2025 at 4:51 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

The Supreme Court case between several major record labels and Cox Communications is a landmark legal battle.

The outcome will determine how Internet providers should deal with pirating subscribers on their networks.

Should alleged pirates be disconnected from the Internet after repeated third-party allegations of copyright infringement? Or does that go too far?

In its opening brief, Cox argued that the company should not be held liable for contributory copyright infringement because it failed to terminate subscribers after multiple warnings. The U.S. Government, various tech companies, and other interested parties, supported Cox’s position.

Earlier this month, the major record labels, including Sony and Universal Music, countered these arguments in their response brief. Describing Cox as a company that willingly prioritized profits over piracy, they argued that the $1 billion verdict against the ISP should be upheld.

Former Members of Congress and the Copyright Office

One of the key briefs supporting the record labels comes from a group of former members of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office. These people have direct experience with administering U.S. copyright law, including the DMCA, which is central to the Supreme Court case.

The brief argues that Cox is trying to rewrite contributory infringement law in a way that contradicts what Congress intended. If Cox gets its way, the DMCA safe harbor structure will be effectively rendered toothless because an ISP that doesn’t act against piracy will face no repercussions.

“In practical terms, the change in law Cox asks this Court to impose would effectively eliminate service provider exposure to liability for the vast majority of online infringements,” the brief reads.

The amicus brief

The amici clearly have the required expertise and their previous work as lawmakers and copyright experts carries weight. At the same time, it should be noted that some have since moved on to new positions at organizations that have a direct interest in the legal showdown.

For example, Karyn A. Temple, who signed the letter as the former Register of Copyrights at the U.S. Copyright Office, is now the Motion Picture Association’s (MPA) Global General Counsel. Maria A. Pallante, another former Register of Copyrights, is currently President and CEO at the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Another signee, Jacqueline C. Charlesworth, moved on from the U.S. Copyright Office and currently works as a litigator in copyright cases involving leading music companies, songwriters, and recording artists.

The signees

Motion Picture Association (and others)

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) also submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court’s decision. Representing the major movie studios, Netflix, and Amazon, it describes Cox’s push for an inducement-only standard as a “tectonic change” based on “profound misreadings” of established law.

MPA argues that Cox can be held liable for not taking action against subscribers for whom it has received multiple piracy notices. This is the entire reason why the DMCA safe harbor exists.

“Cox’s brief is strewn with doom-and-gloom predictions that, absent the rule it seeks, Cox will be forced to an intolerable choice: indiscriminately terminate internet access for grandparents and military barracks, on the one hand; or risk crushing liability, on the other. That is a false dichotomy.”

“Cox could have taken many steps short of terminating internet service as part of a graduated system for addressing known instances of repeat infringement by its customers,” MPA’s brief adds.

According to the MPA, at times Cox chose not to follow its own graduated response scheme, labeling it a decision to keep generating revenue from subscribers who were repeatedly flagged as copyright infringers.

National Center on Sexual Exploitation

While most amici focus strictly on how copyright law should be interpreted, there’s also a clear outlier. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), a non-profit organization fighting sexual abuse and exploitation, warns that Cox’s arguments for broad ISP immunity could inadvertently harm the fight against CSAM.

“If Petitioners and their amici successfully establish an all-contexts rule that they can never be liable for anything that can be characterized as ‘inaction,’ internet platforms could sit on their hands while knowingly profiting from criminal child sexual abuse material,” they write.

Why here?
 

A central theme in this Supreme Court challenge is whether ISPs can be held liable for “inaction”. In this case, that refers to not terminating Internet access of allegedly pirating subscribers.

NCOSE is advocating for a Supreme Court decision narrowly focused on copyright law. While acknowledging and, to a degree, supporting the position of the record labels, the group’s primary goal is to avoid an outcome affecting liability in general.

“This case should only be about the distinct question of contributory infringement of copyright—not blanket rules governing the liability of internet platforms for facilitating or assisting wrongdoing.”

More Amici Support the Record Labels

In addition to these three briefs, the Supreme Court received several more that side with the record labels. These largely focus on the same issues, arguing against Cox’s push to limit liability for Internet providers.

For example, the brief from SoundExchange, A2IM, AFM, and SAG-AFTRA warns that Cox’s proposed interpretation of liability would leave the music industry with no viable option to fight online piracy.

“To adopt Petitioners’ myopic view of contributory infringement would spell disaster for the music community, as it would deprive musicians and those who represent them of the only feasible means of challenging mass online infringement,” they write.

The full list of all opposition briefs, available below, underlines the importance of this landmark case and a Supreme Court decision destined to shape the future of U.S. copyright law. With all key arguments now on record, the Supreme Court will hear both sides during oral arguments in early December.

—

Here is a list of the amici curiae who filed briefs supporting the record labels in the Supreme Court case against Cox Communications.

– The Copyright Alliance

– The Motion Picture Association, Inc. (MPA)

– Prof. Bruce E. Boyden

– The Association of Amicus Counsel (AAC)

– The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE)

– Intellectual Property Law Scholars

– Former Members of Congress and Registers and General Counsels of the U.S. Copyright Office

– SoundExchange, Inc., The American Association of Independent Music, et al.

– National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), et al.

– The Authors Guild, Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America, The Songwriters Guild of America, et al.

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Posted Wednesday 29 October 2025 at 3:50 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have three newcomers on the list. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 27 are:

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

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Posted Tuesday 28 October 2025 at 3:47 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

In many respects a lawsuit filed in November 2024 by DISH Network and Sling TV was similar to others filed by the companies in recent years.

Filed at a federal court in Illinois, the lawsuit targeted Richard Moy, the alleged owner of CLVPN LLC, which traded under the name City Lights Entertainment.

According to the complaint, Moy had invested considerable sums of money obtaining servers and streams in order to provide a “top notch” IPTV service, fueled by TV channel content illegally obtained direct from the plaintiffs’ servers.

Since that necessarily involves circumvention of technical measures, DISH and Sling claimed violations of the DMCA under 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2) and 17 U.S.C. § 1201(b)(1). Unusually, the companies also alleged violations of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), specifically 18 U.S.C. §§ 2511(1)(c)-(d), which concerns interception of a real-time transmission.

Complaint Suggested a Massive Operation

Subscriptions were reportedly sold both in bulk to a network of resellers, and on an individual basis direct to end users. A claim reportedly made by Moy himself, that his network had “over 500 sellers” made it into the complaint. The allegation that Moy’s service had over 450,000 users, apparently wasn’t guesswork. DISH and Sling somehow gained direct access to Moy’s IPTV management panel and saw the data for themselves.

Even when one month subscriptions (credits) were sold to resellers for just $5 each, that’s $2.25 million in monthly revenue; $27 million on an annual basis. On top of that eye watering amount, the complaint alleged that “Moy held himself out as a Chicago-area law enforcement officer,” when selling to customers, “to mitigate potential concerns over the unlawfulness of the Service.”

Whatever the intent, there were no signs of mitigation in DISH and Sling’s claim for damages; statutory damages up to $2,500 for each violation of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions (usually assessed on a per-subscriber basis), plus $100 for each day of violations under ECPA, or $10,000, whichever was greater.

Moy Answers Complaint, Confidentiality Ensues

On January 27, 2025, Moy filed his answer to the complaint, admitting that he served as the sole manager of CLVPN and accepting that the Court had personal jurisdiction over the defendants.

The remainder of the allegations and claims were either denied outright, or denied on the basis that the defendants lacked sufficient information to admit or deny the allegations.

On the same date, an agreed confidentiality order was submitted to the court to ensure that sensitive information obtained during discovery – including how the content was obtained and details concerning Moy’s business – wouldn’t see the light of day.

Early June 2024 it was reported that the parties had exchanged initial disclosures and written discovery, and there had been no disputes.

“The parties have exchanged settlement positions, but do not request a settlement conference at this time,” Magistrate Judge Beth W. Jantz reported.

Defendants Run Out of Funds

Mid-August 2025, counsel for the defense filed an unopposed motion to withdraw. Noting that the parties had conducted settlement negotiations and extensive written discovery has been undertaken, the motion stated that the defendants no longer had “sufficient financial resources to continue the representation.”

The motion indicated that not only would the attorney not be paid for any further work, but was still owed for work already done. A motion filed by Moy late August in respect of future representation was swiftly denied by District Judge Edmond E. Chang.

