Sports streaming services are popular worldwide, with different regions having their local favorites.

In Latin America, the Magis TV brand is particularly popular but another name also popped up more frequently: ‘Al Ángulo TV’.

Al Ángulo was available through various domain names as well as an Android app, offering access to a variety of pirated sports streams. As its logo suggests, football was a particularly popular sport on the service.

‘Al Ángulo TV’ Operator Arrested

The streaming service stood out as its alleged operator, known online as ‘Shishi’ (real name Alejo Leonel Warles), was both active and visible on social media. Just a few days ago, Al Ángulo’s official X account celebrated 100,000 followers, a figure that has since skyrocketed to over 125,000 today. The reasons for the increase aren’t what Warles had hoped for.

Yesterday, Warles was arrested by local authorities in the city of Paraná, Argentina. The arrest, carried out by the San Isidro DDI, was approved by a local court following a month-long criminal investigation led by the Specialized Cybercrime Investigation Unit (UFEIC) of San Isidro, Buenos Aires.

The arrest
 

The investigation received key support from international organizations, including the Alliance Against Audiovisual Piracy (ALIANZA) and Spain’s professional football league, LaLiga, which were both directly affected by Al Ángulo’s activities.

At the time of writing, the main domain of the service, which received over three million visits in July, is unreachable. This suggests that the operation was effectively shut down by the law enforcement operation.

Catch Me if You Can

According to a report from Infobae, Warles previously acknowledged the illegal nature of the service, while informing followers that ‘no one could catch him’. The alleged operator had also appeared in press interviews and was active on YouTube as W4RLES.

With this and other information, the authorities were able to connect the dots and then arrest the presumed brain behind the operation. Warles now faces charges for violating Law 11.723, Argentina’s copyright law, risking a multi-year prison sentence.

Al Ángulo TV (last month)
 

‘Al Ángulo TV’ reportedly generated revenues through advertising and direct user donations through virtual wallets and cryptocurrencies. During the raid on Warles’ home, authorities seized computers, cell phones, electronic devices, and various funds stored in the virtual accounts.

David vs. Goliath Fundraiser

The defendant is represented by attorney Fernando Madeo Facente, who will file a request for Warles to be released on bail, arguing that he has no prior criminal record. The attorney sees this case as a “David versus Goliath” battle.

“It’s similar to the case against the Fútbol Libre site. They’re multinational companies, and the Spanish LaLiga is involved in this. It’s David versus Goliath. A very powerful company versus a kid from a humble family,” Facente said, quoted by Infobae.

Shortly after the arrest, a fundraiser was launched to cover legal expenses and travel costs. This effort, purportedly backed by the family, is widely shared on social media.

Fundraiser (Mercado Pago wallet)
 

According to Warles’ attorney, this swift action demonstrates that powerful forces, including LaLiga, are driving the case. Rightsholders, in turn, will see it as evidence that Argentinian authorities are taking piracy seriously.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

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

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

RIP Matrix

With nearly 700 million monthly active users across over 180 markets, Spotify is the world’s most popular music streaming service by a significant margin.

The streaming giant has always positioned itself as a competitor to pirate services, but its success also relied on pirates. In the early days, Spotify allegedly used MP3s from The Pirate Bay to populate its beta service. The notorious Swedish torrent site was instrumental in other ways too.

Times change, however, and today online piracy and related tools are a major nuisance for the Swedish company. They get in the way of selling subscriptions and hurt the company’s bottom line.

Spotify Takes Down ‘EeveeSpotify’

EeveeSpotify, a software tweak for iOS that allowed users to access premium features without having to sign up for a paid subscription, was especially popular. Like its defunct predecessor Spotilife, it offered an ad-free listening experience, access to lyrics, and the ability to play any song on demand.

Developer ‘whoeevee’ posted pre-compiled IPA application packages on GitHub, so users could easily download an already modified version of the Spotify app, including the necessary tweaks.

After EeveeSpotify gained substantial traction over the past year, Spotify stepped in, asking GitHub to remove the entire repository from its platform.

“The files identified below were derived from unauthorized copies of the Spotify Copyrights and/or the files identified below are derivative works based on the Spotify Copyrights,” Spotify wrote, listing the entire EeveeSpotify repository as problematic.

Spotify’s takedown notice

The takedown notice specifically mentions derivatives. This is accurate, as EeveeSpotify was distributed pre-compiled and included the Spotify application’s original copyrighted code. As a result, GitHub took action, disabling the entire repository as well as more than 500 forks.

Removed

‘EeveeSpotify Reborn’

The removal was a disappointment for many users as well as the developer. However, ‘whoeevee’ read the notice carefully and concluded that there may be a way for the popular code tweak to survive in the form of ‘EeveeSpotifyReborn‘.

Soon after Spotify’s DMCA notice was honored by GitHub, the developer posted a new repository on GitHub offering the same functionality, but with a key difference. EeveeSpotifyReborn does not include the IPA packages containing Spotify’s copyrighted code.

“The original EeveeSpotify repository was disabled due to a DMCA takedown. This repository will not contain the IPA packages, as they are most likely the reason for the takedown,” the developer notes.

Reborn
 

Without an easy sideloading option, some users may find it harder to install the tweak. However, the developer no longer directly infringes Spotify’s copyright. At the same time, the legal responsibility for modifying the Spotify app shifts more towards the end-user who applies the patch.

Whether this will ensure availability of the code going forward is unknown. In its takedown notice, Spotify also mentions that it uses protection measures to control access to copyrighted content. The company may argue that the tweak violates the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA and enables wider infringement by users of the tweak.

For now, EeveeSpotifyReborn, which already has more than 100 forks on GitHub, remains online.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Thursday 21 August 2025 at 1:12 pm AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix

A little over three years ago, SmoothStreams was considered one the most reliable and well-known pirate IPTV providers. Several years of what appeared to be fairly plain sailing in relatively calm waters proved to be deceptive.

Following a years-long investigation, a huge coalition of entertainment industry companies including Bell Media and Rogers Media, members of MPA-Canada (Motion Picture Association Canada) and ACE (Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment), were preparing to shut SmoothStreams down.

The End of SmoothStreams

On June 17, 2022, Bell, Rogers, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, Warner Bros., and Universal filed a statement of claim against Marshall Macciacchera and Antonio Macciacchera (son and father respectively). According to the plaintiffs, these men were not just the operators of SmoothStreams, but were also behind several linked platforms including live247.tv, StreamTVNow.tv and StarStreams.tv.

Armed with an Anton Piller order issued by judge, the plan was to gain entry to various premises and quickly secure crucial evidence to prevent tampering or even destruction. With potential prison sentences for failing to respect this type of order, those targeted are expected to comply and that’s usually what happens. Not here.

As individuals their responses differed, but the bottom line was broadly the same for both men. Neither fully complied with the order and for that there would be consequences. The men were accused of contempt of court, an offense punishable by fines or even a custodial sentence.

The Long Haul and Mounting Costs

The substantial end of SmoothStreams was never really in doubt but whether there would ever be a normal trial was a completely different matter.

The plaintiffs quickly sought an order finding Marshall Macciacchera and several affiliated companies in contempt for failing to comply with the terms of an interim order. Failure to make financial disclosures, refusing to answer questions regarding assets, and failure to provide login credentials led to Marshall and the companies being charged with contempt in July 2022.

All Defendants Found Guilty of Contempt

Antonio faced a separate proceeding and a contempt judgment in the summer of 2023. He was ordered to pay ~CAD$95,000 (~US$70,900) to the plaintiffs to cover their costs.

In Marshall’s case, a contempt hearing spanning four days took place in April 2023, with additional submissions on five occasions to January 2024. The court concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that the terms of the interim order were knowingly breached; Marshall and three affiliated companies – Arm Hosting Inc., Star Hosting Limited, and Roma Works Limited – were all found guilty of contempt.

In an order dated August 21, 2024, the defendants were instructed to pay a lump sum amount of CAD$375,312.93 (~US$270,600) to cover the plaintiffs’ costs, an amount for which they were held jointly and severally liable.

For Marshall and Antonio, these costs were just the beginning; penalties for contempt were yet to be decided.

Plaintiffs Demand Custodial Sentences

The entertainment company plaintiffs informed the defendants that they would seek an initial term of imprisonment of up to six months for both men, to continue until they complied with the terms of the interim order. They were expected to “cure their contempt” by providing the information, documentation, and passwords that they had been ordered to provide.

The proposals put forth by Antonio and Marshall were considerably less punitive.

Antonio recommended that he should receive a 30-day term of imprisonment to be served on weekends, or 30 days of house arrest, for failing to provide financial information.

Marshall proposed a prison term of one week for his failure to comply with the terms of the interim order, without an offer to provide the plaintiffs with passwords, documents, and other information.

Concerned that custodial sentences would elevate flight risk, the plaintiffs highlighted track records of non-compliance, almost 100 questions yet to be answered, and significant costs yet to be paid, together representing an ongoing challenge to the Court’s authority. Marshall’s response to the plaintiffs asking whether he intended to cure his contempt by handing over a password, was provided to the court as an example.

Provide the password? Still ‘No’>

After thorough consideration, the Court ordered Marshall and Antonio to surrender their passports to the Federal Court no later than 09:00 on the first day of their penalty hearing. There they would remain under seal until delivery of their penalty judgment, to be returned only when all appeals had been exhausted.

Order For Marshall’s Arrest

Throughout this entire case the majority of filings have remained unavailable to the public. An order dated August 15 was just the latest in a long line but a public note suggested that freedom had indeed been taken off the table.

Reasons for Order and Order dated 15-AUG-2025 rendered by Chief Justice Crampton. Matter considered with personal appearance. The Court’s decision is with regard to Special Case Result:

 

“YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED to: 1. Arrest Marshall Macciacchera, whose last known address is XXX-XXXX XXXXX XXXXXXX XXXX Woodbridge, Ontario XXX XXX, if it is necessary to do so in order to take him into custody.”

A follow-up note provides valuable context and reveals the fate of both men.

The court found that the defendants showed blatant disregard for the orders, which aimed to prevent the destruction of evidence and transfer of funds outside the jurisdiction.

The plaintiffs sought penalties including incarceration until compliance. The court ordered [Marshall] to serve an initial six-month sentence followed by a maximum of five years less one day for continued non-compliance, requiring the disclosure of assets and passwords.

[Antonio] received a four-month initial term with the same maximum extension. The court emphasized that these penalties are necessary to uphold the rule of law and deter future contemptuous conduct, given the absence of mitigating factors in this case.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Thursday 21 August 2025 at 2:42 am AEST (my time).

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

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 two newcomers on the list. “Superman” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on August 18 are:

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

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 20 August 2025 at 5:26 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix

Under U.S. law, rightsholders have an option to identify alleged copyright infringers without directly having to file a lawsuit.

Instead, they can request a DMCA subpoena which is typically signed by a court clerk and don’t require any judicial oversight.

