Major sports rightsholders and broadcasters are building momentum for what could be a crucial couple of years ahead.

The USTR has promised to focus on live sports in its Notorious Markets review before rightsholders’ eyes turn to the European Commission, hoping that their endless patience for measures to curtail live streaming leads to something substantial that justifies the wait.

In the meantime, enforcement operations continue. With the ink barely dry on last week’s Streameast announcement, developments reported this week will be seen as another plus for live sports.

Calcio: Italian For ‘Football’ and Italy’s #1 Pirate Sports Site

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and broadcaster DAZN, which is also a member of ACE, report that a coordinated investigation has led to the shutdown of Calcio, the most popular live sports piracy site in Italy.

According to ACE, Calcio received more than 123 million visits during the past 12 months, with Italians responsible for six million of those visits every month. For many, free access to premium Serie A football (‘calcio’ in Italian) would’ve been the main reason for visiting the site, together providing 80% of Calcio’s traffic.

Remaining traffic consisted of visitors from Spain, the United States, Germany, and France. Earlier action by DAZN to have the domains Calcio.ws and Calcio.la blocked in Italy were authorized (1,2) by telecoms regulator AGCOM in 2023. However, using a mountain of backup domains, Calcio remained stubbornly accessible.

Calcio Stockpiled Domains

ACE says that Calcio operated 134 domains but identified none in its press release. From our own limited research, domains now under MPA control appear to have a similar number of unique domain extensions. From calcio.autos to calcio.baby, through calcio.beauty, .best, .buzz and .hair, Calcio had many other domains besides, hoping to undermine any and all efforts to block it.

Based on records correct at the time of writing, a likely incomplete list of ‘calcio’ domains, showing the MPA as their new owner, appears in the first table below.

While ACE doesn’t specify an exact date when Calcio was reportedly shut down, WHOIS records suggest that the domain transfer process likely began around the third week of June and then continued through July and August.

The volume of domains acquired by Calcio’s operator indicates determination to keep the site online. With this many domains, it’s possible to evade regular blocking tactics and minimize the effects of a potential, although somewhat less likely, bulk domain seizure.

Yet, despite these preparations and considerable levels of traffic, Calcio appears to have disappeared off the radar, just like that.

Italy’s Favorite Sports Piracy Site, Run from Moldova

The circumstances of Calcio’s closure are completely absent from the press release. Indeed, the description seems unusually casual for such an important shutdown, to the extent that it immediately stands out.

The Moldova-based operator of the service agreed to cease operations after being approached.

While some kind of legal process can’t be completely ruled out, current copyright-related turbulence of various types could dampen enthusiasm. If nothing else, the timing isn’t great and probably won’t be for several years to come.

Even when all else fails, opportunities to send a deterrent message are considered valuable, and as such are rarely overlooked. In this case a clear messaging opportunity sails right by, drawing attention to another press release absentee; the customary ‘well done’ and ‘thank you’ to local authorities for their invaluable input.

A second oversight can’t be completely ruled out, but other explanations for not dwelling on the details seem more persuasive. When considering Moldova’s traditional lack of focus on piracy issues, and its future planning where the opposite is unavoidable, the backdrop to Calcio’s shutdown is interesting, whether it played a major role here or not.

EU Membership and the Future of Moldova

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in March 2022 the Republic of Moldova applied for EU membership. With only a river separating Moldova from a breakaway state to its east, one with its own government, army, and a heavy Russian military presence, the former Soviet state had understandably seen enough.

After achieving candidate status in June 2022, Moldova set a target date of 2030 for EU Accession and negotiations officially began late June 2024. Even without consideration of guaranteed interference from Russia, Moldova has an extraordinary workload ahead; from democratic reforms to the alignment of national legislation with that of the bloc, everything is more easily said than done.

On the thorny issue of intellectual property rights, an area requiring work beyond the latest copyright amendment draft, Moldova has little room for maneuver. Collaboration with the EU Intellectual Property Office and EU member states is just one of the requirements and already underway.

Among many other examples, on 12 and 13 June 2025 representatives attended the International IP Enforcement Summit 2025 in Athens, Greece, which took place just two weeks before Calcio’s domains began transferring to ACE. That might be coincidence, not unlike two years ago when RARBG disappeared around the same time.

Yet, no matter how Calcio met its demise, cooperation with the EU and, interestingly, a non-EU partner thousands of miles away, is already embedded in Moldova’s future. The situation in Moldova is changing, making shutdowns like this even more likely in the future.

Moldova’s 2025 Work Plan

A document published by the State Agency for Intellectual Property (AGEPI) details Moldova’s action plan for 2025 (pdf). It contains commitments to implement provisions in international treaties and to collaborate with overseas governments and rightsholders in the private sector.

2.2. Ensuring cooperation with the associations of rights holders and other associations with responsibilities in the IP field abroad

 

2.3. Monitoring to ensure the implementation of the provisions of international treaties and agreements in the field of IP to which the Republic of Moldova is a party

 

2.4. Ensuring bilateral collaboration in the field of IP, with IP offices of EU Member States, EFTA [European Free Trade Association], and the United States

In the context of potential EU membership, it’s not hard to imagine Moldova reacting favorably following a request from the EU, or from DAZN via ACE/MPA, to see if a site like Calcio could be persuaded to shut down. In the context of full EU membership, something similar may be viewed as an obligation.

EU Membership or Not, The Piracy Wars Wait For Nobody

What these changes will mean for the many pirate sites currently hosted in Moldova, where DMCA takedown notices are routinely ignored to the frustration of rightsholders, will become clearer in time. Right now, DAZN and ACE will view this as a big win, and most likely it won’t be the last.

“Shutting down illegal operations like Calcio is vital for protecting fans, safeguarding jobs, and preserving the value and integrity of live sports,” says Ed McCarthy, COO of DAZN Group. “ACE and DAZN’s decisive action in removing this site has prevented further harm to the wellbeing of the sports ecosystem.”

“Piracy diminishes the commercial value of a live sports broadcast well before the final whistle blows, harming broadcasters, sports leagues, and fans alike,” says Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

“With the start of the Italian football season, I commend the team for the timely takedown of this notorious operation.”

Update: Additional Table 2 below contains ‘calciostreaming’ domains, apparently seized over a period of months, the most recent this week. Connection to ‘Calcio’ domains currently unclear

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Posted Thursday 11 September 2025 at 1:57 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

Nearly five years ago, a Virginia jury ordered Cox Communications to pay a billion dollars in damages to a coalition of record labels, including Sony and Universal.

The jury concluded that the Internet provider was liable for the pirating activities of its subscribers, as it failed to terminate their accounts after multiple infringement notices.

The liability ruling was upheld at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, prompting Cox to request a hearing at the Supreme Court, which formally accepted the case and received Cox’s opening brief last August.

In recent days, it became apparent that the Internet provider is not fighting the battle alone; there is support from a wide variety of interested parties, including the U.S. Government, which also backed Cox earlier this year.

U.S. Government Warns of Mass Terminations

The U.S. government, through the Office of the Solicitor General, filed an amicus brief supporting Cox’s position. The government’s decision to weigh in is significant; the Solicitor General’s office is seen as the tenth justice and its arguments are granted significant weight by the Supreme Court.

The government’s brief argues that the Fourth Circuit’s decision wrongly applied U.S. copyright law. By doing so, many people may be at risk of losing internet access, while companies such as Cox face broad copyright liability rulings.

The U.S. brief highlights that secondary liability requires “culpable intent” to facilitate infringement, not just a passive failure to act. The brief states that Cox’s services have substantial non-infringing uses, and its conduct, at worst, showed indifference to infringement, not a desire to facilitate infringement.

U.S. Government position
 

If the Fourth Circuit ruling is allowed to stand, then ISPs and other online services may be more inclined to take action following copyright complaints. That would affect innocent users and threaten universal internet access.

“Affirmance of the ruling below would create a substantial disincentive to ISPs’ provision of universal internet service. Terminations of service would adversely affect not only actual infringers, but also the potentially numerous non-infringing users of terminated accounts,” the U.S. brief reads.

The U.S. also sides with Cox’s view that mere knowledge of subscriber piracy does not constitute ‘willful’ copyright infringement, as the lower court suggested to the jury. Willful infringement requires proof that the defendant understood the illegality of their own conduct, not just that they knew their customers’ actions were unlawful, the brief reads.

Google, Amazon & Microsoft Back Cox

Cox’s case also receives support from a coalition of leading tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Pinterest. They submitted a joint amicus brief warning that the Fourth Circuit’s ruling “threaten(s) all types of online service providers” with “overbroad and unpredictable liability rules”.

The tech companies argue that the lower court misinterpreted the DMCA’s safe harbor protections. These are intended to provide a layer of protection for service providers, but the court turned that upside down and transformed it into a “liability-creating mechanism” instead, the companies say.

Upside down

Under the DMCA, online services enjoy safe harbor protection if they implement a proper repeat infringer policy. Not doing so makes Cox ineligible for safe harbor protections, but not automatically liable. In this case, the court concluded that Cox is liable for contributory copyright infringement because it failed to implement such a policy.

Similar to the U.S. position, the tech companies argue that “conscious, culpable conduct” is required to prove contributory infringement, not merely a failure to act.

The brief also points out that willful infringement requires actual knowledge of its own wrongdoing. The loose standard that was applied by the lower court opens the door to damages awards of $150,000 per work, which leads to “truly exorbitant damages,” they note.

Legal scholars, ISPs, rights groups, and others all back Cox

The U.S. Government and tech companies are not the only parties that have come out in support of Cox. Filings from a diverse array of fellow ISPs, digital rights groups, and legal scholars, all argue that the lower court’s decision is a dangerous expansion of copyright law that threatens to disrupt the fundamental nature of the internet.

Altice, AT&T, and Verizon are concerned about the real-world consequences of the ruling for the public, warning of potentially crippling damages awards that could shake up the industry.

“It threatens to saddle internet service providers with responsibility for virtually every bad act that occurs online. And it threatens those providers with massive liability if they do not carry out mass internet evictions,” the ISPs write.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with the American Library Association and Re:Create, stressed the public policy implications. Their brief argues that the lower court’s ruling would cause ISPs to disconnect “innocent and vulnerable users” upon the “flimsiest of accusations”.

“If there was ever a case where the Court should act cautiously before expanding the scope of copyright contributory liability, it’s this one. Here, Defendant Cox is an Internet Service Provider (ISP), upon which millions of innocent users rely for internet access, a vital service in today’s society,” they write.

Digital rights organization Public Knowledge also weighed in, calling the existing precedent “ahistorical and contrary to public policy”. The group argues that the Fourth Circuit’s decision misinterprets the DMCA by treating its safe harbor conditions as a trigger for liability, creating a “perverse incentive to terminate first and ask questions later.”

A perverse incentive
 

Legal scholars Christopher Cotropia and James Gibson point out that holding Cox liable for its inaction, instead of its actions, is a dangerous precedent that could lead to liability findings for all sorts of mere conduit providers.

“By treating Cox’s passive provision of Internet access and data transmission as a knowing, material contribution to infringement, the Fourth Circuit collapsed the crucial legal distinction between conduits and hosts, extending contributory liability into an area where no court or legislature has ever placed it.”

Finally, X Corp., the parent company of Twitter, brought a unique perspective as a social media platform. Its brief argues that the lower court’s ruling would have a chilling effect on free expression.

“Declining to take away an important tool of expression from these ordinary Americans is not the kind of inaction that the doctrine of contributory or aiding-and-abetting liability was meant to reach,” X Corp writes.

“To allow a billion dollar award against a party that did not itself directly infringe, did not participate in the infringement, and did not financially benefit from infringing uses versus non-infringing uses by its subscribers is a grotesque distortion of the purposes of copyright law and common-law principles of liability.”

These briefs make it clear that this isn’t an ordinary case, but a landmark legal battle destined to shape the future of U.S. copyright law. However, these responses are just one side of the argument. The record labels are expected to file their reply brief next month. They will undoubtedly receive support from other rightsholders.

—

Copies of all the supporting amicus briefs mentioned in this article, plus some others that came in, are available below.

– United States (pdf)
– Google, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Mozilla and Pinterest (pdf)
– Law professor Charles Duan (pdf)
– Electronic Frontier Foundation et al. (pdf)
– Legal scholars Christopher Cotropia and James Gibson (pdf)
– Common Sense Copyright Coalition et al. (pdf)
– Public Knowledge (pdf)
– X Corp (pdf)
– Altice, AT&T and other ISPs (pdf)
– Computer & Communications Industry Association (pdf)
– The Copia Institute (pdf)
– ACLU et al. (pdf)
– Engine Advocacy (pdf)
– Joshua Moon and the United States Internet Preservation Society (pdf)
– American Intellectual Property Law Association (pdf)
– Intellectual Property Law Scholars (pdf)
– Internet Society (pdf)
– Grande Communications Networks (pdf)

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Posted Wednesday 10 September 2025 at 3:58 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

In June 2024, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Modded Hardware and its alleged operator, Michigan-resident Ryan Daly.

In a complaint filed at a federal court in Seattle, Washington, Nintendo accused Modded Hardware of copyright infringement and violating the DMCA by trafficking in circumvention devices, among other things.

The case is part of Nintendo’s broader enforcement strategy to prevent the public from playing pirated games on the Switch console. The Japanese gaming company has won several lawsuits and previously referred the infamous hacking group Team-Xecuter to U.S. authorities, which led to its demise.

Initial Denial

In the complaint, Nintendo alleged that Modded Hardware sold devices designed to circumvent its piracy protections. These include mod chips and ‘MIG Switch’ devices, which allow people to play pirated copies of Nintendo Switch games on authentic consoles.

In October 2024, Daly responded to the lawsuit pro se (without an attorney), denying any wrongdoing. He specifically denied the claim that he owned and operated the Modded Hardware business. At the time, access to the Modded Hardware website had already been restricted with a password-protected login.

Modded Hardware

With Daly’s response on the record, a trial was scheduled for January 2026, pitting the defendant against a team of seasoned Nintendo lawyers. After the parties agreed on a joint stipulation late last week, that scenario will likely be avoided.