“On review of Defendant Moy’s motion for attorney representation, the motion is denied without prejudice. First, the motion was not accompanied by a financial affidavit, even though the Court explained that requirement at the prior hearing,” the Judge wrote.

“Second, on review of the complaint and the stage of the case, right now a high-school graduate like Defendant Moy can defense this case adequately on his own. The alleged facts are detailed in the complaint and are straightforward, and the cited statutes for the three claims also have, as applicable to this case so far, straightforward elements.”

Parties Agree to Settle

The prospect of conducting an “adequate” solo defense in a case like this, against plaintiffs DISH and Sling, does seem a little optimistic. Fortunately, it appears that Moy was spared the experience.

Last Friday, the parties filed a joint motion for final judgment and permanent injunction.

“The parties entered into a confidential settlement in this case. Under that settlement, the parties have agreed to the Court’s entry of a final judgment awarding statutory damages and a permanent injunction that enjoins Defendants from providing any infringing streaming service,” the motion reads.

The motion continues by noting that the permanent injunction and statutory damages are both authorized by the DMCA. For each violation of section 1201, statutory damages of not less than $200 or more than $2,500 are available for “each act of circumvention, device, product, component, offer, or performance of service.”

The final amount is less than the maximum, based on a “conservative” estimate that aligns with damages calculations deemed acceptable in previous DISH/Sling lawsuits.

“The parties request that the Court enter the agreed final judgment and permanent injunction, which resolves all claims in this case, as doing so will conserve judicial resources and allow the parties to avoid the expense and other burdens of continued litigation,” the motion concludes.

The complaint and motion for final judgment and injunction are available here (1,2, pdf)

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Posted Tuesday 28 October 2025 at 3:40 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

The most enduring questions in the online piracy debate loosely center on what causes it, who is to blame, who can be held liable for it, and what can be done to address it.

Depending on variables including who asks and who answers, answers to these questions can differ quite wildly and are often subject to change. The one constant is that rightsholders’ answers ultimately carry more weight.

They select targets for direct enforcement and identify third parties in a position to assist, or at least, who could be compelled to do so if necessary.

Having a lasting impact at the top end of the piracy supply chain is notoriously difficult. However, move a short distance downstream, placing continuous pressure on intermediaries can eventually pay off. Many can and should do more to fight piracy, the commentary goes, while the remainder are guilty of not doing enough.

Once content cascades down to the masses, ISPs face potential liability, and consumers are blamed for fueling an illegal market. In fact, anti-piracy challenges at this end of the supply chain are so numerous, one might conclude that problems exist almost nowhere else.

The Silent Crisis Costing Billions

For the past several years, site-blocking measures have attempted to build a barrier between pirate sites/services and pirate consumers. These are usually implemented by local ISPs, and in terms of location, could not be further away from the original pirate source.

The Herculean task of building the equivalent of anti-piracy firewalls around ISPs globally is considered necessary, especially in light of an ongoing “silent crisis” that reportedly costs the content industries billions of dollars.

Late August, cloud technology company Velocix cited an estimate from Parks Associates, which predicted cumulative revenue losses of $113 billion for streaming video providers by the end of 2027.

“What’s often overlooked is that a substantial portion of this pirated content is served using legitimate CDN infrastructure,” Velocix continued. “Some platforms report that up to 30% of their CDN traffic is being consumed by unauthorized users, draining network capacity, degrading service quality, and silently eating into service margins.”

The phenomenon is called ‘CDN Leeching’ and while some describe it as a new threat, for some time consumers have been reporting pirate streams of such great quality, they could even pass for the real deal. There’s a very good reason for that; they come from the same source, and only legality sets them apart.

From the rightsholders’ perspective, the situation could hardly be any worse. After producing or buying content, and building a distribution platform to deliver it to the masses, unauthenticated users escape with pristine content at close to zero cost, from an extremely reliable source, which also picks up the tab for the bandwidth consumed.

The Triple Threat

A report published late 2022 by content security company Viaccess-Orca was one of the first to publicly acknowledge what had been known privately for some time.

“Starting around the tail end of 2020, our experts started noticing a new technique being used for the first time: CDN Leeching. Due to its complexities, it has spread comparatively slowly throughout the pirate community since,” the company reported.

“But, as we start to approach the first in a new cycle of large, global sporting events, we are seeing more and more incidents of it occurring. What’s more, these are increasingly coupled with sophisticated front-end operations that, to all intents and purposes, look like legitimate streaming providers with subscriber offers, discounts, advertising, and more. The trend is concerning.”

These quotes are almost three years old, and they describe a problem that was already at least two years old at the time. In 2023, Viaccess-Orca described CDN Leeching as a ‘Triple Threat’ based on the following;

1) Subscriptions loss: Users choose pirate services instead of legitimate platforms.
2) Increased Expense: Pirates access streams from the CDN, but pay for nothing.
3) Service impacts: Pirates consume resources allocated to legitimate customers.

To a background of sports rightsholders warning of an existential threat, how is CDN Leeching carried out, and more importantly, why is it still possible in 2025?

Piracy-as-a-Service

Reports on why consumers need to stop financing criminal streaming services are as common as commentary explaining why intermediaries, including ISPs, DNS providers, and domain registrars, need to step up and take the piracy problem much more seriously. The lack of open discussion on what is clearly a major contributor to the piracy ecosystem is unusual, to say the least.

Anti-piracy companies promote their products and solutions as one might expect, but it’s beyond clear that as a topic for open discussion, rightsholders prefer to talk about other things. There’s no mention in public-facing anti-piracy campaigns, for example, and even when platforms that rely on CDN Leeching are discussed in public, the focus is the services they offer rather than the source of the content upon which they rely.

Under the umbrella term ‘Piracy-as-a-Service’, these platforms are very cheap or even free to access and are more functional and better looking than their legitimate counterparts. For those interested in making the transition from viewer to pirate site operator, a full platform package makes the switch worryingly easy.

Worryingly Easy vs. Regular Worry

With all content piped in (including via CDN Leeching) and the necessary admin/billing/support panels included, anyone can start their own subscription service and begin selling access to others. Verimatrix suggests the price is around ~$45,000 to get started with the potential to make 90% profit moving forward. Maybe other potential outcomes shouldn’t be immediately ruled out.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that a payment of ~$45,000 to an anonymous internet stranger will not always go according to plan. Even if the transaction did live up to expectations, generating $45,000 to break even in a year requires 375 customers paying $10 each per month from Day One.

According to Verimatrix, the going rate for lifetime access starts at $75, with regular access costing as little as $1 per month. That sounds like 1000 customers and a break even celebration almost four years later. Assuming that the ecosystem makes it that far, of course.

Recent comments by the MPA and ACE suggest this general area is considered a top priority. It certainly sounds serious enough to warrant special attention, not unsurprising either, given that the barrier to entry is so low.

“Your grandma’s dog could be trained to do it,” Maria Malinkowitschas at Verimatrix concludes.

Recent reports from various anti-piracy/cybersecurity companies reveal the basics of CDN Leeching, techniques/methods used, and the reasons why it can be difficult to stop. Details of particularly serious and persistent exploits published elsewhere have been excluded (Full original statements linked under the company names cited at the end of each quote)

_____________________________________________________________________
 

[Pirates] typically reverse engineer video applications (e.g., browsers) to understand how to access and extract the CDN content, enabling them to distribute pirated material more efficiently. CDN access serves as an entry point for pirates to obtain copyrighted content. (Irdeto)

_____________________________________________________________________
 

Stolen tokens & keys: When authentication tokens or encryption keys are intercepted, they can be reused to access video streams. Open access points: Misconfigured CDN endpoints or caching policies can expose content to anyone who knows where to look. Referrer spoofing: Attackers disguise requests to appear as if they come from trusted domains. (Velocix)

_____________________________________________________________________
 

Device diversity and compatibility challenges: A wide array of devices for accessing video content, with its own specifications, security capabilities and operating systems, presents a significant challenge in terms of ensuring compatibility across the industry for streaming video providers. As users seek seamless access to content on their preferred devices, the pressure to address compatibility issues compounds, sometimes leading to unauthorized means of access when official support is lacking.(Irdeto)

_____________________________________________________________________
 

Pirates hijack legitimate CDNs by hotlinking or proxying origin URLs, piggybacking on bandwidth OTTs pay for, while degrading QoS, inflating bills, and muddying audience analytics. What allows this to happen? Static tokens, loose referrer settings, shared keys across events, and weak origin shielding. (ICC)

_____________________________________________________________________
 

DRM Exploitation: The media and entertainment industry is currently facing serious challenges with content protection and cybersecurity, the most pressing of which is the exploitation of software-native Digital Rights Management (DRM). This technical vulnerability allows pirates to bypass DRM protections, leading to unauthorized access and distribution of content. This not only undermines revenue streams but also the integrity of content distribution. (Verimatrix)

_____________________________________________________________________
 

Feature Exploitation: An example is where operators need to allow consumers to continue watching content across multiple devices that share an IP address. This consumer demand for content portability creates a loophole that pirates can exploit. Unsecure apps without solid code obfuscation expose valuable DRM license files that pirates will hack to extract the keys and then create their own license files for illicit distribution. (Nagra)

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Posted Monday 27 October 2025 at 3:24 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

After obtaining a court order that granted permission to block pirate streaming services, top-tier football league LaLiga faced a dilemma.

