The Premier League, UK broadcaster Sky, plus global anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, are reporting the conclusion of a ‘landmark’ pirate IPTV case in the Middle East.

According to their statement, a joint criminal complaint in Lebanon led to an unnamed defendant being found guilty of five criminal charges, including unspecified intellectual property and cybercrime-related offenses.

The precise origin, nature, and date of a ruling cited in the announcement are not made clear although, at least to some extent, the ruling’s requirements are more detailed.

Highly Important Case, Unfortunately Low on Detail

The rightsholders state that the ruling orders the shutdown of the defendant’s ‘seized websites’ and the deletion of all data from his ‘devices’. The identities and functions of those websites, including when and how they were seized, and the nature of the devices, including their function and what they contained, also go unexplained.

A requirement that all accounts used for client and customer communication must be deleted, seems fairly straightforward, yet still lacks details usually associated with cases of such importance. Hoping to fill in the gaps, TorrentFreak requested a copy of the court order.

“The court order is not public as it is classified as a non-public judicial decision and is subject to confidentiality under local legal procedures,” we were informed.

No Doubt Over Platform’s Importance

The person convicted and subsequently sentenced to serve 11 months in prison and pay more than US$90,000 in penalties and damages, “was the operator of a platform responsible for supplying illegal streams to pirate services around the world,” the rightsholders confirm.

In common with its alleged operator, the service isn’t named. While that’s unfortunate from a reporting perspective, any frustration pales into insignificance when compared to the time, effort, and resources expended by the Premier League, Sky, and ACE on this case.

Even from our very limited knowledge of the investigation, it seems likely to have been one of the longest of its type ever undertaken. Obtaining any type of conviction that is directly linked to the infamous Globe IPTV, as information shows, was never going to be easy.

Globe IPTV

Use of the Globe brand in connection with TV piracy dates back over a decade. The supply of CCCAM servers focused on Sky broadcasts may have laid the groundwork for its entry into the IPTV market towards 2014/2015.

Globe’s focus was on the supply of broadcasters’ streams on a wholesale basis, as the Premier League’s 2022 submission to the European Commission’s Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List explains.

Similar claims featured in subsequent submissions to the EC and the USTR’s Notorious Markets Report. Globe’s ‘wholesale’ strategy meant that it “operates higher up the IPTV ecosystem, selling content and services to resellers who then ultimately make the content available to the public,” the Premier League explained.

Prominent Wholesale Supplier

The claim that Globe was known to have supplied multiple pirate services already sued by the Premier League is supported by the prosecution of Flawless TV, the largest case of its kind ever to conclude in the UK. When Flawless launched in August 2016, Globe was a major supplier to the operation.

Among other content, Globe supplied Flawless with premium content belonging to Sky and BT Sport, at rates fairly easily deduced from one of our earlier reports. The source of that content was cable operator Virgin Media, which for some time had faced consumer-end piracy on a massive scale.

Virgin started to regain control in 2017 and with the introduction of new encryption around a year later, Globe’s cable source in the UK was on life support. Satellite feeds remained viable, however, albeit at significant additional cost to Globe. Virgin Media’s bill was significantly bigger; closing the loophole meant replacing millions of set-top boxes in homes across the UK.

Obscure References to Globe

Over the past couple of years, various industry reports have mentioned Globe quite openly but on occasion, descriptions of events or scenarios that closely match existing knowledge about Globe have also made an appearance. Unaccompanied by the kind of detail required to remove all doubt, these seemingly random snapshots variously seemed to suggest that enforcement wasn’t far away, or might even be imminent.

Following a relatively recent event, also lacking information sufficient to make a provable connection, the signs suggested a potentially terminal blow from which Globe might never recover; albeit from one which it seemingly did.

At least for a while and in theory, potentially far longer than that.

“Anywhere in the World, Pirates Can Be Brought to Justice”

Information has a tendency to be in constant short supply but there’s just enough here to celebrate an anti-piracy achievement many years in the making.

“The case further demonstrates the Premier League’s commitment to protecting its intellectual property around the world,” says Kevin Plumb, General Counsel at the Premier League.

“This is not only important to us and our broadcast partners, but it is essential for the future health of English football and the protection of our fans. This case perfectly shows the benefits of working alongside other rights owners. I would like to thank our co-complainants, Sky and ACE, for their trusted partnership throughout these unique and complex proceedings leading up to this conviction.”

Matt Hibbert, Group Director of Anti-Piracy at Sky, says the ruling sends a strong message that pirates can be brought to justice, no matter where in the world they are.

“The Lebanese judicial authorities in Lebanon, in collaboration with the Lebanese Cyber Crime Bureau successfully pursued the prosecution of this individual, who has been involved in the egregious theft of content for many years.”

After being placed on the United States’ Special 301 watchlist in 2008, Lebanon reportedly did “very little” to improve its protection of intellectual property rights for the next 14 years.

The U.S. Trade Representative removed Lebanon from the Special 301 Watchlist in its 2022 report.

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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. “Last Breath” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on March 24 are:

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

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Regardless of club, region or country, football fans across Europe have been warned for years about the potential for financial crisis.

With rising prices for those who love the stadium experience, and a similar picture for those burdened with rising costs while juggling multiple subscriptions at home, awareness among fans is already typically high.

Commentary from those within French top tier football indicates a sport in crisis. Panic spread like wildfire last month when a multi-million-euro dispute between DAZN and Ligue 1 boiled over in public and almost immediately raised the specter of a financially paralyzed ecosystem.

The dispute still isn’t settled, but after DAZN reportedly paid an estimated €70 million in licensing fees owed for February alone, one aspect of the current crisis was at least kicked a little further down the road.

Draft Law Aims to Tackle Sport’s ‘Structural’ Problems

Senators Michel Savin and Laurent Lafon presented a bill last week aimed at reforming professional football through recommendations spanning how the sport is organized, managed and financed. With sharp observations on remuneration at the top of the game, and suggestions of conflicts of interest, also at the top of the game, the senators appear unrestrained.

“Ligue 1 is suffering an erosion of its appeal and a decline in its value. It has been unable to secure a long-term broadcasting contract to guarantee its financial stability. The instability of broadcasters has led to a decline in the number of viewers, who are confused by the successive changes and exasperated by the need to buy multiple subscriptions to access all the competitions,” the bill reads.

“The proliferation of matches and competition from other audiovisual content, both sporting and non-sporting, creates an overabundance of content that challenges the balance of the football audiovisual exploitation rights market.”

The proposals run deep and even if the bill passes, pushback seems almost inevitable. During a press conference last week, it was made clear that doing nothing would lead to disaster.

“Professional football is a drunken boat that drifts with the wind, and it will inevitably run aground if we do nothing.”

Piracy in the Crosshairs

The bill predictably describes piracy as a major economic threat to the sport due to the top clubs’ dependence on broadcasting rights.

Figures for 2023 indicate a €290 million loss of revenue due to all pirate sports broadcasts, representing around 15% of the market. More recent estimates for football alone suggest a piracy rate of over 50%, that’s despite the introduction of dynamic injunctions and the blocking of 7,000 domains since 2022.

Amendments to Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code aim to address rising piracy rates through enhanced blocking capabilities.

One amendment envisions telecoms regulator ARCOM developing and controlling an automated site-blocking system “to ensure real-time blocking, during the live broadcast of a sporting event, of access to illicit broadcast sources.”

The bill states that these sources would include pirate services that had not been previously identified in a court order. In common with all blocking orders executed in France, ‘real-time blocking’ would be carried out by ISPs under the previously established voluntary agreement.

Any irregularities (i.e overblocking) would lead to a suspension of measures before the end of a live event.

Introduction of Specific Offenses

Clarity on what constitutes an offense and how a particular offense is likely to be punished under law, can be lacking in some jurisdictions. This is most evident where sentences for copyright offenses are perceived to be less punitive than those available for crimes like fraud, for example.

With amendments to Article 10, the bill introduces specific offenses based on the offense of copyright infringement and related rights provided for by the Intellectual Property Code.

The scope of potential punishments appears to leave prosecutors and the courts with plenty of room for maneuver. The overall aim, it appears, is to focus on suppliers and promoters of various kinds, as opposed to those who consume.

“These new offenses would not target users of illegal services. However, the acts of publishing or making available to the public piracy sites and services, or marketing subscriptions, devices or software providing access to such services, would be punished,” the bill reads.

Summary of Offenses and Penalties

Offense: The act of designing, publishing or making available to the public, for payment or free of charge, an online public communication service broadcasting a competition or sporting event, without authorization [from the appropriate rightsholder].

Offense: The act of habitually communicating or making available to the public, through an online platform, whether for a fee or free of charge, broadcasts of a competition or sporting event without authorization.

Offense: Manufacturing, importing, offering/holding for sale, selling, renting, making available to the public, or installing a device or software clearly intended to allow illegal access to [authorized] services for the purposes of exploiting exclusive rights without authorization.

Penalties: All of the above punishable by three years’ imprisonment and a fine of €300,000. In the event the offenses are committed by an organized gang, penalties are increased to seven years imprisonment and a €750,000 fine.

Offense: The act of inciting by any means, including an advertisement, the use of an online public communication service, a device, or software, allowing access to a competition or sporting event without authorization.

Penalties: Punishable by one year’s imprisonment and a €15,000 fine.

Depending on how the measure is perceived (which probably depends on whether there is any visible enforcement), the final proposal encompassing advertising and promotion may be the one to watch.

At least when compared to the other measures, the financial component is quite low, which may suggest that advertisers or those who offer slots for ads on their own sites could be the most likely targets.

Clarity on the other offenses is useful but as a deterrent, it’s harder to gauge their usefulness. All have been treated as crimes previously and since most sites are operated from beyond French borders, local law may not be considered a particularly big threat.

The introduction and full bill are available here and here (French, pdf)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

In Denmark, law enforcement authorities and rightsholders have worked hard to shut down the thriving local torrent tracker scene over the past five years.

These efforts targeted private torrent trackers including DanishBits, NordicBits, Superbits, Asgaard and ShareUniversity. More than two dozen uploaders and admins connected to these sites were convicted as a result.

Torrent Tracker Uploader Sent to Prison

Thus far, several cases against alleged pirates have resulted in conditional prison sentences. This means that the defendants don’t have to serve time if they don’t go astray in the near future. Two new sentences, announced last week, break this trend.

Danish Police report that the Court in Hillerødr sentenced a 46-year-old man to nine months in prison, three of which are unconditional. The man reportedly shared 74 terabytes of pirated films and TV shows via the torrent trackers SuperBits and DanishBytes.

The 46-year-old, who confessed to his wrongdoings, was also sentenced to 120 hours of community service. Whether the man was merely an uploader or if he also had other roles at the tracker, isn’t immediately clear from the public announcement.

Member of ‘The Scene’ Convicted

In addition to the torrent tracker case, the National Unit for Special Crime (NSK) reported that a 48-year-old man was convicted for uploading content and hosting two servers for the international piracy network “Scenen”, which translates to “The Scene”.

Following a confession, the Court in Nykøbing Falster handed down a prison sentence of 12 months, of which four months are unconditional.

The Scene refers to the top of the so-called ‘piracy pyramid’ where content is meant to be shared privately. In the press release, NSK mentions that the 48-year-old illegally copied content from three streaming services, specializing in Danish children’s series, including dubbed ones.

The police further mentioned that the defendant had 134 terabytes of copyrighted material in his possession, strongly suggesting he was not a minor player.

Danish Crackdown on The Scene

The authorities note that the alleged “Scene” member was active from November 2021 until his arrest in November 2023. This aligns perfectly with the arrest of a then-47-year-old man, announced by NSK at the time.

The November 2023 arrest sparked rumors of a broader Danish crackdown on The Scene, which reportedly involved several arrests. While police didn’t mention The Scene by name, the description certainly matched.