Modded Hardware & Nintendo Reach Settlement

Following private discussions, both parties agreed to a final judgment in which Daly agrees that he trafficked in “circumvention devices” and “hacked consoles” that allowed Nintendo Switch users to play pirated games. According to the proposed judgment, this violated Nintendo’s rights under the DMCA and the U.S. Copyright Act.

As part of this settlement, Nintendo will be awarded $2,000,000 in compensation. There is no specific breakdown for this damages figure, but the stipulation mentions that Nintendo suffered losses due to the piracy enabled through Modded Hardware.

$2 million
 

“Defendant’s conduct has caused NOA significant and irreparable harm. For example, the MIG Devices, Mod Chips, Hacked Consoles, and Circumvention Services allow members of the public to create, distribute, and play pirated Nintendo games on a massive scale,” the proposed judgment reads.

Permanent Injunction

In addition to the agreed judgment, Nintendo and Daly also reached agreement on a permanent injunction. This prohibits the defendant from owning, selling, creating, or trafficking in “Circumvention Devices” such as mod chips, MIG Dumpers, MIG Switches, and “Hacked Consoles”.

Even linking to third-party sites that offer these devices is off-limits. In addition, Daly is personally restrained from reverse engineering or otherwise tampering with any of Nintendo’s products going forward.

Finally, the proposed injunction requires the defendant to hand over the moddedhearware.com domain name to Nintendo, while destroying any circumvention devices still in his possession.

The provided documents don’t include any background on how this settlement was reached, but it is clear that both parties prefer not to go to trial. At the time of writing, the court has yet to approve the final judgment and the injunction, but that only seems a formality.

—

A copy of the Joint Stipulation for Entry of Final Judgment, submitted at the Seattle federal court, is available here (pdf). A copy of the proposed Judgment and the Permanent Injunction can be found here (pdf)

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Posted Tuesday 9 September 2025 at 2:00 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

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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 two newcomers on the list. “The Naked Gun” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on September 08 are:

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

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Posted Tuesday 9 September 2025 at 3:32 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

From the perspective of rightsholders, blocking domains and IP addresses is necessary to counter a persistent threat from online piracy. In this context, they insist it is reasonable to force internet intermediaries to intervene, using blocking measures that also elevate the risk of unintended consequences and collateral damage.

With blocking demands moving towards a ‘real time’ requirement as standard, increasingly unsupervised blocking exposes third parties to a risk of becoming collateral damage in a war that already transcends national borders.

With no requirement to report incidents of overblocking, and third party claims routinely dismissed as unsubstantiated hearsay, the findings of a new study focused on Italy’s Piracy Shield platform provides an opportunity for reflection.

The peer-reviewed study reveals that broad-scope blocking significantly disrupts legitimate online services, renders IP address space unusable, undermines the operation of legitimate businesses, while posing a broader systemic risk encompassing national infrastructure.

Piracy Shield: Collateral Damage and Efficacy

The credentialed authors of the study, 90th Minute: A First Look to Collateral Damages and Efficacy of the Italian Piracy Shield are Raffaele Sommese, Anna Sperotto, Jeroen van der Ham, and Antonia Affinito at the University of Twente, Netherlands, and Antonio Prado, an independent consultant in Italy.

Motivated by the aggressive piracy countermeasures of Italy’s Piracy Shield, related collateral damage, and a lack of empirical data on the platform’s real-world impact, the study aims to provide the first data-driven investigation into the platform’s efficacy and unintended consequences.

Obtaining Data, Understanding Blocked Resources

In an environment that the researchers describe as favoring “enforcement efficiency over full transparency” access to relevant official data was an immediate challenge. Resources blocked by Piracy Shield are not published by telecoms regulator AGCOM and an unofficial list of blocking tickets available via ISP Infotech appear only in redacted form.

A Piracy Shield dataset leaked to GitHub, containing ~11,000 IP addresses and ~42,600 fully qualified domains (FQDN), provides the foundation for the study.

Of these domains, 18,849 (44.2%) were confirmed as still blocked, while 23,805 (55.8%) had been removed. Verified by the researchers as authentic after cross-referencing with Infotech data, the same dataset was independently reviewed by TorrentFreak in 2024 and is considered reliable.

Identification of the blocked resources and exploration of their characteristics, allowed the researchers to evaluate ownership, operational control, while inferrinng hosting and leasing activity; i.e IP addresses likely to belong to leased address space.

The researchers leveraged data provided by OpenINTEL to identify domains either hosted on blocked IP addresses or referring – via CNAME records – to blocked FQDNs. They also conducted their own scan of 1.8 billion FQDN extracted from Certificate Transparency logs to identify shared infrastructure and potential collateral damage.

Distribution of Blocked IPs and FQDNs

From February 2, 2024 to June 4, 2025, a total of 3,782 blocking requests (tickets) were issued to the Piracy Shield platform. Of those, 1,817 (48%) tickets targeted at least one FQDN and one IPv4 address, 1,719 (45%) targeted only FQDNs, and 246 (7%) targeted only IP addresses. The distribution of blocked IP addresses per country and FQDN per TLD are shown in the tables below:

EU IP Addresses Dominate

Table II shows that 37.9% of the IP addresses blocked by Piracy Shield are hosted in the Netherlands followed by Germany (9.0%) and Romania (8.2%), with a relatively modest 843 IP addresses (7.7&) located to the United States.

“Interestingly, 2.5% of the blocked IPs are located in Italy, and 76.8% of the blocked IPs are within the European Union, where copyright owners may have better leverage to identify illegal streaming perpetrators and take them down,” the researchers note.

Distribution across the top 15 hosting infrastructures for the 10,918 IP addresses, by company, /24 networks (2,134 overall), and ASN (262 overall), is shown in the table below. (Note: As referenced in the study, a ‘/24 network’ is a Class C IPv4 network supporting 254 hosts)

“Interestingly, a single company – GZ Remittance— hosted more than 9.5% of all blocked resources, concentrated in just 15 distinct /24s. This may suggest that the company is highly favored by illegal streaming operators, who likely rotate through IPs to evade blocking. The same pattern is observable for NexonHost, which shows similar figures,” the study notes.

“OVH stands out for having the highest number of unblocked IPs – 41 in total, accounting for almost one third of all unblocked addresses. This suggests that shared resources may have been inadvertently affected, or that the infrastructure was later reused for benign purposes.”

IP Addresses and Leased Address Space

The researchers observed that of the 10,918 blocked IP addresses, 2,618 (24%) were linked to leased address space. This is significant; leased address space can be used as an evasion tactic and could lead to collateral damage when ‘pirate’ leases expire and IP addresses are made available under a new lease.

The study found that, on average, 7.5 IP addresses per /24 were blocked in leased address blocks, compared to just 4.5 IP addresses per /24 in non-leased blocks. This suggests that some pirates prefer leased address space, leading to potential collateral damage when blocked IP addresses are reassigned under a new lease. Interestingly, 453 IP addresses were leased for the first time after being blocked, signaling major Italian connectivity issues for the new operator of those IPs.

Furthermore, with assistance from IP leasing broker IPXO, the researchers were able to identify an additional 1,012 IP addresses spanning 121 /24 networks still subject to Piracy Shield blocking. Of these, 268 IP addresses (across 32 /24s) were no longer leased by the same companies, with 250 IP addresses (across 23 /24s) having been re-leased to different companies.

“These results highlight a significant risk of collateral damage for companies that may find part of their address space unusable when communicating with Italian customers,” the study notes.

Collateral Damage

The study uncovered significant and widespread collateral damage, mostly caused by IP address blocking.

During the study’s timeframe, 7,114 FQDNs were either completely or partially affected by Piracy Shield blocking, with 510 domains manually confirmed by the researchers as legitimate websites, unconnected to any streaming-related activity.

Of these, 373 domains were disrupted by IP address blocking, including personal branding pages, company profiles, hotels, restaurants, a car mechanic, a nunnery, retail shops, an accountant, and a telehealth missionary program. In three cases, blocking single IP addresses caused 60 collateral blocks each.

Between February 2024 and June 2025, 7,742 FQDNs were impacted by IP address-level blocking. In 7,232 of these cases, all hosting IPs of the affected FQDNs were blocked and in 302 cases a subset of their hosting IPs suffered disruption. Mail server IPs were blocked in 782 cases and disruption due to nameserver blocking was observed in 397.

In one case a single blocked Hetzner IP address disrupted 325 domains, one of which was operated by a Portuguese hosting provider that suffered 16 days of lost email connectivity with Italian customers. Anycast IP addresses belonging to DDoS protection providers including StormWall and DDoS Guard were also blocked and in Italy, nine domestic websites – including an Italian marketing company using an OVH IP address – remain unreachable.

On average, domains affected by Piracy Shield-related collateral damage remain impacted for ~320 days.

Conclusions and Discussion

The study’s findings validate warnings from Italy’s ISPs before Piracy Shield’s launch early 2024. In broad terms, there were two critical issues: 1) IP address blocking would cause collateral damage and 2) Blocking would prove ineffective while imposing an unacceptable burden on local ISPs.

“Our results on the collateral damages of IP and FQDN blocking highlight a worrisome scenario, with hundreds of legitimate websites unknowingly affected by blocking, unknown operators experiencing service disruption, and illegal streamers continuing to evade enforcement by exploiting the abundance of address space online, leaving behind unusable and polluted address ranges,” the researchers note.

With emphasis that the study offers a “conservative lower-bound estimate” that likely misses “cascading disruptions on other services like APIs, email, or databases that rely on direct IP connectivity”, the impact of Piracy Shield is likely understated.

“Technically, it risks systemic failure by blocking shared infrastructure like CDNs and DDoS protectors while polluting the IP address space for future, unsuspecting users. Operationally it imposes a growing, uncompensated burden on Italian ISPs forced to implement an expanding list of permanent blocks.”

Mitigation

The researchers make many solid recommendations, the majority of which have been aired dozens of times previously before being routinely rejected. With the support of evidence presented within this study, conducted by highly competent experts in relevant fields, it’s hoped that opportunities to mitigate damage will receive greater attention.

• IP-level blocking is indiscriminate, has consequences outweighing its benefit, and should not be used
• Many illegal streaming services operate within the EU; rightsholders’ legal action should target them there
• Resource owners should be notified immediately when their assets are blocked
• A fast unblocking mechanism must be made available
• AGCOM should publish a list of all blocked resources to enable third party review and remedial action
• Control of critical infrastructure under a single opaque platform remains ill-advised

To conclude, we hope that this work sparks a thorough discussion among Italian operators, AGCOM, and national policymakers on reconsidering the Piracy Shield initiative. This reflection must account for the significant collateral damage to legitimate infrastructure and the potential threat to national security the platform may pose. Ultimately, the challenge is not whether piracy should be fought, but how to do so without endangering the very principles and infrastructure that sustain the Internet as we know nowadays.

90th Minute: A First Look to Collateral Damages and Efficacy of the Italian Piracy Shield, published as part of the upcoming 21th International Conference on Network and Service Management, is available here (pdf)

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Posted Tuesday 9 September 2025 at 3:10 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

Will the United States introduce a pirate site blocking program? Depending on who one asks, the answer could go either way.

A slightly different and potentially more complex question isn’t whether the United States will adopt such a program, but whether it should. Is limiting communications absolutely necessary and the only option left? Is it still absolutely necessary after considering how quickly the UK is descending into censorship, with the equipment standing by to take things to the next level?

No matter how the topic is presented, and whether for or against site blocking, definitive answers are always elusive. Yet, extend the timeline to the horizon and a little beyond, and whether the United States will ever introduce a site blocking program has a straightforward answer; It is absolutely inevitable; only the timing, framing, and eventual implementation are in doubt.

Transparency is Not an Option, It’s Absolutely Necessary

Murphy’s law posits that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and almost every prediction from 2012 about how site blocking could go wrong, has gone wrong in the period since. There has been no wholesale collapse of the internet, yet, but try telling that to the Spanish who, incidentally, were simply ignored when they called out for help.

No system is perfect, but a transparent system helps to build trust. The recent site blocking proposals in the U.S. recognize that transparency is important, but there’s a pretty big caveat. Since relatively few people are aware of the true scale of worldwide site-blocking due to a general lack of transparency in most countries, how does one assess the value of transparency that isn’t comprehensive?

The recently introduced Block BEARD draft does not mention public transparency, but both FADPA and ACPA envision publication of site blocking orders once granted by the court. For scale, that’s more or less equivalent to reading the opening paragraph of a detailed news article.

In other jurisdictions where orders made public, they typically outline the justification for blocking and detail why the target sites meet the threshold for blocking under relevant law. At this crucial stage, shining a spotlight on anomalies is essential because people may act quite differently when free from scrutiny.

The limited transparency outlined in the FADPA and ACPA proposals can be put into perspective with help from a practical example.

DAZN Obtains a Local Blocking Order With Global Impact

The Indian legal system may not always deliver the results major U.S. rightsholders expect, but when it comes to site blocking, the High Court of Delhi has shown an enthusiasm for blocking up to tens of thousands at once. More recently, the issue of jurisdiction has received liberal treatment too, with blocking orders under Indian law reaching into other countries with instructions for registrars to suspend domains, among other things.

An order obtained in June by Disney subsidiary Star India is the latest example of the High Court going the extra mile for rightsholders. With maximum freedom to block domains quickly, limited oversight was temporarily suspended in favor of no oversight at all while the Court was on holiday.

This dynamic+ injunction grants permission to block domains that don’t yet exist, and if content is delivered by apps instead of sites, no problem; blocking is not only authorized but must take place in real-time. Domain suspensions are part of the package too, including those linked to American companies such as Namecheap, which is known to comply. Try that in the United States, and it could easily take one or two years.

After obtaining global broadcasting rights to the FIFA Club World Cup 2025, selecting India as the venue for its site-blocking measures would’ve been a no-brainer for DAZN.

With no question of who owns the rights anywhere on the planet, the High Court of Delhi granted an injunction that required local ISPs to block six sites: buffsports.me, sporthd.me, piratemedia.me, vipbox.lc, strimsy.top and vipstand.pm.

Despite the popularity of the domains, the list of six domains was pretty mild by most standards. That the sites lacked popularity in India made things more interesting but not exactly a surprise given the potential for global impact.