Many of its targets were using Cloudflare’s reverse proxy service, which in basic terms allows a webhost’s IP address to remain private while one of Cloudflare’s IP address is exposed to site users. Since hundreds of sites can share the same Cloudflare IP address, blocking one pirate site would end up blocking them all.

Since no compromise could be reached with Cloudflare, LaLiga went ahead with its blocking campaign, which included blocking Cloudflare’s shared IP addresses.

Courts Unsympathetic,

After the blocking campaign began in earnest, complaints calling for the courts to take action to prevent collateral damage were rejected on various grounds. In June, the Mixed Parliamentary Group, at the request of Néstor Rego Candamil, the deputy of the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), presented a Non-Legislative Proposal (PNL) in an attempt to build momentum.

The proposal explained the shared-IP address situation at Cloudflare and went on to describe what can go wrong on match day.

“The BNG believes the State Government must take action on this issue in response to the repeated blocking of thousands of websites. Failure to do so would constitute a dereliction of duty, leaving them in private hands, which act solely for their own benefit and, without regard, hand them over to third parties,” the proposal continued.

A summary of the three main requests in the proposal:

1. Blocking must be performed precisely, targeting domain names and DNS only
2. Establish protocols for hosts to shut down sites and/or hand over operator details
3. Disallow IP address blocking to prevent blocking of innocent sites.

Proposal Put to the Vote on Wednesday

Presented by the Mixed Group at the request of BNG, the proposal to ensure accurate, collateral damage-free blocking of exclusively pirate sites, received 6 votes in favor, 17 against, and 12 abstentions.

Despite the Socialist Group’s (Grupo Socialista) abstention, a representative said that the blocking measures comply with requirements, ensure that the clubs and broadcasters can protect their rights, and have safeguards to protect legitimate access to the internet for citizens and companies.

The Popular Party and Vox groups rejected the proposal outright, stating that it disregards the damage suffered by football clubs and therefore puts the economy in jeopardy.

A spokesperson for Vox said the government doesn’t get involved when matters are under the eye of the judiciary, adding, “I don’t know if you’re defending piracy.”

Proposal Rejected

The Economy, Trade and Digital Transformation Committee of Congress rejected the non-legislative proposal. In a statement Thursday, LaLiga described that as support for its anti-piracy strategy, including IP address blocking.

In line with comments made by the Popular Party and Vox groups, LaLiga also expressed concern that the proposal failed to address “both the critical impact of audiovisual fraud on the country’s social and economic infrastructure and the origin of this issue, including the actors who profit from this illegal business.”

LaLiga’s statement makes no mention of the internet users the proposal aimed to protect. Instead, it restates its position that all blocking “is proportional, targeted, and time-limited, being enforced only during matches….in strict compliance with the relevant court order.”

Cloudflare Animosity Continues

LaLiga also had further sharp words for Cloudflare, mostly along the same lines as those made earlier in the year which appeared to mark the end of civil discussion, assuming that had ever been the case. There’s clearly a huge difference of opinion in respect of how Cloudflare views its obligations and what LaLiga believes they should be.

At an event in Italy last week, José Ignacio Carrillo de Albornoz, Global Content Protection Manager at LaLiga, said that collaboration is the key to success and that partnerships with other companies are proving effective.

Mentioning no company in particular, he noted that “Not all intermediaries are willing to cooperate,” before revealing a new angle to LaLiga’s strategy and a likely source of future friction.

“We’ve decided to seek legal injunctions globally,” he said.

With a direct reference to European Union Regulation 2015/2120, de Albornoz said that ISPs can block ‘certain types of traffic’ in compliance with a court order.

“We have done so, and it’s proven very effective. Collaboration is the key.”

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Posted Sunday 26 October 2025 at 4:43 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

European football association UEFA was founded in 1954 to protect the interests of European football, particularly within the global FIFA body.

During the early years its powers were rather limited. UEFA was mostly an administrative union, consisting of three employees who issued non-binding recommendations to member associations.

In 1955, less than a year after UEFA was formed, journalists of the French newspaper L’Équipe proposed the launch of a European club championship. UEFA was initially hesitant to adopt the idea but eventually moved the project ahead.

The resulting European Cup was commercialized as the UEFA Champions League in 1992. This is widely recognized as the most prestigious club prize in football and with billions of euros in annual revenues, it’s also serious business.

UEFA Joins Anti-Piracy Coalition ACE

With this much money on the line, UEFA has a vested interest in protecting the competition from piracy. Many millions of fans who can’t afford paid access or prefer to use the money elsewhere, turn to free streams instead, contributing to what UEFA believes is a significant financial loss.

Over the past several years, UEFA has targeted pirate streams through site-blocking efforts and takedown requests. Yet despite these anti-piracy measures, the piracy problem only appears to have become worse. That’s likely one of the key reasons behind its partnership with anti-piracy coalition ACE announced this week.

UEFA itself is a not-for-profit operation, but UC3, a commercial joint venture with football clubs, exploits the multi-billion-euro broadcast rights contracts. By joining ACE, it can now rely on technological resources and law enforcement contacts around the globe.

The European football association is the first sports exclusive rights holder to join ACE and will play an active role in the ACE “Live Tier”. Other prominent members of the MPA-led alliance include the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and beIN.

“UEFA joining ACE represents a landmark moment in our global content protection strategy,” says UEFA’s Guy-Laurent Epstein, commenting on the new. “This partnership allows us to expand our enforcement capabilities, deepen our existing collaboration with industry leaders and leverage ACE’s proven capabilities to disrupt illegal services.”

Targets: Pirate IPTV and Hydra sites

As the name suggests, ACE’s ‘Live Tier’ focuses on sites and services that offer live streams. Speaking with TorrentFreak, MPA’s Deputy Chief of Content Protection Dani Bacsa notes that priority targets include pirate IPTV services and so-called hydra sites that offer live content.

These targets are typically selected in consultation with members. The potential enforcement actions are similar to those taken against other types of piracy.

“We use the same toolkit we use to tackle other forms of digital piracy, which has been tested and proven. These range from out-of-court settlements and voluntary initiatives to civil litigation and working with law enforcement agencies to dismantle major criminal networks,” Bacsa says.

“One thing that we are well aware of is that live content has a short shelf life, and we need to act expeditiously and time operations when they make the most impact. Any activity carried out by ACE is agreed upon and approved by its members.”

MPA and UEFA have previously filed their blocking requests separately in France, India, and elsewhere. In theory, MPA/ACE could take this up in the future as they do for other members. However, when we asked about this directly, we received a “no comment” instead of a more direct “no”.

Whether more sports leagues and football organizations will join ACE in the future is unknown, but the anti-piracy coalition is certainly open to it. It was always stressed that cooperation is key to defeating piracy, and a broader membership base serves this goal.

“ACE is cooperating and coordinating with multiple non-member partners, including leagues, to various extents and capacities. We would always welcome closer collaboration and partnerships to increase our collective force,” Bacsa tells us.

It’s Not Just Piracy That’s Grown

There is no denying that sports piracy is a serious and growing problem. According to EU data, 12% of EU citizens watch sports content through illegal online sources, which goes up to 27% for people between 15 and 24.

However, this doesn’t mean that the revenues from sports rights are dwindling. On the contrary, it has grown spectacularly over the past decades.