“The case is about an organized network that has illegally shared extremely large quantities of films and TV series via file sharing services,” NSK Police Commissioner Anders-Emil Nøhr Kelbæk said at the time.

In the wake of the arrest, several Danish Scene groups stopped releasing new content. The group “DKiDS“, which specialized in children’s content ripped from streaming services, was among them.

DKiDS’s most recent upload was November 21, 2023, one day before the arrest of the now-convicted defendant.

DKiDS final uploads
 

The Danish crackdown on The Scene reportedly resulted in more arrests, but it’s unclear whether additional convictions are pending. However, last week’s sentencing confirms that Danish police succesfully targeted Scene elements.

Landmark Prison Sentences Without Profit Motive

Commenting on the news, NSK Special prosecutor Jan Østergaard says that he is very satisfied with the outcome in these two unrelated cases. These are the first unconditional prison sentences of their kind; both for copyright infringement but without motivation to profit.

The fact that both defendants shared many terabytes of copyright-infringing data contributed to the severity of these sentences.

“This is the first time that the courts have imposed unconditional prison sentences on file sharers who have no criminal record and have not benefited financially. It is the enormous amounts of data of illegally shared copyrighted material that have been the decisive factor for the harsh sentences,” Østergaard says.

Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance is also pleased with the sentences. The group was not involved in The Scene case, but it played a major role in the enforcement actions against “SuperBits”, “DanishBytes” and other torrent trackers.

Rights Alliance’s director Maria Fredenslund hopes that these sentences will serve as a stark warning to others.

“For many years, we have had a massive focus on closing down illegal Danish file-sharing services, and thanks to our and NSK’s efforts, this has been successful. Let the verdicts be a wake-up call to the users and perpetrators who persist: Violations of rights can be discovered – and taken seriously when they do.”

These two prison sentences are not the end of the Danish piracy crackdown. Rights Alliance informed us that other cases are pending and NSK said that two additional cases are currently awaiting a court hearing. Whether any of these related to The Scene is unknown.

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 Released in 2013, The Pirate Bay documentary TPB-AFK offers insight into a pivotal moment in Internet history.

Created by Simon Klose, the film follows three Pirate Bay founders during their trial in Sweden. True to the nature of the site, it was made widely available online for free.

People could still buy copies or support the film directly, but those who didn’t want to spend a dime could grab a copy though torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay, or stream it on YouTube. The Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA) license even allowed fans to share their own copies with others.

“You don’t need permission to copy and share my film. But you can’t make money off it,” Klose explained at the time. “By using a Creative Commons license, I am making it legal for the audience to copy and share the film.”

2013: Copies Taken Down by Hollywood

Soon after the premiere, hundreds of copies of the documentary started to surface online, resulting in millions of views. While this was good news for the director, it also caused controversy.

In the months following the release, several Hollywood studios including HBO, Paramount, Fox and Lionsgate, sent DMCA notices to Google, asking the search giant to remove links to the documentary. In most cases the requests were honored.

It wasn’t clear whether the takedowns were sent in error, or if it was a targeted attack on the Pirate Bay documentary. Whatever the case, the unwarranted censorship outraged the director.

After the erroneous takedowns were highlighted in the news, Google eventually reached out offering to set the record straight by reinstating the removed links. But not before teaching a valuable lesson about copyright power dynamics.

“To me, it’s a depressive lesson that Google rather acts as a private proxy for dinosaur copyright enforcement than helping indie filmmakers experiment with sustainable distribution models,” Klose said in 2013.

Takedowns Remove TPB-AFK copies from YouTube

With this backstory in mind, it came as a surprise to learn that copies of the TPB-AFK documentary were removed from YouTube recently. This includes the official release posted on the TPBAFK YouTube channel that was embedded across hundreds of websites.

“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Nonami Docs,” YouTube’s message reads.

TPB-AFK embed (YouTube link)
 

Nonami Docs isn’t some Hollywood adversary with a Pirate Bay grudge. On the contrary, it’s linked to Simon Klose, who used it to remove copies of his own documentary from YouTube. That also includes uploads by third-parties.

Peter, who runs the anarchi.st YouTube channel, is one of the people who was hit by a takedown notice. The channel shares films relating to class struggle without running advertisements on them, in line with TPB-AFK’s Creative Commons license, but was removed nonetheless.

“You can imagine my surprise when my channel got a copyright strike because Simon Klose wanted the film removed from YouTube. It is difficult to imagine a more ironic copyright action,” Peter tells us.

Anarchi.st Takedown (Swedish)
 

The channel owner confirmed that the notice did indeed come from the TPB-AFK director but opted not to file a counter notice as he could do without the added stress. Nonetheless, he was puzzled by the takedown. And he’s not the only one.

Klose Sees YouTube as a Radicalizing Platform

Creative Commons licenses are typically considered irrevocable, which makes the takedown all the more questionable. However, it turns out that Klose hasn’t had a change of heart when it comes to copyright, his actions are targeted at YouTube specifically.

The director informs us that he did indeed remove the film from YouTube. This is not a copyright issue. He simply doesn’t want TPB-AFK to be present on Google’s streaming platform any longer.

“I’ve taken it off YouTube, because I think YouTube has become a radicalizing platform full of hate, and I don’t want my film there anymore. It’s still available on torrent sites,” Klose says.

The director didn’t add any further background but pointed us to his latest film, “Hacking Hate“, which discusses in detail how social media platforms and YouTube are used as a tool to proliferate extreme content while profiting from it.

While it’s clear that Klose has changed his mind about YouTube rather than copyright, one can question whether copyright takedowns are the right way to enforce this. Especially when people are technically allowed to share the film.

The removals could be a good strategy to put a spotlight on the “Hacking Hate” documentary, but since Klose never sought public attention for the removals, his actions seem more intrinsically motivated.

It’s not clear how many instances of the documentary were removed from YouTube, but many copies of TPB-AFK are still available on the platform at the time of writing. Whether the uploaders of these copies filed counter-notices or were simply not targeted is unclear.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

As the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States, adult entertainment company Strike 3 Holdings has filed over 15,000 lawsuits in federal courts.

These lawsuits target people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright-infringing content via BitTorrent.

Many of these cases result in confidential settlements or are quietly dismissed and never heard of again. A tiny percentage proceed to a full contest in court, while the remaining cases are simply ignored by defendants.

From a legal standpoint, failing to respond to a lawsuit, regardless of the validity of the claims, is the worst option. Not putting up a defense allows the claiming party to move for a default judgment where the court, because it only hears one side of the case, may find it easier to agree with the claiming party.

Strike 3 Strikes Gold

Strike 3 has obtained dozens, if not hundreds of default judgments and this week appears to have struck gold in a Georgia federal court. In three separate cases, U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg awarded default judgments in favor of the adult entertainment company.

These uncontested cases are fairly straightforward. After filing complaints against John Does initially identified only by their IP-addresses, Strike 3 obtained subpoenas to obtain associated subscriber data from their ISPs.

These named defendants, who allegedly shared dozens of pirated films each via BitTorrent, were then served and asked to appear in court. The defendants in all cases failed to make an appearance, after which Strike 3 requested default judgments based on the following details.

– Defendant A. Salomon shared 130 copyrighted works without permission
– Defendant H. Alexander shared 115 copyrighted works without permission
– Defendant K. Forbes shared 35 copyrighted works without permission

Some of the works listed in Salomon’s case
 

Under U.S. Copyright Law, statutory damages for willful copyright infringement can reach $150,000 per infringed work. That could’ve resulted in almost $20 million in damages for defendant Salomon and more than $5 million for Forbes. However, Strike 3 opted for a more “reasonable” request.

Strike 3’s motion for default judgment requested damages of $750 per work, the statutory minimum for non-willful infringement.

“Defendant infringed 130 of Plaintiff’s Works, which therefore equates to $97,500. Thus, the recovery sought has been reduced to the absolute minimum and is reasonable,” the company argued.

Court Issues Default Judgments

After reviewing the paperwork and Strike 3’s self-proclaimed ‘reasonable’ damages requests, Judge Steven Grimberg granted all three default judgments this week.

The three judgments are part of a consolidated docket and use a nearly identical template. The only differences are the personal details, the number of infringed works, and the related damages amount. For Salomon, this results in $97,500 of owed damages, while Alexander and Forbes must pay $86,250 and $26,250 respectively.

Default judgment
 

In addition to the damages, Judge Grimberg also issued a permanent injunction, ordering the defendants to stop pirating Strike 3’s works and destroy all copies still in their possession.

These types of lawsuits are so common by now that they rarely make headlines anymore. However, this week’s substantial judgments show that they can have real consequences.

Strike 3 filed nearly 4,000 complaints last year, so these three cases represent a tiny fraction. Given the potential reward, however, it’s understandable that the company continues down this path.

For anyone involved in one of these cases, innocent or not, the defaults serve as a reminder that legal paperwork should not be ignored. And if defendants are innocent, history has shown that it can be worth putting up a serious defense.

—

Copies of the three default judgments issues by U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg are available here (1, 2, 3).

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Italy’s war on pirate IPTV providers, resellers, and viewers, began in earnest back in February 2024. Yet despite the significant resources committed to the expanding Piracy Shield initiative, it’s all but invisible to the public.

Piracy Shield’s existence, not unlike that of a cosmic black hole, is perhaps most easily confirmed by observing the effect it has on the entities that surround it. After drawing in every ISP in the country, each required to block pirate sites within 30 minutes at their own expense, legal amendments recently expanded the potential for new recruits. VPN providers, DNS operators, hosting companies, and other blocking-capable entities, can now be compelled to participate in a piracy war with no obvious end.

Both Cloudflare and Google have faced considerable pressure to participate voluntarily. Once it became clear that was unlikely to happen, telecoms regulator AGCOM began openly criticizing the companies’ refusal to implement blocking measures. Just below the surface, both were already becoming entangled in uncompromising anti-piracy legislation, specifically designed to ensure that intermediaries have no other choice.

Cloudflare Falls First

In a decision handed down last December, the Court of Milan ordered Cloudflare to block pirate streaming services offering Serie A football matches. The Court found that Cloudflare’s CDN, DNS resolver, WARP, and reverse proxy service, facilitate access to live pirate streams.

The Court spoke of “causal contribution” to copyright infringement and the undermining of Italy’s ‘Piracy Shield’ legislation. With its finding that refusal to take action established legal responsibility for the self-described online intermediary, the Court warned that further refusal to block would be addressed with fines of €10,000 per day.

Serie A Complaint Triggers Action Against Google

In a lawsuit filed at the Court of Milan, Serie A complained that Google refused to comply with requests to block pirate sites for which AGCOM had issued blocking instructions.

In a statement published Thursday, AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio claims that not only did Google fail to respect those orders, but it also took no action to address content previously listed for blocking on the Piracy Shield system.

Published on LinkedIn, Capitanio’s statement references a decision handed down on March 11 by the Court of Milan, which reportedly clarifies that all relevant internet access providers, including Google, must respect the requirements of law n. 93/2023.

The Court’s decision wasn’t made available to support AGCOM’s statement, and at the time of writing, we are still trying to locate a copy. Whether it contains any additional information is unknown but as things stand, the reporting suggests a landslide defeat for Google and praise all round for AGCOM’s work.

The Decision, According to AGCOM

Capitanio’s assessment notes that Google is subject to EU regulations concerning digital services. As a result, the company is also required to comply with requests for blocking measures issued on an “urgent basis in order to counteract illicit activities carried out by recipients of services, where those services causally contribute” to rights violations.

“It is therefore reiterated, as already noted in the December [2024] order against Cloudflare, that when AGCOM determines that certain content violates copyright, any service that contributes to the distribution of that content must comply with [AGCOM’s] decisions,” Capitanio adds.