Specifically, they allow rightsholders to obtain the personal details of anonymous alleged infringers from third-party internet services where the infringing material was stored or shared. That includes hosting companies and social media platforms.

DMCA Shortcut?

The DMCA specifies that these subpoenas don’t apply to all online services. Mere conduit providers that simply pass on bytes are typically excluded, for example. However, that didn’t stop some rightsholders from using this shortcut to request information from residential ISPs.

Drawing inspiration from the RIAA’s efforts to identify music pirates in the early 2000s, more recently they used the DMCA subpoena process to obtain the personal details of suspected copyright infringers.

Courts in the United States ruled out use of DMCA subpoenas in this context over two decades ago, but more recent attempts presented fresh interpretations while highlighting conflicting case law. Many court clerks granted these new subpoena requests, which required Internet providers to identify hundreds, if not thousands, of alleged pirates.

Cox Successfully Intervened, Filmmakers Appealed

After rightsholders obtained similarly broad DMCA subpoenas from courts around the U.S., Internet provider Cox Communications intervened in one of those cases to defend a subscriber who objected to the handover of their information.

In common with the opposition that ruled out the use of DMCA subpoenas in the early RIAA case, the ISP argued that these subpoenas don’t apply to mere conduit providers, as defined under § 512(a) of the DMCA.

The Hawaii District Court agreed with Cox’s reasoning last year and quashed the subpoena. The ruling concluded that DMCA subpoenas typically don’t apply to DMCA §512(a) services, but do apply to other providers that store or link to infringing content directly.

The film companies, including Capstone Studios and Millennium Funding, didn’t give up, however. After an initial motion for reconsideration failed, they filed an appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Among other things, the appeal argued that Cox also falls under the definition of DMCA §512(d) providers, as it can remove or disable ‘references or links’ to infringing content.

The rightsholders further argued that DMCA subpoenas also apply to § 512(a) service providers, so should be valid for Cox.

Court of Appeals Keeps Shortcut Closed

After hearing both sides, the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of Cox, confirming the lower court’s decision. This means that DMCA subpoenas cannot be used to compel residential ISPs to identify subscribers who allegedly pirated content.

The Court ruled that the subpoena process is “inextricably intertwined” with the DMCA’s “notice and takedown” framework. This means that a valid subpoena can only be issued following a takedown notice that identifies content that should be removed or disabled.

Since an ISP like Cox does not store the files users share via BitTorrent, there is nothing for it to “take down”. Therefore, a valid notification cannot be sent, and a subpoena cannot be issued.

From the order
 

The film companies had argued that by assigning IP addresses and routing traffic, Cox was effectively “linking” subscribers to infringing content. The Court rejected this argument, noting that, based on this logic, the § 512(d) safe harbor would “completely swallow” the § 512(a) safe harbor, as every ISP performs this function.

Finally, the Court dismissed the filmmakers’ argument that Cox could “disable access” via port blocking or null routing. The Court concluded that these measures would not remove the infringing material from the internet.

MPA, RIAA, EFF and Congress

The ruling is in line with previous decisions from other circuits, solidifying the use of DMCA subpoenas as off-limits.

This is good news for subscribers who were at risk of being identified through this shortcut. Rightsholders can still request their identities, but only after filing a regular lawsuit, a more expensive process and harder to scale up.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which submitted an amicus brief in the case, previously argued that allowing these subpoenas would empower “copyright trolls” and lead to coercive settlement demands against ordinary internet users. That concern is off the table now.

The MPA and RIAA will be less pleased with the Ninth Circuit’s decision. While they took no side in the dispute, they feared that the lower court’s ruling against DMCA subpoenas could interfere with their efforts to obtain details of infringers through third-party services such as Cloudflare.

The movie and music industry’s anti-piracy groups filed an amicus brief arguing for a “narrow ruling” that would not reject the possibility that an IP address could function as a “link” under the § 512(d) safe harbor.

However, the Ninth Circuit did not issue a narrow ruling. On the contrary, it confirmed that connecting a user to the internet and assigning them an IP address does not “link” or “refer” that user to any particular infringing material.

Link or refer
 

The Court did exactly what the MPA and RIAA feared it might do. Of course, this case applies to a residential ISP, Cox, and if a similar challenge is filed in cases where Cloudflare or other providers are targeted, other arguments may be brought to the table.

All in all, the Court of Appeals clarified that rightsholders will have to use the more expensive route if they want to identify alleged BitTorrent pirates. The Court did say that it understood the challenges rightsholders face, but stressed that these should be addressed by lawmakers.

“We are sympathetic to this argument, but whether the DMCA provides a sufficient remedy for copyright holders to vindicate their rights against infringers using P2P networking is ultimately a question for Congress, not the courts,” the decision concludes.

—

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, issued on August 15, is available here (pdf)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 19 August 2025 at 2:56 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix

From its initial launch and relentless coverage in the media for a solid 18 months, there had to be something more to the BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign than initially met the eye.

Anti-piracy campaigns come and go; BeStreamWise made itself comfortable in people’s living rooms, took over the Sky remote, and even now still refuses to leave.

Those who took refuge online found little respite. BeStreamWise has maintained a constant media presence, especially via the national tabloids, their regional partners, plus online-only publications known for their social media reach.

Interestingly, zero coverage by the BBC. Not a word. Even more unusual given that the campaign’s partners include the BBC itself and the UK government, via the Intellectual Property Office, which prominently mentions the campaign on its website….absolutely nowhere?

BeStreamWise Partners 

[credit:bestreamwise.com]

Today we present a sample of what we have learned about the campaign and those involved since September 2023. A slightly different format than usual with plenty of images, in keeping with the campaign itself.

Creating the BeStreamWise Brand

“Sky partnered With marketing agency Weber Shandwick to create the BeStreamWise brand, educating consumers about the risks from illegal streaming websites. The Sky Anti-Piracy team needed a website to tie into a UK-wide TV, online and out-of-home advertising campaign.”

Photographer Henrik Knudsen worked with Weber Shandwick and Nice Shirt Films to create the assets for the out-of-home and digital campaign.

credits: webershandwick.com / henrikknudsen.com

Special effects were created by BOOM CGI and the BeStreamWise campaign website, hosted on the Sky Websites platform, is powered by ContentStack which can provide useful insight on user interactions.

credits:BOOM CGI / ContentStack

BeStreamWise Video Campaign

The BeStreamWise YouTube channel contains only three videos. The launch video (center) received relatively few views, just 2,600 in total. The 30-second campaign video (left) has performed well with 863,000.

That’s nothing when compared to the 15-second variant that is targeted, at least in part, at viewers known to have searched for infringing content.

credit:youtube.com

A total of 7.6 million views so far and still counting shows the reach of the campaign. How many pirates viewed the video more than once isn’t clear but on a strict one-to-one basis, that figure is getting close to every pirate in the country.

The big question is this: they may have seen the campaign but did they listen closely enough to absorb the message? For that matter, what exactly is the message?

Holy Grail of Campaigning – Modify People’s Behavior (COM B Model)

Several months ago, a Sky employee updated colleagues on a successful campaign; an anti-piracy campaign with relevance as a cybersecurity awareness drive. The campaign was described as follows:

The campaign is a fresh take on anti-piracy messaging and likens illegal streaming to leaving your digital front door open. The tag line, ‘Illegal Streams Let Criminals In’, acts to remind consumers of the risks involved in illegal streaming from malware and viruses to fraud, theft or even identity theft. While also directing consumers to safe and official streaming pathways

The model chosen to underpin the entire campaign is especially interesting;

The COM B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behavior) model is a behavior change framework that suggests successful behavioral modification requires the following elements (descriptions tailored to the campaign, our analysis, not Sky’s)

1. Capability:
– Psychological and general ability to perform the desired behavior
– Understanding that illegal streaming carries risks
– Understanding potential cybersecurity threats

2. Opportunity:
– Social and physical environment that enables the desired behavior
– Availability of accessible legal streaming alternatives
– Highlighting easy ways to access legitimate content

3. Motivation:
– Brain processes that energize and direct behavior
– Emotional and reflective motivation towards risk avoidance (cybersecurity threats)
– Fear around potential consequences of illegal streaming (malware etc)

4. ̶P̶R̶O̶F̶I̶T̶ Successful behavioral modification

How Did the Campaign Perform?

After waiting three months in the hope that Sky would release the results to the public, we came to the conclusion that in all likelihood, the results of the campaign are probably destined for private consumption. We have no fine details but from the information available, certain targets were met and the campaign appears to have been viewed as a success.

Terms used to sum up:

• Earned media publicity through promotional efforts, not paid advertising
• OOH (Out-of-Home) Advertising: Billboards, street furniture, public transport etc
• Earned activations: Marketing initiatives that generate organic engagement
• Enforcement communications: See below

Whether a campaign is considered a success when measured against increased sales of legal products is never discussed in public; there’s no reason to believe BeStreamWise will be any different. Regardless of the outcome, nobody can accuse Sky of not putting in the effort and the targeting appears to have been pretty much flawless.

Finally, a short comment on ‘Enforcement communications’, which appear to be linked, in whole or in part, to hundreds of mostly sensationalized, misleading, or otherwise disappointing stories in the media, concerning illegal streaming, arrests, prison sentences etc.

Some may believe the end justifies the means, but filling the public consciousness with anything other than a best effort representation of the facts, simply kicks the piracy problem down the road for another day.

People should be concerned about malware, credit card fraud, and identity theft, so that’s a valuable message to have sent. But take that away, people still aren’t scared about piracy.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 18 August 2025 at 2:53 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix

Early August, we reported on a remarkable court order handed down by the Dutch Business Court in Brussels. It compelled internet providers, hosting companies, and other intermediaries to block access to several ‘pirate’ sites and deny access to payment providers.

The targeted domain names are linked to known shadow libraries such as Anna’s Archive, LibGen, and Z-Library. However, the order also listed Internet Archive’s Open Library project as a structurally infringing website.

When making their case in favor of a blocking order, the plaintiffs argued that the sites’ operators were difficult to reach, which the court accepted in its ruling. While this can be true for classic pirate sites, Open Library is quite approachable; it’s operated by the Internet Archive, a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.

Despite this apparent conflict, the court signed off on an order that clearly requires ISPs and other companies to block access to Openlibrary.org.

Open Library Remains Accessible

After publishing our report the Internet Archive informed us that the Open Library project remained accessible in Belgium. Along with domains operated by four ‘target sites’, Open Library’s domain was listed on the master blacklist of FPS Economy, which oversees site blocking measures in Belgium. The site wasn’t actually blocked, however.

Hoping for clarification on what had led to Open Library’s exclusion, despite the presence of a clear blocking order, we contacted the responsible Belgian federal authority. Our request remains unanswered, but an official implementation plan for the order, published last week, explains what’s going on.

The follow-up order was published by the Department for Combating Infringements of Copyright and Related Rights Committed Online and the Illegal Exploitation of Online Games of Chance, which is part of a larger Belgian government ministry, FPS Economy.