In the first Champions League season, income was a relatively modest €46 million. Roughly half of this flowed back to the clubs. By the end of the decade, as the tournament expanded from 8 to 32 teams, revenues had grown to hundreds of millions.

The 2006/2007 Champions League was a milestone, with revenues exceeding half a billion euros for the first time. For the 2013/2014 season, seven years later, revenues had doubled to a billion euros.

While these are healthy revenue numbers, growth exploded in recent years. UEFA’s men’s club competitions now bring in €4.4 billion, with UEFA already eyeing the €5 billion mark for the near future, with Netflix showing interest in the rights.

UEFA would likely argue that there could be even more potential income if piracy was defeated. However, one can also argue that the surge in revenues contributes to a key motivation to pirate. After all, the billions paid for broadcasting rights are in large part passed on to consumers whose TV subscription costs aren’t getting any cheaper.

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Posted Saturday 25 October 2025 at 4:33 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

In the past, rightsholders have frequently complained that takedown requests can be futile. Even if pirate sites take action, content can swiftly reappear.

Taking down entire websites has always been the weapon of choice, but that doesn’t always solve the problem either.

Pirate Site Operators On/Off the Radar

When public pirate sites first became popular at the beginning of the century, many operated as central hubs. Their operators communicated with users regularly, and many fostered a sense of community. There were competitions, merchandise, and the Pirate Bay took its early activism to the streets of Stockholm more than once.

After several prominent sites lost legal battles, the mood changed. Running a popular pirate site was much more than a public act of defiance: it was also a criminal offense with potential prison sentences attached. The Pirate Bay was a pioneer on this front too, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Legal pressure motivated public pirate site operators to stay in the shadows. If rightsholders can’t track you down, they can’t touch you, the theory went. While that is still true to a certain degree today, anti-piracy groups were busy adding site blocking to their arsenal.

The Pirate Bay was one of the prime targets of early site-blocking requests in various countries. This led to soaring popularity for Pirate Bay proxies, which facilitated access to the original site in blocked regions. Despite having no connections to the original team, many proxies adopted Pirate Bay branding, which didn’t bother users all that much.

From Pirate Sites to Pirate Brands

While proxies were often launched as a means to ‘unblock’ sites, they also provided an opportunity for outsiders to generate profit. And with more sites getting blocked, full-on copycats began to emerge. These sites typically had little to do with the originals they copied but used their branding to draw traffic and sell advertisements.

Eventually even the demise of popular sites became a potential goldmine for others, with popular brands living on and continuing to generate profit. Some of these copycats may have had more traditional pirate interests in mind, but others simply saw them as platforms for malicious ad campaigns. The problem for many users was telling them apart.

Fmovies?
 

Today, the exploitation of pirate brands comes in many forms. Streaming sites are particularly popular but due to various enforcement measures, domains are increasingly seen as disposable. Since branding persists, recognized brands are valuable assets.

The Motion Picture Association’s latest enforcement effort highlights several examples.

MPA Hunts Ghosts of the Past

Earlier this week, the MPA requested two DMCA subpoenas at a California federal court on behalf of its anti-piracy arm, ACE. The requests ask Cloudflare and the .to domain registry (Tonic) to hand over all identifying information they hold on alleged pirate site domains.

The Cloudflare subpoena lists 46 domain names in total. This includes sites that the MPA recently flagged to the U.S. Government as “notorious piracy markets“, such as Cineby.app and Nunflix.org, classified as major threats in the new “hydra site” category.

At the same time, the subpoena also lists names of pirate brands that the MPA and ACE targeted in the past, sometimes on more than one occasion.

Fmovies.co and Fmovies.ro, for example, are clearly inspired by the world’s largest piracy ring. ACE helped to shut this operation down in 2024, and two Vietnamese operators received suspended prison sentences for their involvement with the massive piracy network. However, the brand lives on in many forms.

Fmovies and Aniwave
 

The same applies to Cuevana, a popular streaming portal in Latin America, of which ACE has helped to shut down several iterations previously. Despite these efforts and the related criminal investigations, the latest subpoena application targets Cuevana.is and cuevana3cc.me.

The same is true for other domain names such as aniwave.se and 123moviesfree.net. The piracy portals that popularized these brands are long gone, but they live on through various incarnations, giving prospective pirates a familiar brand to look for.

Identifying the Operators

Through the DMCA subpoenas, MPA hopes that Cloudflare and Tonic will provide information to accurately identify the operators of these and other sites. While many sites provide false data to avoid enforcement, these efforts have also proven fruitful in the past.

All the .to domain names are targeted through both companies, which will be helpful to compare the associated user data, including names, IP addresses, payment details, and other information.

Requested information
 

At the time of writing, the DMCA subpoenas have yet to be signed off by a court clerk. Cloudflare and Tonic generally don’t oppose these requests, so that is merely a formality. The real challenge for MPA and ACE is to permanently bury these zombie brands. That’s not going to be as easy.

—

A list of all the targeted domain names is available below. The declarations linked to the two DMCA subpoenas can be found here (pdf) and here (pdf).

– 123moviesfree.net
– 430hdd.com
– animedefenders.me
– animekai.ac
– animekai.cc
– animekai.to
– animeyy.com
– anigo.to
– aniwave.se
– baan-series.online
– bingewatch.to
– bronat.lat
– bstsrs.in
– cineby.app
– cinecalidad.rs
– comandoplay.com
– cuevana.is
– cuevana3cc.me
– doomovie-free.com
– dopebox.to
– flixhq.to
– fmovies.co
– fmovies.ro
– goyabu.to
– hdtodayz.to
– hianime.bz
– hianime.cx
– hianime.pe
– hianimez.is
– himovies.sx
– jkanime.net
– miruro.to
– movies2watch.tv
– moviesjoy.plus
– nunflix.org
– opmovies.tv
– peelink2.com
– pelisplushd.to
– pelispop.lat
– piratetv.pro
– portalultautv.biz
– streamingunity.co
– theflixertv.to
– topsrs.day
– westream.to
– yflix.to

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Posted Friday 24 October 2025 at 8:12 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

During the past several years, sports rightsholders in Europe have made it clear that piracy of fleeting live events poses unique problems that require a strong response.

Existing site blocking measures were seen as insufficient. Standard takedown notices reportedly lacked the necessary teeth to ensure compliance, something that could be addressed under revised EU law, rightsholders said..

In 2022, requests for European Commission assistance escalated to outright demands for legal amendments, which were instantly dismissed by the Commission in favor of an extended consultation.

To what extent the EC’s response acted as a catalyst isn’t clear, but nothing has been quite the same since.

Canal+ Targets Public DNS Resolvers

Anti-piracy group AAPA was among the first to politely inform the EC that its members, including the Premier League, Sky, beIN, and Canal+, were really disappointed with the outcome. Yet, it transpired, no less motivated.

With permission from the High Court in London, Sky began targeting key IPTV providers, eventually blocking thousands upon thousands of fully qualified domains, at an unprecedented rate.

In France, Canal+ decided to close the alternative DNS loophole, reportedly undermining blocking at local ISPs. Seemingly undeterred by potential backlash, Canal+ sued Cloudflare, Google, and OpenDNS, and with the assistance of broadly crafted French law, won a first of its type injunction.

With significant fines on the table to ensure compliance, OpenDNS had seen enough and promptly shut down its services in France.

Why Stop at Public DNS? VPN Blocking Awaits

Attorney Richard Willemant is known for his work representing rightsholders in France. Recent cases include the police raids and civil lawsuit against UptoBox. By volume, lawsuits compelling intermediaries to block pirate sites and delete search results on behalf of Canal+ (and by extension, Premier League, UEFA, LFP, and Formula 1) are far more numerous.

Speaking at an event last week organized by Italian telecoms regulator AGCOM, Willamont spoke about his work with Canal+ and the importance of dynamic injunctions capable of tackling circumvention attempts more quickly. After obtaining an injunction to block pirate sites in France, post-judgment modification of blocking targets takes place with assistance from French telecoms regulator ARCOM.

“ARCOM allows us to update injunctions flexibly, adding new domains or mirror sites without having to refer to the courts each time. This system has made it possible to block thousands of illegal sites and services more quickly and effectively,” he explained.

Blocking thousands of additional targets

Willemant’s more recent stand-out successes include the controversial action against Cloudflare, Google, and OpenDNS.