“In ordering the execution of the blocks, with a precise reconstruction of the legislation, the Judge therefore confirmed the value of AGCOM’s investigations, once again giving legitimacy to a system for the protection of copyright that is unique in the world.”

One-Sided Decision

Since AGCOM has clashed quite fiercely with both Cloudflare and Google over blocking and related issues during the last 12 months, any defeat for Google will likely be considered a win for the regulator. This brings us to another important aspect of the announcement.

After Serie A receives praise from AGCOM, it becomes evident that Google has not yet had an opportunity to defend its position.

“The validity of Serie A’s requests seem so clear that the provision was issued inaudita altera parte, that is, without even needing to hear from Google, which will obviously bring its defense in view of the hearing that will have to confirm the provision,” Capitanio notes.

To use a football analogy, Serie A appears to be leading four-nil after the first leg, but has yet to face any opposition. More detail on the specifics of the procedure may yet prove informative but until then, Google is clearly being identified as the loser.

“The Court reminds the American company, as it already did with Cloudflare, that no one should even unwittingly favor crimes related to piracy. The road to full legality is still a long one, but these are fundamental steps forward,” Capitanio concludes.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Greece has a population of around 10.4 million and worldwide, Greek is the first language of just 13 million people.

Unlike content made available in English or Spanish, when Greek content starts to feel the piracy pinch, there’s no deep well of overseas markets to exploit. Increasingly, then, pressure finds itself directed inwards.

Greece is no stranger to anti-piracy measures and, after having tried almost everything else, the authorities hope that fining IPTV subscription buyers will nudge the population in the right direction.

More Blocking, Faster Blocking, Still Not Enough

Traditional blocking orders were first issued in Greece around 2012 under Article 64A of law 2121/1993. Mostly intermittent action continued until 2021 when EDPPI (the Committee for the Notification of Copyright and Related Rights Infringement on the Internet) was handed responsibility for tackling illicit broadcasts of live sporting events.

Rightsholders now have full access to DNS/IP address blocking, including in ‘real-time’ to protect live football matches. Greece operates an administrative system requiring no judicial oversight, but reports suggest that rightsholders would prefer more freedom and greater speed, to suppress activity highlighted in a recent EUIPO report.

A survey reported in ‘Foul play: millions of Europeans watch sporting events illegally‘ revealed that one-in-five Greeks admitted they had used illegal sources to consume live sporting events. That 20% placed Greece second only to Bulgaria, where 21% of the population admitted to the same.

More Frequent Enforcement Action

In October 2023, news of an unusually large enforcement operation began to emerge. Greek police said they had dismantled a criminal organization behind an illegal IPTV operation believed to have cost broadcasters Cosmote, Nova, and Vodafone, more than €100m.

The calculations supporting that figure are still unclear, and the same goes for the €25m in ‘benefit’ the service’s operators reportedly enjoyed over an eight-year period. Last week 17 people went on trial in what some are describing as the largest prosecution of its type ever seen in Greece.

The defendants stand accused of participation in a criminal organization that used pirate IPTV to generate significant wealth. Police say the defendants “legalized their criminal income” with real estate purchases, the formation of companies, and transactions involving betting companies. Police also seized half a dozen luxury cars and the same number of motorcycles.

If the outcome of that trial is considered a good fit, rightsholders and authorities will probably take the opportunity to highlight any prison sentences, fines, and damages, to send a wider deterrent message to the local population. The timing could hardly be better.

Specific legal amendments narrowly voted through last month now give the authorities the ability to fine pirates at the consumer end of the market and just about anyone else involved in the pirate IPTV market.

Article 65A – Administrative Sanctions

Administrative sanctions are already available in Greece to punish various intellectual property offenses. For example, anyone who reproduces, displays, sells or otherwise distributes unlicensed software to the public could be fined 1,000 euros for each illegal copy.

Those who “reproduce phonograms stored on any technical storage medium, including hard disks, whether or not integrated into a computer,” without obtaining permission, also face a potential fine of 1,000 euros for each illegal copy. For scale, a 256GB thumb drive can hold around 83,333 320kbps MP3 files.

Administrative Pirate IPTV-Related Fines

Offering piracy products or services on the internet, either through advertising or promotion, is now punishable by an administrative fine of 1,500 euros for each violation. “If the offense is carried out by presentation to the public in places of any nature,” those deemed to have done so with the aim of gaining “direct or indirect commercial financial benefit” face a fine of 5,000 euros for each violation.

For the ordinary user, fines of ‘just’ 750 euros await. A direct English translation of the Greek text is shown below. [The original text and translation are presented side by side for reference at the end of this article].

2B. Whoever, without right and in violation of this, retransmits, records, reproduces, in whole or in part, distributes by sale or in other ways, transmits by any means and manner, presents to the public in any way, including on-demand transmission, possesses or obtains access by possession of illegal equipment or software, with or without the intention of distribution and generally exploits illegal audiovisual works or broadcasts of radio and television organizations or national or international television events that are broadcast on the internet simultaneously with their implementation, including those where the possibility of monitoring is provided through audiovisual media service providers and communication media service providers, as defined in article 2 of law 4779/2021 (A’ 27), regardless of other sanctions, is subject to an administrative fine of seven hundred fifty (750) euros for each violation.

The section above is comprehensive and appears to go beyond basic consumption of infringing content. With the inclusion of the following statements [highlights added] the scope is not only quite broad, but also sets the bar low enough to ensure that watching infringing streams isn’t a strict requirement.

….possesses or obtains access….by….possession of illegal equipment or software….with or without the intention of distribution….is subject to an administrative fine of seven hundred fifty (750) euros for each violation.

In the context of illegal streaming services, ‘possession of illegal software’ necessarily defines software designed to access illegal streams, regardless of whether they’re illegal streams paid for by the user, or those obtained for free. The broader aim, it seems, is to eliminate argument over what the user intended to do.

Can Just Anyone Become a Target?

Possession isn’t explicitly defined in the text but any pirate-type app installed on a device could be enough to trigger a potential fine, even if an app never left the privacy of a user’s home. Indeed, the law anticipates that those who possess such apps may even be caught more than once. “In cases of infringement for private use,” repeat offending increases the administrative maximum from 750 euros per offense, to 1,500 euros per offense.

So are all pirates affected by these new rules? According to the text, probably not.

For practical reasons, anyone considered for a fine will already be known to the authorities, even if only in a very limited way. That could be a name, an email address, payment details, or whatever else people foolishly hand over to a pirate IPTV service or seller when buying a subscription.

“For the purpose of establishing the administrative violations [as detailed above] and imposing administrative fines, the competent judicial authorities are permitted to transmit to the authorities……the necessary data for identification of the offenders, which were collected and contained in a criminal case file drawn up following criminal prosecution for the crimes of article 66.

Article 66

Law-2121-1993 is available here and Article 66 details activities typically associated with commercial piracy, including activities often associated with those involved in the supply, sale, and/or distribution of infringing content/subscriptions to the public. Members of the public whose personal details become known to the authorities as part of an investigation against a pirate supplier, will have provided enough information to lead the authorities right to their door.

Whether that means a letter delivered by the mailman, or a visit from the authorities in person, will likely depend on the circumstances.

What happens after that will probably depend on any aggravating factors that come to light. When the fining process will actually begin is unknown but according to the authorities, the trial underway right now involves a customer list 13,000 entries long. Whether any of those customers are eligible for fines isn’t clear, but there’s unlikely to be a shortage of suitable targets moving forward.

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Europol published its latest Serious and Organized Crime Threat Assessment (SOCTA) this week.

The report provides a detailed overview of the threats posed by serious and organized crime in Europe, and includes a section dedicated to digital content piracy.

Europol is no stranger to piracy and online copyright infringement. The EU agency has led and assisted in many enforcement efforts over the years and has been particularly active in dismantling criminal IPTV operations across several member states.

Pirate Streaming Threats

The 100-page SOCTA report touches on a wide array of crime threats but, with less than a full page, the piracy assessment is rather concise. Europol notes that pirated digital content is mostly consumed via mobile and web-based applications, driven by increased online streaming and “over-the-top” services.

The report goes on to mention that online piracy and other types of cybercrime increasingly overlap. This can include ‘theft’ of credentials from legitimate streaming service subscribers, which can then be repackaged and offered to pirates.

“Digital pirates may steal or purchase login credentials from legitimate subscribers — often sourced via phishing scams or data breaches — and then repackage multiple over-the-top libraries into a single, unauthorized service,” Europol writes.

“Piracy Will Drop”

Europol’s overview of the piracy landscape and associated threats doesn’t offer much detail, or highlight any novel or emerging threats. However, it does include a noteworthy piracy prediction, suggesting that a “drop in demand” for pirate services is expected.

Highlighted in the 2025 SOCTA report
 

This statement stands out for various reasons, including Europol’s own preface, which suggests that consumers might be more drawn to piracy today due to cost concerns and the increased fragmentation of legal streaming services.

“The current cost-of-living crisis as well as the fragmentation of content across multiple legal streaming platforms prompt consumers to seek more cost-effective and unified packages regardless of their illegality,” Europol notes.

“Yet, due to improved access to legal platforms, and enforcement scrutiny in some Member States, a further drop in users for illicit platforms is anticipated.”

The last sentence is rewritten, blown up, and separately highlighted in the piracy section of the SOCTA report. This leads to the conclusion that criminal piracy networks will be facing a drop in demand.

Where is the Data?

Rightsholders will be delighted to read this forecast, especially since it comes direct from Europol. That said, it would be good to see more data and context on how this conclusion was reached.

Europol didn’t immediately reply to our request for comment but, luckily, the report includes citations. The “drop in users” prediction is tied to a 2023 Europol IP-crime threat assessment, which includes a near identical statement, shown below.

Near identical (2023 report)
 

The 2023 report includes another citation, referencing Europol’s Intellectual Property Crime Threat Assessment from the previous year. This indeed mentions that “the overall decline of digital piracy continued” during the COVID pandemic.

Piracy Decline (2022 report)
 

This report is still not the original source, as another citation identifies an EUIPO copyright infringement report from 2021 as the basis for the conclusion that piracy is declining. The data this report refers to was collected between 2017 and 2020, which is far from new.

Piracy is Actually Rising?

The citation-chain suggests that the predicted piracy decline, which is prominently highlighted in the 2025 threat assessment, relies on five-year-old data.

Interestingly, the increased fragmentation of content across legal streaming services, which Europol highlighted as a piracy driver, mostly took place after the ‘piracy drop’ data was collected. For example, Disney+ and HBO MAX were still not available in Europe early 2020.

This means that the data supporting Europol’s prediction of a drop in piracy, was collected before a key piracy driver was introduced in the EU. That’s a potential problem; there’s good reason to believe that piracy has increased over the past several years, running counter to Europol’s conclusion.

The 2021 EUIPO report that provides the basis for the reported decline, was followed up by a new EUIPO copyright infringement report in 2023. That report showed – contrary to Europol’s prediction of decline – that online piracy is on the rise again.

Put differently, it appears that Europol’s piracy prediction is not only based on five-year old data, but data that has since been displaced by newer findings indicating that the downwards piracy trend has since been reversed.

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In late 2022, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.

The record labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

The trial lasted more than two weeks and ended in a resounding victory for the labels. A Texas federal jury found Grande guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement, and the ISP was ordered to pay $47 million in damages to the record labels.

The copyright infringement verdict was confirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals but the lower court’s decision on how damages should be calculated was overturned. A new trial will determine the appropriate amount but in the meantime, Grande continues to protest the liability ruling.

Grande Petitions Supreme Court

Last week, Grande filed a petition at the Supreme Court, urging the justices to take up the case and review the Fifth Circuit’s decision.

The petition centers on the crucial question of ISP liability in cases of contributory copyright infringement. Grande frames the issue as an “exceptionally important question under the Copyright Act,” highlighting a “nationwide litigation campaign by the U.S. recording industry” to hold ISPs liable for copyright violations carried out by their customers.