Transparency Ends Here in the U.S. Proposals

India’s blocking measures are roughly equivalent to those suggested in the United States drafts and, up to this point, offer the same level of transparency.

In India, once one knows where to look, most details are available for scrutiny, from the initial order to any follow-up measures. In the United States (as far as we know), only the information in the initial order would be made public; nothing beyond that would ever see the light of day.

A Modest Beginning, the Calm Before the Storm

The dynamic order was issued on May 28, 2025, and very quickly at least three of the original domains were suspended by 1API Gmbh, NETIM and Namecheap. Suspensions aren’t part of the current proposals in the United States but may not be required either, not with an offshore service like this available.

DAZN Comes Up With a Few More Domains

On June 2, DAZN filed its first ‘List of Additional Domains’, all of which are submitted along with an evidence pack (below). These domains are typically proxies, mirrors, or new domains obtained by, or linked to, the six sites outlined in the initial order. However, DAZN kept its powder dry for good reason.

The injunction permitted the blocking of ANY site, regardless of any connection with those revealed in the initial batch. Additional List 1 contained the following domains, all subject to local ISP blocking and suspensions by domain registrars that have global impact:

Additional List 1: vipleague.im, amzstream.tv, footybite.store, ppv.wtf, rivofutboll.live, pelotalibretv.me, www.pelotalibretv.me, thedailytimereads.com, streamlivetv.site, livetv.sx, cdn.livetv853.me, futbollibretvpe.com, etvpe.com, tv.hesgoal-tv.app, live.hesgoal-tv.app, king-shoot.live, tipotv.com, futlibre.net, bosscast.online, sportp2p.com, lshunter.online, daddylive.dad, klubsports.site, totalsportek.es, hdplayerr.xyz, totwatch.php, ozb.spon.live, ff.wcup.me, premiertv.watch, amzlive.tv, bingsport.com, 247sport.net, bingsport.watch, deporte-libre.link, worldsports.me, soccerworldcup.me, qatarstreams.me, socceronline.me, fbstreams.pm, vipleague.pm, rojadirectatv.run, rojadirecto.de, rojadirectahd.com, cracksports.me

On June 17, DAZN submitted another list containing many popular domains, especially in Latin America.

Additional List 2: ovogoal.net, live-kooora.com, koraonline.live, 1ball.me, flicksoccer.com, totalsportek.pro, fawanews.com, rbtv77.vin, gol.yalla-shoot-as.com, k315.liveball.ws, redditsoccerstreams.org, rbtv77.rocks, kora.kooora-goal.live, stad.yalla-shhoot.com, totalfhdsport.xyz, tiksports.net, hesgoal.one, pelota-libre.org, rojadirectaenhd.net, score808pro.com, tazztv.art, tazztv.pro, rojadirectaenvivo.store, rusticotv.vip, nbatv.store, rojadirectavip.net, futbolhoy.live, pelotalibre.com, pirlotv.in, pirlotvenhd.com, stream196tp.com, futbol-libre.org, apretontv.com, la12hd.com, verfutboltv.net, todopelotatvhd.com, telerium.biz, tarjetarojaenvivo.nl, futbolparatodostv.net, viperplayhd.com, pelotalibre2.org, futbolparatodostv.lat, futbollibreonline.org, tarjetarojaa.com, deporte-libre.fans, rojadirectahd.mx, deportestvhdplus1.pro, rojadirectatv.uno, rojadirectaenvivo.la, antenacentral.store, pelotalibreonline.com, pirlotvhd.store, rusticotvhd.com, deportelibre.live, rojadirectatv.world, pirlotv.uno, futbollibretvenvivo.com, pirlotv.bet, envivoplay.net, pirlotvenhd.online, sportwatch24.com, telegratishd.com, rbtv77.services, kooralive.ws, rojadirect.top, kooora-lives1.com, pirlotv.win, fr2.sportplus.tv, dooball66m.com, rojadirectaenvivo.uk, freeshot.live, daddylive.icu, qkoora.live

A day later, a fairly small batch followed, probably because there was not much left to block…

Additional List 3: elitegol.onl, elitegol.watch, futbollibre.run, futbollibrego.cl, futlibre.com, kooora4us1.com, live.kickkoora.com, livetv853.me, me.webcric.com, multicanais.casa, pelotalibretv.com, pirlotv.onl, pirlotvdh.lol, pirlotvenhd.me, pirlotvhd.lol, rivestream.org, rojadirect.uno, rojadirecta.gratis, rojadirectaenhd.me, rojadirectahdenvivo.com, rojadirectatv.lol, selcuksportshd1826.xyz, sportsbay.dk, streamonsport.city, streamsgate.tv, yalla-shoot-tv.one

…apart from yet another batch just 24 hours later, obviously.

Additional List 4: alangulotv.cloud, apurogol.info, balondeportes.com, cdn.stream-24.xyz, daddylivehd.click, dzritv.com, fctv77.com, futbollibre.biz, ggsport.tv, h5.365streams.world, home.sporttuna.vip, la14hd.com, megadeportes.pro, megadeportes2.lat, mutstreams.com, pelotalibrehd.com, pirlotv.asia, pirlotv.lol, pirlotv.shop, pirlotv.tel, rbtv77.com, rojadiecta.uno, rojadirectatvhd.org, rojadirecto.uno, rojdirecta.com, tufutbollibre.com, tvlibreonline.org, verfutebol.website, viperplayonline.com, zonamovil.net

After submitting its fourth additional list on June 19, it seems reasonable to point out that the original site-blocking application offered almost nothing to suggest the blocking bonanza that would follow. That’s relevant to the transparency discussion in the United States, especially when one considers this is nothing out of the ordinary.

Indeed, it’s a strategy seen anywhere where it’s allowed in the world; reveal as little as possible in the application, then when the transparency lights go out, deliver the mother lode.

No Criticism of DAZN, It Did Everything it Was Supposed To

DAZN obviously didn’t have the luxury of complete darkness but nevertheless, it didn’t complicate the application with a huge volume of domains when it wasn’t required to. Indeed, there can be no criticism of DAZN anywhere in the process. The application had no issues and as soon as it was practical, the broadcaster began submitting the additional lists detailed above.

And this list dated June 20, a day after the previous one.

Additional List 5: 24tv.site, 808fubo.com, antenasport.online, azulbogota.com, dooball66k.com, drama-tv.live, en.sportplus.live, futbol-libre.info, futbollibrehd.com, futbollibrehd.futbol, futemax.ngo, hattrick.ws, k323.liveball.ws, kooralive-4k.com, koora-live-tv.app, kuoralive.com, lady3.ltdak8nature334hqis.shop, livestreming.online, nizarstream.xyz, sexandsamba.xyz, shoot-yalla.me, shoot-yalla-tv.live, soccer-1000.com, softlive.xyz, streameast100.com, stream-easts.app, streamtpglobal.com, supertipzz.online, yalla-shooot.io, zingsport.tv, zonamovil.top

Having illustrated what often happens after an initial blocking order [pdf] is issued by a court, we should mention that Additional List 5 above was followed by additional lists 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

That’s an awful lot of domains already, but DAZN didn’t stop until it had submitted its 19th Additional List making a grand total of 536 domains, including some of the largest sports streaming platforms online today; or not, as the case may be.

Under FADPA or ACTA, the public would be made aware of just buffsports.me, sporthd.me, piratemedia.me, vipbox.lc, strimsy.top and vipstand.pm.

Transparency as proposed would hide the remaining 530 domains, an uplift of 8,833% over those actually disclosed. The greatest risk of collateral damage exists not in the initial order, but what came next.

As far as we’re aware, there have been no voluntary disclosures of collateral damage during the past 15 years of global site blocking. Cloudflare’s unique position allowed it to identify thousands of instances. Transparency would help to identify and potentially eliminate many more.

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Posted Monday 8 September 2025 at 12:54 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

Sports piracy made headlines this week when anti-piracy coalition ACE announced the shutdown of the world’s largest illegal sports streaming ring.

The operation, carried out by Egyptian authorities at the end of August, resulted in two arrests and the seizure of roughly 80 domain names.

A website carrying the ‘Streameast’ brand was one of the main targets. This was indeed one of the larger pirate sports streaming portals. However, reports by The Athletic and other news outlets concluded that the original Streameast site was shut down; that is not correct.

In reality, this week’s takedown targeted a massive ‘copycat’ network that simply copied famous ‘pirate’ site logos and branding to its own sites, to boost their popularity by passing off as the originals. This was corroborated by the operator of the original Streameast, who quickly clarified they have no connection to the seized sites or to Egypt where the enforcement action took place.

USTR puts a spotlight on Sports Streaming Piracy

While the distinction might seem minor, getting the facts right is crucial, especially when other prominent reports are also causing confusion.

In this light, it is good to see that the U.S. Trade Representative recently announced that sports piracy will be the focus issue for its upcoming review of significant piracy and counterfeiting threats. The annual “Notorious Markets” overview is compiled with help from copyright holders and can be used to motivate foreign authorities to take action, with the emphasis on “piracy of sports broadcasts” in 2025.

Issue Focus

The MPA, parent organization of the ACE coalition, is a regular ‘notorious market’ contributor. In its most recent submission last year, the group did not mention Streameast by name. Instead, Librefutbol.su, Librefutboltv.net, and Buffstreams.app^(*) were the only featured sports streaming sites in its recommendation.

From MPA’s 2024 USTR recommendations

With sports piracy as the focus issue, MPA may list more sports streaming targets in its upcoming recommendations. That will also be an opportunity to mention the shutdown of the world’s largest illegal sports streaming ring as a recent key achievement, perhaps with additional context.

Streameast vs. Streameast

Additional eyeballs on sports streaming presents a good opportunity to clear up the Streameast confusion.

After all, the original Streameast, which was targeted in a crackdown by U.S. authorities last year, remains online today. Perhaps that site is no longer considered a major threat due to more modest traffic, but the fact that it was targeted in a criminal investigation by the feds would at least warrant a mention.

The Premier League and BeIN may be able to help with that, as these rightsholders previously flagged Streameast.app (the clone) as a notorious market. With the clone sites now shut down, the original Streameast is picking up extra traffic and that will automatically bring it back into focus.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s call for comments on the 2025 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy is available in the Federal Register. The deadline for submissions is October 1.

—

note: Buffstreams.app is one of the domains that was recently taken down, likely as part of the Streameast operation. It is now under the control of MPA/ACE. In last year’s USTR submission, MPA said that the operators were believed to be in France.

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Posted Sunday 7 September 2025 at 2:17 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

During the first half of 2022, U.S. Senator Thom Tillis was working on a proposal to put forward in a new pirate site blocking bill.

The text of the No-Fault Copyright Remedy Act (NFCRA) was shared among stakeholders but wasn’t announced to the public.

A decade had passed since the first attempt to introduce site-blocking legislation backfired in 2012. For NFCRA, copyright holders and Internet service providers were brought on board early with the aim of negotiating a mutually agreed text.

That hoped-for agreement never came. Rightsholders and ISPs submitted proposed amendments that would take the bill in different directions, widening the gap instead of closing it.

The NFCRA draft

After the failed attempt to make progress behind closed doors, things went quiet. However, rightsholders’ calls for site-blocking legislation only intensified, and this summer Senator Tillis officially introduced the Block BEARD Bill.

The Block BEARD Bill ‘Evolution’

The Block BEARD Act of 2025 is a bipartisan effort supported by Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), as well as Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA). The latest version still includes sentences from the early draft circulated three years ago, but there are substantial changes too.

A key difference is that the Block BEARD proposal allows for dynamic blocking. It specifically gives courts the authority to amend existing orders with new domain names or IP addresses, if a site uses them to circumvent blocking efforts.

The latest bill also proposes a significant reduction in the time allowed to implement blocking measures; just 15 days and for live events “as soon as practicable”. In the NFCRA draft, service providers would’ve been given a minimum of 30 days to act, with no special carve-outs.

The good news for some service providers is that Block BEARD doesn’t apply to them all. Those with fewer than 50,000 subscribers are explicitly excluded, and the same applies to venues such as coffee shops, libraries, and universities that offer internet access to visitors.

Meanwhile, the operators of alleged foreign pirate sites have the right to appear in court to prevent a blocking order from being issued. That safeguard wasn’t included in the bill’s predecessor.

Key differences between the two legislative drafts. 

To what degree stakeholders were involved in the drafting process of the latest text is not known to us. It’s clear that not all parties who were previously involved were brought back to the table, but previous comments by Senator Coons suggested that ISPs and rightsholders were involved.

In any case, the process and history show that the latest proposal is far from new. It’s the result of a multi-year effort that took place outside the public eye.

More Blocking Bills in the Works

Block-BEARD is not the only site-blocking proposal currently on the table in the United States. Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA), which proposes a similar blocking regime, but one that specifically excludes DNS resolvers.

At the same time, Representative Darrell Issa is working on yet another site-blocking bill, the ‘American Copyright Protection Act’ (ACPA), which tackles the same issue from a different angle by appointing judges for blocking cases. This version is yet to be formally introduced.

If site-blocking efforts move forward, the eventual law must pass both the House and the Senate. This means that a combination of these proposals may ultimately lead to the final blocking legislation, if it gets that far.

Opposition Treads Carefully

Over the past several weeks, many rightsholder groups have responded positively to the proposals, as expected. Interestingly, however, there hasn’t been much response from residential ISPs or the many companies and organizations that previously spoke out against similar legislation.

The Re:Create coalition, which promotes a free and open Internet on behalf of members including the EFF, Creative Commons, and the Consumer Technology Association, has been most outspoken in opposition.

“Despite a clever acronym that distracts from the truth, the Block BEARD Act is a new name for a decades-old attempt by Big Content to control the internet through site-blocking,” Executive Director Brandon Butler commented.

“The Block BEARD Act would legalize a dangerous mechanism for content trolls to request the take down of legitimate content because of an alleged piracy claim, putting Americans’ free speech rights into the hands of a powerful few.”

Most large Internet services have remained quiet, however. While we can only speculate on their reasons, they may prefer diplomacy over a major SOPA-style pushback.

The online and political landscape has changed dramatically over the past thirteen years. And with site-blocking being broadly implemented over the world, stopping multiple legislative proposals in the United States is not going to be easy.