With that achievement already behind him, Willemant went on to successfully argue that VPN providers NordVPN, Proton, CyberGhost, ExpressVPN and Surfshark, should also be compelled to block pirate sites targeting France.

The move was certainly controversial, but more importantly, did it move the needle?

Success or Failure? Canal+ Attorney Reveals All

During his speech, which outlined experiences from the perspective of rightsholders, Willemant said that for the first time in his experience, piracy rates are now starting to come down. Citing research by regulator ARCOM, which he described as completely unbiased, Willemant reported the following results:

Which specific piracy statistic was reduced by 15% isn’t made clear.

The number of visits to the pirate websites listed in the order is one possibility, but for that figure to hold weight, traffic to other sites not yet subject to blocking would need to be measured too. Diverting traffic to another platform showing the same content has no effect on overall piracy rates.

Other VPN providers not subjected to blocking also factor into the equation. French users behind VPNs may appear to be geographically located outside France, but that’s not necessarily the case.

Nevertheless, Willemant says that when court-ordered and administrative blocking measures are both taken into account, they “clearly indicate that blocking is working” and “producing measurable results.”

Resistance Against Blocking, Enforcement Not Always Possible

After covering the successes, Willemant revealed several causes for concern. While rightsholder enthusiasm for blocking measures isn’t in doubt, opposition to blocking is being felt in the judicial, regulatory, and political arenas.

“We are facing strong resistance from intermediaries including Cloudflare. Despite being one of the respondents in blocking injunctions, Cloudflare independently decides which sites to block, and which not to block. Both the courts and ARCOM are perplexed by the company’s approach.”

For context, the injunction makes it clear that failure to comply with the court’s instructions carries a potential penalty of €30,000.

Willemant’s reference to issues at the judicial level received no elaboration. However, the issue of enforcement clearly came up at some point, hence his comment that enforcement hasn’t always been possible for “practical” reasons.

Penalties exist to incentivize compliance, but based on the comments, it’s possible that something isn’t functioning quite as intended.

Political Pushback at the Highest Level

There’s no question that President Trump’s return to the White House has unsettled United States trading partners, not to mention its long-standing strategic allies. Thus far, few if any have been spared.

The European Union’s efforts to regulate online services operating in Europe necessarily involve some of the largest online platforms; they’re mostly American companies such as X, Facebook, and Instagram, not forgetting Cloudflare and Google, of course.

“We are seeing lobbying pressure, including international pressure, in particular from the US government,” Willemant confirmed.

“The government has asked its diplomats in Europe to oppose certain provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA), precisely those that strengthen intermediaries’ obligations to cooperate [with rightsholders].”

Willemant said that intermediaries have benefited from limited liability for many years under the E-Commerce Directive. The quid pro quo under the Digital Services Act, however, is substantially more involved. In exchange for limited liability, Willemant said, “[intermediaries] must actively collaborate in the fight against illegal activities.”

“Stop Censoring Free Speech”

In the United States, the EU’s sprawling legislation is viewed quite differently. Described by House Judiciary Committee Republicans as a ‘Foreign Censorship Threat’ that infringes on ‘American Free Speech’, the Committee produced non-public documents to show, according to their reading, “that European censors target core political speech that is neither harmful nor illegal, attempting to stifle debate on topics such as immigration and the environment.”

A diplomatic cable seen by Reuters, titled “Action Request” asked American diplomats across U.S. embassies in Europe to regularly engage with EU governments and authorities to convey U.S. concerns about the DSA.

The anti-piracy event at which Willemant made his presentation was centered around Articles 58, 59, and 60 of the Digital Services Act. The articles outline rules for cross-border cooperation, referral of issues to the European Commission, and procedures for joint investigations into suspected infringements of the DSA.

If the United States had its way, the cable suggests, there would be nothing to discuss.

“Repeal and/or Amend the DSA”

“Posts should focus efforts to build host government and other stakeholder support to repeal and/or amend the DSA or related EU or national laws restricting expression online.”

Blocking unfavorable, infringing, and illegal content is already deeply embedded across the EU. What that means for the site-blocking push currently underway in the United States is unclear. As a means to suppress foreign threats, President Trump might be persuaded to get onboard.

Admittedly, tomorrow he may see things quite differently. The fully-committed European Commission, on the other hand, will not.

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Posted Friday 24 October 2025 at 3:07 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of September): 4,533

RIP Matrix

Every year, the US Trade Representative (USTR) issues an updated overview of “Notorious Markets” that allegedly facilitate copyright infringement.

This review is put together based on recommendations from copyright holders and other interested stakeholders. The ultimate goal of the annual report, which was first released in 2006, is to help combat piracy.

The USTR’s report is meant to highlight economic harm and raise awareness. Ideally, it should urge the affected sites and services to take action or, alternatively, motivate foreign governments to step up.

“In the absence of good faith efforts, responsible government authorities should investigate reports of piracy and counterfeiting in these and similar markets and pursue appropriate action against such markets and their owners and operators,” USTR wrote in its most recent report.

Unfazed Pirate Sites

Ideally, the USTR’s review should help to find solutions for existing concerns. However, after covering the submissions for many years, their repetitive nature stands out most. While new piracy players enter the scene occasionally, many arguments and rebuttals are repeated over and over.

While it is understandable that copyright holders see persistent piracy as a major concern, listing a website such as The Pirate Bay every year for nearly two decades raises questions of effectiveness. At this point, yet another listing seems unlikely to move the needle.

From USTR’s 2008 report
 

No one appears to be concerned by yet another callout. The Pirate Bay’s operators don’t seem to care, and neither do any of the other services that continue to work with the ‘notorious’ pirate site.

Therefore, we can likely expect The Pirate Bay to be listed again this year, alongside other ‘pirate’ markets that have been featured for more than a decade, including 1337x, Rutracker, Rapidgator, and others. Whether USTR’s clout will help to change the status quo is doubtful.

Accuse, Rebut, Repeat

A more problematic trend in this diplomatic process is the continued standoff between rightsholders and parties they accuse of wrongdoing, resulting in formal challenges over purported mischaracterizations of their business.

For more than a decade, copyright holders have called out U.S. infrastructure company Cloudflare in their recommendations. While the company is not seen as a notorious piracy market directly, it stands accused of helping pirate sites to shield their hosting locations.

The MPA and RIAA are among the rightsholder groups that persistently highlight Cloudflare’s involvement. Despite rebuttals from Cloudflare, the allegations have continued for many years.

In 2016, the California company responded for the first time, noting that these groups present “distorted descriptions” of the services Cloudflare provides. The company further noted that both the MPAA and RIAA use its “trusted notifier” program to obtain information on pirate sites from Cloudflare.

A year later, the process repeated itself during the next notorious markets review. Rightsholders characterized Cloudflare as a key intermediary in the piracy ecosystem, while Cloudflare rebutted their claims.

At the time, Cloudflare highlighted that the MPA and RIAA had essentially repeated the same arguments, to which the company had already provided a response.

“Most surprising is that their comments were basically the same complaints they filed in 2016 and contain the same mistakes and distortions that we pointed out in our rebuttal comments from October 2016. Simply repeating the same mischaracterizations for a second year in a row does not convert them into facts,” Cloudflare noted.

… 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

The same allegations were made in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and in 2025, not much has changed. Both the MPA and RIAA continue to highlight Cloudflare’s role, without flagging the company as a notorious market directly.

Again, Cloudflare highlights mischaracterizations in recent submissions, while stressing that it provides rightsholders with options to identify hosting locations and the operators of alleged pirate sites.

The company claims that rightsholders are using the USTR notorious markets process as a means to exert pressure on Cloudflare to conduct enforcement beyond legal requirements, which is not what the process is intended for.

“We firmly believe that the continued use of the Notorious Markets process to pressure Cloudflare and other Internet infrastructure companies into taking actions neither expected nor required by U.S. law is both misguided and a misuse of this vital trade tool,” Cloudflare notes.

From Cloudflare’s 2025 rebuttal

Anti-Piracy Groundhog Day

This type of back and forth, with no apparent progress, is not unique to Cloudflare. The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which represents prominent tech firms including Google, Meta, and Amazon, finds itself in a similar loop.

More than a decade ago, CCIA was particularly concerned with the mention of domain name registrars as Notorious Markets. This later expanded to U.S. tech firms in general, after rightsholders pinpointed the role of Amazon, Facebook, Namecheap, and others in their submissions.