The central question, as presented in the petition, is as follows:  

“Whether an ISP is liable for contributory copyright infringement by (i) providing content-neutral internet access to the general public and (ii) failing to terminate that access after receiving two third-party notices alleging someone at a customer’s IP address has infringed.”

The Fifth Circuit and other courts in related cases have confirmed that ISPs can be held liable. Grande vehemently disagrees, likewise Cox Communications, which filed a similar petition at the Supreme Court last year. The ISPs warn that the status quo could have devastating consequences for the ISP industry and the general public.

In its petition, Grande highlights splits in lower courts regarding the standard for contributory copyright infringement. It also mentions the Supreme Court’s recent Twitter v. Taamneh ruling, which stated that there is no “duty” for online platforms to “terminate customers after discovering that the customers were using the service for illicit ends.”

What makes matters worse in this case, according to the ISP, is that it’s not clear how services should deal with copyright infringers going forward.

Unworkable Uncertainty

Grande notes that despite lower court decisions, the practical uncertainties for Internet providers remain. Faced with “crushing liability”, ISPs might be more eager to disconnect subscribers, even if they have no faith in the validity of copyright infringement notices.

Even if the notices are valid, other questions remain unanswered. For example, is it fair to disconnect subscribers from vital services? How many notices should trigger a disconnection when ISPs receive millions of them? And should subscribers be protected in any way?

“Respondents ignore the significant practical challenges that ISPs face in making termination decisions, especially without any clear framework dictating when action is required—or what process and protections subscribers should receive,” the petition reads

“Respondents’ position is unworkable and deeply concerning. It misstates the law and produces grave practical problems. It will interfere with the entire ISP industry and unduly harm innocent subscribers.”

The current precedents are based on the DMCA, which in its own right leaves many questions unanswered. There’s no clear definition of what a proper “repeat infringer” policy should look like, or what thresholds warrant Internet disconnections. These uncertainties remain, despite earlier verdicts.

Legal and Practical States

The petition notes that the current situation has astounding implications that warrant urgent intervention. Internet providers should be able to operate under clearly defined terms, Grande notes.

“This Court has long recognized the importance of protecting key industries from undue interference and preserving clear, efficient, workable rules for regulated actors. Yet while respondents pitch their position as straightforward, nothing about their proposed scheme is simple or easy.”

“They brush aside the real-world challenges it thrusts upon others, and shrug at the severe hardship it would impose on families, businesses, schools, hospitals, and major institutions. It endangers jobs, livelihoods, health, education, emotional wellbeing, and political engagement.”

Grande says that the current situation works well for rightsholders, as they have the power to ‘force’ ISPs to terminate accounts of alleged copyright infringers. However, this comes at significant costs for ISPs and their subscribers.

A Need for Clear Policy Guidelines

In conclusion, this petition challenges more than just a wrong interpretation of current law, the ISP says. It essentially argues that the DMCA, as written, is too ambiguous to handle the present conundrum.

“At bottom, this is a policy question for the political branches,” Grande writes, adding that “it needs a regulatory framework with settled rules, clear enforcement mechanisms, and unambiguous legislative guidance.”

“It should not be announced in scattershot fashion by district-court judges on an ad-hoc basis—a process that will wreak havoc on the public and the entire ISP industry for potentially decades.”

For this reason, Grande hopes that the Supreme Court will take on this case. If not in isolation, then as a companion to the petition that Cox filed on this “exceptionally important issue” last year.

—

A copy of Grande Communications’ petition for a writ of certiorari, submitted to the Supreme Court last week, is available here (pdf)

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 The official launch of Piracy Shield on Saturday February 1, 2024, played out more quietly than many had predicted.

The next five days saw the blocking of just 11 IP addresses, adding weight to the theory that the system still wasn’t quite ready. After several months the volume of IP addresses and FQDNs (fully qualified domain names) dramatically increased but not before overblocking entered the equation.

When mounting criticism found a platform in the media, legitimate concerns were publicly dismissed as fake news. Public awareness of piracy was always part of the plan but on terms designed to build bridges, not erect even more walls. Yet in October 2024, further amendments to the law (the Omnibus decree) caused uproar by targeting the very people and companies upon which Piracy Shield completely relies.

One legal amendment threatened ISP bosses with prison if they failed to proactively report piracy to the authorities. Some ISPs highlighted the injustice of trampling on the rights of an entire industry, purely for the benefit of protecting football. Others spoke only of betrayal.

Piracy Shield: New Technical & Operational Requirements

Published by AGCOM last Friday, ‘Update of the Technical and Operational Requirements of the Single Technology Platform with Automated Operation Called Piracy Shield’ is available under the more convenient reference Delibera 48/25/CONS (pdf) on AGCOM’s website. It contains proposals for changes to Piracy Shield’s operations which will most likely pass as-is, unless someone contests it at the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio within 60 days of publication.

AGCOM begins by referencing the requirement in the Omnibus decree that VPN services and publicly available DNS, “wherever resident and wherever located,” plus “search engines and, more generally, the providers of information society services involved in any capacity in the accessibility of the website or illegal services” will be required to obtain accreditation to use Piracy Shield and like ISPs, start blocking pirate services.

In the event that “managers of search engines and the providers of information society services” are not directly involved in the accessibility of a pirate site or service, they will still be required to act.

Within thirty minutes of receiving notification of a blocking order, they will be required to “adopt all technical measures useful for hindering the visibility of the illegal content,” including in any case, “the de-indexing from search engines of the domain names subject to AGCOM’s blocking orders, including the domain names subject to the reports made via Piracy Shield.

IP Addresses & Domain Name Blocking/Suspensions

Another measure introduced via the Omnibus decree reads as follows:

“The providers of IP address assignment services, the Italian Registry for the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) .it, the providers of domain name registration services for ccTLDs other than the Italian one and for generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) names, shall periodically re-enable the resolution of domain names and the routing of network traffic to the addresses.”

AGCOM clarifies that IP addresses blocked pursuant to this article, may only be unblocked on a date at least six months after they were initially blocked, assuming they are not used for illicit purposes. In respect of domains and IP addresses in general, previous limits no longer exist in 2025, but increases will be applied gradually.

Permanent Technical Table

“ISPs and rights holders, including trade associations and federations, as well as representatives of the ACN [National Cybersecurity Agency], the Guardia di Finanza, the Postal Police and representatives of the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy, participate on a permanent basis in the work of the Technical Table… ”

Noting two dates in January 2025 where ‘Technical Table’ meetings took place, AGCOM says that rightsholders and ISPs were previously invited to submit their observations on the implications of the new provisions in the Omnibus decree. Submissions and subsequent discussion seems to have led to some type of consensus or acceptance on the interpretation of some of the more contentious provisions.

Overblocking Avoidance

When rightsholders wish to block content made available by an IP address offering both infringing and non-infringing content, going ahead regardless would almost certainly lead to collateral damage.

Previously, an IP address/server ‘univocally’ or universally used to supply infringing content could be blocked. However, by mixing legitimate and illegitimate content on the same server, it was argued that pirates could avoid blocking by gaming the rule. By replacing ‘univocally’ with ‘predominantly’ the ‘loophole’ was closed but left rightsholders in a position to potentially block quite a lot of legitimate content to protect their own. AGCOM offers a solution of sorts.

“It has been specified that the requirement of prevalence must be interpreted in compliance with the criteria of proportionality and reasonableness, assessing their existence on a case-by-case basis. The reporters [of infringement] are required to respect the utmost diligence and the utmost rigor in submitting the blocking requests,” AGCOM notes, adding that if the prevalence of illicit content is in doubt, AGCOM should be consulted.

In view of earlier overblocking at Cloudflare, for example, AGCOM makes an additional comment suggesting that measures are already in place to prevent a repeat moving forward.

The regulator notes that “resources for which there is no certainty of the prevalent illicit nature or resources for which it was not possible to carry out all the technical analyses aimed at excluding blocks of legitimate resources” should not be reported for blocking, as is the case already.

The same applies to “resources that present a high risk of overblocking, such as, for example, content delivery networks, reverse proxies, VPN services, cloud storage services and the like.”

ISP Compensation & Pirates’ Privacy

Currently required to provide their own equipment and software, pay overtime, and cover all other costs associated with blocking, ISPs have been asking for fair compensation for their work. AGCOM explains that “the law does not attribute powers to the Authority [AGCOM] in this regard,” but it “reserves the right to activate the initiatives within its jurisdiction in order to represent this situation in the appropriate venues.”

On the privacy front, AGCOM reminds all involved in Piracy Shield that diligence and confidentiality of information and data should be observed at all times. That leads to the question of transparency and whether blocked IP addresses should be made public as previously promised, but never emerged.

“[W]ith particular reference to the confidentiality of the blocked IP addresses, it was specified that the Authority believes it cannot publish the entire list of blocked IP addresses as they fall within the category of ‘personal data’ that may allow indirect identification, as clarified both by the Court of Justice of the European Union and by the Privacy Guarantor, as well as to not undermine the action to combat piracy,” AGCOM notes.

From a technical perspective, AGCOM is on pretty solid ground. However, the same does not apply to any kind of domain name so, in the interests of transparency, releasing those could be a reasonable compromise.

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In 2021, Colorado-based Internet provider Wide Open West (WOW!) was sued by a group of movie companies including Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures.

The filmmakers accused the ISP of failing to terminate the accounts of subscribers who were repeatedly flagged for sharing copyrighted material.

These types of lawsuits resulted in multi-million dollar judgments against Cox and Grande; a fate WOW hopes to avoid. The ISP challenged the claims and filed a motion to dismiss the case early on, arguing that the allegations fall short.

$56 million

This initial motion to dismiss was denied by the Colorado federal court. The tone had been set, however, with WOW describing the movie companies and their anti-piracy partners as “copyright trolls”.

Perhaps bolstered by the failed dismissal request, the plaintiffs then sought to expand their case. They added new rightsholders, new piracy tracking companies, and more than 300 additional film titles.

This culminated in a second amended complaint (SAC) that significantly raised the stakes. Instead of 57 works, good for maximum statutory damages of roughly $8 million, an expansion to roughly 375 works would increase the statutory maximum to $56 million, if WOW was found liable.

The nature of the claims against WOW didn’t change, however. The movie companies continued to accuse the Internet provider of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, as well as violations of the DMCA.

Motion to Dismiss

Faced with these new and expanded allegations, WOW responded to the amended complaint with a new motion to dismiss. The ISP argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed in its entirety, or at least in part, for various reasons.

One key argument was that the 300+ newly added films are not backed up by proper evidence. The movie companies rely on data from tracking company Facterra, suggesting that IP-addresses of WOW subscribers shared films though BitTorrent. However, WOW said that there’s no evidence that it was informed about these alleged infringements.

The ISP also cited the ‘Twitter v. Taamneh‘ Supreme Court decision, which was released after its initial motion to dismiss.

In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that social media platforms aren’t liable for ISIS terrorists who used their services to recruit and raise funds. In a similar vein, WOW believes that it shouldn’t be held liable for subscribers who pirate content.

Motion Denied

Last Friday, U.S. District judge Daniel Domenico ruled on the motion to dismiss, denying it in its entirety.

The ruling acknowledges that WOW may not have been aware of specific instances of copyright infringement for all 300+ newly added works. However, to state a claim for contributory copyright infringement, the movie companies should show that WOW was aware of pirating subscribers.

Judge Domenico concludes that WOW’s alleged knowledge of widespread infringement by its subscribers, and failure to take action, was sufficient to suggest willful blindness, even if specific instances for each work weren’t documented.

“The complaint alleges that WideOpenWest was notified of over 33,750 specific instances of direct infringement at over 13,000 of its IP addresses […] yet it did not investigate further or take any action to stop continued infringement by the subscriber accounts associated with those IP addresses.”