Essentially, the order from the Business Court in Brussels granted authority for the department to determine the detailed technical rules for execution of the blocking order, to ensure that blocking is effective. That process allows for reversing or pausing blocking requirements, and that’s why Open Library remains accessible.

New Order Defers Open Library Blocking

As noted earlier, the implementation order indicates that the owner of Open Library is easily identified. In fact, the Belgian authorities formally heard the Internet Archive on July 28, after the blocking order was issued.

The original court order listed Internet Archive as the hosting service of Open Library, although it’s also the platform’s owner. Based on this information and the hearing, the blocking decision was deferred.

The implementation order urges the Internet Archive to consult the publishers who requested the blocking measures, to see if an agreement can be reached.

“Due to the capacity of this intermediary as website owner, the Department considers that additional consultation with the parties involved (Internet Archive, requesting parties) is necessary and that, if necessary, the implementation measures that have to be taken by this party will be determined in consultation with the parties involved in a later decision,” the order reads.

Blocking On Hold
 

Internet Archive’s Director of Library Services, Chris Freeland, informs us that since they are working with the Belgian authorities on the next steps, no further details are being shared at this time.

Two-Step Blocking Process

This new information confirms that Belgium operates a two-step process when it comes to these types of blocking orders. The original business court orders are formal but not final. They can change significantly based on a follow-up implementation order issued by Belgium’s Federal Public Service (FPS).

In addition to the crucial pausing of blocking measures against Open Library, the follow-up order also removed intermediary Amazon as a blocking target since it provides no services to any of the targeted sites.

Amazon is Exempt
 

The order further clarifies that payment intermediaries like PayPal and Alipay will only be required to suspend services after the rightsholders share specific, detailed information (e.g., email addresses, account numbers) that allows them to reasonably identify the associated customer.

Finally, the order notes that rightsholders can request new domains and mirror sites to be added to the blocklist, with a limit of 50 new domain names per month. Once approved by the department, these will be added to the blocklist on a monthly basis.

All in all, it’s clear that the Belgian blocking process is more involved than a single court order. Whether Open Library will still face some level of blocking will become clearer in the days and weeks ahead. Whether details of the ‘consultation’ will be made available to the public in the interests of transparency remains unknown.

—

A copy of the implementation decision/order, issued by the Department for Combating Infringements of Copyright and Related Rights Committed Online and the Illegal Exploitation of Online Games of Chance, is available here (pdf).

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 16 August 2025 at 7:29 pm AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix

After 15 years of pirate site blocking by ISPs including BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, and Plusnet, last month a new player quietly entered the UK site blocking arena.

Cloudflare’s blocking measures in the UK were confirmed when attempts to access pirate streaming sites returned Error 451, indicating a site unavailable for legal reasons. To help visitors understand why access had been blocked, Cloudflare provided a link on its error page to legal documents referencing blocking injunctions previously obtained by Hollywood; most were several years old and none were directed at Cloudflare.

A Clearer, Much Bigger Picture

We now have a better idea of the potential scale of Cloudflare’s blocking in the UK. Our initial estimate of 200 sites/domains was based on more recent blocking instructions and was aimed deliberately low. New information suggests that the injunctions in question may have already expanded to cover more than 1,000 domains.

The real figure could even be double that; the truth is we can’t rule anything in or out. Transparency starts and ends with the initial process, and once a blocking order has been signed, down comes the curtain. Cloudflare recently commissioned a report on the perils of mass site blocking, but our questions on the same topic remain unanswered. We didn’t ask for one, but a live list of domains requested for blocking, by whom, where, and why, isn’t expected any time soon, at least not officially.

Meanwhile, Cloudflare has submitted some relevant information to the Lumen Database. It still falls short on detail and transparency, which requires us to make a couple of assumptions we’d rather not. Nevertheless, some information is better than the alternative; if tech companies including Cloudflare, Google, GitHub, and others didn’t contribute as they currently do, the ramifications would be significant.

Cloudflare Blocking Concerns Previously Obtained Injunctions

The notice below is one of several published on the Lumen Database during the past few days. Reportedly received by Cloudflare, each notice refers to a court order issued by the High Court on August 8, 2025, followed by a reference number, in this example IL-2021-000073.

The entities responsible for sending the notice to Cloudflare are listed on the left.

The supporting PDF contains details of a successful application for a dynamic injunction obtained by Columbia Pictures, Disney, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, Universal City Studios, and Warner Bros. It requires the UK’s leading ISPs to block domain names linked to streaming sites with familiar brands, including 123movies, fmovies, sflix, and watchserieshd.

In total, the injunction requires the ISPs to block 17 domains, with broadly similar numbers requested in the other injunctions submitted by Cloudflare in the same batch.

The original orders were obtained in July 2021, December 2021, March 2023, and February 2024 respectively, but since they’re dynamic injunctions to which additional domains can be added as required, we assume they’re currently live and ongoing.

IL-2021-000073 – One of Four Injunctions Recently Submitted By Cloudflare

Like the example above, none of the four original orders mention Cloudflare, so we turn to the title of the notification sent to Lumen (first image above, white text on blue). Citing a High Court order issued on August 8, it seems to imply that the High Court added Cloudflare to the existing order on that date, and it’s now required to block the same domains as the ISPs.

While it’s tempting to make that assumption, no official paperwork has been made available to support it. The difference between being compelled to block and blocking voluntarily is significant anywhere; in the UK, voluntary site blocking would be a first, for an intermediary like Cloudflare, close to groundbreaking. Until we see evidence one way or another, that question remains open.

Domains Listed For Blocking in the Remaining Injunctions

Since the remaining orders are broadly the same, with the same applicants and the same ISP respondents, we now turn to the list of domains for blocking by ISPs (plus Cloudflare, of course) attached to each of the orders.

Schedule 1 for Each Order Containing Domains For Blocking

Adding up the domains in each schedule and concluding that Cloudflare only has to block around 50 domains would be a mistake. These domains are the same as those present in the original orders so years later, many are lying dormant, seemingly doing very little, parked, or completely dead.

The important domains – the ones added AFTER the injunctions are issued – don’t appear in any public paperwork in connection with any injunction, yet by volume they are by far the greatest contributors to ISP blocking lists worldwide.

The classic ‘iceberg’ analogy doesn’t even come close. Over 60 domains/subdomains have been blocked in the UK containing the word ‘bflix’, over 150 domains that contain ‘Putlocker’, and a mind-boggling 700+ with the term ‘123movie’ somewhere in its domain/subdomain, with fmovies accounting for at least another 400.

Yet Another New Batch

On or around August 11, ISPs in the UK began blocking yet another batch of domains for copyright infringement. This added more than 100 new domains/subdomains to an already stacked list.

Once again, the new list is dominated by pirate brands, including gomovies, couchtuner, 123movies, fmovies, and worthmovie, but something wasn’t performing as it should.

When attempting to access maxflip.top, a clear blocking target for the MPA, Cloudflare’s Error HTTP 451 ‘legal reasons’ page linked to a takedown notice that has nothing to do with blocking. Similar errors persist on other recently blocked domains, all from the most recently submitted batch.

Given the sheer number of blocked domains/subdomains and the endless combinations of branding options when new domains appear online, arriving at a precise number of domains blocked by Cloudflare is both difficult and time-consuming.

Without a doubt, the biggest hurdle has always been a complete lack of transparency after initial blocking orders are issued, at a time when volume of domains blocked immediately increases. Everything happens in complete darkness so when there’s an incident, there’s very little the individual can do.

High Court orders issued in the UK have a clause stating that anyone affected by overblocking has the right to apply to the Court to discharge or vary the order. For the average user it’s almost impossible to determine that an access failure was caused by erroneous blocking. The prospect of finding out who was responsible in order to file a complaint, is only marginally more comical than obtaining the evidence likely to be requested to show what happened.

As blocking escalates all over the world and the associated risks to the wider internet continue to increase (see a recent report commissioned by Cloudflare itself), vast sums are being spent on blocking systems and legislation in support of blocking systems that benefit relatively few companies.

Against that backdrop of time and expense, consider this; changing a single browser setting immediately restores access to every site currently blocked by Cloudflare in the UK.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 16 August 2025 at 5:00 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix

Copyright holders have made numerous attempts in recent years to deter people from visiting pirate websites.

Simply stating that piracy is illegal doesn’t appear to work very well, so anti-piracy messaging often tries to appeal to other emotions too.

Anti-piracy campaigns frequently warn of the malware and security risks posed by some pirate operations, for example. These concerns are warranted as some sites and services have been associated with severe security risks. The ultimate goal of these campaigns is to convert pirates into legitimate subscribers.

“You Get Pirated Football, They Get You”

A few days ago, Spain’s top football league, LaLiga, launched a new PSA, coinciding with the start of the new season. Their message is simple but clear: “You Get Pirated Football, They Get You”.

LaLiga warns fans that using pirate services puts them at imminent risk, noting that criminals can gain access to sensitive personal data.

“Accessing pirated content is like leaving the front door open to hackers. The risks range from identity theft and financial fraud to device hijacking and total privacy loss. Fans who watch illegal broadcasts may become victims without even realizing it,” LaLiga writes.

The campaign video, which has embedding disabled, starts with a claim that over 50% of viruses detected online come from pirate services. While we can’t find a direct source for this statement, the rest suggests that pretty much everything is at risk.

50% of all viruses…

“When you stream a match on an illegal site, you’re opening your life to anyone. They’ll gain access to your phone. To your accounts, passwords, and personal emails. They can drain your bank account, steal your identity. They’ll know everything about you. Everything.”

Drained bank account…
 

The official campaign website provides more context and links to third-party reports and sources, including Interpol and Europol. At the same time, it encourages the public to stay away from potential trouble and sign up for an official subscription instead.

Extreme?

While pirate sites and services can certainly pose a threat, they come in all shapes and sizes, including some that may not immediately drain users’ bank accounts. This type of nuance may not do so well in an anti-piracy campaign of this sort.

Whether the message will be effective among fans has yet to be seen. Previously, research has shown that extreme messaging can be counterproductive. Whether that will be the case in Spain will be determined by the viewers.

Thus far, the majority of YouTube comments appear unconvinced that LaLiga cares about the security and privacy of pirates. Quite the contrary.

YouTube comments on the official warning

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 15 August 2025 at 6:06 pm AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix

Piracy of movies, TV shows, music, games and similar content, purely for the purpose of recreation, is an internet wide phenomenon that would otherwise find funding from consumers’ disposable income.

Once gainfully employed, piracy of leisure products largely becomes a matter of choice. In the educational context, textbooks can be both expensive and effectively mandatory for those seeking an education, a job, and the luxury of income to spend at some point.

For less well-off students this presents a dilemma; a) no money now and no money later either, b) go into debt and introduce a new set of problems, or c) piracy.