The CCIA states that the Notorious Markets review should not include American companies. The USTR’s Special 301 process does not target local companies, many of which already have extensive anti-piracy policies in place.

These repetitive circular arguments are not limited to U.S. companies. Polish streaming service CDA has also submitted multiple rebuttals. This service has actually been featured as a Motorious Market by the USTR, a description the company vehemently rejects.

Without going into the arguments from both sides, CDA’s most recent rebuttal illustrates the ‘groundhog day’ nature of the process.

“(i)t should be noted MPA has already submitted almost identical statements regarding cda.pl in previous years. This year’s submission of MPA is almost a copy-paste of previously rebutted claims from [2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021],” CDA’s attorney writes.

“Similar allegations have been made by MPA in the comments on the [2020, 2019, and 2018 reviews]. In response to all those letters, my client successfully and extensively rebutted MPA’s claims in letters to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.”

From CDA’s 2025 rebuttal

High Stakes Standoffs

This decade-long loop of accusations and rebuttals says nothing about the validity of the arguments from either side. However, it is a signal that USTR’s goal to motivate the key players to tackle piracy issues, ideally through cooperation, does not work in these instances.

The USTR does not report any legal findings in its annual reviews, and takes no direct position on the rightsholders’ arguments or their rebuttals. That said, there are also dozens of examples of sites and services shutting down after they appeared on the Notorious Markets list. Whether the Notorious Markets process facilitated those shutdowns isn’t clear, but the USTR’s involvement certainly didn’t hurt.

As Cloudflare pointed out, rightsholders can use the process to exert pressure. And as with all tools, this one can be used for good and bad. Whether that’s the case here depends on who you ask.

—

A copy of Cloudflare’s rebuttal in response to the 2025 Notorious Markets review can be found here (pdf), CDA’s letter is available here (pdf), and CCIA’s response is here (pdf).

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Posted Thursday 23 October 2025 at 3:47 am AEST (my time).

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As pirate IPTV services have continued to grow in recent years, TV broadcasters and distributors have intensified their efforts to combat piracy.

Pay TV provider DISH Network has been at the forefront of these efforts. In April, the company sued then-unknown operators of popular ‘pirate’ streaming services Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV.

Through a lawsuit filed at a federal court in Texas, and various subpoenas to obtain information from hosting providers, domain registrars, payment processors, and social media services, and Google, DISH hoped to identify the operators.

The subpoenas were directed at Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV directly but also targeted some resellers. For example, the Google subpoena requested information related to the Gmail addresses of bestusiptv and 1dollariptv.

While the Texas court approved the subpoena request in July, the underlying lawsuit was suddenly dismissed last week. Having successfully identified the alleged operators of both IPTV providers, plus a US-based reseller, DISH refocused its action elsewhere.

DISH Identifies Lemo/Kemo, also Sues ‘1 Dollar IPTV’

Shortly after the initial lawsuit against Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV was dismissed without context, DISH filed a new complaint at a Florida federal court. This time, it names the alleged operators of the Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV pirate services, as well as one of their U.S.-based resellers: ‘1 Dollar IPTV’.

DISH alleges that the Malaysian company Kemo E Marketing Sdn. Bhd and its sole shareholder, Noorhayati Binti Abdul Rahim, are driving forces behind the Lemo/Kemo operation. Ammar Towir, also from Malaysia, allegedly owns and operates the Lemo/Kemo domains and financial accounts.

Lemo/Kemo defendants
 

The identities of these defendants were presumably obtained with help from the earlier-mentioned subpoenas. This includes 1 Dollar IPTV, which was allegedly operated by Artistry Group LLC, a company based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Artistry Group was voluntarily dissolved on February 27, 2025, but DISH notes that the company or its successors continue to run 1 Dollar IPTV.

Direct, Contributory, and Vicarious Copyright Infringement

The Malaysian defendants are accused of direct copyright infringement. They allegedly offered access to thousands of live channels and on-demand content through their pirate IPTV service.

“Direct Infringers offer United States Subscribers a 36-hour trial to the Service and sell Service Subscriptions for one device for one month, three months, six months, and one year at prices ranging from $11 to $69,” the complaint reads.

Kemo pricing
 

In addition to selling directly to consumers, both services operate reseller programs. This allows third parties to launch their own custom-branded IPTV streaming sites and apps for under $200. Resellers purchase credits for use with their branded services, which they can resell to their own customers at a significant markup.

According to the complaint, Artistry Group’s ‘1 Dollar IPTV’ is one of these resellers. The Florida-based company is accused of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. According to DISH, the company willfully continued its infringing activities after being notified.

1 Dollar IPTV, which remains online today, advertises itself as the “Best IPTV Service USA”. DISH notes that it sent at least seven infringement notices to the Florida reseller. While the company responded to one notice, the infringing activities allegedly continued.

DISH writes that it sent at least 96 infringement notices to the Lemo/Kemo operators over the years. However, these all remained unanswered. Meanwhile, the operators allegedly switched hosting locations to evade enforcement actions.

$27 Million in Damages

The complaint accuses all defendants of infringing its exclusive rights to “at least” 181 copyrighted works. For these willful infringements, DISH requests the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work, for a total of $27.15 million in potential damages.

In addition to the monetary damages, DISH requests a broad permanent injunction to shut the services down. This would include an order to transfer all domain names used in the infringing operations, such as Kemoiptv.io, Lemotv.io, and 1Dollariptv.com.

In addition to this new lawsuit in Florida, DISH previously filed a separate $25 million lawsuit against UK-based hosting provider Innetra. The hosting company allegedly provided the server infrastructure for Lemo/Kemo and other services, while advertising a policy of ignoring DMCA takedown notices.

By targeting the Lemo/Kemo operators directly, suing their U.S.-based resellers, and going after a hosting provider, DISH is trying to cover all bases. For now, however, they have yet to defeat the pirate IPTV operations.

—

A copy of the complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, is available here (pdf).

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Posted Wednesday 22 October 2025 at 4:41 am AEST (my time).

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The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have one newcomer on the list. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 20 are:

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

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Posted Tuesday 21 October 2025 at 4:02 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

With an industrial-scale Piracy Shield blocking program not quite the panacea some had predicted, Italian authorities and rightsholders have recently upgraded their deterrent messaging capabilities.

After a database of 2,200 individuals who subscribed to a pirate IPTV service was obtained by police during the course of a raid, authorities made good on their promise to issue fines to those exposed.

For some of those who accepted responsibility and settled their debt to society, a hard lesson had been learned. In a letter delivered to their homes recently, the head of DAZN explained the details of a new lesson to the same people. Previously fined recipients were provided an opportunity to pay DAZN an additional €500, this time to head off a possible claim for damages.

Lesson 3: Shame and Suffering, Respectfully

At the recent Sky Up The Edit event, part of a project championing digital inclusion, respect, and sports values, Minister for Sport and Youth, Andrea Abodi, spoke about the importance of respect.

“We must practice it, it’s an idea that can’t just fade away,” he said. “The more we respect ourselves and others, the better our quality of life.”

Sports content creator Lisa Offside spoke a little about social media, where respect can be in short supply.

“I’m realizing that negative comments define the person making them more than the person receiving them,” she said.

The minister wholeheartedly agreed. “You don’t have to respond to disrespect with disrespect: it’s a demonstration of strength and inner peace. We must continue to set a good example.”

IPTV Piracy is Disrespectful to Sport and the Economy

With the state and DAZN currently setting a different kind of example in respect of a couple of thousand luckless IPTV subscribers, Minister Abodi explained that buying pirate subscriptions isn’t simply being disrespectful to sport.

“We must be aware that buying an illegal ticket, piracy, means helping criminal economies. We must understand that we all become accomplices to this crime,” he warned.

Unlikely to do much to foster inner peace among those targeted, a new deterrent measure revealed by Minister Abodi suggests that setting an example doesn’t have to take place in private.

“I believe the names of those who buy illegal tickets may soon be published. It’s beyond privacy concerns, it’s a crime. I hope people understand that perhaps it’s better to spend a few euros more and avoid running into problems,” he added.

Pay Now or Pay More Later

While the ‘name-and-shame’ component is new, the advice from the minister is not dissimilar from that outlined in DAZN’s letter. In general terms, people are free to make their own choices; however, should they choose to pirate rather than buy a legal product (or settle a claim in DAZN’s case), it only gets more expensive when people get caught later on.