The Supreme Court’s Twitter v.s Taamneh doesn’t foreclose any of the copyright infringement claims either. That case confirmed that social media companies can’t be held liable for terrorist attacks committed by subscribers away from their platforms. This means that there is no ‘direct nexus’ between Twitter’s conduct, and the attack itself.

In WOW’s case, it can be argued that there is a direct nexus between the pirating activities of subscribers and the ISP’s service. WOW provided the service that was necessary to pirate the movies, and continue doing so after it was alerted about the alleged wrongdoing.

“Twitter does not provide a reason to revisit my previous analysis of the plaintiffs’ allegations regarding secondary liability for copyright infringement or Digital Millennium Copyright Act violations,” Judge Domenico writes.

Reddit Comments

WOW also requested the court to dismiss the vicarious copyright claim, which relies on the allegation that the ISP’s actions acted as a ‘draw’ to those who were interested in pirating content.

WOW highlights a similar case between record labels and Cox Communications. In that matter the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that advertisements for high download speeds, and the availability of infringing content, are not sufficient to be considered a ‘draw’ for potential subscribers.

In the Cox lawsuit, the court dismissed the vicarious liability claim because it failed to see a direct financial interest. However, Judge Domenico believes that dismissal would be premature in this case.

Interestingly, the filmmakers support their ‘draw’ argument with allegations that rely heavily on comments from anonymous Reddit users. These public comments suggest that WOW’s actions may have drawn subscribers.

“The plaintiffs allege that at least one subscriber continued using WideOpenWest’s internet service because WideOpenWest is ‘amazing on torrents’ and the subscriber had ‘never gotten a letter or notice’ despite having ‘downloaded truly an outrageous amount of data’.”

“That subscriber recommended WideOpenWest to someone else looking for an internet service provider that is ‘‘less’ strict on downloading’,” Judge Domenico adds.

Reddit comment (posted 10 years ago)
 

These and other Reddit comments are sufficient at this stage, so the vicarious copyright infringement claim remains intact. In a footnote, however, the order clarifies that screenshots of Reddit comments need to be backed up with properly admissible evidence at trial.

Moving Forward

This footnote explains why several filmmakers have repeatedly tried to uncover the identities of Redditors in lawsuits against other ISPs. While these publicly available and anonymous comments are self-explanatory, without verification they might not be admissible at trial.

Therefore, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the filmmakers will seek further information from Reddit going forward.

In any case, the lawsuit will move forward in its entirety, with all copyright infringement claims intact.

—

A copy of Colorado District Court Judge Daniel Domenico’s order denying the motion to dismiss is available here (pdf)

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

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

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “Captain America: Brave New World” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on March 17 are:

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

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From short-tempered exchanges to full-blown public displays of anger, Europe’s top football leagues and their broadcasting partners seem to be less than satisfied with site blocking as a piracy suppressant.

One of the most aggressive site-blocking systems available anywhere on the planet was launched in Italy in 2024. The balance in favor of rightsholders was obvious from day one yet despite having more tools than rightsholders anywhere else, the law supporting the program was tightened up within months. Yet more amendments are expected in the near future.

Spain’s LaLiga also indicates that site blocking measures need to be improved. Blaming Cloudflare for the lack of performance, Spain’s top league retaliated by blocking Cloudflare and its customers; whether the pirate services hiding behind Cloudflare were affected is unknown.

DAZN sparked a crisis in French football last month when it withheld millions of euros in fees owed to French league Ligue 1, which it accused of not doing enough to tackle piracy. DAZN has now paid everything owed; the problem has not gone away.

Preparing For Le Classique

The decades-old rivalry between Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Olympique de Marseille (OM) is a very big deal in French football. They call it Le Classique and when the two most successful clubs in France meet, few fans want to miss out on the Ligue 1 action. If all went to plan last night, upwards of 50% of fans who watched the first leg of the clash last October will have had their viewing ruined. Or interrupted.

The background appears in an intriguing report published by L’Equipe, which notes that during the fixture last October, 55% of viewers watched the match illegally despite the blocking of 340 pirate domain names to prevent that happening.

The scale of the event makes Le Classique one of a dozen sporting events to receive special attention from French telecoms regulator Arcom. Partnering with broadcasters like DAZN, Arcom takes the opportunity to spread an anti-piracy message. Arcom’s new president, Martin Ajdari, told L’Equipe that 18% of people in France consumed sports from illegal sources in 2024, the same figure reported for 2023.

“[T]his represents a loss of €300 million in one year for the sports ecosystem. And while piracy is generally declining, we are seeing an increase in illicit consumption via IPTV (access to all channels, via a box or an app, for a low-cost subscription),” Ajdari said.

Secret ‘Commando Operation’ Against 100 Pirate Sites

How Arcom and broadcasters like DAZN counter the piracy threat all year round isn’t for public consumption. Yet, in the days before the big game yesterday, L’Equipe was invited in to witness Arcom’s work and DAZN “pulling out all the stops” in a secret operation to protect the biggest match in French football.

“For several days, Arcom has been preparing a new commando operation, secretly scheduling the blocking of around a hundred pirate services around the return match. On Wednesday, at the regulator’s Paris headquarters in the 12th arrondissement [region of Paris], L’Équipe was able to witness its preparations and meet with agents, all of whom wished to remain anonymous,” the publication reported.

The report begins with an interesting angle to a known but not often discussed aspect of blocking live sports. Many pirate sites are tagged for blocking based on the content previously broadcast, not necessarily on what they’re broadcasting when they’re blocked.

L’Equipe noted a request appearing on a screen to block an IPTV service observed showing Premier League content the previous week. The request was sent by Canal+ to assist rival DAZN; through the Association for the Protection of Sports Programs (APPS), agreement had been reached to collectively target the service in question.

“In the fight against piracy, what benefits one benefits the other, given that IPTV offers all channels,” an anonymous agent told L’Equipe.

More Details of the Secret Operation

Details of the secret operation were not exactly in short supply. The plan for Sunday evening was to disable some pirate services 30 minutes before kick-off. When pirates turned to other sites to resume their illegal viewing, they would then run into a second wave of blocking scheduled for 30 minutes after the start of the match.

Arcom’s investment of €200,000 in systems that improve capacity for blocking requests and reduce processing time to 10 minutes, appears to be paying off.

“Since January 1, we have already blocked 1,293 domain names, almost as many as in all of 2023,” an agent revealed. “Before the software arrived last summer, the blocking request was submitted manually by the rights holder, by email. And we filled out a report template in Word.”

That Arcom still has no direct means of tackling piracy on Telegram, despite the detention of its founder last year, is a little surprising.

“Our main objective is to make it as difficult as possible for consumers to access these illegal services, to discourage them,” explained Arcom’s Martin Ajdari. “We are in a cops and robbers situation, with constant innovations to circumvent the law. We know that the rules put in place will never be completely watertight.”

Precise Timing, Exact Strategy

L’Equipe was informed that the secret operation would launch its first wave at 20:15 and its second wave an hour later at 21:15, details that appeared in its report published well in advance of the match on Sunday night. It’s possible that L’Equipe’s paywall was seen as a no-go-zone for pirates, to the extent that the details wouldn’t leak out and allow pirates to prepare. In theory, perhaps.

If the details on timing were indeed true, the decision to block 30 minutes before the match started seems curious. Regardless of the strategy ‘leaked’ in the article, that would’ve given everyone 30 mins to find one or more replacement streams without missing a second of the match. The second wave of blocking would then cause only half the irritation it could’ve done, losing out on the opportunity to double the impact of Arcom’s anti-piracy message.

An alternative theory is that those details weren’t true and like all good battle plans, misled the enemy and kept everyone guessing until they least expect it. Unfortunately, it’s big match day; everyone expects it.

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The Internet made all areas of the globe accessible with a keystroke. But that doesn’t mean artificial barriers no longer exist.

The entertainment industries, in particular, rely heavily on the territorial lines that were once drawn on a map.

Movies and TV shows are not typically offered globally, but sold instead based on geographical licenses. This allows rightsholders to get the best possible price for their content in each region and if the best offer isn’t good enough, the content simply won’t be made available.

The same model also applies to other industries, including live sports, where the value of broadcasting rights is highly dependent on the region. This is often a reflection of consumer demand, where more demand leads to higher licensing fees, which are partly passed on to fans.

EU Unblocking Measures

Increasingly savvy consumers circumvent these barriers using VPNs, for example, which are now promoted by YouTubers, bloggers, and podcasters as a potential solution to uneven pricing. While that may work in some cases, rightsholders and online services typically frame this as abuse.

Another option to deal with these geographical restrictions is to outlaw them. The European Union has looked into this previously. As a union of 27 countries, it aimed to level the playing field between member states.

To counter consumer-unfriendly limitations, the European Commission previously banned certain types of geo-blocking as part of the Digital Single Market reforms. This legislation has been in place for a few years and works well, although video content is currently exempt.

The movie industry and sports broadcasters were happy with this exception, but they remain vigilant. The European Commission is currently evaluating geo-blocking regulation and is open to making changes, which understandably has rightsholders worried.

A recent EU consultation asked stakeholders, including consumers, to submit feedback. While some are in favor of removing ‘broadcast’ and ‘streaming’ barriers in the EU, rightsholders are rallying against upsetting the status quo.

Hollywood, Netflix, and Amazon are Worried

In a response to the consultation, the Motion Picture Association’s EMEA branch urged the EC to keep audiovisual content excluded from current regulation. Representing the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, and Amazon, the MPA stressed that territorial exclusivity is of critical importance to the industry.

The MPA says that geographical restrictions serve as foundations for developing, financing, producing, marketing, and distributing culturally and linguistically diverse audiovisual works.

These barriers allow companies to price their products based on consumer purchasing power, the MPA adds, noting that research indicates lifting these restrictions would devalue their content.

“This has a direct and negative impact on content development, financing and distribution opportunities, as well as on the recoupment of investments in future film and audiovisual content in Europe.”

These negative effects would impact the studios directly. It can also impact streaming services, European cinemas, and some consumers who might see price increases, MPA warns.

Sports Industry & Broadcasting Concerns

The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) is equally worried. The group represents many major sports rightsholders including the Premier League, Sky, beIN, and Viaplay, whose multi-billion-euro businesses are largely built around geographical licenses.

AAPA shared many of the same concerns as the MPA, with a specific warning that a ban on geo-blocking would harm many consumers too.

The group notes that territories have diverse demands in terms of content, and pricing reflects those demands. Setting the same price across the EU for content with geographically specific levels of popularity would likely impact consumers.  

“100 million European sports fans could face increased charges, eliminating local pricing flexibility and imposing financial burdens on lower-income regions,” AAPA writes.

AAPA also notes that some consumers will benefit from lower subscription fees but at the cost of broadcasters and rightsholders. That could result in reduced investment in localized services, such as local language commentary for sports.

Music Industry Fears Piracy

Even the music industry is in favor or maintaining regional differences. While geographical licensing is rarer, Spotify subscriptions are priced differently from country to country, often taking the purchasing power of consumers into consideration.

In a submission to the EU consultation, industry group IFPI also warns that banning geo-blocking will severely hurt the music industry and many consumers.

If streaming services can no longer vary the price based on the purchasing power of consumers, subscriptions will become too expensive for some. This could drive these consumers to use pirate alternatives instead.

“[A] significant number of consumers who would wish to consume licensed music but are no longer able to pay the higher prices, would be unserved or in a worst-case scenario could turn to piracy,” IFPI notes.

IFPI fears that a ban on geo-blocking would lead to lower subscription revenue, especially in less wealthy countries. This would result in lower investment in music, especially in those regions.

Overall, it’s clear that the audiovisual industries view geo-blocking bans as a potential existential threat, at least to parts of these industries. While there are no concrete plans for the EU to lift the current exceptions, these companies will be watching the EU evaluation closely.