“Eliminating Educational Inequality”

Yubin Archive launched on Telegram in July 2023 and was an instant hit with students. Offering educational materials such as textbooks, workbooks, video lectures, and exam preparation material, its motto was Eliminating Educational Inequality.

Early 2024, Yubin Archive had already amassed over 140,000 members, mostly students and of all ages. Stories of how the unofficial library had saved the day in various ways began to appear in the media. Queues to scan textbooks and have them printed onto paper were dramatically cut. Starting out with a digital copy rather than a loaned physical book yet to be scanned, let alone printed, became a thing of the past.

A report in March 2024 reported that Yubin Archive had become popular with students at law school, proof perhaps that knowledge of the law doesn’t always precede compliance.

Book Publishers and Government React

“It is not an exaggeration to say that most of the 6,000 law school students across the country have pirated files,” commented the CEO of a book publishing company early last year.

“Although we started filing complaints in May last year [2023] and sent warnings to law schools nationwide, books published in January and February this year [2024] are already being shared as files.”

An official from the Korea Copyright Commission warned that copying and distribution would breach copyright law, before conceding that punishing individuals could be quite difficult.

“Private education is essential, but there are cases where sufficient education is not received due to the burden of costs,” the then-anonymous operator of Yubin Archive added. “We have opened a Telegram channel for equality in education for all.”

As the Commission suggested, chasing down every individual involved in this type of platform isn’t feasible; recently the channel had over 330,000 members. In situations like these, it’s much more likely that those running the service and/or contributing significant content, will eventually attract enough attention to warrant an investigation.

Authorities Arrest Yubin Archive’s Operator

An official statement confirming the operator’s arrest was published locally on August 12. The timeline suggests the arrest probably took place on or around August 9. The following notice appeared on Yubin Archive on August 11.

“The Ministry of Culture and Sports’ Copyright Crime Science Investigation Team used digital science investigation (forensics) and various investigation methods to identify the core operator, conduct simultaneous search and seizure at their homes, and fully secure the Telegram criminal activities,” the Ministry’s statement reads.

Copyright Crime Investigators search Yubin Archive operator’s home

“Investigations into accomplices who participated in the operation are also underway.”

Authorities Dismiss ‘Robin Hood’ Imagery

While copyright infringement at scale is almost always a crime, regardless of content type or claimed good intention, having a Robin Hood character in the mix risks dilution of key anti-piracy messaging. No surprise then that much is being made of the existence of a ‘minority room’ within Yubin Archive, access to which was only permitted upon payment of a fee.

“The core operator of the ‘Yubin Archive’, who was arrested, was found to have created a separate paid sharing channel (also known as a minority channel) while promoting the illegal sharing of learning materials as a noble act to eliminate educational inequality,” the Ministry notes.

“In addition, the illegal sharing channel was a criminal act that could instill incorrect copyright awareness in most users, including teenagers. The Ministry of Culture and Sports is committed to continuing its efforts to track and strictly respond to illegal activities that abuse anonymous channels such as Telegram, to protect the rights of creators.”

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 15 August 2025 at 4:38 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix

The most hardcore pirates rarely feel the need to justify their consumption habits. For those who are a little less militant, reasons to pirate are in plentiful supply.

Whether it’s availability, price, inconvenience, not enough choice, or too many choices, there always a reason for piracy being the more attractive offer.

For their part, opponents often dismiss these reasons as convenient excuses, places to hide while defending what some believe is straightforward theft. Take the same stance against a 3pm blackout ‘excuse’ and the argument quickly hits a dead end.

Reason’s Big Brother: Justification

The 3pm blackout refers to the period when broadcasters such as SKY cannot broadcast live football to fans in the UK.

Running from 2.45pm until 5.15pm on Saturdays, the ‘closed period’ was originally put in place to ensure that the draw of major games on TV couldn’t deprive clubs in lower leagues of their significantly smaller audiences.

Support for ‘grassroots’ football may at times be presented as benevolent, charitable even, but a failure to nurture home-grown talent risks reliance on expensive imports later down the road. Short-term ‘gains’ for not reinvesting money back into the game would’ve been worth around £170 million to the Football Association according to its last set of accounts.

Grassroots engagement, not to mention engaging the entire country in football, generation after generation, is fundamental to ensuring healthy match attendances at every level; that leads to lucrative broadcasting rights upon which the ecosystem relies.

The 3pm blackout protects all of that, at the expense of locking all clubs out of a local live broadcasting market, in which they could enjoy exclusivity. Yet through artificial restriction that prohibits the existence of a potentially lucrative market, fans happy to hand over their cash have become increasingly frustrated.

Less invested fans in overseas markets are not only free to watch matches during the blackout, they do so legally at a fraction of the prices charged in the UK generally.

So, if no money is made from UK fans during the blackout, piracy could be viewed as not just a reasonable option, but a logical common sense alternative.

Can IPTV pirates offering 3pm matches hurt a market that doesn’t even exist? And when fans watch matches, is that still straightforward theft from the Premier League, for example, and if so, what exactly are they being deprived of?

“We Run On English Football Time”

For the clearest example yet that exploiting a market that doesn’t exist is a serious crime in the UK, look no further than pirate IPTV service Flawless TV.

After its operator quipped that the Flawless team “run on English football time” and it was privately recognized that the 3pm blackout was great for business, criminal prosecutions concluded that rights can’t be exploited without first obtaining permission from the rightsholder.

Excuses, reasons, and justification ultimately proved no match for custodial sentences totaling more than 30 years which in practical terms, failed to solve the problem. Pirates don’t just exploit artificial restrictions, they thrive on them. If there was a gap in the market, it didn’t stay that way for long.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Speaking to the press at Sky’s Premier League launch event this week, Sky Sports chief Jonathan Licht added momentum to what some believe is the beginning of the end for football’s 3pm TV ‘blackout’.

“There’s clearly a direction of travel and lots of conversation about Saturday 3pms, and I think that will perhaps increase as we go through this cycle,” Licht said. “It’s a conversation that’s coming.”

Talking is clearly important but admitting that a problem exists should make the conversation a little less complicated. This week, Licht effectively admitted that the restriction fuels piracy, arguably football’s biggest problem.

“It’s fair to say that 3pms have been a point for piracy coming into this market from various places,” he said.

Piracy Profits From Exclusivity

Some might argue that refusal to serve an exclusive market is why exclusive markets shouldn’t be allowed to exist. That’s a whole new conversation but purely from the perspective of loyal fans, it actually does something far worse; it provides unrivaled justification for piracy and a gateway to even more.

When fans offer their money and it’s refused year after year, pirate subscriptions and web-based streaming sites don’t just solve the 3pm Saturday problem, they continue to work all week.

“There’s a real concern that despite the illegality and links to organized crime, [piracy] has been normalized. That’s dangerous for everyone, the industry and rights holders,” Licht said. So what can be done?

“It’s all of our responsibility in the industry to tackle piracy, whether that’s lobbying big tech or engaging government,” Licht said.

Controversial, perhaps, but is listening to the fans still an option?

Fans Want to Spend Money

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Thursday 14 August 2025 at 3:38 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Next month, American filmmaker Julian Schnabel will be honored with the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker award at the prestigious Venice Film Festival.

Schnabel’s latest film In the Hand of Dante will have its world premiere at the festival, with a star-studded cast including Oscar Isaac, Al Pacino, Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, Jason Momoa, and Martin Scorsese, who is also credited as executive producer.

So far, very little official footage from the film has been released to the public; not even a trailer. Yet through unauthorized channels, including public pirate sites, a full screener copy leaked online a few days ago.

The pirated copy lists “a friend” as the source, without further context. Aside from the opening and closing scenes, the film is in black and white and clearly lists a “for screening only” watermark, as shown below.

In.the.Hand.of.Dante.2025.1080p.SCREENER.WEB-DL.X264.AC3
 

A high-profile leak of this nature is concerning, all the more so because it’s not the only screener that was released by over the past few days. Copies of other unreleased films including The Best Thing About Christmas, Agon, Life Is, and Extreme Family also appeared online.

These are mostly independent films with relatively small budgets and limited promotion.

What further stands out is that several titles have an Italian connection. In the Hand of Dante is based on a novel about the famous Italian poet and was filmed in Sicily, Venice, and Rome. The Best Thing About Christmas is a project from Italian director Paolo Genovese, while Agon is an Italian production directed by Michele Riondino.

Life Is by prominent Mexican director Lorena Villarreal doesn’t have an obvious Italian connection. Instead, the leaked screener copy has an “EFICINE Producción” watermark, referring to the fiscal stimulus program for movies in Mexico.

Life.Is.2025.1080p.SCREENER.WEB-DL.X264.AC3
 

Finally, it’s worth highlighting that we also spotted an screener release of Michael Shanks’ horror movie Together, which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently in theaters.

What is clear is that someone with either authorized or unauthorized access to these screener copies is leaking them to the public. This is reminiscent of earlier screener leaks by the group EVO, which shared similar advance copies before the group was busted in late 2022.

For these independent titles, a pre-release leak can be financially devastating, impacting potential distribution deals and box office returns. Understandably, the creators and rightsholders of the recently leaked films will be determined to find out where the current breach originated.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Wednesday 13 August 2025 at 3:40 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

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. “Jurassic World: Rebirth” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on August 11 are:

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

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Tuesday 12 August 2025 at 4:58 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

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

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

Netflix, Amazon & Hollywood Sue American IPTV Operator

To curb this unauthorized activity, several members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) filed a lawsuit against the alleged operator of Outer Limits IPTV. Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Disney, Paramount, and other major Hollywood studios alleged widespread copyright infringement.

The complaint, filed in a California federal court, identified Murrieta resident Zachary DeBarr as the owner of Outer Limits. The ‘pirate’ service reportedly offered access to over 4,000 live channels and a VOD library of more than 13,000 movie titles and over 3,000 TV series.

DeBarr allegedly promoted the IPTV service through his iTrustStream YouTube channel, which according to the plaintiffs had 100,000 subscribers. DeBarr’s company, iLockSports LLC, was also named as a defendant.

From the complaint
 

The studios listed a long history of infringing actions, dating back to 2017. The defendant allegedly started by selling Firesticks that had been modified to provide access to pirated content. He later moved on to reselling pirate IPTV subscriptions and, more recently, launched his own pirate IPTV service.

“DeBarr makes money by selling subscriptions to his Infringing Service directly to the public, but he pays nothing to Plaintiffs for the copyrighted works he exploits,” the complaint alleged.

Studios Request Default Judgment

The Outer Limits IPTV service went dark shortly after the lawsuit was filed. However, despite these serious allegations, the defendant did not appear in court to defend himself, and neither did his company. This prompted the rightsholders to file a motion for default judgment.

The plaintiffs argued that DeBarr engaged in willful copyright infringement, requesting maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the 100 copyrighted works listed in the complaint, $15 million in total.