American companies such as Google and Cloudflare already implement blocking measures in other jurisdictions, so if the U.S. proposals move forward, they would likely prefer to exert their influence, rather than publicly berating the efforts.

Concerns Over Collateral Damage

The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) is keeping a close eye on developments. The organization represents members including Cloudflare, Google, Amazon Web Services, and several large VPN providers, all of which could be impacted by the blocking plans.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Executive Director Christian Dawson notes that combating illegal activity is important, but he urges caution over the risk of causing collateral damage.

“Blocking at the infrastructure level is a blunt instrument that too often breaks the open Internet in the process,” Dawson says.

“While we share the goal of addressing illegal activity, the Block BEARD Act risks causing collateral damage to lawful services and undermining the security and reliability of the networks we all depend on.”

As the legislative process moves forward, we can expect more commentary and advocacy from various stakeholders. However, a global blackout of the Internet and massive worldwide protests are not on the cards.

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Posted Saturday 6 September 2025 at 3:35 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

Research and investigations concerning internet platforms can be incredibly time-consuming, despite most of the necessary tools being readily available to the public free of charge.

Threat intelligence platform Silent Push combines the essence of these tools into a graphical interface that does much more than the sum of its parts. Historical data, for example, allows connections to be built in cases where evidence no longer exists on the ‘live’ web. Straightforward tasks such as WHOIS lookups, on the other hand, only rarely look this good.

According to Silent Push researchers (SPR), the platform makes it easy to “map out the entire infrastructure supporting IPTV networks” by “combining just a few technical fingerprints.” The results of an investigation published today claim to identify a major IPTV network and an individual the researchers claim is closely involved.

A Domain Name Gets Things Rolling

SPR say their investigation began with a domain name – premiumplustv[.]xyz – which had been reported as hosting pirated content. Using the Silent Push Web Scanner they were then able to connect the service to 10,000 IP addresses and 1,100 domains, with one standing out in particular.

“The xuione[.]com website, seen below, is a massive IPTV provider that appears to support numerous pirated content schemes – confirming the initial suspicions of our research partner,” SPR write.

“For several years, the xuione[.]com website listed details indicating the registrant was based in Herat, Afghanistan.”

Records were updated to remove references to Afghanistan in March 2025, but historical records are more difficult to change.

SPR Identify an Individual With Close Links to the Network

SPR’s investigation led them to identify an individual that they believe is closely linked to the pirate IPTV network, who is also the “likely” operator of the pirate IPTV service at jvtvlive[.]xyz.

That service allegedly exploits content from the world’s leading entertainment and sports brands including Prime Video, Bein Sports, Disney Plus, NPO Plus, Formula 1, HBO, Viaplay, Videoland, Discovery Channel, Ziggo Sports, Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu, NBA, RMC Sport, Premier League, Champions League, Sky Sports, NHL, WWE, and UFC.

While that individual may indeed be everything SPR say he is, an OPSEC note accompanying the investigation notes that the methods used by the team to enumerate the piracy network, and the process used to identify the individual (located in Herat, Afghanistan), “cannot be shared publicly.”

We have no reason to doubt their findings, but there’s no replacement for seeing the evidence first hand.

Evidence Mounts

Ultimately, however, SPR were able to link the domain xuione[.]com to an IP address – 158.220.114[.]199 – used by many apparent IPTV-linked services [here] including streamxpert[.]net, jvtvlive[.]xyz, and tiyanhost[.]com.

Tiyanhost[.]com is the domain name of Tiyan Software Development, a business entity also based in Herat, Afghanistan. Public records show that the person identified by SPR shares the same name as the owner of that company. Sites with links to XuiOne display a WhatsApp number with an Afghan country code that perfectly matches a number directly linked to the same person, researchers say.

Overall, that led to the researchers feeling “comfortable assessing his involvement” in the pirate network’s operations.

Food For Thought

Exactly what additional evidence was obtained by the researchers is unknown, but we assume that it’s pretty compelling after naming the individual in public. It also seems reasonable to assume that information has been shared with anti-piracy companies and other interested parties in advance. If not, publication of the research is a pretty loud ‘headsup’ for those involved.

Yet, as far as we know, the service remains active. Enforcement in Afghanistan may present more than a few stumbling blocks, but the country isn’t known for cutting edge technical infrastructure. The service’s infrastructure has a fairly significant European presence, but perhaps the time isn’t quite right to do anything about it.

Finally, online databases used for investigations aren’t always accurate and at times can deliver the occasional curveball. All things considered, the existence of an $84 million turnover ad agency in the same Afghan town seems unusual. Even more so when allegedly operated by an individual with a familiar name, which some databases link to an even bigger operation in the Netherlands.

Silent Push (Community Edition) is available for free here (pdf). The investigation report is available here

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Posted Friday 5 September 2025 at 3:22 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

Last year, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seized several domain names linked to Streameast, a popular live sports piracy site with millions of users.

The seizures were carried out by the book but did not achieve the desired effect. Streameast remained available through alternative and regularly updated domains.

At the time, the operator of the original Streameast operation, known by the handle ‘Quick’, noted that many Streameast-branded clone sites were not targeted in the government crackdown, despite pulling in more traffic than the original.

“Despite the existence of countless fake, fraudulent, infected, and misleading streaming sites, this attack was solely targeted at the real addresses of Streameast,” Quick wrote in a response.

ACE & Egypt Shut Down Streameast Network

After more than a year, Streameast is making headlines once again. This time around, however, the original Streameast was not targeted. Instead, the copycat clone sites were the focus of a massive anti-piracy operation.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) reports that alongside Egyptian authorities, it has shut down the world’s largest sports piracy ring; the Streameast network.

Streameast.app, a few days ago
 

The MPA’s anti-piracy arm says that the network consisted of more than 80 domain names, reportedly good for 1.6 billion visits in the past year. Streameast.app, which had more traffic than the original Streameast, is now under ACE control along with the other domains.

The press release doesn’t identify any domains by name, but it states that some sites were targeted at specific sports. These sites did not necessarily carry Streameast branding and appear to include boxingbite.app, nbastreams.app, mlbbite.net, mlbstreamlinks.org, and reddit-nba.com.

A full list of the seized domains, independently identified by TorrentFreak, is available below. These will be redirected to ACE’s ‘Watch Legally’ page, which is typical in these types of cases.

Redirect

A Victory For Rightsholders

Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), who also serves as Chairman of ACE, describes the massive takedown as a major anti-piracy milestone that protects rightsholders who invest in the live sports ecosystem.

“Today, ACE scored a resounding victory in its fight to detect, deter, and dismantle criminal perpetrators of digital piracy: by taking down the largest illegal live sports platform anywhere,” Rivkin said.

Ed McCarthy, COO of DAZN Group, is pleased with the achievement too and congratulates ACE and Egypt for the resounding success.

“This criminal operation was siphoning value from sports at every level and putting fans across the world at risk. We commend the Egyptian authorities and ACE for their action in bringing down the world’s largest illegal sports streaming operation.”

The press release doesn’t mention that the original Streameast is still in operation, but ACE is undoubtedly aware of its existence, as this operation was at the center of a U.S. Government crackdown last year.

Streameast: We’re Fine

As the news broke, the original Streameast’s communication channel was overloaded with worried users, but operator Quick informed them that the service is operating as usual.

“We are not connected to them in any way (we’re not even Egyptian). We have not been raided, and our streams and work continue as usual. As we’ve always said: Do not use fake sites!”

Quick’s comment
 

ACE would undoubtedly prefer to shut down all major pirate streaming sites, but where Streameast is concerned the ‘copycat’ was actually the biggest fish. It’s therefore no surprise that they are pleased after shutting it down.

—-

Below is a list of all sites that were seized by ACE over the past days, including Streameast.app.

boxingbite.app, boxingstreams.app, buffstreams.app, buffstreamz.app, crichd.app, f1bite.app, f1streams.app, mlbstreams.app, mmabite.app, mmalive.app, mmastreams.app, nbastreams.app, nfllive.app, nflstreams.app, nhlstreams.app, streameast.app, ufctonight.app, vipleague.app, crackstreams.dad, boxingbite.net, f1bite.net, mlbbite.net, mlbshow.net, mmabite.net, nhlbite.net, redditnflstreams.net, rmlbstreams.net, rmmastreams.net, soccerbite.net, atdhe.club, allfloridasafetyinstitute.com, cfbite.com, googlapisapi.com, mlbshow.com, nflbite-streams.com, nflpulse.com, nflsurge.com, nhlbite.com, rboxingstreams.com, reddit-nba.com, reddit-nfl.com, redditmmastreams.com, redditnhlstreams.com, rmmastreams.com, rnbastreams.com, rncaafstreams.com, wnbabite.com, wnbastreams.com, totalsportek.fun, redditsoccerstreams.link, boxingstreamlinks.live, f1streamlinks.live, mlbstreamlinks.live, mmastreamlinks.live, nhlbite.live, redditcfbstreams.live, redditf1streams.live, redditmlbstreams.live, redditmmastreams.live, redditnbastreams.live, redditnflstreams.live, adstrim.org, boxingstreams.org, f1streamlinks.org, mlbstreamlinks.org, mmastreamlinks.org, nflbites.org, nflstreamlinks.org, nfltonight.org, nhlstreamlinks.org, redditnbastreams.org, thevipbox.org, streamingsites.review, nflbite.site, redditsports.stream, 1stream.top, nflbite.watch.

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Posted Thursday 4 September 2025 at 3:01 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

Anti-piracy action in Argentina continues to expand, with tight collaboration between the Spanish football league LaLiga and local authorities.

Following raids in Argentina targeting MagisTV and Al Ángulo TV, new information reveals that a global network was taken down recently.

LaLiga says the historic enforcement action dismantled dozens of IPTV services with an estimated 8 million paid subscribers. Following an investigation by the Cybercrime Prosecutor’s Office of San Isidro (UFEIC), local police raided four office buildings in Vicente López, Buenos Aires.

The press release makes no mention of any arrests, but photos taken in an apparent office building show seized items including large amounts of cash, as well as a poster of Walter White. The images feature agents from the Provincial Investigations Police of Buenos Aires (DDI San Isidro) as well as a representative from LaLiga.

From the raids
 

The raids were approved by San Isidro Guarantees Court No. 4, but no further information has been shared in respect of the criminal allegations.

My Family Cinema, TV Express, Eppi Cinema, Weiv TV and others

The list of targeted services includes My Family Cinema, TV Express, Eppi Cinema, Weiv TV, Red Play, Duna TV, Boto TV, Break TV, VTV, Blue TV, Super TV Premium, HOT, ONpix, PLUSTV, Mix, Venga TV, ALA TV, Pulse TV, Football Zone, Nossa TV, MegaTV+, Cineduo, Megamax+, GTV, Nebuplus, Onda TV, and several other brands.

A quick glance at the websites of these operations reveals that, at the time of writing, some are offline or under maintenance. It doesn’t appear that their domain names have been seized.

My Family Cinema Maintenance

On social media, several users also report problems with these streaming services, even for those whose websites are still online. This suggests that the infrastructure of some of these brands was indeed partially dismantled.

Legitimate Companies Implicated

LaLiga’s information states that these allegedly illegal platforms “operated through” several legitimate companies that operate across the globe. These “associated” organizations include Valoroso, Space Place Consulting, Goose, BitKernel, Peliplat, and FatFish Media.

If or how these companies were involved is not disclosed. It is not immediately clear if any of the people involved are suspected of being part of the pirate streaming services’ operations, or whether the services simply used their infrastructure.

LaLiga mentions that some companies offered “seemingly legitimate services” such as Peliplat and Doozy TV.

Implicated?

TorrentFreak reached out to Goose, BitKernel and Peliplat for a comment, but those requests were not immediately answered. Their websites are online and there is no mention or visible impact of the raids.

Without drawing any conclusions, YouTube videos of Peliplat show that the company was in an office building with wall panels that look similar to the raid photos, while also featuring movie/TV posters.

From the raids
 

According to LinkedIn job offerings, Peliplat has an office in Vicente López, Buenos Aires, the same city where the police raids took place. These links don’t prove anything, so we requested LaLiga to clarify the involvement of these companies; again, without an immediate response.

A Turning Point?

Commenting on the enforcement action, LaLiga president Javier Tebas suggests that the recent action in Argentina marks a turning point in the fight against online streaming piracy.

“This operation marks a before and after in the fight against digital piracy in Latin America. The scale of this network demonstrates that audiovisual fraud is a transnational organized crime issue,” Tebas says.

LaLiga further notes that ALIANZA, NAGRAVISIÓN, and Telecom Argentina played a role in the investigations. In addition, the Motion Picture Association was involved in the process. The latter informed TorrentFreak that it will not comment on the recent action.

The information made available suggests that this was a massive anti-piracy crackdown affecting millions of subscribers and a handful of companies that appear to have other legitimate operations as well.

It also leaves us with a bitter taste, however. Given the scope of the operation and the seriousness of the criminal allegations, one would expect more transparency, so the press can properly do its job instead of regurgitating press releases.

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Posted Thursday 4 September 2025 at 4:21 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

In the United States, Europe, the UK, Australia, Japan, and many other countries respectful of copyright, rightsholders have a fundamental right to take action against alleged infringers.

How that takes place in practice has been source of friction, especially when rightsholders target thousands of individual infringers, aiming to collect cash settlements of thousands of dollars from as many as they possibly can. Such schemes place significant pressure on internet bill payers, who are not necessarily those responsible for the actual infringement, and in turn cause a major headaches for ISPs.

A decade ago Canada attempted to strike a compromise with its ‘Notice and Notice’ regime, which requires ISPs to forward rightsholders’ copyright infringement notices to subscribers. Warnings that aggressive rightsholders would likely find a way to use the scheme to obtain settlements were well-founded, but not the only opportunity they have to get paid. Several repeat infringer liability lawsuits against ISPs, VPN providers, hosts and other intermediaries in the U.S. are proof of that.

Movie Companies Demand CAD$400m / US$291m in Damages

When companies including Millennium Funding, Outpost Productions, Bodyguard Productions, Hunter Killer, and Rambo V Productions sought to enforce their rights in Canada, they reportedly had some early success obtaining customer identities from Bell, at least until things went sour.