—

Copies of all the submissions mentioned here, as well as dozens of others, are available on the European Commission website.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 Reports last week that Spotify had suddenly gone down worldwide were a little overblown.

The ‘outage’ may have felt that big to those affected, and it may have been of some comfort if everyone had the same problem; after all, nobody likes to suffer alone.

That doesn’t mean the perceived outage was insignificant or had limited geographical reach. Spotify has neither confirmed nor denied anything, it’s possible it never will. But something definitely happened.

Significant reports of Spotify ‘downtime’ began to surface around March 3rd and for the next several days, similar reports appeared on discussion platforms around the world. As the dust settled it became increasingly clear that this wasn’t a global Spotify outage. Indeed, there’s no evidence to show that legitimate users of Spotify were impacted at all.

Targeted Anti-Piracy Crackdown

All evidence points towards an international Spotify campaign to render its service inaccessible to those enjoying the ‘Premium’ ad-free experience without paying for it.

The precise scope of the apps targeted is unknown, but Android users appear to represent the bulk of those affected, with ‘modded’ or ‘cracked’ versions of the Spotify client cited most often. Data from Google Trends reveals a worldwide search interest peak last week higher than any other Spotify-related event in the last 90 days.

The same search reveals a peak of similar size and shape across multiple countries where an ‘outage’ was reported last week.

Google Trends search data is available for periods of up to 7 days, but then jumps to 30 days and beyond. The image below shows the top 5 countries for ‘Spotify’ searches in the preceding 30 days and, for comparison, the same search for 7 days.

The change in position on the right may suggest a phased approach by Spotify; 7 days may be too short to account for all searches conducted in Italy if it was one of the first targets last week. This may have allowed Ukraine to take the top spot and made room for Poland and Moldova to enter the frame.

Was Spotify’s Crackdown The Cause?

A company of Spotify’s significance means that for one reason or another, making headlines is nothing particularly unusual. In this case there appears to be little doubt that the peak in interest last week was indeed linked to the disabling of the pirate apps.

The top 20 trending searches in the UK, linked to the initial searches above, are listed below. The overwhelming majority show direct interest in unofficial access, with at least half of the searches specifying particular pieces of software.

Searches in other regions indicate that solutions sought for the Spotify ‘outage’ ranged from the very direct, to the more flexible and creative.

Italy’s approach ranged from the easily translated ‘spotify premium apk ultima versione‘ to the specific ‘com.spotify.music apk arm64-v8a‘. Showing a desire to switch platforms if necessary, ‘come trasferire playlist da spotify a youtube music‘ (how to transfer playlist from Spotify to YouTube music) was also popular.

Over in Belarus, many searched for “спотифай скачать взлом” (Spotify download hack) while others sounded less optimistic with “почему спотифай не работает” (Why Spotify doesn’t work?).

In the United States, a Spotify tweak called ‘EeveeSpotify’ attracted significant attention. Like the now-defunct Spotilife before it, ‘EeveeSpotify’ signals to Spotify that the user has a Premium subscription. This is currently achieved by intercepting Spotify’s requests to load user data and then modifying the responses.

A popular search in Ukraine, believe it or not, is the only search that Spotify wants to see after this type of event. Faced with a Spotify blackout, Ukrainians searched for ‘підписка спотіфай‘ which translates to ‘Spotify subscription.”

New Modded/Cracked APK Files Appear Onine

Despite having other options, some users are only prepared to settle for a solution featuring the original Spotify app. New cracked/modded versions of the official Spotify Android app may have appeared online quite quickly, perhaps as early as March 4 or 5 when the ‘outage’ was still in its early stages.

From a purely functional perspective, modded Spotify APK files often claim to offer a complete (or near complete) Spotify experience, minus the cost of subscription. These APKs are fairly easily found online and straightforward to install. The major difficulty that concerns some more than others, is the age-old question of trust.

Gambling on Trust, Risk vs. Reward

Installing an APK from an unverified source carries significant risk. Once installed, users may find all promises have been kept but what actually happens inside users’ phones and tablets is hard to predict. With moderate effort, an average user should be able to learn enough about a modded APK to make a semi-informed decision, even if only based on how much risk they’re prepared to take.

On one side of the scale, free Spotify; on the other, a potential nightmare costing much more. The odds of the experience tipping in favor of one versus the other depends on both known and unknown factors.

Installing an unknown app from an unknown source is normal behavior for many pirates. One particularly popular Spotify app has been freely exchanged between Reddit users during the past few days. As one early installer put it, “Yes it seems to work.” At times like these, for some that’s more than enough.

Rolling the Spotify Dice

Whether there are multiple versions of the same app, or whether they just behave the same, is hard to tell without spending considerable time. What we can say for sure is that the handful we’ve seen didn’t always share the same hash. There might be good reasons for that but when hashes don’t match, further tampering has already been confirmed.

 A test result published on Hybrid Analysis, for an APK that reportedly brings Spotify back to life, dates back six/seven days. The final verdict is one of “malicious” despite anti-virus vendors giving the file a clean bill of health on both Hybrid Analysis and Virus Total.

In our own tests, a similar (but not identical) APK resulted in three sets of reports, one of which exceeded 100 pages and revealed interesting ‘features’. It’s possible that the official Spotify app has features we’re yet to discover, such as the ridiculous ‘Jam’ mode inflicted on even the most loyal subscriber.

But did that have permission to read a phone’s contact lists, SIM card details, the content of every SMS, call logs, calendar entries, and then use the camera? In 2025, anything is possible, but it’s hard to imagine much good coming from that.

Yet for some, the idea of paying for music will be too difficult to overcome. And despite costing almost nothing, research may sound like too much hard work, even if it paid off handsomely in the end.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 At the start of the year, TorrentGalaxy was one of the most-visited torrent sites, welcoming millions of users a day.

The site was originally launched by former members of ExtraTorrent, a popular torrent site that shut down in 2018. The founders aimed to provide a home for ExtraTorrent ‘refugees’ but, over time, it transformed into much more than that.

Last summer, there was a drastic change as TorrentGalaxy as the founders sold the site to a new and undisclosed party. The handover was clearly noticeable to outsiders, as the typically stable site suddenly experienced repeated stretches of downtime.

It was presumed that these problems were related to the change of guards, but without a word from the site’s new owners, both staff and users were left guessing.

When new downtime issues presented themselves last month, few people were surprised. This had happened previously on numerous occasions, with the site typically coming back online after a few days. This time around, however, the site stayed dark.

Site Offline for Two Weeks

At the time of writing, TorrentGalaxy has been unreachable for more than two weeks. The site had started using Cloudflare on its main torrentgalaxy.to domain, which informs users that the ‘host’ server is unreachable.

Bad Gateway
 

TorrentGalaxy has a dedicated status page to inform users what parts of their infrastructure are still operational. This currently indicates that all backup domains are offline too, including those on the Tor network.

The status page is automated and provides no additional explanation. The current issues seem more than just a technical outage, however.

ProxyGalaxy Status Page

Broken Upload Bots

In addition to the site itself, plus main and backup domains, TorrentGalaxy’s upload bots are offline too. These bots, including TGxGoodies, provided a steady stream of thousands of movie and TV torrents to other torrent sites, including 1337x.

Two weeks ago, a 1337x moderator decided to suspend TGxGoodies as many of its uploads were not being seeded. This was likely triggered by hosting-related issues that appear to have plagued the site.

“I have suspended the uploading of this bot till you guys figure out what’s going on over there. You have 500 unseeded torrents here. Not going to let you upload anymore till you start seeding what you have already uploaded. This bot needs a fixing,” the mod wrote.

Over at The Pirate Bay, the TGxGoodies and GalaxyRG bots stopped uploading weeks ago, for unknown reasons. This means that TorrentGalaxy’s problems are not isolated to just one website, its absence is being felt across the entire torrent site ecosystem.

Staff Fear the Worst

After two weeks of unexplained downtime, many users have concluded that the site is not coming back anytime soon. This sentiment is also trickling through to members of TorrentGalaxy’s staff, who are also being kept in the dark.

Mafketel, one of the TGx super admins, informs TorrentFreak that site staff are gradually losing hope for a good outcome.

“To be honest, the belief that it eventually will all be okay is very low among all staffers,” he says. However, as long as the proxy status page is online, with a checkmark beside one of the domains, staff continue to hope for a ‘miracle’.

As far as we can see, none of the current issues are domain-related. The main TorrentGalaxy.to domain is registered and operational, with working nameservers. The server it points to clearly isn’t functioning, however.

Financial Concerns

Rightsholders will be happy to see the site stay offline. ACE and others have previously tried to uncover the identities of its operators, hoping to take them down. There are currently no signs that anti-piracy forces are behind the downtime, at least not directly.

It is possible that ‘someone’ got to the servers and did unrepairable damage, but that’s all speculation.

Many online commenters link the current problems to TorrentGalaxy’s plea for money. A few weeks ago, the site reported financial difficulties, asking users to send donations to cover the bills.

The logical conclusion is that the money eventually ran out. However, while that sounds plausible, it would be highly unusual. After all, the operators of the site could easily put up a text file with a formal farewell.

Alternatively, they could point the domain to an external page where they explain the situation, and perhaps ask for even more money. Just giving up without any explanation, months after taking over the site, makes little sense.

At the end of the day, TorrentGalaxy’s status remains a mystery until someone steps forward to explain the situation.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

 When peer-to-peer file-sharing was in its heyday, communities were the glue that held everything together, but not in the global sense evident today.

File-sharing communities typically gathered on various forums. Operating in isolation, most embraced a central theme – file-sharing – everything else was a footnote.

Embracing anyone and welcoming any topic of conversation, fancy high-tech social media platforms made short work of file-sharing communities. Had Disqus been around a little earlier, things may have been different, at least for a while.

Feel Free to Discuss

Up and running in no time at all, Disqus embeds offer a full-featured and externally hosted comment platform, making life a lot easier for site operators. Of course, that single place is actually someone else’s servers, and the commenters were now someone else’s users.

For evolving file-sharers, who consume most of their content on streaming sites while sharing very little, Disqus made conversations convenient. Same username, same password, and in time, the appearance of large specialist communities centered on the theme of the site. Or, as commonly seen today, specific content available for download on many specialist sites.

Since wherever Disqus users go, their communities go with them, the conversation never had to stop. At least until Disqus decided that those communities needed to be to shut down, quickly.

You Have 24 Hours to Comply

Shared with TorrentFreak by the operators of pirate site KickassAnime, the notice below strongly suggests that Disqus didn’t have negotiation in mind.

There are no specific allegations or even a mention of a repeat infringer issue. Instead, based on a general assessment that KickassAnime violates Disqus terms and conditions (which it clearly does), the site was given roughly 24 hours to leave town.

At first blush, the opportunity to export comment histories seems like a welcome consolation prize.

On closer inspection, the offer is actually for the recipient to download their own comment history, unless they’re the author of all comments on the site, which seems highly unlikely. At best, the wording seems ambiguous.

More Notices Sent to Other Sites With the Same Message

The operator of KissManga received a similar notice on February 22.

“It’s come to our attention that your site kissmanga-5 is sharing copyright-violating content. As this is a violation of the Disqus Terms of Service, we will no longer be able to provide commenting services to your site, and your site will be removed from the Disqus network,” it begins.

There’s no mention of decisions against kissmanga-4, kissmanga-3, or the others, but for now the locals seem glad to have their chat back after the operator of the site installed wpDiscuz.

Other Targets

While some sites were happy to post their Disqus notices in public, others handled things in their own way.

Bato.to simply advised where the Disqus window used to be, that “Disqus has stopped providing services to us.” MangaPark, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to have taken any specific action just yet.