In addition, the Hollywood studios requested a permanent injunction to stop future infringement and sought to take control of the outerlimitsiptv.com and outerlimitshosting.net domains. An injunction was needed, they argued, as DeBarr might continue his infringing activities in the future.

“While it appears the Infringing Service is no longer operational, based on my experience investigating copyright infringers, DeBarr is very likely to engage in infringing conduct again, especially given his long history of piracy,” MPA’s Bryan Willett wrote in a declaration to the court.

$15 Million in Damages

In an order issued on August 4, 2025, Judge Josephine Staton of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California sided with the studios, awarding the full $15 million in damages.

$15 Million
 

“The Court finds the requested amount of statutory damages reasonable in light of the seriousness of Defendants’ infringement and the harm it caused. The nature and scope of Defendants’ conduct indicates that they willfully engaged in egregious copyright infringement on a massive scale,” the order reads.

Judge Staton mentions that DeBarr initially shut down his operation in 2020 in response to a cease-and-desist notice, only to relaunch in 2021 while ignoring further communication from rightsholders. This underscores that his actions were willful.

In addition to the massive damages award, Judge Staton also granted a permanent injunction prohibiting DeBarr from infringing the studios’ copyrights moving forward, citing a significant threat of recidivism. The defendant must also hand over his domain names to the plaintiffs.

“Defendants’ non-appearance in this case, combined with Defendants’ history of willful infringement, convince the Court that there is a significant threat of future infringement,” Judge Staton concludes.

This judgment marks another victory for the studios in their ongoing fight against piracy. While taking one service offline doesn’t do much to limit pirate offerings, they hope that the multi-million dollar judgment, together with other verdicts, will send a deterrent message to other operators.

Earlier this year, many of the same studios filed a similar complaint at a federal court in Pennsylvania. This case targets Mechanicsburg resident Brandon Weibley, the alleged operator of several commercial IPTV services including ‘Shrugs’ and ‘Zing’. The case remains pending.

—

A copy of the $15 million default judgment against DeBarr, issued by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, is available here (civil minutes, pdf)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Tuesday 12 August 2025 at 4:35 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Earlier this year when discussing ongoing work to block pirate sites and services, Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni said that a system of fines targeting end users in Greece would complement these efforts.

As part of an administrative system, fines would be issued against people who “illegally obtain access to audiovisual media” from an illegal source, such as a website or pirate IPTV subscription, with penalties increasing depending on the seriousness of the violation.

The framework received the green light and the full text was published in February.

Procedure for Imposing and Collecting Fines

Joint Ministerial Decision 358834/2025 published by the government this week outlines the procedure for imposing and collecting administrative fines for IP violations.

The procedure specifically targets violations of intellectual property rights as defined under paragraphs 1, 2, 2A and 2B of Article 65A of Law 2121/1993 and provides details on the authorities responsible for initiating investigations, issuing infringement notices, and the collection of fines.

The administrative procedure is initiated by ‘competent control authorities’ on their own initiative or in response to a written complaint. Authorities include the Independent Authority of Public Revenue, the General Directorate of the Financial Crime Prosecution Corps, the Interdepartmental Market Control Unit, police, and Port and Customs Authorities.

Relevant to users of pirate IPTV are violations under paragraph 2b of Article 65A (full text below). Here, the fines procedure can also be initiated based on data received from the judicial authorities obtained as part of a separate criminal prosecution under Article 66 of Law 2121/1993. In plain language, if an IPTV provider or seller is prosecuted for more serious offenses and customer details are available to the authorities, that could trigger fines for the seller’s users.

Pirate IPTV-Related Fines

Evidence to support the imposition of a fine is reflected in a document containing the personal details of the offender and the infringement, plus details of any previous offenses. Details of how to dispute the allegations, within the allocated 10-day period, are also provided.

For the regular consumer, administrative fines start at €750 and when the full amount is paid without any objections, the matter is brought to a close. If the same consumer is flagged again, based on records held in a database, the fine doubles to €1,500 euros.

If the use is deemed to be commercial in nature, administrative fines start at €5,000 for each violation, increasing to €10,000 for each violation in the case of repeat infringement.

The same fines also apply to users of any equipment, such as decoders or software, through which they illegally gain access to audiovisual content without authorization from rightsholders.

For the most serious violations, usually involving sales, distribution, and other commercial components, fines start at €2,900. Offenders who pay double the administrative fine can avoid criminal prosecution but can still be pursued by rightsholders.

Joint Ministerial Decision 358834/2025 is available here, previous reporting with additional detail here

Amendments to Article 65A previously published

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Monday 11 August 2025 at 2:27 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Online piracy is a constant headache for copyright holders; one that’s particularly difficult to shake.

Academic publishers are also grappling with this issue and have recently ramped up their enforcement actions.

One key strategy is to issue takedown notices to intermediaries, including the billions of requests sent to Google. Publishers have also obtained site blocking orders in several countries and, when possible, they go after the infringing sites directly.

Publishers Seek to Unmask Shadow Libraries

In a new filing at a D.C. federal court, a coalition of academic publishers is seeking to unmask pirate site operators for potential legal action. The group includes the American Chemical Society, Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Taylor & Francis Group.

The companies requested a DMCA subpoena and that was swiftly issued by a court clerk. The subpoena is directed at internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, compelling it to hand over all identifying information the company has related to various shadow library domains, as well as other sites.

The targeted domains, all presumably Cloudflare users, include those related to the major shadow libraries, such as 1lib.sk, annas-archive.org, annas-archive.se, libgen.gl, libgen.la, libgenesis.co, z-lib.fm, z-lib.fo, z-lib.gd, z-lib.gl and sci-hub.vkif.top.

The paperwork clarifies that the subpoena is sought to “obtain the identity of alleged infringers” and that the information obtained will be used to protect the publishers’ “rights under the U.S. Copyright Act”.

As is typical with DMCA subpoenas, Cloudflare is asked to produce all relevant information it has on file. This includes names, physical addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and any billing or account records.

More Targets, Including Uptime Monitor SLUM

The subpoena also lists other domains including collegepdf.com, dl4all.org, ebookmass.com, letmeread.net, and limetorrents.lol, which all allegedly linked to pirated books.

While many of these domains indeed appear to link to specific infringing works, the same can’t be said for the open-slum.org domain. This site is better known as SLUM, the Shadow Library Uptime Monitor.

As the name suggests, SLUM provides a status overview of various Shadow Library domains and relevant hyperlinks. However, as far as we can see, it doesn’t link to any specific infringing content.

In fact, the site itself states that its goal is to provide neutral technical status monitoring and historical analysis. It does not host, mirror, or distribute any copyrighted material.

The publishers, however, appear to see it as an infringing service. In their subpoena evidence, they mention that it “redirects to https://annas-archive.org”, a term that suggests automatic forwarding. However, at the time of writing, the site merely contains a standard hyperlink to the website, which is a crucial distinction.

Publishers ask Cloudflare to Disable Access

DMCA subpoenas are not reviewed by a judge but signed off by a court clerk, in this case a day after the request was filed. The subpoena orders Cloudflare to provide the requested information by August 21.

Cloudflare can also object to the disclosure, but that’s not typically what it does. Nor is it likely to comply with additional requests the publishers made when they first alerted the company about these domains.

Before requesting the DMCA subpoena, the publishers notified Cloudflare through a takedown notice, asking the company to disable access to the domains.

“We hereby give notice of these activities and demand that you take expeditious action to disable access to the material described above, thereby preventing the illegal reproduction and distribution of this content via your company’s services,” they wrote.

Cloudflare doesn’t host the sites in question but is known to provide services to some, though its CDN for example. Since these domains are still online using Cloudflare, that request was not immediately honored.

The subpoena is a separate process, and Cloudflare is known to respond to these. Whether the information the publishers will receive will help to identify the site owners is another question. After all, pirate site operators tend to take steps to hide their identities.

—

A copy of the DMCA subpoena signed by a clerk at the federal court in D.C is available here (pdf 1, 2, 3)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Sunday 10 August 2025 at 3:26 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Four weeks ago in the wake of a Netflix price hike in Nigeria, the third in two years, there were fears that the persistent struggle between affordability and legality had reached a critical point once again.

With reports that Nigerian movie lovers were simply dealing with economic realities as they flocked to a local MovieBox-branded platform, urgent questions concerning piracy and the future of an entire movie industry came to the fore once again.

Barely a month later, MovieBox.ng was gone.

First of a Kind Action, Won’t Be The Last

The disappearance of MovieBox was credited to the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) with assistance from the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA). Their collaboration resulted in the disabling of the domain MovieBox.ng, over which NiRA has control as country’s domain registry.

Celebrated as a big win for the ongoing Stand Together Against Online Piracy (STOP) campaign, simultaneous mention of “clones and multiple mirror domains” and MovieBox’s general resilience, didn’t bode well. Tracked down and confirmed alive two minutes later, MovieBox seemed none the worse for its ordeal.

.NG Domain Suspended, MovieBox Has More

The row of logos from left to right in the image above shows that no platform’s content is off limits: Netflix, Prime, Disney, Apple, Hulu – the list goes on. MovieBox’s subtle attempt at deflecting liability by allocating usernames to each category and declaring the site legal, has no track record of success.

Strategic domain switches, on the other hand, are known to help platforms stay online, a must if traffic levels are to be preserved. SimilarWeb data reveals that the old .NG domain topped 29.5 million visits in April, 33.7 million in May, and 37.8 million in June.

Jump Around

An alternative domain – moviebox.ph – has already been published in Nigerian media. Others connected to the platform are easy to find, including the sample below.

At this point things become a little more interesting; often a dead end of redactions, in this case WHOIS records are unusually helpful. While there are some differences in respect of domain registrars, most identify the same company as the owner.

At least in public, WHOIS records are supposed to protect domain owners’ privacy but even when protected by anonymity services, it’s not difficult for credible entities to access whatever’s hidden underneath.

For that reason, those who register ‘pirate’ domains tend not to hand over accurate personal details, especially not their own. Records indicate that the domain owner is an active company that celebrated its two-year-anniversary on August 4 this week.

In this case, no effort has been made to obscure the domain owners’ identity or their claimed address in Hong Kong. Both are consistent in WHOIS records across domains and appear to be accurate, as we’ll see in a moment. Given other publicly available information, exposure doesn’t appear to be an issue, which in itself is pretty rare.

And the rarities keep on coming.

1. Piracy | 2. Trademark | 3. ?? | 4. Profit

From uploaders embedding their online handles into filenames and watching them spread around the world, to the more formal tagging adopted by Scene release groups, branding has always carried some level of importance in piracy circles. How those traditions morphed into today’s practices of picking someone else’s brand, and then launching 50 sites with virtually the same name, may be a sign of the times.

Yet the value of branding and trademarks isn’t poorly understood either. For example, the owner of the MovieBox domains above recently filed applications for MovieBox trademarks at the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI).

Serving 17 regional member states in various areas of intellectual property protection, trademarks included, OAPI published the MovieBox applications in its official bulletin last month (pdf).