“It might seem, in some cases, like bravado,” Abodi explained. “My son also tried it, and I explained to him that it’s not just about taking money away from football.”

Italy’s Minister for Sport presented the new Sports Decree during the summer, which aims to pump money into the sport, in part by revisiting policies that have reportedly hurt the clubs financially.

In a move designed to suppress problem gambling, in 2018 Italy passed the Dignity Decree which imposed a blanket ban on gambling advertising and sports sponsorships. According to almost everyone, the decree hit revenues very hard indeed, so gambling operators are now being invited back after six years.

During that period, infamous betting operator 1xBet was the Presenting Partner of Serie A, Italy’s top football league.

1xBet logos were displayed on virtual advertising boards during matches but were only seen by overseas viewers due to the decree addressing problem gambling at home.

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Posted Monday 20 October 2025 at 5:56 pm AEST (my time).

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In a legal dispute now at the U.S. Supreme Court, the world’s leading record labels and Cox Communications disagree on many things, including how to respond to online piracy.

The labels’ preferred solution is to sever subscribers’ access to the internet. Cox believes that denying internet access is excessive. The case is much more complex than that as the venue suggests, but one aspect seems clearer when viewed in its own light.

When a person gets caught pirating music online, should everyone in their household be denied access to banking, health care, education, and everything else people need to simply exist? Is collective punishment the right way to satisfy a commercial dispute, between a record company and an ISP, over alleged activity of which the family likely had zero knowledge, and were never in a position to control or prevent?

Collective Punishment, Every Single Week

The proposition above sounds fundamentally unfair, because punishing innocent people is always unfair. Billions of people understand and respect the principle of individual responsibility and violations are quite rightly viewed with contempt.

Yet, some will argue that life is full of unfairness. Inconvenience for a few people is inevitable when solving important copyright disputes involving a lot more money than most people have ever seen.

In Spain, an important copyright dispute and accompanying site-blocking order certainly don’t authorize collective punishment on an unprecedented level. Yet, for several hours, several times each week, local ISPs now block hundreds of Cloudflare IP addresses to prevent access to unidentified pirate streaming services run by unidentified people.

There’s no discrimination; ISP’s deploy blocking measures that affect their own customers, denying access to websites using Cloudflare’s services and any others that also happen to be blocked.

There appears to be no warning and little transparency. ISPs never inform customers of incoming blocking, and it’s not uncommon for questions about suspected blocking to be brushed aside or simply ignored. Fingers invariably point to an unspecified court order, obtained by an unspecified entity, on unspecified grounds. As a solution to their current access problems, the information is totally useless to any customer.

The Blocking of NO-IP’s Dynamic DNS

For well over a week, users in Spain have been reporting problems with ddns.net, a dynamic DNS service offered for free by NOIP.com. DDNS.net and similar services offer a solution to an issue affecting anyone with an IP address that periodically changes.

When not at home, for example, gaining access to CCTV cameras might suddenly prove impossible when an ISP allocates a new IP address. Using a service like DDNS.net allows users to associate their IP address with a DDNS.NET subdomain (examplemyaddress@ddns.net) with future IP address updates handled automatically.

A selection of DDNS services built into ASUS routers

Not only are services like these useful, some routers have them built in, so people may be using and benefiting from them without even knowing.

Some users recognized the problem immediately, and with records showing almost 350,000 URLs associated with the ddns.net domain, there’s plenty of scope for disruption.

The above post on X is a fairly typical report with some useful additional detail. It mentions an ISP called Digi, which, instead of returning the correct IP address associated with the user’s DDNS.net subdomain, points it to the 127.0.0.1 loopback address that refers to the user’s current device.

A follow-up post by the same user a day later reveals that blocking actually began on October 8, and despite requesting information from Digi, no explanation had been forthcoming. Another user affected by the issue eventually received a response earlier this week.

While a court order was confirmed as the root issue, refusal to elaborate any further isn’t just common; it’s the standard across all ISPs in Spain. To our knowledge, blocking orders to date haven’t carried any non-disclosure conditions, so in most cases, there’s no legal reason underpinning the lack of transparency.

DDNS.net is Definitely Subject to Blocking

Confirmation that Digi continues to block at the time of writing is available via the unofficial third-party blocking transparency portal hayahora.futbol.

Current information shows that Digi continues to block the service, but details reported elsewhere show that this wasn’t a lone action.

Local reports state that Movistar displayed Error 451 (Unavailable for Legal Reasons), MásOrange displayed the message “Content blocked at the request of the Competent Authority, communicated to this Operator,” while Vodafone said it could do nothing about the outage: “For reasons beyond Vodafone’s control, this website is unavailable.”

Alone in the Dark

The lack of transparency is pervasive, and the indifference to the problems experienced by subscribers all over Spain is evident every week. People with zero connection to any of the parties involved in blocking disputes continually pay the price, wasting hours finding workarounds to bypass deliberate network blockages that, for no good reason, are shrouded in secrecy.

A user who could no longer access his server using Wireguard reported the problems to his ISP, Digi, on October 13. He was informed that, having looked into it, no issues could be found. That led to an entire thread of potential solutions, including replacing the ISP’s DNS with another service and replacing DDNS.net with a similar service operated by DuckDuckGo.

Consolation: Could’ve Been Significantly Worse

Tests suggest that the blocking efforts target the DDNS.net domain, but how far the damage goes in respect of subdomains is difficult to determine by users of non-blocking ISPs.

Digi operates at least two public DNS servers, but remote tests yielded no useful information. Fortunately, domain blocking doesn’t appear to be accompanied by IP address blocking, at least in this case. DDNS.net has thousands of subdomains, but if its IP address had been targeted too, the exponential scale of the fallout could’ve been extraordinary.

The situation in Spain has no parallel in Europe. Blocking is expanding elsewhere, including in the UK, most recently to protect a company behind several well-known weight loss drugs. However, avoidable collateral damage on this scale has never happened.

That it takes place in a member state of the increasingly heavily regulated European Union remains completely unfathomable.

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Posted Monday 20 October 2025 at 3:27 am AEST (my time).

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To combat online piracy, copyright holders frequently use DMCA subpoenas to compel service providers to unmask alleged infringers.

Because these requests don’t require a judge’s approval and are typically signed off by a court clerk, they offer a swift and powerful tool to identify pirates.

In recent years, Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has been targeted with DMCA subpoenas dozens of times. While the personal information it discloses may not always be accurate, it has been instrumental in several enforcement actions.

Shueisha vs. Mangajikan

In some instances, the mere threat of potential legal trouble may already be sufficient. This was the case a few months ago when the massively popular manga piracy site Mangajikan.com shut its doors days after publisher Shueisha obtained a DMCA subpoena directed at Cloudflare.

While Shueisha must have been pleased with the quick result, the publisher still didn’t know who was running the site. Shortly after Shueisha obtained the DMCA subpoena, the anonymous operator of mangajikan.com and related domain alammanga.com, submitted a motion to quash at a California federal court.

Anonymous Operator Relies on Cox Precedent

The ‘John Doe’ operator’s motion to quash cited several reasons why disclosure of their personal data should be denied. This includes the Cox precedent confirmed by the Court of Appeals in August, which held that DMCA subpoenas don’t apply to Section 512(a) service providers, i.e mere conduits that simply pass on bytes.

“Cloudflare is not a proper DMCA target in this instance because here, it only provides DNS and CDN services to the Domains and cannot remove or disable access to content,” Doe’s attorney explained.

“[F]ederal courts have repeatedly held that DMCA subpoenas cannot compel disclosure from service providers acting solely as conduits or CDNs, as they do not host or control the allegedly infringing content.”

The non-hosting argument appears to align with Cloudflare’s own policy. The company does not disable access to allegedly infringing URLs that use its CDN service because it doesn’t host the content permanently. Instead, Cloudflare forwards DMCA notices to the affected subscribers.

Shueisha Counters: Caching is Key

In its response, Shueisha pointed out that since Cloudflare temporarily stores the contested materials in its cache and then serves the content to the site’s visitors, Cloudflare qualifies as a Section 512(c) service.

The manga publisher backed up its claim by simply submitting a screenshot from Cloudflare’s own website describing how its cache “stores copies of frequently accessed content.”