Anime Kai, a domain active for just a few weeks and already pulling in 20 million visits per month, had a bit more to say. The same goes for the site’s users who, in their brand-new comment section, had a debate over which previously existing site Anime Kai had just replaced.

At the bottom, evidence that Disqus isn’t limiting itself to banning sites offering content only from Japan. The screenshot from FitGirl-Repacks also seems to answer whether Disqus will hand over a database of comments made by an unknown number of site users, to the person in control of a site. In this case, that does seem to be the case.

Responses at various sites

Why Take Action Now?

Why Disqus has decided to act now isn’t clear. The company says that it took action based on terms of service violations and in that respect, the decision finds solid ground.

It’s also possible that owner Zeta Global felt under some pressure or obligation to act, even if that pressure was self-imposed.

The company is heavily involved in AI and in its article titled ‘Responsible Use and Legislation of Generative AI’ the company notes various risks and the importance of transparency.

Using generative AI for marketing isn’t without its risks — including accuracy, bias, privacy, and copyright infringement, for example. As adoption of the technology increases, responsible AI practices, like transparency, trust, and human oversight, are also gaining importance.

 

 

Moving forward, it will be important that AI vendors are transparent with:

 

How their models are trained
Any known model vulnerabilities
How the model performance is measured

 

And regulators will be taking note.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

Yesterday, Carl Lundström stepped into his Mooney M20 propeller-driven plane, heading from Zagreb to Zurich in a solo flight. Not long after takeoff, the plane reportedly crashed into a mountain cabin located in the Slovenian Big Pasture Plateau.

Lundström, who was 64 years old, did not survive.

The crash of Lundström’s plane was picked up by both Slovenian and Swedish media. A body reportedly found at the crash site is yet to be officially identified.

Flightradar

Carl Lundström (1960 -2025)

Born in 1960 as one of the heirs to the Wasabröd empire, Lundström was financially independent at an early age. In addition to an interest in politics, including his involvement in various far-right political organizations, he also developed his business skills, with a particular interest in technology.

Photo by Christian Peterson
 

Lundström owned the Internet providers Rix Telecom AB and Rix Port 80, which helped many businesses venture online in the early 2000s. These companies also partnered with smaller players such as PRQ, owned by Pirate Bay founders Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm.

In 2004, Lundström met Neij at an exhibition and invited him to work for Rix Telecom. Later that year, Neij informed Lundström about one of the new projects he was involved in; a torrent site called The Pirate Bay. The site, which was Swedish-only at the time, was growing fast and needed more server power and a good Internet connection.

Pirate Bay Backer

Lundström was interested in the project and offered to help out, initially providing two servers. This was just the start, however, as plans to transform The Pirate Bay into an international file-sharing site would soon require much more computing power.

According to a detailed description, shared during the Pirate Bay trial, Lundström later proposed a formal partnership where he would provide hardware and connectivity, in exchange for a significant stake in the business.

This formal involvement with The Pirate Bay didn’t come to fruition. When changes to Swedish copyright law were announced in 2005, Lundström started to have doubts about the project. An initial plan considered relocating the business to Argentina, where the Swedish Embassy was asked for input, but that never went through.

Rix Telecom’s owner reportedly backed out of the planned deal with PRQ/TPB in late 2005, but his company continued to offer services to the file-sharing site, at least for a while.

While Lundström had taken his hands off the Pirate Bay project, his early involvement made him one of the four defendants in the Pirate Bay trial. He was ultimately sentenced to four months in prison.

Controversy

Lundström’s association with right-wing organizations was often the center of attention, for good reasons. However, Swedish journalist and friend Christian Peterson, stresses that Lundström was much more than that.

“Although the established media likes to reduce him to a simple ‘right-wing extremist’, Lundström was far more than that. He was an entrepreneur, a creative financier and a person who dared to defy political correctness when it was not popular to do so,” Peterson wrote in an article, commemorating his friend’s passing.

The far-right political associations were quite uncomfortable for some involved with The Pirate Bay early on, especially those who leaned far to the left. Yet despite this unease, Lundström played a central part in the site’s history. Perhaps even more than that.

Without Lundström stepping up, the notorious torrent site might never have broken through to the masses.

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

In recent years, the European Commission has proposed and adopted various legislative changes to help combat online piracy.

The Copyright Directive and the Digital Services Act both envisioned tighter copyright takedown rules for online service providers.

Sports rightsholders and other organizations felt that these new rules were not sufficient to tackle specific challenges in respect of live streaming piracy. They wanted more incentives for online service providers to act faster and more diligently, as suspensions are useless after a live broadcast ends.

The EU Commission heard these calls and published a targeted recommendation, “encouraging” member states to introduce measures to facilitate prompt takedowns of live streams. At the same time, service providers and rightsholders were encouraged to collaborate, to tackle this challenge together.

The recommendation, which doesn’t include any legislative requirements, was largely met with disappointment by rightsholders. They had hoped for strong restrictions, binding takedown requirements, or at least some kind of formal regulation. Those didn’t come.

Report Shows Low Responsiveness to Takedown Notices

Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that rightsholders remain unhappy. Almost two years after the EU recommendation, a report from the accounting firm Grant Thornton, created in partnership with the Live Content Coalition finds that little has changed.

The report’s title leaves little to the imagination. It stresses that, after seventeen months, the EU recommendation on combating online piracy of live events has had limited impact.

The report finds that live-streaming piracy remains a problem and online intermediaries continue to show low responsiveness to takedown notices. Of the 10.8 million notices recorded last year, only 19% resulted in suspensions of pirated live streams.

Roughly two-thirds of all takedown notices were not addressed at all, as shown below. The remaining 15% was addressed but, for reasons not detailed in the report, the intermediaries did not suspend the streams.

Even when online services take action, it often takes more time than rights holders would like. Only a small fraction of the reported live streams, 2.7%, were suspended within 30 minutes of a takedown notice being sent.

Dedicated Server Providers are Most Problematic

These numbers are disappointing to rightsholders, but it’s worth stressing that not all intermediaries have a bad track record. Of the notices that were sent to online services such as social media platforms, 98% resulted in suspensions of the pirated streams.

For Dedicated Server Providers, which received the most notices, the suspension rate is notably lower: 11%.

The notices sent to the remaining category of “other providers” led to suspensions in 8% of cases. This category is not defined, which makes the rate difficult to interpret, but it could include CDN services and cloud hosting providers.

Reappearance of copyright-infringing streams is also more common through Dedicated Server Providers.

“Online platforms have a 7.6% rate of no-reoccurrence within the day, while DSPs have a significantly higher rate at 39.5% further indicating the scale of the issues relating to these intermediaries,” the report reads.

Not The Full Picture

The report was commissioned by the industry and is based on data provided by eight major rightsholders. This means that it doesn’t necessarily present the full scope of all takedown notices and the real numbers are likely much higher.

The report is also limited in its view of the problem. The lack of definition for “other providers” could use more context, for example. The same applies to the reasons why intermediaries ‘fail’ to take action, which could include erroneous or incomplete takedown requests.

Further research into the motivations and challenges faced by intermediaries could help to paint a more nuanced picture and foster future cooperation.

Rightsholders see the report as confirmation that more should be done to tackle live-streaming piracy. The EU recommendation has had limited effect, the Live Content Coalition says, noting that none of the key performance indicators (KPIs) show any real progress.

“Overall, there were only marginal improvements in KPIs throughout 2024, which demonstrates the limited impact of the Recommendation against the sizable piracy problem where mitigation efforts are mostly ignored,” the Live Content Coalition comments.

Top Spanish football league LALIGA agrees. They note that piracy remains a major problem and since EU efforts have had little effect, more should be done.

“The report highlights the need to strengthen cooperation agreements and accelerate takedown times for infringements. It also underscores the importance of implementing additional specific measures for DSPs, who represent the largest source of unsuspended illegal broadcasts,’ LALIGA says.

—

A copy of the latest progress report, titled “The European Commission Recommendation on combatting online piracy of live events has limited impact after 17 months” is available here (pdf)

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RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend  

In the race to build the most capable LLM models, several tech companies sourced copyrighted content for use as training data, without obtaining permission from content owners.

Meta is among a long list of companies now being sued for this allegedly infringing activity, including a class action lawsuit filed by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden. This case has a clear piracy angle, as Meta used libraries of pirated books as training material.

Meta admitted the use of these unofficial sources early on. At the same time, however, the company denied the copyright infringement allegations, noting that it would rely on a fair use defense, at least in part.

Lawsuit Takes Shape

Earlier this year, Meta tried to reduce the scope of the legal battle, requesting the court to dismiss two of the three main claims.

Meta argued that the alleged violations under the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA) didn’t hold up. The same applied to the claim that Meta removed copyright management information (CMI), which would violate the DMCA. CMI is information that is included in a copyrighted work, which among other things can identify the copyright owner.

Notably, Meta did not request dismissal of the core copyright infringement complaint. Instead, it said it was confident that it can “debunk this meritless allegation” on summary judgment.

For reference:
Claim 1: Direct Copyright Infringement (no dismissal requested)
Claim 2: Removal of Copyright Management Information
Claim 3: Violation of CDAFA

Late last week, Federal Court Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed the CDAFA claim, as Meta requested. However, the CMI removal claim survived the motion to dismiss. While the Judge doesn’t believe that stripping copyrighted data would improve the training material, Meta may have removed it to conceal its alleged infringement.

“[P]laintiffs have adequately alleged that Meta intentionally removed CMI to conceal copyright infringement. The plaintiffs allege that Meta ‘knew that Llama was especially ‘prone’ to memorizing and generating outputs of CMI’ unless CMI was removed from its training data,” Judge Chhabria wrote.

As a result, the case continues with the CMI removal claim. In the grander scheme, however, the main copyright infringement claim is likely to be the hottest contended issue. This increasingly shifts the focus from Meta’s use of books as training data, to the alleged sharing of these books with third parties via BitTorrent.

Authors Request Partial Summary Judgment

In a heavily redacted filing, on Monday the authors moved for summary judgment. they ask the court to rule and Meta is liable for direct copyright infringement by obtaining pirated books from pirate libraries via BitTorrent.

The authors argue that the available evidence, including statements from Meta employees, makes it clear that the company pirated millions of copyrighted works.

Fair use is no defense here, the plaintiffs state, pointing out that courts have previously ruled that this type of ‘unmitigated piracy of copyrighted works’ does not quality for a fair use defense.

Meta could argue that the use of the pirated books as AI training data qualifies as fair use. However, the authors point out that the tech company’s alleged sharing of pirated books with other BitTorrent users, which is typical for torrent transfers, is clearly infringing.

“Even if the Court decides that the fair use analysis applies to Meta’s unmitigated piracy and use of torrenting to obtain pirated copies of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Books, it should nevertheless grant summary judgment to Plaintiffs under the four fair use factors regarding Meta’s decision to make available to other P2P pirates millions of copyrighted books in exchange for faster download speeds,” the authors write.

This ‘sharing with others’ element is at the center of the author’s evidence gathering process, where the alleged uploading of pirated books via BitTorrent is getting considerable attention.

The ‘Leeching’ Theory

On the same day last week that Judge Chhabria ruled on the partial motion to dismiss, he also ruled on the authors’ request to conduct additional discovery to support their core copyright infringement claims.

The authors previously alleged that Meta shared copies of pirated books with third-parties when it downloaded shadow library data via BitTorrent. Meta responded to this by stating that it avoided seeding any of the pirate library data, but that didn’t stop the authors from digging.

Because “seeding” typically refers to the state where a BitTorrent user has a complete copy of the downloaded files, the rightsholders became interested in Meta’s “leeching” activity.

Leeching refers to the state where a complete copy of a torrent is yet to be downloaded. However, due to the nature of the BitTorrent protocol, leechers may still upload bits and pieces of the files they already have to peers in the same swarm. The authors suspect that Meta may have done so.

The additional discovery includes the term “leeching” as well as many other torrent-related requests, among which the authors hope to find a smoking gun.

A New Playing Field?

While this case began with accusations that Meta used copyrighted books as training data, the torrenting activities continue to gain importance. This makes sense from the rightsholders’ perspective since it has the potential to identify direct infringement, which is less likely to be protected by fair use.

Meta, however, appears increasingly frustrated with the new developments in the case. In its response, it asked the court to limit discovery regarding the “brand new theory of ‘leeching’,” arguing that it had not been previously addressed.

“Among other things, Plaintiffs should not be permitted to introduce a brand new expert and report on a newly revealed topic of “leeching”—a term that is found nowhere in the February 2025 production or Plaintiffs’ Third Amended Complaint,” Meta wrote.

The expert Meta refers to is Dr. Choffnes who, in a sealed expert report, presumably lays out the nuances of BitTorrent and related terminology.

The authors also request additional documents and information from Meta. This includes installation, usage, and configuration logs of torrent clients. Notably, this request clearly distinguishes the seeding and leeching phases.

After hearing both parties, Judge Chhabria allowed the authors to conduct the additional discovery. Paired with yesterday’s motion for summary judgment, it’s clear that Meta’s leeching activity will stay under the spotlight as the case moves forward.

—

A copy of the orders and filings referenced in this article are available through Free.law’s Courtlistener.

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For what appears to be operational reasons, police in Germany have only just revealed details of a massive law enforcement operation carried out against a pirate streaming operation last month.

In a joint statement on Monday, the Police Headquarters of Upper Franconia and the Central Office for Cybercrime Bavaria, revealed the culmination of a two-year investigation into what is being described as an ‘illegal streaming network’. In June 2023, a major pay-TV broadcaster filed a criminal complaint, in which it claimed that damages to its business could already be measured in the millions of euros.

Investigation Focused on 36-year-old

While police are yet to name the broadcaster, a TF source identified pay-TV broadcaster Sky as the complainant. During the investigation, three people emerged as the main suspects; a 36-year-old man from the Wunsiedel district in northeastern Bavaria, a 59-year-old man from the Rheinisch-Bergisch district in the Cologne Bonn Region of North Rhine-Westphalia, and a 37-year-old man from the Tuttlingen district in the south of Baden-Württemberg.

The roles of the men remain unclear. Police say that 36-year-old is suspected of “illegally making programs available” to an estimated 30,000 customers of the service all over the world, causing millions of euros in damages. The 59 and 37-year-olds are being held under suspicion of similar crimes. An exact amount will likely emerge at trial, but our source believes that alleged damages exceed $10m.

Major Operation Mid-February

In what appears to be a significant law enforcement operation, police say over 150 task force officers from Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland, targeted a total of 18 suspects at 17 locations in Germany. Arrest warrants against the three main suspects were issued by the Bamberg District Court for suspected commercial computer fraud.

“Officers secured cash of about 16,000 euros and around 35,000 euros in cryptocurrency. Several accounts were also seized by the Central Office for Cybercrime Bavaria,” police note.

Police say that over 200 ‘digital devices’ were seized in the operation, along with 16,000 euros in cash and around 35,000 euros in cryptocurrency. “Several servers” allegedly used for illegal streaming were also shut down.

Since their arrests, the three main suspects have remained in custody, reportedly held at various correctional facilities in Germany. All three are now being held in Banburg and if convicted, face potential prison sentences of between six months and ten years.

Police says that an unspecified number of additional defendants are accused of acting as resellers for the illegal streaming service or simply using the platform themselves.

Pirate Streaming Service Still Unnamed

Authorities in Germany rarely identify suspects by name and in this matter, the name of the pirate service hasn’t been named either. Without those details, it’s difficult to assess the significance of the shutdown, or even confirm the shutdown itself. It’s also possible that this case isn’t necessarily about a traditional single central streaming service exclusively serving its own customers.

Since police use the term “illegal streaming”, there’s no obvious reason to doubt the nature of the delivery method. However, a source informs TF that at this early stage, variants on familiar themes shouldn’t be immediately ruled out.

For example, charges of commercial computer fraud have been used in ‘cardsharing’ cases for at least a decade in Germany. The term “streaming network” has been used to describe scenarios where legally purchased TV subscriptions are used to access encrypted streams, before the decrypted broadcasts are made available to others.

From there, streams are typically shared further still, to a much wider and potentially global audience.

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

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

This week we have three newcomers on the list. “Anora” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on March 10 are:

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

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 Almost two decades ago, The Pirate Bay supported the “OscarTorrents” project, which aimed to be a pirates’ counterweight to Hollywood’s annual awards show.

At the time, mass movie piracy was still a relative fringe activity, with no instant streaming options available. Nonetheless, more than 100,000 people voted for their own movie favorites.

While the OscarTorrents project was a clear display of defiance, the outcome of the voting was rather mainstream. The Departed was crowned ‘Best Picture’ in the official Oscars ceremony, as well as in the pirate equivalent, and many of the other winners were also identical.

2025 Oscars

Fast-forward to the present day, and pirates continue to be aligned with the mainstream public, perhaps more than ever. Whenever a movie or TV show is in the news, interest typically surges through both legal and illegal channels.

Winning an Oscar is arguably the best thing that can happen to a movie from a PR-perspective. This undoubtedly results in more legal sales and streams, a trend that’s mimicked on pirate sites.

This phenomenon was confirmed once again following the 97th Academy Awards eight days ago. With five Oscars, including the main ‘Best Picture’ award, Sean Baker’s comedy drama Anora was the undisputed winner.

Anora Piracy Surge

High-quality pirated copies of the film had already been available online since mid-December, and while there was some interest in Anora, that paled in comparison to the download surge that took place after the awards.

Based on a sample of torrent activity tracked by IKnow, we can report that pirated downloads of Anora more than quadrupled this week. The chart below shows the daily estimated downloads for three Oscar nominees that were widely available on pirate sites. Anora’s numbers clearly stand out here.

The fact that Anora is one of the lowest grossing best picture winners in recent history, likely plays a part in this surge in demand. Many people, including pirates, hadn’t seen the film yet.

Limited Oscars Impact

The Substance, which won an Oscar for ‘Best Makeup and Hairstyling’ also saw a small bump in downloads, but that paled in comparison to Anora.

Wicked, which won Oscars for ‘Best Production Design’ and ‘Best Costume’, saw no significant increase in interest. This confirms yet again that most attention goes out to the best picture winner.

All in all, it’s safe to say that after 97 years, the Academy Awards ceremony is as relevant today as it has ever been. While people now have the freedom to watch what they want, whenever they want, their free choice continues to be directed by external forces.

As with all trends today, the initial piracy boosts didn’t last long. Downloads already started to drop off after a day. However, interest in Anora may remain elevated for a while.

—

Note: The data used in this article comes from Iknow, which tracks torrent downloads through DHT and PEX. While it may not be able to track all downloads, it’s a substantial sample. This sample only looks at torrent downloads. Views on streaming platforms, direct downloads, and other piracy sources can’t be measured directly. That said, we assume that the trend will be similar there.

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Public pirate sites accessible by anyone with an internet browser have been under financial pressure for years.

Rightsholder-led campaigns urged mainstream advertisers to boycott the platforms to cut off their revenue streams. This was supposed to put sites out of business but in many cases that simply meant the deployment of lower quality ads from any entity still prepared to place them. Sites that used to be relatively safe quickly became relatively unsafe and, as the pressure increased, some became very unsafe indeed.

As reported last week, elaborate and lucrative schemes are able to counter limitations on advertiser choice. Unfortunately, these methods also provide an environment where scams and flat-out malicious activities thrive, before doing the kind of damage reported by Microsoft late last week.

Large-Scale Malvertising Campaign Began on Pirate Streaming Sites

Microsoft’s official report published last week is highly detailed and by its own accounting, a full 32-minute read. We’ll distill the key details here.

Early December 2024, Microsoft Threat Intelligence identified a large-scale malvertising campaign that it now believes infected almost one million devices for the purpose of stealing information.

Microsoft says that the attack stemmed from illegal streaming sites where embedded redirectors generated pay-per-view/pay-per-click revenue from malvertising platforms.

“These redirectors subsequently routed traffic through one or two additional malicious redirectors, ultimately leading to another website, such as a malware or tech support scam website,” Microsoft explains.

That was only the beginning.

First-Stage Payload

Those scam websites typically redirected users to GitHub where the attackers hosted the first-stage malware payloads. Often digitally signed with newly created certificates, Microsoft says this infection allowed the attackers to establish a dropper for additional payloads hosted elsewhere.

The GitHub repos have since been taken down. Microsoft says it also observed similar activity where Discord and Dropbox delivered the payload.

Second, Third, and Fourth-Stage Payloads

During the second stage the attackers engaged in system discovery, obtaining information about the host; memory size, GPU specs, screen resolution, operating system, and user paths, for example. The information was Base64-encoded before being exfiltrated to a remote IP address.

Microsoft says that activity in the Third Stage depended on the payload in the second-stage payload. “Executables and PowerShell scripts were dropped, initiating a chain of command execution, payload delivery, defense evasion, persistence, C2 communication, and data exfiltration,” the company writes.

The fourth-stage, documented in excruciating detail by Microsoft, saw multiple files dropped from various executables, carry out tasks including process injection, remote debugging, data exfiltration through various mechanisms. One file ensured persistence on the host by first dropping an AutoIT .scr file and a .js (JavaScript) with the same name.

“The purpose of the JavaScript file is to ensure persistence by creating a .url internet shortcut that points to the JavaScript file and is placed in the Startup folder, ensuring that the .scr file executes when the .js file executes (through Wscript.exe) upon user sign-in,” Microsoft reports.

Additional mechanisms were also available, including those that established network connections to Telegram and Let’s Encrypt, among others.

“The .scr file can initiate C2 connections, enable remote debugging on Chrome or Edge within a hidden desktop session, or create TCP listening sockets on ports 9220-9229.

“This functionality allows threat actors to monitor browsing activity and interact with an active browser instance. These files can also open sensitive data files, indicating their role in facilitating post-exploitation activities.”

Stealing Information

The multi-stage approach saw the attackers use various files and scripts to collect system and browser information. Information stealers including Lumma Stealer, which is known for targeting gamers with a penchant for mods, and the trojan Doenerium were “commonly deployed” according to Microsoft, alongside use of software already installed on victims’ machines.

“The threat actors incorporated use of living-off-the-land binaries and scripts (LOLBAS) like PowerShell.exe, MSBuild.exe, and RegAsm.exe for C2 and data exfiltration of user data and browser credentials,” the company adds.

Mitigation

Microsoft Defender Antivirus detects these attacks, but Microsoft recommends additional actions to more fully mitigate this type of threat. Windows users should enable tamper protection and network protection, use web browsers with Microsoft Defender SmartScreen, and use AppLocker to restrict prohibited software.

Many rightsholders would advise never visiting pirate sites as the best option for avoiding this type of attack. That would’ve worked here, but the same attack could’ve taken place elsewhere too, so a more proactive approach should also be considered as one of the options available.

Basics include keeping software updated, operating systems and browsers in particular, a good ad blocker turned up to 11, and use of an encrypted password manager in preference to a browser full of plain text credentials.

Backups need no explanation and if possible, a virtual machine should be used for browsing. This reduces the chances of an infection causing havoc on a main system, which should be using an OS downloaded from the official source, not some random pirate site.

Finally, clean bills of health for sites and apps reported on sites like VirusTotal can be misleading. That’s not because these services are useless, far from it. In many cases the upfront scores/detections just aren’t the right tool for the job.

Advice to look at detection scores for assurances that a site or a piece of software is guaranteed safe, should be given no weight, especially when more useful information is just a click away.

To fully appreciate the scale and scope of the scheme and the commitment of those behind it, it’s worth reading the full report.

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