In their lawsuit targeting Bell, the movie companies claimed that they sent over 81,000 notices to Bell between February 2019 and June 2021, but Bell failed to forward almost 40,000 of them. Since in theory intermediaries could face a bill of between CAD$5,000 and CAD$10,000 for failing to meet their ‘notice and notice’ obligations, the plaintiffs filed a claim against Bell demanding CAD$400 million in damages.

Bell’s Defense and Counterclaim

In a counterclaim Bell accused Aird & Berlis LLP, the law firm hired by the studios to send the notices, of misuse of copyright and abuse of process.

Bell alleged that the scheme abused the notice and notice regime by automatically generating large numbers of notices to 1) intimidate alleged infringers and 2) claim huge damages from ISPs for not forwarding them.

On top, Bell alleged champerty and maintenance, where a third party pays litigation costs in return for a share of the eventual spoils, or assists in a lawsuit without having a legitimate interest.

Struck Out, Leave to Amend Denied

A case management judge largely sided with the plaintiffs; Bell’s complaints concerning the notice-and-notice regime was a matter for Parliament, the judge said. Claims that Aird & Berlis intimidated alleged infringers lacked supporting evidence, likewise there were “no material facts” to show that Aird & Berlis and Millennium were not in a solicitor-client relationship.

Allegations of copyright misuse, champerty and maintenance, abuse of process and unlawful means conspiracy, were therefore struck out by the judge without leave to amend.

Bell fought back against the order but had only limited success on appeal. On copyright misuse, Federal Court Judge Angela Furlanetto concluded that it could be a defense to a section 41.26 action, but agreed that Bell had provided insufficient evidence.

Ultimately the Federal Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the decision to strike portions of Bell’s pleadings without leave to amend. That denial was justified, the judge wrote, because Bell had previously amended its pleading without curing deficiencies raised by the movie companies.

Federal Court of Appeal’s Decision

A subsequent appeal launched by Bell against the Federal Court’s decision – that in turn had upheld the case management judge’s decision – was reviewed by the Federal Court of Appeal. The judgment, with reasons written by Justice Woods alongside Justices Laskin and Justice Locke, was handed down on August 29.

The core of Bell’s appeal was that several of its pleadings should not have been struck, and it should’ve been given leave to amend. Bell’s allegations of champerty or maintenance did not appear in the appeal.

On the misuse of copyright claim, the Federal Court said that Bell’s pleading did not provide sufficient information to support its allegations of improper conduct. It failed to “specify ‘what’ the misuse was and ‘how’ the conduct was contrary to public policy.” The decision to strike due to insufficient material facts was therefore correct.

Bell’s ‘secondary allegations’ against Aird & Berlis LLP also lacked sufficient material facts to support allegations of improper conduct, with the Court of Appeal noting that the described actions were consistent with a solicitor-client relationship.

The ‘abuse of process’ and ‘unlawful means conspiracy’ claims failed for similar reasons. The Court affirmed the striking of these allegations, noting that Bell had not provided sufficient information on the ‘illegal purpose’ or how that had caused Bell to suffer damage.

On the alleged violations of the notice-and-notice provisions, the Court of Appeal agreed that these should be struck from Bell’s defense and counterclaim because a statutory breach does not give rise to an independent cause of action.

Denial of Leave to Amend Was an Error of Law

The Court of Appeal found that the Federal Court judge misapplied the legal test for denying leave to amend.

“The legal test to deny leave requires that the judge conclude that the defects are not curable. This high bar highlights that denying leave is a very serious consequence for the party whose claim is dismissed and is a step that should not be taken lightly,” the judgment reads.

A recent Court of Appeal decision found that leave to amend should be granted unless many chances to amend had been given already. The Court also describes Bell’s ‘copyright misuse’ allegation, concerning alleged misuse of the notice-and-notice regime, as “a viable defense.”

“The [Federal Court] judge determined that the pleading does not provide sufficient detail to support these allegations, but it is not plain and obvious that these defects cannot be cured,” the judgment notes.

The Federal Court of Appeal allowed Bell’s appeal in part without costs, and set aside the decision that denied leave to appeal. That means Bell has an opportunity to submit an Amended Statement of Defense and Counterclaim, but where that will leave the case is still unclear.

The Federal Court of Appeal judgment in Bell Canada v. Millennium Funding, Inc. is available here (pdf)

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Posted Wednesday 3 September 2025 at 3:37 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

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. “Superman” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on September 01 are:

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

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Posted Tuesday 2 September 2025 at 2:42 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

When a Virginia jury ordered internet provider Cox to pay $1 billion in damages for failing to take appropriate actions against pirating subscribers, shockwaves rippled through the ISP industry.

The verdict, in favor of major record labels including Sony and Universal, was a catalyst for many other ‘repeat infringer’ lawsuits. This resulted in yet more multi-million dollar claims and awards, with many still in the pipeline today.

Meanwhile, Cox did all it could to fight the verdict. This resulted in some small wins, including a recent ruling that the billion-dollar damages calculation needs a re-evaluation. The liability ruling stands, however.

In a final attempt to find the law on its side, last year Cox petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court. In essence, it argued that an ISP shouldn’t be held liable simply because it knew that its subscribers were downloading and sharing pirated content. Cox also challenged the assertion that mere knowledge of subscriber piracy constitutes ‘willful’ copyright infringement.

The U.S. Solicitor General backed Cox’s request, and in June the Supreme Court allowed the ISP’s case to proceed. At the same time, the Supreme Court denied a cross-petition from the record labels, who sought to strengthen the existing verdict.

Cox Files Supreme Court Brief

Cox submitted its brief to the Supreme Court last Friday, asking it to overturn the lower court’s ruling. The ISP presents two questions that have broad implications for ISPs, millions of their subscribers, rightsholders, and potentially other online services.

The first question relates to contributory infringement. Specifically, whether an ISP can be held liable for “materially contributing” to copyright infringement if it fails to terminate accounts of allegedly pirating subscribers.

In its brief, Cox argues that the Fourth Circuit wrongly concluded that it was liable. The ISP notes that contributory copyright infringement requires proof that the company engaged in ‘affirmative conduct’ that facilitated the misconduct. Failure to terminate accounts of allegedly pirating subscribers is not sufficient proof.

“In short, Cox did not engage in a single affirmative act with the purpose of furthering infringement—and gained nothing from users’ infringing conduct. Cox simply provided communications infrastructure to the public on uniform terms,” Cox writes.

The ISP adds that terminating Internet access is a draconian measure with potentially devastating consequences. This duty shouldn’t be imposed by the court but by Congress.

“Only Congress is empowered to create a duty to terminate internet service that carries such profound implications for members of the public and the nation’s economy,” Cox argues in its brief.

Only Congress
 

The second question relates to whether Cox’s actions were willful, which is relevant to damages which ultimately led to the $1 billion verdict.

Here, Cox argues that willfulness requires proof that the defendant knew its own conduct (not terminating repeat infringers) was illegal. According to Cox, there is no evidence that this is the case, pointing to an anti-infringement program it developed to counter piracy on its network.

Mass Terminations & Internet Police

The full brief presents a wide array of arguments. According to Cox, it’s clear that the lower court’s ruling should be reversed. If not, millions of Americans risk losing Internet access over unvetted third-party claims.

“If allowed to stand, the Fourth Circuit’s one-two punch will yield mass evictions from the internet. ISPs confronting steep penalties will have no choice but to terminate the connections of homes, barracks, hospitals, and hotels, upon bare accusation,” Cox writes.

According to Cox, the ramifications go further than just copyright infringement. Liability could spread to other types of misconduct, requiring ISPs to take action to avoid being held responsible. That would effectively turn these companies into the internet police.

“Under the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning, once an aggrieved party sends an ISP a notice asserting any manner of customer wrongdoing, the ISP is a willful accomplice for every subsequent customer misdeed,” Cox notes.

“That notion turns internet providers into internet police and jeopardizes internet access for millions of users.”

Cox’s Supreme Court brief is just the opening salvo, and the record labels will undoubtedly present a different interpretation of both the facts and the law. Their brief is due on October 15 and will offer a different perspective on the lower court’s ruling. After that, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments from both sides.

—

A copy of Cox Communications’ brief to the Supreme Court is available here (pdf)

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Posted Tuesday 2 September 2025 at 2:21 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

With the new football season underway in Spain and LaLiga’s blocking order still in force under the authority of a judge, overblocking is still a big problem in Spain according to reports.

Last season saw relentless IP address blocking target shared Cloudflare IP addresses again and again. With no obvious urgency to ensure that those blocks were lifted when no longer needed (i.e after LaLiga matches had ended) blocking continued to affect innocent parties for much longer than necessary; that’s if we assume that any avoidable blocking of innocent third parties is ever necessary.

Potentially Some Limited Progress

As reported earlier this week, data reviewed by TorrentFreak suggests that some measures may have been put in place to limit how long IP addresses stay blocked. Instead of persisting for hours, days, or even weeks after being put in place, blocks seem to be lifted much more quickly.

While that should’ve been the case back in February to limit unnecessary collateral damage, any progress should come as a relief, especially if it can be built upon in the coming weeks.

Until then, concerned parties appear to be battling a fundamental reluctance to get involved by anyone with any power or influence. Faced with inaction and a problem for individuals and businesses up and down the country, media coverage can often make a real difference.

Not in this case; beyond a small number of tech-focused news outlets, most mainstream outlets in Spain have avoided mentioning the controversy, much less found reason to discuss it.

ERC Demands Answers

Not so the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), a pro-Catalan independence party that aired its concerns in Congress this week. Accusing the government of doing nothing to protect citizens from freedom of information and net neutrality violations, ERC said inaction amounted to a dereliction of the government’s duties.

“A private company cannot act with impunity and indiscriminately in defense of its business. No matter how important that business may be,” spokesperson Gabriel Rufián wrote on X.

“And charging €120 per month, it certainly can be.”

According to a Europa Press report, ERC presented a list of questions to the government for which it demanded answers from the executive branch concerning LaLiga’s blocking campaign. The party reportedly described collateral damage from overblocking as “massive”, with large platforms such as Steam and Elon Musk’s ‘X’ among those negatively affected.

Europa Press invited LaLiga to comment; maintaining its original position from roughly six months ago, LaLiga denied there was a problem.

LaLiga: Reports of Overblocking Are False

“It is false that massive blocking of legitimate websites is taking place,” LaLiga told the publication.

“All blocking measures are part of an authorized and supervised judicial procedure, under very restrictive and guarantee-based criteria, and under protocols that include multiple safeguards and guarantees, thus ensuring compliance with the principle of proportionality.”

LaLiga went on to describe a “precise and surgical procedure” within a system that is “highly specific and designed to address illegal content, while documenting and preserving evidence of the violation of its rights in all cases.’

Still No Peace Agreement

In a clear sign that LaLiga and Cloudflare have been unable to patch up their differences, LaLiga took the opportunity to blame Cloudflare for hosting “both legitimate and illegal websites on the same IP address, thus serving as a digital shield for such criminal conduct.”

The statement is a classic double-edged sword. By shifting responsibility to Cloudflare, it acknowledges the shared IP address issue at the root of the majority of overblocking incidents in Spain. While LaLiga claims to block the pirate services with pinpoint accuracy, which it does, there could be dozens or hundreds of innocent services on the top of exactly the same pin as a single pirate site.

The blocking of innocent third-parties is clearly something that LaLiga would like to avoid. Since it has no means available to partially block an IP address, blocking impacts innocent individual users and small websites, through to large internet-based operations that have no connection to piracy.

Cloudflare IP address 172.67.69.232

There’s no definitive single source of information to accurately and comprehensively identify in advance which sites will be affected by an IP address block; but there are ways to confirm that at least some damage will be caused. At the time of writing, the majority of previously blocked IP addresses have been unblocked by the ISPs in Spain.

For reasons that remain unclear, however, Vodafone is still blocking the Cloudflare IP address 172.67.69.232.

This means that any Cloudflare customers that have been allocated that same IP address can no longer service any visitors who attempt access from a Vodafone connection in Spain. During match times, the same would also apply to other ISPs including Movistar, DIGI, Orange, Masmovil, and Vodafone itself.

The perfect result for LaLiga might be the blocking of a single pirate site. The actual result of blocking a shared IP address is the blocking of a single pirate site, and all other sites operating from the same IP address.

Pinpoint Accuracy Collateral Damage

In the case of Cloudflare IP address 172.67.69.232, the following domains (and most likely many more besides) were all using that address at the time of writing. (domain extensions modified for security reasons)

logos-world.nxt, cordonbleu.edu, thefloridachannel.oxg, filext.cXm, atwix.cXm, royalapps.cXm, netticket.fi, cultsport.cXm, rapid-rebates.cXm, gosweetspot.cXm, sundaymore.cXm, bizmanualz.cXm, atech.cloud, boom.tv, dobenergy.cXm, viseo.sX1, radbag.bEx, fabricsandpapers.cXm, diamondtours.cXm, muzikercdn.cXm, supportyourtech.cXm, mellano.fi, ac-knowledge.nxt, g-city.cXm, brightercraft.cXm, wsipowered.cXm, kleverinnovations.nxt, experimenteaza.ro, omegatv.cXm.cy, b-zone.buz, farma-rhodes.cXm, improveit.llt, finqr.sX1, bluefoxhost.cXm, card-plus.nxt, stampseed.cXm, gomel-sat.ZZ, zanchetta.cXm.br, lotsthailand.cXm, motaquip.cXm, chelfordfarmsupplies.co.bk, sierracases.cXm, southtelecom.vn, adjust-it.nlX, shavaz.cXm, naisuku.jpx, online-escape-room.cXm

A cursory review of these domains leads to one standing out above the others: gomel-sat.ZZ. The domain extension has been altered by us, but the site is linked to IPTV and could’ve been targeted via IP address blocking.

Whether UK-based Chelford Farm Supplies Ltd should’ve been blocked at the same time to prevent piracy is a matter for them. Likewise UK-based car parts distributor Motaquip and the others that we didn’t check individually.

LaLiga told Europa Press that it knew of “multiple complaints on social media about alleged blocks on nonexistent websites, with no real traffic or only a few dozen users per month. These types of complaints have no real impact on users and only seek to create a narrative of social alarm to discredit the fight against piracy.”