Translated from French, the classes suggest that in the event trademarks are awarded, the MovieBox software system, related mobile phone apps, actual mobile phones and laptops, plus TV equipment and loudspeakers, would all receive valuable protection under trademark law.

For those who enter into a MovieBox contract (terms and conditions here) respect for those marks includes an agreement not to “remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary notices (including trademark and copyright notices) that may be affixed to or contained within MovieBox.”

Plenty of Business Opportunities

For the right company with the right branding, the market in Africa could prove quite lucrative, especially one with a well-known trademark to associate with mobile phones.

In Nigeria, Android users have access to Google Play but for owners of TECNO, itel, and Infinix-branded devices, manufactured by China-based Transsion, the PalmStore claims to be the official platform for free apps, “security guaranteed.”

Mid-July, the discovery of a high severity authentication vulnerability in the Store’s mobile app warned of information leakage. Whether that has any connection to the thousands of pages of logs uploaded to Scribd isn’t clear.

Whatever the reason, it appears that normally hidden backend events concerning MovieBox and an unknown number of additional apps, are now available for public consumption. Meanwhile, hundreds of domains, pointing to platforms and apps that claim to be the real MovieBox, carry on regardless.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Saturday 9 August 2025 at 4:14 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

Last week, Anthropic petitioned to appeal the class certification, urging the court to weigh questions that the district court judge, William Alsup, seemingly did not. Alsup allegedly failed to conduct a "rigorous analysis" of the potential class and instead based his judgment on his "50 years" of experience, Anthropic said.

If the appeals court denies the petition, Anthropic argued, the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" based on a class certification rushed at "warp speed" that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine.

Confronted with such extreme potential damages, Anthropic may lose its rights to raise valid defenses of its AI training, deciding it would be more prudent to settle, the company argued. And that could set an alarming precedent, considering all the other lawsuits generative AI (GenAI) companies face over training on copyrighted materials, Anthropic argued.

"One district court's errors should not be allowed to decide the fate of a transformational GenAI company like Anthropic or so heavily influence the future of the GenAI industry generally," Anthropic wrote. "This Court can and should intervene now."

In a court filing Thursday, the Consumer Technology Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association backed Anthropic, warning the appeals court that "the district court’s erroneous class certification" would threaten "immense harm not only to a single AI company, but to the entire fledgling AI industry and to America’s global technological competitiveness."

According to the groups, allowing copyright class actions in AI training cases will result in a future where copyright questions remain unresolved and the risk of "emboldened" claimants forcing enormous settlements will chill investments in AI.

"Such potential liability in this case exerts incredibly coercive settlement pressure for Anthropic," industry groups argued, concluding that "as generative AI begins to shape the trajectory of the global economy, the technology industry cannot withstand such devastating litigation. The United States currently may be the global leader in AI development, but that could change if litigation stymies investment by imposing excessive damages on AI companies."

Some authors won’t benefit from class actions

Industry groups joined Anthropic in arguing that, generally, copyright suits are considered a bad fit for class actions because each individual author must prove ownership of their works. And the groups weren't alone.

Also backing Anthropic's appeal, advocates representing authors—including Authors Alliance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, and Public Knowledge—pointed out that the Google Books case showed that proving ownership is anything but straightforward.

In the Anthropic case, advocates for authors criticized Alsup for basically judging all 7 million books in the lawsuit by their covers. The judge allegedly made "almost no meaningful inquiry into who the actual members are likely to be," as well as "no analysis of what types of books are included in the class, who authored them, what kinds of licenses are likely to apply to those works, what the rightsholders’ interests might be, or whether they are likely to support the class representatives’ positions."

Ignoring "decades of research, multiple bills in Congress, and numerous studies from the US Copyright Office attempting to address the challenges of determining rights across a vast number of books," the district court seemed to expect that authors and publishers would easily be able to "work out the best way to recover" damages.

But it's never easy, groups said. Consider, for example, how now-defunct publishers might add a wrinkle to ownership questions with some books involved in the litigation. Or how rightsholders might be affected if they only own a portion of a work, like a chapter or inserts in academic texts. The district court apparently didn't even consider "what will be done with authors who are dead and whose literary estates hold rights split across multiple parties." There are also many so-called "orphan works," where "identifying rightsholders to address ownership questions will be impossible." If the class action moves forward, groups warned that the court may have to review "hundreds of mini-trials to sort out these issues."

Further, some authors may never even find out the lawsuit is happening. The court's suggested notification scheme "would require class claimants to themselves notify other potential rightsholders," groups said, overlooking the fact that it cost Google $34.5 million "to set up a 'Books Rights Registry' to identify owners for payouts under the proposed settlement" in one of the largest cases involving book authors prior to the AI avalanche of lawsuits.

Additionally concerning, the court suggested that it was acceptable to certify the massive class because any authors who did not want to join could opt out. But groups warned that a lackadaisical approach put authors who may never hear about the lawsuit—and perhaps would have litigated their claims differently—in a difficult position, therefore serving as "an inadequate answer to a fundamental fairness problem in the formulation of the class and the due process concerns of absent class members."

Some authors and publishers are "already at odds over AI," which may further complicate these cases, if one side representing legal owners (usually publishers) wants to join but beneficial owners (usually authors) don't.

Simply put, "there is no realistic pathway to resolving these issues in a common way," advocates said, despite the district court seeing a common question in Anthropic downloading all their books. And authors ultimately risk sustaining the cloud of uncertainty over AI training on copyrighted materials by seeking a path likely to force settlements.

"This case is of exceptional importance, addressing the legality of using copyrighted works" for generative AI, "a transformative technology used by hundreds of millions of researchers, authors, and others," groups argued. "The district court’s rushed decision to certify the class represents a 'death knell' scenario that will mean important issues affecting the rights of millions of authors with respect to AI will never be adequately resolved."

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Saturday 9 August 2025 at 4:13 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

North Carolina-based Rare Breed TV was one of the world's largest digital piracy operations, claiming to offer subscribers access to over 28,000 channels and more than 100,000 movies and series.

"As part of the agreement, the operators will permanently shut down their illegal service and pay a significant financial settlement. Rare Breed IPTV was an unauthorized streaming platform that operated for years, offering thousands of live television channels and a video-on-demand library featuring more than 14,000 titles—all without the consent of the copyright holders," ACE said on Wednesday.

"With support from its member studios, ACE identified the individuals behind Rare Breed and contacted them in North Carolina. Following ACE's enforcement efforts, the operators agreed to cease their infringing activities, pay financial compensation, and fully cooperate with ACE going forward."

However, while ACE says the pirate service operators agreed to shut down their illegal IPTV platform, the Rare Breed TV website was still online when this story was published, offering subscriptions ranging from $15.99/ month to $79.99 for a full year.

An ACE spokesperson was not immediately available for comment when contacted by BleepingComputer earlier today.

ACE is a coalition of over 50 media and entertainment companies worldwide, including the world's largest film studios and television networks, focused on shutting down illegal streaming services.

It also collaborates with law enforcement organizations, including the U.S. Department of Justice, Europol, and Interpol, to target large-scale illegal streaming networks.

The coalition's governing board includes companies such as Amazon, Apple TV+, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Studios, Netflix, Paramount Global, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Since its establishment in June 2017, ACE has successfully taken down numerous piracy platforms, including the streaming providers Openload and Streamango, the pirate IPTV service Beast IPTV, the 123movies.la streaming site, and the world's largest anime piracy site, Zoro.to.

Last year, it also helped sentence five men linked to the Jetflicks illegal streaming service, shutter a pirate TV streaming network that made millions of dollars since its launch in 2015, dismantle a pirate streaming service with over 22 million users and making over €250 million ($263M) each month, and take down Markkystreams, one of the largest live sports streaming piracy rings, with over 821 million yearly visits.

"This enforcement action sends a strong message to piracy operators worldwide," added Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President at the Motion Picture Association (MPA), on Wednesday. "Operating an illegal streaming service comes with serious consequences—including lawsuits, substantial financial penalties, and permanent shutdown."

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Friday 8 August 2025 at 2:37 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

The frontline of online piracy liability keeps moving and core internet infrastructure providers are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs.

Since last year, the Paris Judicial Court has ordered Cloudflare, Google and other intermediaries to actively block access to pirate sites through their DNS resolvers, confirming that third-party intermediaries can be required to take responsibility.

These blockades are requested by sports rights holders, covering Formula 1, football Ligue 1, MotoGP, and other major sporting brands. They claimed that public DNS resolvers could help users to bypass existing ISP blockades, and the court agreed.

This year, rightsholders including beIN and Canal+ extended their list of problematic intermediaries by targeting VPN providers with similar blocking demands. Again, the Paris Court acknowledged the threat of circumvention, and CyberGhost, ExpressVPN, NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and Surfshark were ordered to start blocking access to specific websites in France.

New VPN blocking orders

These blocking efforts didn’t stop after the first blocking order was granted in May. A similar order followed in June, and on July 18, two new orders targeting VPNs were handed down by the Paris Court.

beIN vs. Nordvpn, Proton, Cyberghost (July 18)

The first blocking request lists seven domains accused of sharing pirated WTA Tennis Tournament streams. They are freestreams-live.mp, topliga.net, tennis-open.ru, line.super-signal.com, line.protv.cc, 115680073183.d4ktv.info and line.trx-ott.com.

Like previous blocking cases, the request is grounded in Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code, which enables rightsholders to seek court orders against any entity that can help to stop ‘serious and repeated’ sports piracy.

After reviewing the evidence and hearing argument from both sides, the Paris Court granted the blocking request, ordering the VPN providers to block all seven domains.

Canal+ Group vs. NordVPN, Proton, CyberGhost, Surfshark and ExpressVPN (July 18)

The Canal+ request aims to block pirated Formula One streams accessible via 16 domains; f1livestream.best, f1box.me, calmatv.ru, rojadirectatvdh.online, totalsportek.stream, rojadirecta.website, antenavip.online, antenacentral.store, livetv822.me, lshunter-iframe.com, totalsportek.dad, totalsportek.games, kakarotfoot.ru, totalsportek.pro, f1.totalsportek.pro, cdn.livetv822.me.

In common with the beIN case, Canal+ targets NordVPN, Proton, and CyberGhost, with Surfshark and ExpressVPN as additional VPN providers.

Justifications for blocking are also similar to those in the beIN case, but the outcome was different. While the Paris Court granted the blocking request, it did so only for five domains, with the remaining eleven running into evidence issues.

The Five Blocked Domains
 

These five domain names had to be blocked within three days of the July 18 order, with the same applying to the beIN case. In both cases, all parties were ordered to bear their own legal costs.

Not All Blocking Requests Were Granted

The Canal+ case stands out because the Paris Court refused to issue a blocking order for 11 domains. For these sites, there was no definite proof that the illegal Formula 1 streams were using the Canal+ broadcast feed.