“Cloudflare does, in fact, store content on its servers in the form of cached data which allows for faster loading of sites. Courts, particularly in this district, routinely issue DMCA subpoenas to Cloudflare that Cloudflare does not move to quash,” Shueisha argued.

From Shueisha’s filing
 

Shueisha further argued that the pirate site’s operator failed to cite a single case in which Cloudflare was seen as an “improper recipient” of a DMCA subpoena in this context.

Jurisdiction, Fair Use, and Retaliation

In addition to the disagreement over the correct application of a DMCA subpoena, the operator argued that a U.S. court is not the right venue. In a declaration, they explained that Mangajikan.com allegedly blocked U.S. visitors, had a non-commercial nature, and has already been shut down.

The underlying DMCA notice is also invalid, they argued, because it didn’t properly identify the infringing content and failed to take fair use into account.

Finally, the John Doe operator asked the court for a protective order to shield his identity, noting that he feared retaliation since Shueisha had released personal details of adversaries in the past.

These additional arguments were contested by Shueisha. Crucially, the publisher said that since their declaration was submitted anonymously, the operator can’t be held to the standard of “penalty of perjury” so should be ignored.

Other defenses, such as fair use claims, do not need to be considered for a motion to quash, the publisher added.

Court: Caching Qualifies for a DMCA Subpoena

After reviewing the filings from both sides, the court ultimately sided with the manga publisher.

Firstly, Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Shueisha sufficiently identified a copyrighted work. In addition, its takedown notice included the required statement of good faith belief that Mangajikan’s use was unauthorized.

Finally, the court found that Cloudflare is not a mere conduit service provider under Section 512(a), as it stores cached content. Siding with Shueisha’s argument that Cloudflare functioned as a Section 512(c) service provider, the Court confirmed that a DMCA subpoena can be used.

From Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ order
 

“The parties offer limited evidence to demonstrate what functions Cloudflare performed for Doe’s websites. Still, Shueisha has made a prima facie showing that Cloudflare stores content on its servers in the form of cached data to support faster loading of sites.”

“Because there is no evidence to the contrary, the Court accepts Shueisha’s prima facie showing and concludes that Cloudflare functioned as a Section 512(c) service provider,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers added.

DMCA: A, B, C…

Interestingly, the order didn’t mention Section 512(b), which specifically references caching. That likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome, however, as DMCA subpoenas also apply to these services.

Cloudflare likely sees itself as a caching service in relation to its CDN services, as it typically does not remove cached content, unlike content that it hosts permanently. Therefore, the court’s ruling here should be seen as limited to this particular case.

For Mangajikan’s operator, the ruling effectively means that their battle for anonymity is over. However, the court did order the parties to create a protective order, which will limit how Shueisha can use Doe’s identity, particularly in public.

—

A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ order is available here (pdf)

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Posted Sunday 19 October 2025 at 4:48 am AEST (my time).

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In the decade preceding 2023, overseas sales of Japanese content tripled, reaching approximately 5.8 trillion yen or roughly US$38.3 billion at today’s rates.

According to the five-year action plan laid out in the 2025 Entertainment and Creative Industry Strategy report, that figure surpassed the exports of the semiconductor and steel industries, leaving only the car industry out in front. Now positioned as a ‘core industry,’ and with expectations that even greater achievements lie ahead, the Japanese content industries have a new target: overseas sales of 20 trillion yen – US$133 billion – by 2033.

Content Overseas Expansion 2.0

The global appeal of Japanese content, especially among consumers of comic books (manga) and animated movies (anime), led to an explosion of content consumption that appeared to take the local industries by surprise. Fan-led pirate sites satisfied demand for several years, including all-important translations that often were simply unavailable to buy from official sources.

The plan for achieving the required level of growth is detailed and complex; our focus here is necessarily more narrow. One key aspect expected to boost sales and profitability is a shift away from lower-profit licensing agreements with third party companies overseas, towards serving markets and consumers directly.

Japanese companies are reportedly establishing bases in overseas markets, aiming to build fan communities through live events and merchandise sales, while generating interest in a wider range of products.

The plan identifies 100 specific actions across 10 market sectors including anime, manga, video games and music. Areas in need of attention include a lack of human resources on the business side, a shortage of specialist content creators, restricted production capacity, and a lack of objective market data.

However, if all goes to plan, overseas success is expected to increase demand for Japanese products in general. Inbound tourism is also predicted to rise with the benefits felt on a regional basis. Establishing the content industries overseas would also provide a bridgehead enabling others to follow.

“In order to advance ‘Content Overseas Expansion 2.0,’ it is essential that the public and private sectors work together strategically to increase productivity and profitability across the industry, create new IP content, and strengthen competitiveness,” the action plan reads.

Two-Pronged Anti-Piracy Strategy

The shift to a new business model will inevitably present new challenges, but none quite as difficult to solve as piracy. On one hand, boosting interest in Japanese content overseas could be a roaring success. On the other, if pirate sites end up reaping most of the benefits, that will suppress companies’ abilities to generate profit in support of significant new investment.

The challenge is well understood and, at a base level, hasn’t changed in 20 years. Fundamentally, the solution is equally static; increase the appeal of legitimate products, ensure that content is properly localized to meet the language requirements of local audiences, and make it easy to consume through accessible, value-for-money platforms.

Since the popularity of pirate sites is determined in exactly the same way, Japanese content – manga in particular – is uniquely vulnerable to pirate competition. The cost of creating and promoting legal content is of little interest to most large pirate sites operating in the niche. That has immediate consequences for affordably priced content competing against identical content given away for free. The relatively simplistic manga format only serves to compound the problems.

The two-pronged approach assumes that when everything has been done to meet customer requirements (prong 1) yet content is still consumed from pirate sites, strengthening enforcement measures to remove unfair competition (prong 2) becomes a necessary component of a successful anti-piracy strategy.

General Anti-Piracy Measures and Enforcement

Law Enforcement and Investigation: Anti-piracy group CODA (Content Overseas Distribution Agency) actively investigates pirate sites on behalf of its members, which include some of Japan’s largest producers of manga and anime.

Existing enforcement work alongside international partners such as the MPA, often in cooperation with national law enforcement agencies, is expected to play a major role. Establishing an overseas presence has already led to publicized success in China (1,2,3) and while yet to be formally announced (to our knowledge), evidence suggests similar planning for action elsewhere.

Comprehensive Response: The action plan recognizes that regions with high piracy rates will require a comprehensive anti-piracy approach to create potential for sales of legitimate products. While enforcement will likely prove necessary, the aim will be to offer translated and localized content, supplied in a format that makes it easy for fans to consume, at a price that makes the content attractive.

Manga and Other Publications: The general goal is to apply anti-piracy measures while strengthening distribution of legitimate content. The latter will require support for the JLOX+ initiative (Japan content LOcalization and business transformation(X) Plus) and development of industry infrastructure for the effective translation of manga and other publications.

As things stand, a lack of skilled translators means that pirate sites often take the top slots in overseas search results. Basic translations are considered insufficient for official publications distributed overseas. On a region-by-region basis, translations must also consider local history, culture, religious sensitivities, and in some cases, limits on expression.

Japan Business Federation Calls for Urgent Support

Earlier this month, the influential Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) called for the government to provide immediate, large-scale, and multi-year funding necessary to ensure the success of the content industry as a driving force in the Japanese economy.

While acknowledging the growth of Japanese content on the world stage, Keidanren said that other countries are also launching projects, intensifying competition in an already competitive environment.

“To further promote the content industry as a core industry in Japan, while relying on the fundamental premise of private-sector-led creativity, public-private partnerships are essential. The government must now step up its efforts and provide large-scale, strategic support over multiple years,” Keidanren added.

“In order to achieve the government’s target of 20 trillion yen in overseas sales by 2033, it is essential to go beyond these measures and expand support measures for the entire content industry, such as strengthening central coordination and offering tax incentives.”

The plan is certainly ambitious, but with impressive attention to detail throughout, including during the preparation stages, Japan isn’t taking this lightly. Piracy will likely remain part of the equation for some time, and while that might not be ideal, there might be small comfort in the knowledge that the lowest piracy rates usually accompany the least desirable content.

Keidanren’s call for urgent government support (pdf, Japanese)
Entertainment and Creative Industry Strategy – Five Year Action Plan (pdf, Japanese)

Source

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Posted Friday 17 October 2025 at 5:58 pm AEST (my time).

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