Narratives like these are undoubtedly a negative in the fight against piracy. Fortunately, they are easily managed through the elimination of the events providing the fuel.

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Posted Monday 1 September 2025 at 5:30 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of August): 4,048

RIP Matrix

In recent years, rightsholders of major sports events have repeatedly complained that piracy of live sports has gone through the roof.

Many have called on politicians to tighten legislation and urged law enforcement to take the problem much more seriously.

The issues are no different in Norway, where streaming service Viaplay is facing a surge in piracy. According to a recent survey by Mediavision, 1.25 million Norwegians, or 30% of the population aged 15-74, use illegal streaming services every month.

IPTV piracy is particularly problematic. Research shows that 14% of all Norwegian households subscribe to an unauthorized IPTV service. That’s an increase of 40% compared to a year earlier.

These pirate platforms offer movies, regular TV programming, and access to live sports, including the popular English Premier League.

At What Cost?

These new statistics were the reason local news outlet Nettavisen ran a series of articles on IPTV piracy, which resulted in a mixed bag of commentary.

Rights holders, including Viaplay, see these rising piracy numbers as an existential threat that should be tackled sooner rather than later. Several politicians agree that this ‘illegal activity’ should not be condoned.

“We have an ongoing dialogue with the authorities about the challenges with illegal IPTV, and we notice that they see the seriousness of the problem and want to do something about it,” Viaplay’s Birgitte Malling said.

Jon Espen Nergård, chairman of the board of Nordic Content Protection, previously said that illegal market turnover was approaching one billion Norwegian kroner, with money going “into the pockets of criminals” instead of benefiting the Norwegian creative industries. He’s calling for tougher measures, stressing that “illegal use must have consequences.”

The notion that piracy is wrong was also reiterated by conservative politician Tage Pettersen, who, as a member of parliament, shows no sympathy for, or understanding of, people who turn to piracy. “It’s illegal,” he says.

Who is Paying The Price?

The legality of piracy is not really up for debate in the current discussions in Norway. However, many people, including politicians, academics, and experts, point out that the public revolt is likely a response to high costs.

A premium tier subscription to Viaplay with access to live sports currently costs 749 NOK (~$73) per month. That’s a steep increase compared to a few years ago, and one of the highest price points in Europe.

For comparison, a similar Viaplay subscription in the Netherlands costs less than a third of that, 235 NOK (~$23).

Viaplay
 

While many hardcore sports fans are willing to pay this price, there’s an increasing number of people who can’t or simply don’t want to pay so much. Instead, they opt for pirate IPTV services which also charge subscription fees, but at a fraction of the prices demanded by legitimate services.

‘Football Digs Its Own Grave’

Mimir Kristjansson, who’s currently a member of parliament for the Red Party, recognizes that piracy is against the law. However, he doesn’t feel particularly upset when people who choose that option.

Instead, he points a finger at the high subscription prices, which are a direct result of licensing fees charged by sports leagues, including the Premier League.

“Football digs its own grave when it costs so much money that ordinary people cannot have a Premier League season subscription, unless they are completely football crazy,” Kristjansson said.

Agnes Nærland Viljugrein of the Labor Party is not as outspoken but also mentions pricing as a key factor in this debate.

“As a politician, I would never encourage people to break the law, but I think it’s worth facing the realities. These are the steps people take, and it’s not unlikely to think that it’s about price,” Viljugrein said.

Illegal? So What?

While the authorities and rightsholders have repeatedly stressed that piracy is against the law, and may even be considered a criminal offense under some circumstances, Norwegians don’t seem to be fazed.

Harry Arne Solberg, professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, says that this is in part because the risk of getting caught is low. In addition, he too sees price as a key factor.

“What we see time and again is that people are provoked by the prices. You don’t need to be a researcher to understand that, given the prices,” Solberg told Nettavisen.

“They probably know by definition that it’s illegal, but to put it in Northern Norwegian terms, they don’t give a damn,” he added.

The professor says that instead of hiding their illegal activity, Norwegians tell their friends about pirate IPTV services, helping them to save money too. That’s the polar opposite of what all anti-piracy efforts have tried to achieve.

All in all, it is clear that many Norwegians see IPTV piracy as a viable option to enjoy sports without paying too much, knowing very well that they are breaking the law. Turning this ship will require draconian enforcement actions or, alternatively, more affordable legal options.

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Posted Saturday 30 August 2025 at 5:42 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of July): 3,458

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Three years ago, pirated Blu-ray copies of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ began circulating on pirate sites, weeks before the film’s official release.

Shortly before, pre-release discs were offered in an eBay listing, suggesting that someone had managed to get their hands on several pre-release copies of the film. The exact source and circumstances were unknown.

Earlier this year, the mystery was partly solved when the U.S. Department of Justice indicted the alleged wrongdoer. Following an in-depth investigation by the FBI, the authorities indicted 37-year-old Steven Hale, accusing him of stealing several Blu-rays and DVDs from his former employer; a disc manufacturing and distribution company in Memphis.

In May, Hale pleaded guilty to stealing and distributing numerous DVD and Blu-ray discs for commercial advantage and private financial gain. Among them, the pre-released ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ and other titles such as ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage,’ ‘Encanto,’ and ‘The Matrix Resurrections.’

Firearm Charge

In addition to the copyright infringement charge, Hale was also indicted for a firearm offense. When raiding his premises, law enforcement found a gun in a car that was registered in his name, which, for a felon, is a separate criminal offense.

The defense argued that the gun, which was loaded, didn’t belong to Hale but to his father. In addition, Hale’s attorney also stressed that it “was simply there by coincidence,” not to facilitate the copyright infringement.

The government agrees that there’s no apparent connection between the firearm and the theft of the DVDs and Blu-rays. However, the ‘coincidental’ discovery doesn’t necessarily mean a lower prison sentence.

Government Recommends a 57-Month Prison Sentence

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) shared its position on the upcoming sentencing with the court. The filing notes that this isn’t the first time that the defendant has had a run-in with the law.

“The defendant has an extensive criminal record involving armed robbery, attempted robbery, theft of property, and driving with a suspended license, as well as pending gun and drug charges,” the DoJ writes.

The filing also reveals Hale’s theft of the films was deliberate and methodical, stating he would hide boxes of DVDs near a “malfunctioning emergency door,” cut the security tape, and then move them to his vehicle after hours to avoid detection.

From the DoJ filing
 

Interestingly, the government agrees with the defense that the gun was not specifically linked to the copyright infringement. In fact, the DoJ views these as separate offenses.

“In this case, there is no indication that the defendant possessed or used a firearm to steal DVDs from his employer or commit copyright infringement,” the recommendation reads.

This is not necessarily good news for the defendant, as the DoJ further argues that both crimes should not be grouped at all, contrary to a suggestion in the pre-sentence report. Instead, the DoJ requests separate sentences for both crimes, to be served concurrently.

In this case, the government recommends a 57-month prison sentence for the firearm charge, which is at the low end of their 57- to 71-month calculation. This is higher than the 21-month prison sentence it recommends for the copyright infringement.

If the court agrees, the defendant will have to serve the longest sentence, which is related to the firearms charge.

Defense Hopes for Leniency

Earlier this month, the defense called for a lower sentence, also arguing that the gun had nothing to do with the stolen movies.

The defense’s strategy focused on lowering the sentence in other ways, concluding that 37 to 46 months would be a more suitable sentencing range.

This lower sentence would be appropriate considering that the gun was not Hale’s and “there by coincidence.” In addition, the defense argued that his previous attempted robbery conviction should not count as a “crime of violence”.

Hale’s attorney asked the court for leniency, painting a picture of a man who made a “very poor choice” after struggling against difficult circumstances his entire life. Despite growing up impoverished, he managed to get a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management.

MPA Requests to be Heard

With both sides heard, the Tennessee federal court is expected to announce Hale’s sentence in the coming weeks. Interestingly, the MPA has asked to chime in before that happens.

The movie industry group, which represents the victims in this case, indicated that it would like to address the court at sentencing. In a declaration shared in this case, the MPA mentions that the movie studios were severely harmed by Hale’s actions.

The financial harm likely adds up to “many tens of millions of dollars,” MPA’s Larissa Knapp argued, noting that leaked copies of the Spider-Man movie were shared millions of times before the official premiere.

While the MPA focuses on the massive financial damages from the copyright crime, the judge’s final decision may ultimately hinge on a ‘coincidental’ firearm charge that both sides agree was entirely separate.

—

A copy of the DoJ’s position on the (sealed) Pre-Sentence Report is available here (pdf) and the defense’s position can be found here (pdf)

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Posted Saturday 30 August 2025 at 3:08 am AEST (my time).

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Sky’s investigation into the activities of David Dunbar reportedly began in Ireland during November 2024. Investigators had become aware of a social media account selling so-called ‘dodgy boxes’ and with assistance from an anonymous tip provided by the Federation Against Copyright Theft, Sky was able to connect the dots.

Papers filed at the High Court describe Dunbar as operating under the brand ‘IPTV is Easy.’ As a reseller, Dunbar “sells IPTV subscriptions to his customers, and to sub-sellers who sell subscriptions on his behalf, for a cut of the profit,” a Sky investigator explained.

Sky Obtains Orders to Secure Evidence and Restrain Assets

After obtaining relatively rare yet powerful orders from the Court on May 16, Sky aimed to take Dunbar by surprise, search his home, and shut his operation down. When Sky’s legal representatives arrived unannounced at Dunbar’s home on May 21, Dunbar was advised that he could go to prison if he failed to comply.

Despite the warning, Dunbar refused to allow Sky’s legal representatives inside unless a police officer was present. Since this was a civil matter, police wouldn’t be involved unless things got out of hand, so that was that.

Failure to Comply With High Court Orders

No access meant no search could be carried out, evidence couldn’t be secured, and access to Dunbar’s email accounts was effectively denied. Cloud storage instances couldn’t be secured to prevent deletion either, along with other measures detailed in the order, all of which went unsatisfied.

When Sky’s legal representatives returned later in the day, Dunbar’s position hadn’t changed, but he did understand “the consequences of his ongoing refusal.” With nothing further to be gained, Dunbar was again reminded of his “very clear obligations” not to “destroy, tamper, or interfere with any assets or evidence.”

Sky’s monitoring of a Telegram channel used for ‘IPTV is Easy’ customer support found it had 543 members. By the afternoon of May 21, the channel had disappeared and the ‘IPTV is Easy’ app was no longer operational. Sky concluded that Dunbar was likely taking steps to “hide or destroy evidence of his IPTV service.”

Defendant Admits Non-Compliance

When Dunbar later appeared in Court, he accepted that he’d failed to comply with the High Court’s orders, acknowledged that was a serious matter, and said that he was “extremely anxious to purge my failure to comply.” His suggestion that only after receiving legal advice from his own solicitor did he realize the gravity of the situation, was “inconsistent” with statements made by those who attempted to execute the orders, the Court noted.

Information concerning the IPTV is Easy business, including whose streams it sold, appear to have been addressed in part. Whether any responses provided any useful intelligence seems unlikely. As presented below, that type of information would’ve likely been collected already as part of the investigation.

According to Dunbar, after he sought advice from MBM on Discord concerning the unwelcome visit from Sky, he was “immediately blocked, removed from all groups mentioned and both my and my customer’s [sic] access to the panel and the service was immediately cut off.”

High Court Judgment

In his judgment dated August 20th, Justice Mark Sanfey provides a detailed overview of the investigation, how the business operated and, of course, his asssessment of whether Dunbar was guilty of contempt for failing to comply with the orders issued in May.

While a guilty decision was never really in doubt, the Judge was very thorough and gave Dunbar credit when he felt that was warranted, although never likely to tip the scales to the extent needed.

Nevertheless, on a different day things could’ve been a lot worse. Justice Sanfey said that sending Dunbar to prison would “confer no tangible benefit on the State, which will be put to the expense of funding the defendant’s stay in prison.”

Overall, Defendant Will Be Sufficiently Punished

In arriving at his decision to impose a fine instead, the Judge balanced various factors. These included the possibility of Dunbar losing his job, and the specter of Ireland’s tax inspectors taking an interest to discover the whereabouts of their share of any undisclosed funds.

The fact that Dunbar failed to defend the civil case against Sky, and as a result now owes the company at least €500K in damages and legal fees, led the Judge to conclude that, on balance, Dunbar had been punished enough.

“[W]hile the defendant must be regarded as the sole author of the misfortune which has come his way due to these proceedings, the court is not insensible to what must be an enormous level of upheaval, upset and stress caused to the defendant and in particular to his family by virtue of the exposure of his activities by the plaintiff,” Justice Sanfey notes.

“Taking all of the circumstances of the matter into account, I consider that the imposition of a fine on the defendant is sufficient punishment, and I will impose a fine of €30,000 on the defendant, to be discharged by 31 October 2025.

“The defendant has come very close indeed to being sent to prison; future contemnors in similar circumstances should consider that they may not be so fortunate, as every case depends on its own facts,” the Judge concludes.

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Posted Friday 29 August 2025 at 5:29 am AEST (my time).

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Historically, Apple has banned torrent clients from its iOS devices. In the EU, however, these types of apps have been available for more than a year through third-party app stores.

This breakthrough was a direct result of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) that went into effect last year, requiring Apple to allow apps to be installed through third-party stores.

AltStore Pal is one of the most popular altstores in the EU. Soon after it launched, two torrent clients were made available: iTorrent and qBitControl. This was a notable milestone that AltStore actively promoted on social media.

iTorrent in AltStore PAL
 

AltStore PAL assured its users that these apps were put through a vetting process to ensure that they are secure. And indeed, in the months that followed, many people installed and used the torrent clients without problems.

Apple Bars iTorrent Distribution

While alternative app stores operate independently and are required by EU law, Apple is still in a position to exert some control. This became apparent a few weeks ago, when iTorrent users suddenly ran into trouble when installing the app.

In July, several users complained that they were unable to download iTorrent from AltStore PAL. Initially the cause of the problem was unclear but the app’s developer, XITRIX, later confirmed that Apple itself had stepped in.

Apparently, Apple had revoked the developer’s “alternative distribution” right, which is required to publish apps in alternative stores, including AltStore PAL.

Rights revoked
 

Given Apple’s long history of banning torrent apps from its own store, it’s tempting to conclude that the company stepped in for the same reason here. For now, however, there’s no confirmation that’s indeed the case.

Developer Responds

Speaking directly with TorrentFreak, iTorrent developer Daniil Vinogradov (XITRIX) says that Apple did not reach out to him regarding the revocation of his alternative EU distribution rights.

Soon after the issues appeared, Vinogradov sent a support request to Apple seeking clarification, but that wasn’t helpful either. Instead, Apple responded with a generic message related to App Store issues.

After another follow-up last week, Apple informed the developer that their escalation team is looking into it, but nothing further. “I still have no idea if it was my fault or Apple’s, and their responses make no sense,” Vinogradov says.

AltStore in the Dark, Apple remains quiet

AltStore PAL is not responsible for the issues, but it has also sprung into action. Co-founder Shane Gill informs TorrentFreak that they requested clarification from Apple but are still in the dark about the company’s reasons to intervene.

“I can confirm that we are in communication with Apple about this issue. We’ve told them what’s going wrong, and they said they’re looking into it, but we haven’t gotten any further information as of yet,” Gill says.

For now, there is no evidence that the ‘BitTorrent’ link is the cause of the problem. According to Gill, Apple has never provided AltStore with any guidelines or warnings on specific app categories.

Apple has not responded publicly yet either. When we reached out, the company asked us to call them, but our call went unanswered. The same applies to the follow-up requests we sent via email over the past few days.

While there may be a perfectly logical explanation for iTorrent’s revoked rights, Apple’s handling of the matter so far only fuels speculation. Some might even argue that the lack of transparency in revoking distribution rights violates the letter or the spirit of the EU’s Digital Markets Act.

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Posted Thursday 28 August 2025 at 4:42 am AEST (my time).

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The new football season is underway in Spain’s top professional football league which means LaLiga is also back at work doing whatever it can to block illegal match streams.

The final few months of last season were marred by a bitter dispute between LaLiga and Cloudflare, triggered by the former obtaining unprecedented authorization to block Cloudflare IP addresses used for piracy, and then doing so en masse. The resulting fallout was felt by businesses and internet users throughout Spain.

Innocent Cloudflare Customers Can’t Catch a Break

Cloudflare IP addresses are shared, meaning that hundreds or potentially thousands of users (often websites) can operate from the same IP address at the same time. When LaLiga instructs local ISPs to block a Cloudflare IP addresses, to prevent piracy, that invariably leads to large numbers of innocent Cloudflare users being blocked too, despite having no involvement in LaLiga content piracy.

With no evidence to suggest peace has broken out between LaLiga and Cloudflare, blocking of the latter’s IP addresses resumed at the start of the season. Inevitably that means renewed blocking of innocent parties, but according to data reviewed by TorrentFreak, some measures may have been put in place to limit how long IP addresses stay blocked.

While that does little to reduce the number of collateral damage incidents, shortening blocking time reduces the harm suffered by people who have zero connections to online piracy. The caveat here, unfortunately, is an apparent difference of opinion on what constitutes a “connection” to online piracy.

The Blog of Lazarus

After spending just a couple of minutes on Lazarus’s Blog, one gets the impression that the author not only appreciates technology, but also understands the importance of transparency and netiquette, as positive contributors to the online experience.

As an avid user of Cloudflare who takes time to share his experiences with others, a message forwarded to his account by Cloudflare on Monday can only have come as a complete surprise, as his post on Mastodon reveals (translated from Spanish).

A review of the paperwork reveals an extraordinary message containing allegations and assumptions that challenge any reasonable definition of “connections to piracy” and the potential for legal liability to be incurred as a result.

Connection to Piracy: A Cloudflare IP Address

For Spanish speakers, the original message (in two parts) is available here (1,2). Our unofficial translation appears in the image below:

The message and the threats it contains largely speak for themselves. They appear to center around an individual’s use of Cloudflare to protect his personal blog, and an IP address allocated by Cloudflare being abused by an unknown third party to pirate LaLiga content.

Attributing ownership of Cloudflare’s IP address to the blogger, before suggesting that the message puts the recipient on notice of infringement of which he is now fully aware, is bizarre. Yet still not as bizarre as conflating legal use of a shared resource with someone else’s independent abuse, and then implying a responsibility to compel Cloudflare to act on someone else’s behalf.

The suggestion that a failure to act in the manner described is a dereliction of duty, and tantamount to cooperation with unknown third parties in various unknown crimes, is baffling. That the foundation of the alleged offense relies on association by IP address, allocated by an intermediary over which the blogger exercises no control, seems precarious at best.

Whether Cloudflare will intervene is up for debate but for the operator of the Lazarus blog, it’s possible that targeting Cloudflare users is one of the few opportunities left.

“Well, the league clearly knows how #cloudflare works, but the only way they have, for now, is through #cloudflare users themselves, to pressure them to audit and prosecute those who pirate their football or for us to morally stop using their services,” he wrote on Mastodon.

“If there’s football on 5 days a week and they block your website, we won’t say anything about it, and neither will we say anything about the judges who allow it.

“It’s the last attempt by #laliga to get #cloudflare to jump through their hoop, but if they do, prepare for what comes next.”

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Posted Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 5:19 pm AEST (my time).

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A multi-year legal campaign by academic and scientific publishers continued in 2020 with a lawsuit filed at the High Court in Delhi.

Once again the target was Sci-Hub and site founder Alexandra Elbakyan, and by naming local ISPs as defendants, Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society aimed to have the shadow library blocked nationwide in India.

The publishers left no stone unturned in their 2,169-page complaint, carefully following in the footsteps of universally successful cases that helped to create the framework for pirate site blocking in India. At least on paper, the Sci-Hub lawsuit stood out no more than any other. Dozens of similar cases had led to the blocking of thousands of pirate site domains in previous years, with each passing by relatively unnoticed.

Blocking Sci-Hub Would Be Bad For India, Critics Feared

The action against Sci-Hub triggered an unusually strong response, solely based on the type of copyrighted content made available on the platform. From academics and scientists, to teachers and their students, the consensus was that unauthorized access to scientific knowledge via pirated copies of the publishers’ works should be handled otherwise than in accordance with established copyright law.

Intervention applications by scientists and other interested parties stressed the importance of open access to scientific research. They claimed that the publishers were making excessive profits from elite institutions with the means to pay, effectively denying access to those who simply could not. Similar claims had been made in the past elsewhere in the world, but despite the occasional sympathetic reception, none made any ground in the face of undeniable infringement on a massive scale.

Yet in January 2021, calls to immediately block or remove infringing links from Sci-Hub were rejected by the High Court in Delhi. The judge acknowledged that since the case addressed an “issue of public importance” a two-week extension was appropriate. Urgent action to deny access to infringing content was deemed unnecessary since the alleged infringement had been ongoing since 2011.

Interested parties were invited to weigh-in with submissions on what was already a sensitive case and was about to become even more controversial.

A Year of Controversy

Seemingly out of nowhere, Sci-Hub’s nine-year-old Twitter account was suddenly banned in early 2021, despite never linking to copyrighted content.

In February, the publishers obtained a blocking order against Sci-Hub in the UK, targeting existing domains and any others used in the future. At the time of writing, over 200 domains containing the term ‘sci-hub’ have been blocked under that order, despite a warning from UK police in March 2021 which advised students not to use the platform.

Two months later, with site founder Alexandra Elbakyan seemingly under continuous pressure, she announced that the FBI had gained access to her Apple account, with confirmation provided in an email from Apple itself.

No surprise for Elbakyan, of course. The US Justice Department reportedly began investigating her in 2019, claiming that she “may” have been working with Russian intelligence to “steal U.S. military secrets from defense contractors.”

At least in public, none of these events developed into anything bigger than their initial reports. Yet back in India, an agreement between Elbakyan and the publishers in late 2020 would eventually lead to a fatal undermining of the case and, several years later, a win for the publishers.

Agreement: No More Infringing Uploads to Sci-Hub

During a hearing on December 24, 2020, counsel for Elbakyan reportedly offered assurances that no new copyrighted articles or publications owned by the plaintiffs, would be uploaded to or made available by Sci-Hub moving forward. How far forward appears to be in dispute.

As far as the plaintiffs and the High Court are concerned, the agreement remains in effect. Sci-Hub suggests that it viewed the agreement as temporary, to be continued only until the High Court issued a decision in the main case, which has dragged on and on.

In four months time, the case will be roughly five years old, which is highly irregular when compared to similar cases, even after factoring in additional time to account for a defended case, which is admittedly unusual in itself. Nevertheless, court notifications have at times been difficult to fathom. Lengthy delays of two or three months have been introduced for reasons such as ‘counsel can’t make it today’ or is ‘doing something else this afternoon.’

No signs indicate that was a problem for the court, or indeed, anyone else. However, after several years, the main issue of blocking Sci-Hub was eventually decided on August 19, partly on facts that have been available for years, even before the filing of the current case in 2020.

Violation of December 2020 Agreement

The plaintiffs had been monitoring Sci-Hub and a ‘sister site’ called Sci-Net for compliance with the 2020 agreement and recently informed the court of numerous violations. The plaintiffs contacted Elbakayan about the issue and received the following response:

Having detected a “lack of regard for the legal process” in the above response and confirming violations of the 2020 agreement, Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora examined whether the term “rogue website” applies to Sci-Hub.

The Judge considered characteristics including “a blatant disregard for copyright law” and the fact that blocking orders have already been issued against the site in 11 countries.

Concluding that both Sci-Hub and Sci-Net qualify for “rogue” status, the judge noted that Sci-Hub’s founder is prima facie guilty of contempt.

Defendant no. 1 [Elbakyan] has elected not to appear and failed to give appropriate instructions to her counsel, who represents her in these proceedings. Therefore, the intention of defendant no. 1 is neither to participate and nor to defend herself in these proceedings.

 

The fact that defendant no. 1 is a foreign national seems to make her believe that she is insulated from legal consequences of the violation of her undertaking dated 24.12.2020. However, in these given facts, the Court would have to take appropriate measures for ensuring that defendant no. 1’s wilful actions [of violation] do not see fruition within the jurisdiction of the Court.

After close to five years, the judge ordered the blocking of several Sci-Hub and Sci-Net domains (www.sci-hub.ru, www.sci-hub.se, www.sci-hub.st, www.sci-net.xyz) by local ISPs, describing the decision as “a necessary and proportionate enforcement measure.”

From the comments in her response, it seems reasonable to assume that Alexandra Elbakyan will respond to the blocking measures accordingly. The case is listed for further proceedings on December 1, 2025.

The High Court of Delhi’s decision and blocking order is available here (pdf)

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Posted Wednesday 27 August 2025 at 2:38 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 four newcomers on the list. “Superman” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on August 25 are:

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

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Posted Tuesday 26 August 2025 at 6:01 am AEST (my time).

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Earlier this month, we reported that a screener copy of In the Hands of Dante had leaked online from an unknown source.

The unreleased Julian Schnabel film, featuring a star cast, is officially set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month. However, pirates got early access.

The same was true for other independent films, including The Best Thing About Christmas, Agon, American Cryptids, Life Is, and Extreme Family, all of which leaked early. What stood out is that several titles had an Italian connection.

The source of the leaks was initially unclear, but new information shared with TorrentFreak shows that many, if not all the leaked films, were already publicly available on video-sharing platform Vimeo long before they appeared on pirate sites.

Post-production Studio Uploads on Vimeo

Multiple versions of In the Hand of Dante, using the shorthand “ITHOD,” were uploaded to the Vimeo channel of Augustus Color Srl. This is the name of a prominent Italian company specializing in color grading and digital post-production.

The upload dates range from June to October 2024, confirming the films were exposed for the better part of a year before they appeared on pirate sites. The most recent ‘edit’ on Vimeo is identical in length compared to the copy that leaked on pirate sites and also comes with a screener watermark.

ITHOD
 

This wasn’t the only film posted to the account. Augustus Color has over 1,000 videos on their Vimeo account which has been in use for more than seven years. The account uses the logo of the studio and also posted the official promotional reel, various edits, and several additional films.

Augustus Color
 

After some digging, we also found the leaked Agon film on the same Vimeo account. Again, this copy was posted on the video sharing platform long before it appeared on pirate sites, suggesting this is where the leaks originated. The same account also shared many other films that were not posted to pirate sites.

Before publishing, we reached out to Augustus Color, requesting a comment on our findings, but the company did not respond. The company may have been under the impression that these uploads were not publicly accessible, as the official showreel is private.

There’s More, Much More

Not all recently leaked movies could be traced back to this Vimeo account. It’s a much broader issue. For example, The Best Thing About Christmas screener was also publicly available, posted on Vimeo by the official account weeks before it leaked.

A screenshot from the leak, shown below, notes that it’s a director’s cut. The same cut was also posted on Vimeo.

Producer’s Cut
 

When we reached out to the filmmakers, they informed us that the screener was not meant to be publicly accessible. They believed that it had been shared privately with specific people. That is clearly not the case here.

Similar uploads are common elsewhere on the video platform. A copy of Extreme Family was published in early July by an account linked to a Vietnamese film organization, before it appeared on pirate sites.

Extreme Family on Vimeo
 

Similarly, a copy of the film American Cryptids was uploaded to Vimeo by a Florida-based industry insider in early August. Soon after, a ‘leak’ appeared on pirate sites, days in advance of the official theatrical premiere on Friday, August 15.

The person who shared the American Cryptids film on Vimeo did not respond to our request for comment, but the upload is now password protected. This suggests that it wasn’t meant to be publicly accessible either.

The more we dig on Vimeo, the more films we find. These include dozens of unreleased films, but also several films that were posted on Vimeo longer ago, before their official releases. These are linked to the accounts of industry insiders, ranging from small production outfits to videographers’ personal accounts.

Without additional comments from the players involved, we don’t know if these public uploads were the result of a misunderstanding about Vimeo’s privacy settings or if there is more to it than that. Whatever the reason, it’s a bombshell and a wake-up call all the same.

—

Note: we privately tested the privacy setting on Vimeo videos and that appears to work as intended.

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Posted Tuesday 26 August 2025 at 5:46 am AEST (my time).

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The UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) claims to protect children but has faced fierce criticism for censoring everything from legitimate news reporting from war zones, to critical discussion of the Act itself.

There are many problems, not least a requirement for adults in the UK to prove their identity when accessing sites meeting criteria dictated by Ofcom. Large sites, many in the United States, face huge fines for allowing children to access age-inappropriate content.

This means that unverified adults are treated as children with the same content restrictions. Ofcom’s global threats have led some sites to conclude that the safest option is to ban UK visitors altogether.

Degraded Internet Experience? Hand Over Your Papers

Successive UK governments understood there were risks, or rather, they were informed of the risks and went ahead regardless. Whether the internet is any safer is almost impossible to measure; the same can’t be said for the hours wasted or lost, and the corresponding increases in blood pressure, all thanks to artificial restrictions that punish those who value their privacy.

Guided by the mantra, “a problem shared is a problem halved” those who air their OSA grievances in public find themselves presented with a 50/50 ultimatum. According to Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, those with an opinion on the legislation fall into two categories:

1) People who want to protect kids and 2) People who side with online predators.

You’re Either With Us, or Against Us

The imposition of a binary choice is a well-worn political tactic. It aims to shut down dissent and/or discredit the speaker; in this case ordinary members of the public branded ‘predator enablers’ by a government minister.

VPN users warranted direct advice; no allegations this time but a suggestion that, just like the unverified, VPN users aren’t helping to keep children safe.

Just verify your age (impossible without verifying your identity)

In the event that the above fails to silence the troublemakers, the UK government has recently been discovered filing requests with overseas companies to delete posts made by UK citizens’ criticizing certain aspects of government policy. A United States Department of State report, criticizing the UK government for degrading the right to freedom of expression, remains stubbornly accessible.

No Border Too Distant

Of course, attempting to silence the State Department would be a truly historic mistake, especially in the wake of comments made by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley.

Last summer Rowley threatened to “throw the full force of the law at people” for unacceptable social media comments, warning that “whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.”

Widely interpreted as a warning to citizens of the United States, and by extension a direct threat to their constitutional rights, U.S. officials intervened. Congressman Keith Self warned that “harassing Americans will do absolutely nothing to resolve Great Britain’s internal issues” and risks damaging the US/UK alliance.

As the United States attempts to introduce home turf pirate site blocking from three different directions, the UK government is already preparing to take site blocking to the next level.

Thanks to provisions in the Online Safety Act, the UK will soon begin drawing on 15 years of pirate site blocking experiences, to block regular sites that fail to meet their ‘obligations’ as laid out in the legislation.

Site Blocking For The People?

Ofcom’s stated purpose is to serve the public, within duties defined by parliament, independently, using funds provided by the companies in the sectors it regulates. As regulator, Ofcom doesn’t need permission from the public to start blocking sites, although general approval would likely make the process less controversial.

With the whole world watching and various platforms waiting to see if Ofcom’s threats of global enforcement can be ignored, there’s little room for error.

In the current climate any blocking could be perceived as a further restriction of free speech, or even straightforward censorship. The conundrum is how to make site blocking appear less like censorship while satisfying the people that it’s absolutely necessary. It’s a big ask, but not impossible.

The Pirate Bay: Default Poster Child of Piracy Blocking

In 2012 when the major recording labels obtained their first UK site blocking injunction on copyright grounds, they could’ve picked a no-name MP3 download site and walked away with an easy win. They picked The Pirate Bay instead, and not just because of the site’s profile and unparalleled infamy.

#1 Perfect Candidate: After years in the headlines, The Pirate Bay’s belligerent stance was well understood and at this point, helpfully predictable. First, there was never any chance of TPB spontaneously complying with copyright law. Since blocking injunctions came to exist for the purpose of tackling uncooperative entities, no candidate was more perfectly matched than the most uncooperative pirate site in the world.

#2 No Appearance? No Win: The odds of TPB’s operators making an appearance at the High Court in London were always vanishingly slim, but not just for the reasons one might expect. The site’s alleged operators were never served in the blocking case, and they never appeared at the hearing. In fact, the site wasn’t represented in any way, at any stage.

#3 If Done Right, No Defense: After it was determined that the law didn’t require TPB’s operators to be named as defendants, they were effectively excluded from the process. The ISPs were the defendants in this “no fault” case, and when they were ordered to block TPB, the terms of the injunction were those previously agreed in discussion with the labels.

Describing this as an ‘easy win’ would be a disservice to the work put in by the labels. Nothing was left to chance and the end result spoke for itself. The Pirate Bay and its function needed no introduction, and among supporters and opponents alike, acceptance that it exists for the purpose of infringement on a massive scale, was never in doubt.

That the process was entirely one-sided was neither here nor there. Nobody was surprised by the choice of target or the eventual outcome; in the bigger picture, controversy was kept to a minimum.

Now it’s Ofcom’s turn to convince, or simply inform the public, that blocking non-pirate sites benefits everyone. On paper, the notorious 4chan forum ticks all the right boxes and presumably no match for the well-resourced Ofcom.

4chan: Poster Child of Regular Site Blocking?

One can only imagine the reaction at 4chan when Ofcom advised that it had new obligations under a foreign law. Section 9(2) of the Act requires certain platforms to undertake an illegal content risk assessment, to assess the risks of users encountering ‘illegal’ content on their platforms.

The requirements were published February 24, 2025, and the ‘Illegal Content Duties’ came into effect on 17 March 2025. On April 14, Ofcom issued a ‘formal information notice’ to 4chan demanding a copy of its Illegal Content Risk Assessment and not surprisingly, received no reply.

In common with The Pirate Bay, 4chan’s non-compliance was almost inevitable. When accompanied by threats to disrupt its business, including by obtaining a court order to compel payment processors, advertisers, and hosting providers to stop doing business, while levying fines of £20,000 per day, non-compliance was effectively guaranteed. In this respect, 4chan’s response was entirely predictable.

4chan Unlikely to Attend Court in the UK

As highlighted previously, cases are more easily won when it’s understood that the defendant won’t make an appearance. We can safely assume that 4chan has the same number of tickets to London as it does Illegal Content Risk Assessments so, no, it will not attend. So far, so good then? Not exactly.

Ofcom launched its 4chan investigation on June 10, to determine compliance with various duties under the Online Safety Act.

Did 4chan adequately respond to a statutory information request? Has it conducted and kept a record of its illegal content risk assessment? Is it complying with its safety duties, including protecting its users from ‘illegal’ content?

Ofcom currently has no answers to these questions but did learn something new this week. Not only has 4chan hired extremely capable attorneys in response to Ofcom’s threats, any action by Ofcom will be resisted in the United States under Federal Law.

New Jurisdiction, Different Ball Game

Since Ofcom’s threats are viewed as undermining 4chan’s constitutional rights, its attorneys believe that no court in America will allow foreign penalties to be enforced in the United States. Once people begin speaking about that, the damage will have been done.

Given the offense caused by last year’s threats by UK police against U.S. citizens, and similar events since then, the final three paragraphs of the statement above seem especially relevant.

By selecting 4chan as a potential target for enforcement, knowing all too well it would refuse to comply, a stand-off has been engineered between UK censorship measures nobody asked for, and the constitutional rights of all Americans.

If the hallmarks of the win in The Pirate Bay case were predictability, inability to mount any defense, and the avoidance of controversy, this is only just short of a complete disaster. .

Who’s in Charge of Government Policy?

Further escalation at the political level in the event Ofcom digs in, may demand intervention at the highest level. For Prime Minister Keir Starmer, that does not bode well

First, Ofcom is independent, so that may not even be possible. Second, consider this recent exchange between JD Vance and Keir Starmer himself on the erosion of free speech in the UK.

Vance: “We also know that there have been infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British. Of course, what the British do in their own country is up to them, but they also affect American technology companies and by extension American citizens. So that is something that we’ll talk about today at lunch.”

Starmer: “We’ve had free speech for a very long time in the United Kingdom and uh..uh.. and it will last for a very, very long time. Well no, I mean we certainly wouldn’t want to reach across to US citizens…and we don’t…and that’s absolutely right.

Ofcom begs to differ, clearly; so who is in charge here? Why doesn’t the Prime Minister know that the UK is actively “reaching across to US citizens?” Unfortunately, Ofcom has a reputation for not backing down. On the plus side, it hasn’t imposed any penalties to back down from yet, so there is that.

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Posted Sunday 24 August 2025 at 6:31 pm AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

The Online Copyright Infringement Tracker (OCI) has provided data on piracy carried out online for more than a decade. After publication of Wave 12 in 2022, there was no report covering 2023.

The latest Wave 13 edition covers online infringement in 2024, spanning various categories including movies, music, TV shows, and live sports. The online survey component was conducted among a representative 5,000 person sample of the UK population aged 12 and above.

OCI Wave 13 (2024)

The headline figure reveals a small decrease in the overall piracy rate, from 32% in 2022 to 29% in 2024. This figure represents the proportion of the total sample who had accessed any online content illegally during the previous three months. While any improvement will be welcomed by rightsholders, the authors of the report say the figure should be interpreted with caution due to the addition of new content categories and methods of access.

The software category showed the most progress, with the infringement rate falling from 38% in 2022 to 31% in 2024. Audiobook piracy developed in the opposite direction, increasing from 22% in 2022 to 30% last year.

In most of the other categories, infringement rates are close to those reported two years ago. Live sports, software, digital magazines, and audiobooks show above average piracy rates, and music, TV, video games, and ebooks, all show rates below average.

↑ Music Piracy Infringement Rate ↑

Music infringement rates increased marginally from 25% in 2022 to 26% in 2024. The figure relates to those who used a mix of legal and illegal sources in the preceding three months.

This means that for the last two waves, the overall piracy rate for music has stayed above the 24% rate reported in 2015, which preceded several year-on-year reductions. (red line denotes change in methodology)

In 2019 and 2020, the number of listeners consuming exclusively from legal sources showed slight increases, with those consuming exclusively from illegal sources remaining fairly static. Since then, legal-only consumers have fallen, with the percentage of respondents consuming from illegal sources increasing compared to previous years (47% vs. 45%).

In 2024, 53% of respondents said they only accessed music legally, with less than half (19%) relying exclusively on piracy.

Downloading was the dominant method used to access pirated music in 2024, with just 2% of respondents streaming using a mix of legal and illegal sources. No respondents reported streaming illegally. Overall, it’s estimated that around eight million people pirate at least some music in the UK

↑ Movie Piracy Infringement Rate ↑

In 2024, the overall infringement rate for movies continued on an upwards trend, from 24% in 2022 to 27% in 2024.

This three percentage point increase means a return to the highest overall movie piracy infringement rate recorded back in 2019. That high of 27% was due to an eight point shock increase over the rate reported in 2018 (19%), which in turn was the lowest rate recorded since 2015.

Wave 13 data (2024) shows 73% of respondents downloading movies exclusively from legal sources, with 17% utilizing both legal and illegal. One in ten (10%) respondents pirated everything they consumed.

Infringement via streaming sources was relatively low, with 17% mixing legal/illegal and just 4% obtaining everything from illegal sources. In Wave 12 (2022), 83% of respondents said they relied solely on legal sources to stream movies, a figure that dropped four points to 79% in Wave 13 (2024).

→ TV Piracy Infringement Rate ←

In 2024, the overall infringement rate for TV shows was 19%, unchanged from the previous wave in 2022.

While significantly higher than the 14% recorded in both 2020 and 2021, today’s overall piracy rate for TV content remains lower than the 21% recorded nine years ago.

The data on consumption sources shows 80% of respondents downloading exclusively from legal sources in 2024.

This represents a marginal improvement over figures reported in 2022, which had deteriorated following an all-time high in 2021. Those who downloaded all TV content illegally sat at 8% in 2024, with 11% downloading from a mix of legal/illegal sources.

The study found little change in the rate of TV show infringement purely via streaming, with 13% using a mix and just 2% using illegal sources exclusively.

↑ Live Sport Piracy Infringement Rate ↑

In 2024, the overall infringement rate for live sports was 38%, an increase of two points over the previous wave in 2022.

Live sports consumption appeared in its own category in the OCI tracker for the first time in 2019 and, apart from a Covid-related dip in 2021, has shown consistently high rates of infringement.

The latest figure of 38% in Wave 13 has the dubious honor of being the highest rate recorded since 2019. While this isn’t considered a significant increase in the study, data on the sources used to watch live sports may be a cause for concern.

Data from 2024 shows a decrease in legal-only live sports consumption (62% of respondents in 2024) and a similar one point decrease in exclusively illegal consumption to 14% (15% in 2022). The study provides additional context:

• Exclusive use of illegal sources highest among those aged 16-24 (28%)
• Exclusive use of illegal sources in other age groups (8% to 20%)
• Those with a high passion for live sport are most likely to infringe (44%)

While use of paid subscriptions to music streaming services increased by 3% (57% of respondents), paid subscriptions to sports streaming platforms fell by 8% in 2024 (51% of respondents). Meanwhile, paid subscriptions to pirate IPTV providers to access live sports were up 4% and used by 12% of respondents.

“In the qualitative phase, some participants mentioned having to abandon subscriptions to live sports, due to managing this cost alongside other increasing costs,” the study’s authors reveal.

“Participants suggested that, in the future, they would need to further decrease their consumption of live sports subscriptions and settle for free broadcasts on terrestrial TV.”

Headline Figures & Key Drivers of Infringement

The study found that music is pirated by more people than any other media, 9.9 million in total. An estimated 8.9 million people pirate movies, with 6.2 million getting their TV fix from pirate sites.

Live sports piracy is yet to topple the three main categories, but with 3.9 million people getting at least some events for free, the numbers are significant.

No real surprises or big changes in the dominant categories, but there’s potential for live sports to continue on an upward trend, and with an eight-point increase, audiobooks seem like a category to watch.

The study suggests that the rising costs of living, which include increased prices for music, TV/film, and video games subscriptions, all contribute to infringement levels.

The perception of unfair or high pricing for legal services, especially when multiple subscriptions are required, is cited as a main driver for illegal content access, with saving money the key benefit.

The Online Copyright Infringement Tracker Survey (13th Wave) is available here (ODT)

Source

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Posted Sunday 24 August 2025 at 5:47 am AEST (my time).

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