Canal+ is not an exclusive rightsholder of Formula 1, and the absence of a Canal+ logo makes it impossible to verify that its ‘related’ rights were infringed by these sites.

Previously, the Paris Court partly declined to issue a blocking order in favor of beIN for similar reasons. This indicates that, while the legal door is now open to compel VPNs to comply with blocking orders, victory isn’t automatic. The burden of proof is high and requires meticulous, site-by-site evidence from the rights holder.

Court Rejects Defenses and Request to Stay

The VPNs presented various defenses to the court. They argued that blocking measures are ineffective, costly, and technically difficult to limit to just France. The Paris Court was not convinced by any of these arguments.

Notably, CyberGhost and ExpressVPN asked the court to stay the proceedings to request clarification from the European Court of Justice. They cited a Dutch case pending at the CJEU, but also asked to refer specific questions regarding the blocking language in the French Sports Code.

In simplified terms, the VPNs want to ask the EU’s top court if France’s law can use “general and abstract” language to require “any person likely to contribute” to piracy to implement blocking measures.

They argue that Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code may violate the EU’s E-Commerce Directive, which aims to create a single market, preventing countries like France from creating their own special rules that restrict online services from other EU nations.

The Paris Court rejected the request to stay the case and declined to refer any questions to the CJEU.

The Court stressed that the E-Commerce Directive doesn’t have a ‘horizontal direct effect,’ meaning one private company (the VPNs) cannot use it to invalidate a national law in a lawsuit against another private company (Canal+). It further stressed that the blocking order is a specific, proportionate, and targeted measure to stop a proven infringement.

Finally, in a small win for the VPNs, the Court rejected a separate request from Canal+ that would have required them to publish the ruling on their websites, deeming that specific measure disproportionate.

Whether the VPN companies plan to appeal is not clear. ProtonVPN previously said that it is prepared to take this case all the way to Europe’s highest court, and it will likely find other VPNs on its side. Alternatively, leaving France is also a viable option for some.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Friday 8 August 2025 at 2:34 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Many countries are currently tackling above average piracy rates, usually with a mix of education, site blocking, civil action, and criminal enforcement, but not necessarily in that order.

Typically, members of the public are warned that purchasing a pirate TV box risks fueling organized crime. With the threshold for criminality seemingly lower than ever, they could even step over the line themselves.

Greece, for example, seems intent on criminalizing people who simply watch pirate streams. They risk stiff fines and at least on paper, 12 months in prison. Brazil is nowhere near ready to do that, especially in areas where ISPs and TV companies face threats for attempting to carry out repairs to their own equipment, or whatever remains of it.

Operation Praedo

Better known as Anatel, the National Telecommunications Agency is a financially independent authority tasked with supervising, guiding, and regulating communications in Brazil.

Anatel also decides through a certification process whether set-top boxes can be made available to the public, or destroyed on sight. Even if they carry no pirated content, devices face confiscation for failing electrical safety and other standards; that’s probably one the reasons devices are now being smuggled into the country.

Using the Latin word for ‘pirate’, Federal Police launched Operation Praedo to crack down on the importation, distribution, and sale of illegal TV devices, including the appropriately named ‘TV Box’, a Chinese-manufactured, pre-configured device popular locally.

Images issued by Brazil’s Federal Police

Last Tuesday, 38 Federal Police officers supported by Anatel agents executed a total of 12 search and seizure warrants, eight in Curitiba, three in Foz do Iguaçu, and one in Brasília.

Precautionary measures issued by the 9th Federal Court of Curitiba ensured that assets worth around US$6 million were frozen, vehicles and real estate were seized, and websites used by the suspects were blocked by ISPs.

Complaint Triggered Investigation

Anatel reports that a complaint from an entity representing the telecommunications sector, led police to a sales website managed by an unnamed couple in Curitiba, who reportedly used shell companies to hide their income.

Police later identified another couple and found that additional family members were also involved, working together to sell the pirate devices throughout Brazil after being smuggled in from neighboring Paraguay.

All images issued by Brazil’s Federal Police

“The devices entered Brazil clandestinely, coming from the border with Paraguay via Foz do Iguaçu, through smugglers. The merchandise entered without the proper payment of taxes and, as it does not have approval from Anatel, its commercialization is irregular, constituting a crime of smuggling,” Anatel reports.

“The Federal Police identified an organized criminal structure, with a clear division of functions between importers, logistics operators, financial intermediaries and digital merchants. Large financial transactions were detected, incompatible with the declared income of those involved.”

Illicit income for just one of the couples is said to have reached US$91,000; that’s over twelve times the average salary in Brazil at the time of writing, the equivalent of US$7,000 per year. The money appears to have gone a long way; Anatel says the couple acquired real estate, vehicles and luxury items, much or even all of it is likely to have been seized.

The potential charges mentioned by Anatel include copyright infringement, clandestine development of telecommunications, criminal organization, and smuggling.

Anti-Piracy PSAs Released

Discouraging citizens from using pirate set-top boxes in Brazil has been in vogue for some time and for good reason. The country has one of the highest malware infection rates anywhere on the planet, helped along by a toxic mix of cheap, insecure, and uncertified Chinese-manufactured set-top boxes, many of which receive zero security updates.

No access to Google Play means that users have little choice but to obtain APK files from unverified sources. While infection isn’t 100% guaranteed through use of a third-party store, for some it might already be too late. According to reports, some devices arrive infected straight from the factory.

People getting more than they’d bargained for, or less than they were promised, is the theme in three new PSAs released by Anatel recently. All three use humor instead of the well-worn fear factor approach, an interesting choice given that the scale of the problem is no laughing matter. Whether they’ll prove any more effective is unknown, but they seem unlikely to provoke instant pushback, which is something at least.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Thursday 7 August 2025 at 1:34 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

There hasn’t been much to report on the Piracy Shield front in recent weeks. After Napoli walked away with the title back in May, the Serie A season began winding down ahead of preparations to do it all over again in August.

Unlike Serie A’s football players, Piracy Shield didn’t immediately disappear on a luxury vacation. Records show hundreds of fully qualified domains being blocked every two or three days until the second week of July, aiming to protect other live sports continuing through the summer.

Briefly listing just one domain per blocking ticket, semi-normal service was soon resumed when hundreds of domains and IP addresses were blocked to protect last weekend’s broadcast of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The calm before the August storm

Blocking will likely return to normal levels when the new Serie A season starts in August, but legal amendments adopted by AGCOM last week are likely to further increase Piracy Shield’s workload moving forward. Of course, that’s on the assumption that pirates don’t exhaust the dwindling supply of IPv4 addresses first.

Piracy Shield Widens Scope

It’s been understood for some time that Italy’s live blocking system would expand to protect a wider range of content. As regulator AGCOM noted in its most recent annual report, as much was written into Italian law.

“As known, in fact, Law No. 93/23 further expanded the scope of the Authority’s action by strengthening its functions for a more effective and timely countering of piracy actions online with reference to all events broadcast live on the network,” AGCOM wrote.

“To this end, the Authority will proceed, after public consultation, with the necessary amendments to the Regulations […] and with the technical activities of updating and implementing the live blocking platform (Piracy Shield) functionality to achieve the objectives set by the law.”

During a meeting on July 30, legislative amendments that among other things expand the availability of dynamic injunctions to rightsholders of all live events, were put to the vote. Despite notable opposition, the amendments were adopted by AGCOM.

“With these measures, it will be possible to disable access to illegally disseminated content, during the first thirty minutes of the transmission of live content and premieres of cinematographic and audiovisual works or entertainment programs, as well as similar audio works,” AGCOM confirmed.

Controversial Amendments

The usual methods of blocking – interference with DNS resolution for domain names and routing/blocking of network traffic for IP addresses – are familiar and set to continue. Other aspects of the amendments (Omnibus Decree/October 2024) are much more controversial and are set to come into play for the first time.

• Widened scope: VPN services and publicly available DNS providers are required to deploy blocking measures consistent with those already in place at ISPs. The requirement to block within 30 minutes applies regardless of a providers’ location or residence.

• Obligations for Indirect Providers: Information Society Service providers (ISS)* involved in any capacity in enabling access to an infringing site or service, are required to block access in response to orders from AGCOM, including those reported via Piracy Shield, within 30 minutes.

• Technological Measures: Even when online search engines and Information Society Service* providers are not involved in enabling access to infringing sites and services, notifications to disable access must be executed using “all necessary technical measures” within 30 minutes.

• As amended by the Ominibus Decree, the law clarifies that all recipients of disabling orders must use the Piracy Shield platform to ensure timely and effective action.

AGCOM’s definition of an ISS includes “mere conduit and hosting service providers, as well as caching service providers…..VPN service providers and publicly available DNS service providers, as well as search engine operators.”

* EU Directive 2015/1535 describes an Information Society Service (ISS) as a service normally provided for remuneration, at a distance, by electronic means and at the individual request of a recipient of services.

Early Warning For Rightsholders

Sanctions for non-compliance with AGCOM blocking orders still have no direct equivalent when rightsholders use Piracy Shield to block non-infringing IP addresses. AGCOM’s statement indirectly addresses this criticism, by confirming that it still takes overblocking seriously.

“[Reporters of infringing content] are still required to report on the Piracy Shield platform with the utmost diligence and rigor and to avoid reporting assets that present a high risk of overblocking. In the event of non-compliance with the requirements and conditions governing the operation of the Piracy Shield platform, the Authority will suspend accreditation to the same,” AGCOM notes.

As far as the law goes, nothing has changed. Service providers and other intermediaries can be penalized for not tackling infringement to the required standard, whereas penalties for blocking an innocent party are at AGCOM’s discretion.

Voices of Opposition

General concerns over Piracy Shield have been aired since its launch, but a January 2025 appeal by the Computer & Communications Industry Association to the European Commission ensured that concerns were also heard in Brussels.

The CCIA, which represents global tech firms including Amazon, Cloudflare and Google, later asked the European Commission to issue a detailed opinion to ensure Piracy Shield’s compatibility with EU law.

The EC’s response highlighted several concerns and strongly suggested that work needed to be done. Meanwhile, a lone voice inside AGCOM itself continues to oppose the platform.

Lone Voice Inside AGCOM

AGCOM Commissioner Elisa Giomi was appointed to the board of the regulator in September 2020 but despite the passing of time, a chasm remains between Giomi’s position on Piracy Shield and that of her colleagues. In addition to numerous transparency failings, Giomi believes that the public resources consumed by the project are disproportionate, with any benefit returned to a small group of interested parties.

For more than two years and at every stage, Giomi says she has voted against Piracy Shield, despite “the often virulent reactions of colleagues.” The Commissioner’s position clearly hasn’t changed much since she went public last November; during the vote last week, Giomi voted against adopting the amendments.

With a new sanctioning procedure on the horizon, “for infringements of copyright and related rights by Audiovisual Media Service Providers,” increasing regulation led to the definition of an Audiovisual Media Service Provider being expanded recently.

If a user of YouTube or any social media platform reaches 500,000 followers, or their videos average one million monthly views, they can be personally categorized as an Audiovisual Media Service Provider, and therefore subject to AGCOM regulation.

Commissioner Giomi voted against adoption of this influencer-focused measure but, once again, appears to have been outnumbered. She’s making her opinions known on LinkedIn.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Wednesday 6 August 2025 at 2:17 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

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. “28 Years Later” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on August 04 are:

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

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Tuesday 5 August 2025 at 12:25 pm AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Movie studio Voltage Pictures has targeted alleged movie pirates in court for well over a decade.

The company and its subsidiaries filed numerous lawsuits against internet subscribers in the United States, Australia, and Europe, using various strategies.

In Canada, Voltage and other film companies attempted to target a large group of copyright infringers through a reverse class-action lawsuit, which is relatively rare. The movie company argued that this is a cheaper way to target large numbers of infringers at once.

The lawsuit in question, filed in 2016, revolves around a representative defendant, Robert Salna, who provides WiFi services to his tenants. Through Mr. Salna, Voltage hoped to catch a larger group of infringers.

The case garnered the interest of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) which intervened in the Federal Court proceeding to represent anonymous defendants. The intervention was a success and the Federal Court dismissed the class action attempt in 2019.

Filmmakers Don’t Give Up

While the filmmakers lost their first battle in court, that was just the beginning. The case went through a series of appeals and cross-appeals, and Voltage also petitioned the Supreme Court to take on the matter.

Last year, the Federal Court of Appeal in Toronto took on what now appears to be the final proceeding. The filmmakers hoped to overturn an earlier dismissal by the Federal Court.

One of the contested issues relates to how the class action defendants are notified. Voltage argued that this could be done through the piracy notices ISPs are required to forward under subsection 41.25(2) of Canada’s Copyright Act.

The filmmakers hoped to utilize Canada’s notice-and-notice regime to reach out to proposed defendants. Under their proposal, a hyperlink to contact the rightsholder’s attorney would be added to the notices.

Overall, Voltage argued that the reverse class action approach is doable and should be certified.

Federal Court of Appeal Rejects Reverse Class Action

After hearing both sides, Justices Gleason, Goyette, and Biringer disagreed with Voltage. In their decision issued on July 16, they conclude that the proposed class action is not permitted under the Copyright Act.

More fundamentally, they ruled that a reverse class action is not the preferred procedure for these types of cases, leading to the dismissal of the case in its entirety.

Citing Supreme Court jurisprudence, the Court of Appeal concluded that, to identify alleged copyright infringers, these types of lawsuits should use Norwich orders, not the notice-and-notice system.

“The Supreme Court of Canada […] noted that a copyright owner who wishes to sue a person alleged to have infringed copyright online must proceed by way of a Norwich order to obtain details about them and cannot use the notice-and-notice regime in the Copyright Act for this purpose,” Justice Mary Gleason concludes.

The Supreme Court citation
 

The federal court previously ruled that Voltage’s proposed use of the “notice-and-notice” regime is not permitted. The Copyright Act specifically states that these notices can’t be used to offer settlements, demand payments, or to request personal information.

Similar to piracy warnings that ISPs forward in other countries, the notices are mainly aimed to act as a deterrent.

“In short, the context of the notice-and-notice regime demonstrates an intention to limit the involvement of ISPs to the initial delivery of a notice aimed at deterrence,” the Court of Appeal verdict reads.

“This context does not suggest that a copyright owner who wishes to pursue enforcement against the suspected infringer could use the notice-and-notice regime as a litigation tool,” the order adds.

IP Address Is Not Sufficient

The verdict also cites jurisprudence holding that an IP address alone is not sufficient to establish copyright infringement. It also requires proof that the defendant authorized or controlled the alleged infringements, instead of merely being the listed subscriber connected to an IP address.

This is a critical finding when it comes to the class action approach where all defendants are treated similarly, as these nuances may differ greatly from person to person.

“I cannot see how there is any basis in fact to conclude that the proposed class proceeding is preferable to individual actions because the individual issues in this case swamp whatever common issues there might be,” Justice Gleason writes.

Case Closed, Costs Owed

The Federal Court of Appeal denied the appeal brought by Voltage Pictures and the other film studios therefore the Federal Court’s decision to deny certification of the proposed reverse class stands.

Crucially, the Court issued the dismissal without leave to reapply, permanently ending the legal battle. In doing so, the Court of Appeal effectively closed the door on the strategy being used in mass copyright lawsuits against individuals in Canada.

This doesn’t mean that BitTorrent users can no longer be sued, but reverse class action lawsuits of this type appear off-limits.

In addition to ending this long-running lawsuit, the court also upheld the Federal Court’s decision to award Mr. Salna CAD$50,710 in costs for the previous proceedings, noting that this was warranted by the “exceptional circumstances” and novel issues in the case. The film companies must also pay Mr. Salna’s appeal costs.

All in all, this final decision is a clear victory for Robert Salna and the thousands of people who could’ve been targeted through this and future cases.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Tuesday 5 August 2025 at 3:48 am AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

In 2012, America missed a golden opportunity to show the world how site blocking and other internet restrictions could be deployed at scale to protect rightsholders’ revenues.

Vast opposition led to the SOPA bill being withdrawn but elsewhere, site blocking was being introduced in one country after another, driven by the same core rightsholders.

Claims that the United States needed to catch up led to a new push towards site blocking. After publicly getting underway in January, a key statistic concerning the common use of blocking outside the U.S. seems to have changed its appearance.

Blocking Democracy

Confirmation that site-blocking was back on the political agenda was announced at CinemaCon in April 2024.

“Site-blocking is a common tool in almost 60 countries, including leading democracies and many of America’s closest allies,” MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin informed the audience.

“So today, here with you at CinemaCon, I’m announcing the next major phase of this effort: the MPA is going to work with Members of Congress to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States.”

The FADPA bill, the yet-to-be-published ACPA bill, and new addition Block BEARD bill, represent three different takes on a familiar site-blocking recipe.

Each bill contains more or less of the same core ingredients utilized in countries engaged in blocking elsewhere. The headline figure of 60 countries may have needed some initial adjustment, and potentially even more after democracy entered the site-blocking equation.

“This targeted legal tool mirrors successful approaches used in over 50 democratic countries,” the background text for the Block BEARD bill explains.

Site Blocking and Democracy

If site blocking is a common tool in 60 countries around the world, having 50 democracies in the mix seems to imply that blocking is compatible with democratic values.

While that may well be the case, it doesn’t explain the sudden disappearance of 10 countries, which in theory could include “leading democracies” and/or close American allies.

In reality, quietly disposing of a few isn’t such a bad idea. While many countries block pirate sites, some also have a tendency to block other sites for different reasons, including around election time to ensure a ‘fair’ vote. These countries swell the numbers, but on balance the optics aren’t that great.

Framing site blocking as popular in democracies isn’t new. However, the headline figure of 60 countries in which the MPA previously reported positive site-blocking experiences, “with one of the most effective tools” in the toolbox, has no corresponding public list of countries for reference.

As a result, determining how 60 sites became 50 isn’t straightforward. That being said, presentations made available by the World Intellectual Property Organization show blocking countries on a map of the world, and color coded to show the blocking mechanisms they use.

The only thing left to do was add them all up.

Site-Blocking Countries Part 1

Using the presentation slides, data from other sources, and a more clearly defined map, we attempted to identify every country present in the most recent original dated February 2025 (above/far right, below/grayed out) to compile a more detailed list.

Countries potentially identified: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, Vietnam (30 countries)

Based on the original map, all of these countries block sites on copyright grounds, but how many are democracies?

Full democracy (22), Flawed democracy (3) Not a democracy (6)

We assume the 22 full democracies above are among the ~50 countries referenced in the bill, but since there’s no official list with every country named, we don’t know which of the remaining countries are accounted for.

Site-Blocking Countries Part 2

Countries potentially identified: Argentina, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Democratic Republic Of Congo, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mexico, Niger, Paraguay, Peru, Republic Of Congo, Senegal, Uruguay, Venezuela (23 countries)

Based on the original map, all of these countries block sites on copyright grounds, but how many are democracies?

Full democracy (2), Flawed democracy (11), Not a democracy (10)

We assume the pair of full democracies are among the ~50 countries referenced in the bill, but since a comprehensive list remains elusive, we draw no firm conclusions.

Overall, we’ll also assume that both full and flawed democracies from both sets qualify for inclusion, which leaves us with 22 full democracies and 14 flawed democracies. That’s 36 countries in total but still short of the ~50 required. If anyone has any additional details to share, please feel free to contact us.

Additional Countries and Aggressive Blockers

Countries that allow site blocking that we initially missed include Israel (barely visible but indeed present on the MPA’s map) and Egypt, which was not identified as included according to the February 2025 presentation.

Whether the latter currently allows site blocking in a usable format isn’t clear. Nor does it help us get closer to the increasingly unlikely target of 50 site-blocking democracies, which comes under further pressure from countries heavily engaging in non-copyright blocking.

Indeed, many countries in the list use their pirate site-blocking capabilities to target other sites for reasons that have nothing to do with copyright. Some clearly need no encouragement to do so.

Furthermore, there are numerous countries that despite having site-blocking ‘on the books’, haven’t blocked any sites in years or haven’t made use of their blocking mechanism at all. Nevertheless, it appears that some must’ve been counted in the overall total.

Blocking Can Always Be Justified

In Europe, full democracies overwhelmingly use their blocking abilities as intended, i.e they’re used to block access to copyright infringing sites. However, most if not all EU countries (plus the UK) currently block access to a number of Russian news outlets in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Rather than censorship, the official reason for blocking is sanctions/misinformation.

Whether one agrees or disagrees that from a perspective of conflict new rules inevitably come into play, blocking access to information on political grounds, using systems designed to block something else, was always inevitable. Every government in the world has some information it would like to suppress, for a wide range of reasons, and the system of government – democracy or otherwise – doesn’t mean much when blocking is presented as justified.

Strategic Friction

Just as regular site-blocking is meant to put an obstacle in the path of a potential infringer, no access to an instant blocking system reduces the likelihood that blocking becomes a go-to solution for all kinds of problems.

Putting a system and/or new legislation in place increases the risk of blocking being used to solve an ‘off-brand’ problem unrelated to its original purpose. Some may argue that would be impossible in a full democracy but events in the UK (1,2) show how quickly things can go in the wrong direction.

It was recently revealed that the government hoped to censor certain types of social media content by having Big Tech do it for them. Of course, that would’ve had a similar effect to the unthinkable and exposes clear underlying intent. In the event of non-compliance and a perceived need to demonstrate strength, it would be better if instant blocking options didn’t exist.

But they do exist, and democracy failed to prevent that. A law that denied any and all additional uses would’ve been useful at the start, at least in hindsight.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Posted Monday 4 August 2025 at 12:14 pm AEST (my time).

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

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend