More than six years ago, Bulgaria informed the U.S. authorities that it wanted to shut down the country’s largest torrent trackers, including ArenaBG, Zamunda, and Zelka.

Specifically, the country asked the U.S. authorities for help. That help eventually arrived in January this year, when the domain names of these torrent trackers were effectively seized.

Seized
 

The multinational effort involved Bulgarian authorities and law enforcement, as well as their American counterparts. This included the U.S. Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigations, and National IPR Coordination Center, which were all featured on the seizure banner that’s still online today.

Multi-Decade Crackdown

The crackdown did not come as a surprise. Rightsholders have complained about the Bulgarian torrent trackers for many years, and the local authorities have also tried to address these issues for nearly two decades.

As far back as 2010, Yavor Kolev, the head of Bulgaria’s Computer Crimes Department, said that his organization was intent on shutting down Zamunda and ArenaBG. At the time, police investigations into these trackers had already been ongoing for years.

While the authorities managed to shut down some pirate sites over the years, these major targets survived. In fact, Zamunda had grown to become the 11th most visited site at the start of 2026, until its main domain was seized in January.

U.S. Piracy Watch List

Bulgaria’s challenge to address the local piracy problems motivated the USTR to add the country to the Special 301 Report. This annual overview is meant to urge foreign governments to improve policy and legislation in favor of U.S. copyright holders.

In 2025, for example, Bulgaria was put on the “Watch List” with USTR stating that the country “continues to be a safe haven for online piracy.”

There was change afoot, however, as the country enacted new legislation in 2023 that would make it easier to investigate and prosecute piracy cases. While that had not been used until recently, it provided the basis for the crackdown that took place in January.

Bulgaria Removed from Watch List

The implementation of the new legislation and the subsequent torrent tracker crackdown worked. The latest version of the USTR Special 301 Report specifically states that Bulgaria was removed because of the progress it has made. This relates to the shutdowns and associated prosecutions, which remain ongoing.

“Bulgaria is removed from the Watch List this year due to significant enforcement actions and progress in criminal prosecutions during the past year,” USTR writes.

From the Special 301 Report
 

USTR specifically references Article 172a of the updated criminal code, which allows for the criminal prosecution of people who “create conditions” for online piracy through the “development and maintenance” of torrent trackers and other platforms. This law was used as the basis for the January crackdown, which led to the arrest of several individuals.

“In January 2026, Bulgarian law enforcement seized the five most popular Bulgarian piracy domains, executed search and seizure warrants at 30 locations, and arrested several individuals, some of whom have been charged under Article 172a discussed above,” the report reads.

According to local reports, the operation targeted 44 websites, not just the three mentioned trackers. By February, three of the four detained individuals had been formally charged.

While Bulgaria must be happy with this development, the country was previously removed from the watchlist in 2007 and 2018, just to be readded over new concerns within a few years. Time will tell whether this year’s removal will last.

More Removals and Additions

Bulgaria isn’t the only country to see its status change in this year’s Special 301 Report. Argentina and Mexico are both moved from the Priority Watch List to the lower-tier Watch List.

Argentina is credited for its February 2026 agreement with U.S. authorities, where the country promised to address site-blocking, ISP liability, and online enforcement. Mexico’s lowered risk is tied to draft amendments to the Federal Copyright Law and Federal Criminal Code, which would clarify ISP secondary liability and remove the “direct economic benefit” requirement, which was a roadblock for criminal piracy prosecutions.

The European Union, meanwhile, was added to the Watch List for the first time as a bloc since 2006. USTR cites a wide variety of concerns, including parts of the Digital Services Act, which rightsholders believe may impact their rights. The newly applicable AI Act is also flagged for monitoring.

The most notable change related to Vietnam, however, which was the first country in thirteen years to be designated as a Priority Foreign Country. According to the USTR, the country’s failure to take action against copyright infringers has turned it into a safe haven for pirate site operators.

—

A copy of the U.S. Trade Representative’s 2026 Special 301 Report is available here (pdf).

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Posted Friday 8 May 2026 at 4:22 pm AEST (my time).

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Chip giant NVIDIA has been one of the main financial beneficiaries in the artificial intelligence boom.

Revenue surged due to high demand for its AI-learning chips and data center services, and the end doesn’t appear to be in sight.

Besides selling the most sought-after hardware, NVIDIA is also developing its own models, including NeMo Megatron models. These were trained using NVIDIA’s own hardware and with help from large text libraries, much like other tech giants do.

Authors Sue NVIDIA for Copyright Infringement

This includes authors, who, in various lawsuits, accused tech companies of training their models on pirated books. In early 2024, for example, several authors, including Abdi Nazemian, sued NVIDIA over alleged copyright infringement.

Through the class action lawsuit, they claimed that the company’s AI models were trained on the Books3 dataset that included copyrighted works taken from the ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik.

As the case progressed, the authors also brought up NVIDIA’s contacts with Anna’s Archive, inquiring about “high-speed access” to the shadow library’s massive collection of pirated books.

NVIDIA Wants Case Dismissed

In January, NVIDIA fired back with a comprehensive motion to dismiss, calling the authors’ allegations speculative, vague, and legally insufficient. At the California federal court, NVIDIA argues that the authors’ complaint is built on speculation rather than facts.

Specifically, the company asked the court to dismiss the direct copyright infringement claims linked to Bibliotik, Books3, and The Pile dataset.

In addition, the motion also targets the contributory copyright infringement allegations, which center on scripts and tools NVIDIA allegedly distributed so corporate customers could automatically download ‘The Pile,’ the dataset that contains Books3.

The authors’ script allegations
 

The chip giant initially asked the court to dismiss claims relating to Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, LibGen, Sci-Hub, and the Slimpajama dataset as well, but it withdrew this request in March, which substantially narrowed the dispute.

Scripts Have No Other Purpose than Infringement

In an order issued yesterday, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar denied most of the dismissal request. Importantly, the contributory infringement claim survives, even after the Supreme Court’s Cox v. Sony ruling, which significantly impacts many copyright infringement cases.

NVIDIA argued that Cox tightened the standard, requiring “active encouragement through specific acts,” while stressing that the NeMo Megatron Framework as a whole has substantial non-infringing uses. Marketing or promoting this framework as a piracy tool was needed to prove this claim, NVIDIA argued.

Judge Tigar rejected the framing. Instead of analyzing the Megatron framework as a whole, he zeroed in on the specific scripts that NVIDIA distributed to clients so they could automatically download and preprocess The Pile dataset. Those scripts have no purpose other than enabling infringement, the court concluded.

“The scripts are alleged to have no other purpose than to speed up the process of infringement, unlike the digital video recorder systems at issue in Sony Corp. or the internet service provided in Cox,” Judge Tigar wrote.

This appears to be the first AI training case to apply the new Cox standard, and the result didn’t go the way NVIDIA hoped. The scripts it offered satisfied both the new ‘inducement’ and ‘tailored to infringement’ standards required for a contributory infringement finding.

BitTorrent Is ‘Merely a Tool’

Regarding the direct copyright infringement claims, NVIDIA also asked the court to dismiss “allegations concerning its ‘use of any [sic] BitTorrent Protocol.'”

The request was pretty thin, Judge Tigar noted, pointing out that the complaint contains exactly one reference to BitTorrent. That reference doesn’t point to any of NVIDIA’s alleged wrongdoing. It’s a descriptive line about Bibliotik distributing pirated works via the protocol.

Judge Tigar refused to dismiss all BitTorrent allegations, stressing that “BitTorrent is merely a tool, not a library or dataset.” He also offered a rather colorful analogy.

“Asking to dismiss allegations concerning BitTorrent is like asking to dismiss allegations concerning paintbrushes in a case about a dolphin painting,” the order reads, citing Folkens v. Wyland Worldwide, a copyright dispute over a painting of two dolphins crossing underwater.

NVIDIA’s interest in stripping BitTorrent from the case is easier to understand in light of Meta’s troubles in a parallel AI lawsuit. There, Meta’s BitTorrent seeding resulted in direct copyright infringement claims. NVIDIA appears to have wanted that door closed before discovery could open it.

Lawsuit Moves Forward

NVIDIA did get a small win as Judge Tigar dismissed the vicarious copyright infringement claim.

To state that claim, the authors needed to plausibly allege that NVIDIA had both the legal right to control the direct infringers and a direct financial interest in the infringement. Tigar found neither was adequately pleaded, but allowed the authors 21 days to address the deficiencies and refile.

For now, it is clear that this legal battle between the authors and NVIDIA is far from over.

The same also applies to a long list of other AI training lawsuits, which continue to grow every month. That includes a lawsuit filed against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg yesterday by major publishers, which, like many others, also accuses Meta of training on pirated books.

—

A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar’s order on NVIDIA’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf).

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Posted Thursday 7 May 2026 at 7:02 am AEST (my time).

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Meta is facing a class action lawsuit filed by five major book publishers and one author over claims the company “engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history” when training its Llama AI models, as reported earlier by The New York Times. In their suit, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, Hachette, Cengage, and author Scott Turow allege that Meta “repeatedly copied” their books and journal articles without permission.

The lawsuit accuses Meta of knowingly ripping copyrighted work from “notorious pirate sites,” such as LibGen, Anna’s Archive, Sci-Hub, Sci-Mag, and others, and then feeding that material into its AI model. It also claims that Meta trained Llama with information inside the Common Crawl dataset, which is allegedly “full of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works.” As a result, Llama “outputs verbatim and near-verbatim substitutes” of copyrighted material:

For example, when prompted with two brief sentences from Cengage’s best-selling textbook, Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 9th edition, by James Stewart, Llama begins reproducing word-for-word the continuation of the section.

Several authors have already sued Meta for alleged copyright infringement, which brought to light the company’s internal discussions about how to handle “media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated.” Last year, a federal judge ruled in favor of Meta in one of these lawsuits, though he pointed out that his ruling “does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful.”

A group of authors also sued Anthropic over copyright infringement. While a federal judge ruled that training AI models on legally purchased books without permission is considered fair use, he allowed the authors to move forward with a class action lawsuit over the “millions” of works Anthropic allegedly pirated. Anthropic agreed to pay writers $1.5 billion last year to settle the class action lawsuit.

Turow and the group of publishers are suing Meta for damages, and ask that the court order the company to block its allegedly unlawful activities. They also ask the court to require the company to provide a list of books, journal articles, and other copyrighted works that it trained its Llama AI models on.

“AI is powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and courts have rightly found that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use,” Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold said in an emailed statement to The Verge. “We will fight this lawsuit aggressively.”

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Posted Wednesday 6 May 2026 at 7:36 am AEST (my time).

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With over 120 million daily users, Reddit is undoubtedly one of the most visited sites on the Internet.

The community-oriented social sharing platform, founded twenty years ago, has since transformed from a hobby project to the publicly traded multi-billion-dollar company it is today.

This growth also brought added responsibility. In addition to the billions of casual, insightful, and heartwarming messages, Reddit’s popularity was also embraced by those who color outside the lines of the law, including copyright infringers.

Reddit’s Transparency Report

To show the public how it responds to copyright complaints, takedown notices, and other removals, it publishes a biannual transparency report. The latest version, covering the second half of 2025, shows some interesting new trends.

Overall, the transparency report reveals the massive volume of content that’s added to the site. In just six months, Redditors shared over 2.2 billion posts and comments. More than 150 million of these were removed by moderators and site admins for various reasons.

In addition, Reddit received 69,154 DMCA takedown notices from rightsholders, identifying 425,471 pieces of allegedly infringing content. Reddit removed 217,787 of those, which is an actionability rate of 51% on all reported content.

Reddit’s H2 2025 takedown overview
 

These DMCA takedown numbers are roughly on par with previous years and down significantly from the 2022-2023 period, as seen below.

Copyright takedown notices trend

Bans Shift From Subreddits to Users

While the overall takedown volume remains relatively steady, the number of accounts and communities banned for repeat infringement reveals a notable change.

In the second half of 2025, Reddit banned 1,595 user accounts for repeat copyright violations. That’s a 90% increase compared to the first half of the year, when 837 user accounts were terminated.

The number of subreddits banned for repeat copyright violations went the other way. Reddit banned 563 subreddits in the second half of 2025, down 25% from the 709 subreddits removed in the first half.

The pattern flips the picture from six months ago, when subreddit bans more than doubled year-over-year while user bans grew at a more modest pace. This time, it’s the user bans that surge while subreddit takedowns are lower.

Reddit doesn’t explain the divergence in its transparency report, but today’s user and subreddit bans remain well below the 2022 peak. In the first half of 2022, 3,859 user accounts and 1,543 subreddits were banned for repeat copyright violations. That’s more than double the current numbers in both categories.

Notable Refusals and Fair Use

In addition to these headline figures, Reddit’s transparency report flags several takedown requests it declined to act on.

For example, someone representing an Indian religious leader filed a takedown notice targeting an AI-animated video that showed them being showered with money, paired with a post title hinting at greed. Reddit didn’t take action, characterizing it as fair use.

Another fair use call involved a mobile app developer who tried to take down a post sharing a screenshot of the app’s source code. Since the post was meant to warn that the app was quietly sharing user data without permission, Reddit refused to remove it.

Notable Examples

The examples Reddit shared are meant to illustrate that the company doesn’t take down content blindly, but that it makes fair use calls when it sees fit.

Some of the granted removals are also worth a callout. Reddit highlights, for example, that it removed multiple posts that shared social media recruitment videos for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These posts were taken down because they used music from MGMT without the band’s permission, as was widely reported in the media last year.

Reddit’s full breakdown, including notable government and law enforcement requests, is available in the report linked below.

—

A copy of Reddit’s H2 2025 transparency report is available here (pdf).

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Posted Wednesday 6 May 2026 at 7:35 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of April) 1,700

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

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

This week we have one newcomer on the list.

“Project Hail Mary” is the most shared title.

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

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

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Posted Tuesday 5 May 2026 at 7:22 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of April) 1,700

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Each year the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a new update of its Special 301 Report, highlighting countries that fail to live up to U.S. copyright protection standards.

The annual overview is meant to urge foreign governments to improve policy and legislation in favor of U.S. copyright holders.

The process has shown itself to be an effective diplomatic tool and has helped to kick-start copyright reforms around the globe. Not all governments are equally susceptible to critique, and Canada once described the process as flawed. Still, no country wants to be included in the list.

U.S. Elevates Vietnam to ‘Priority Foreign Country’

USTR’s latest Special 301 Report reiterated much of the critique we have seen in past years. China and Russia, for example, remain on the Priority Watch List, as they were previously. However, for the first time in thirteen years, the rarely used Priority Foreign Country (PFC) category was added.

This year’s designations
 

The PFC label is reserved for the most serious cases, and according to USTR’s latest report, Vietnam falls into this category. The report flags several IP-related concerns, including counterfeiting, but the country’s failure to combat online piracy is at the top of the list.

These concerns are not new, and over the past years, the U.S. and Vietnam have come together in an attempt to resolve the concerns. The U.S. first proposed an IP Work Plan to Vietnam in 2020, which was revised in 2023, but that didn’t book sufficient results.

The USTR notes that online piracy is not just popular among the country’s own residents; many operators of major pirate sites also reportedly reside in the country.

“Vietnam remains a significant source of online piracy and continues to host popular English-language copyright infringement sites and services that target a global audience,” the report reads, providing various examples.

Megacloud and Myflixerz
 

As shown above, the USTR report specifically mentions the piracy-as-a-service provider MegaCloud and the popular pirate streaming site MyFlixerz as key problems. Interestingly, these prominent targets went dark in April, just a few days before the USTR released its report.

Whether the sudden disappearance of these pirate services, which have millions of monthly users, is a mere coincidence or if it’s related to the diplomatic pressure is unknown.

U.S. Wants More Deterrent Prosecutions

To address these and other piracy concerns, the USTR would like the Vietnamese authorities to step up their enforcement actions. This includes the subsequent prosecutions, which have lacked a deterrent effect thus far.

“The operators of these sites and services likely based themselves in Vietnam because enforcement efforts there historically lacked the follow-through and substantial penalties needed to deter infringement,” the report notes.

The USTR specifically mentions the takedown of Fmovies, which once was one of the largest pirate sites. This landmark case resulted in the prosecution of two operators, who received suspended sentences and criminal fines of around $2,700 and $770, respectively.

These sentences lack a deterrent effect, USTR argues, noting that the country could also increase the number of prosecutions.

“Vietnam must provide effective enforcement and take persistent and effective enforcement actions to combat online piracy, including by bringing significantly more criminal prosecutions against online piracy operations; seeking deterrent-level prison sentences, monetary fines, and other criminal penalties; and addressing obstacles to pursuing effective enforcement.”

Recent Shutdowns

USTR report acknowledges a series of recent enforcement actions in Vietnam. In 2025, the music industry group IFPI took action against Y2Mate and 11 other stream-ripping websites, for example.

In March 2026, after the Ministry of Public Security sought feedback on a draft decree on book piracy, several Vietnamese pirated e-book platforms, including TVE-4U, VCTVEGroup, and Ebookvie, ceased operations or stopped sharing copyrighted material.

Interestingly, the report also references the recent shutdown of HiAnime.to, the popular anime streaming site that was widely believed to be operated from Vietnam. However, as far as we know, no authority or rightsholder has publicly claimed responsibility, and no arrests or operator identifications have been announced.

HiAnime went dark in mid-March 2026, posting a brief farewell message, without any clear sign of an enforcement action.

The Clock is Ticking

In addition to addressing online piracy, USTR also flags counterfeiting, border enforcement, use of unlicensed software in the government, and cable and satellite signal theft as key concerns. Together, these put Vietnam in the Priority Foreign Country category.

The PFC label is not symbolic. Within 30 days of the identification, USTR has to decide whether it will launch an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which can result in tariffs and sanctions.

For now, the designation itself sends a strong signal: take action or else.

Vietnam-related piracy concerns have been a recurring item in Special 301 reports for years, but stepping from the Priority Watch List into the Priority Foreign Country category is a rather significant escalation, which no other country has faced in well over a decade.

—

A copy of the U.S. Trade Representative’s 2026 Special 301 Report is available here (pdf).

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Posted Tuesday 5 May 2026 at 7:17 am AEST (my time).

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FlavaWorks is an Illinois-based adult entertainment company specializing in content featuring Black and Latino men.

The company has pursued copyright infringers aggressively for years, including a $1.5 million damages award against a defendant who shared its films on BitTorrent and a high-profile clash with an unnamed television executive that was eventually settled.

This week, the company continues its legal pressure with a complaint filed last week at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The lawsuit targets the owner and administrators of private BitTorrent tracker Gay-Torrents.org, the company that allegedly receives the site’s revenue, and 325 individual members identified only by their site usernames.

Site Owner, Admins, and a Bulgarian Company

Gay-Torrents.org is a private, invite-only BitTorrent tracker that has operated since June 2009. According to the complaint, more than 146,000 members registered at the site since its launch, of which 20,671 members are currently active.

The complaint largely targets unnamed defendants, including the site’s alleged operator, who goes by the handle “TheMan”. According to Flava, “TheMan” was one of the first registered members, using the site’s official email address as the main contact.

TheMan
 

In addition to the operator, seven administrators are also named as John Doe defendants, identified only by their site usernames: sgmusuk, jasepl, Marius, ams_guy, lucasneo, simlacroix, and matthewmancs. According to the complaint, matthewmancs alone has generated more than 470 terabytes of upload and download traffic, the largest sharing volume of any user.

Flava does not only list unnamed defendants; it also identifies BYZONA LTD, a Bulgarian company, as being involved. This company and its operator are allegedly linked to 247host.eu and cloud2max.club. These are shell entities, which Flava believes are used to route VIP-membership payments through Skrill and PayPal, while concealing the site’s true beneficiaries.

The complaint alleges that the two shells together have generated more than €7 million in revenue since 2009. This is not an exact calculation, but based on Flava’s analysis of the site’s VIP pricing, donation records, and the registered member data.

“Straight-Up Extortion”

This is not the first time that Flava has targeted users of the private torrent tracker. In fact, the complaint quotes the site’s owner characterizing FlavaWorks’ enforcement as a scam. Last December, TheMan posted on the Gay-Torrents.org forum in response to a member who had received a cease and desist letter from the studio.

Posting under his “Owner” account, TheMan wrote: “This is straight-up extortion, and people shouldn’t fall for it.”

TheMan also told users the studio had been “uploading their own shitty content themselves just so they can blackmail users afterwards,” and claimed: “We deleted all of their stuff a long time ago.”

TheMan’s forum post (from the lawsuit’s evidence package)

Flava’s complaint points out that the private tracker did not remove all contested content, as 47 of the 56 infringing links it reported in February 2024 remained active on the site twenty months later. Some of the infringing content remained accessible when the lawsuit was filed, the company adds.

A French Uploader and 325 Registered Users

The lawsuit doesn’t only focus on the alleged owner and administrators; it also lists a prolific uploader who is identified as the Frenchman Ludovic D. This defendant allegedly purchased two paid subscriptions to FlavaWorks-affiliated sites in 2004 and 2013, which were both traceable to the same email address and other personal details.

Since Flava uses a forensic-watermarking system to link videos to registered users, it could track the man’s account to more than thirty videos that were uploaded to the torrent tracker.

“Defendant [D.] cancelled his subscription approximately thirty days after purchase, on the same day as his final download session—a pattern consistent with bulk acquisition for redistribution rather than ordinary consumption,” the complaint reads.

In addition to the named Frenchman, the complaint also lists 325 “John Doe” defendants who are only known by their usernames. These users all allegedly shared Flava’s copyrighted works, are based in the U.S., were active in the Gay-Torrents forums, and purchased VIP memberships.

Courts have previously been wary of joining this many Doe defendants in a single lawsuit. Flava recognizes this and specifically notes that this isn’t part of a mass settlement scheme, while promising to dismiss all defendants who don’t fall under the court’s jurisdiction.

“This is not a mass-joinder action seeking to extract settlements from non-resident Doe defendants in a distant forum,” the complaint reads.

‘$7 Million’ Asset Freeze and More

Flava also requests an asset freezing order targeting the assets in the Skrill account associated with BYZONA and the PayPal account associated with cloud2max.club. Those can be as high as €7,000,000, the complaint notes. That is an estimation based on Flava’s calculations, assuming that no funds were spent or taken out in 17 years.

Asset Freeze
 

In addition, the complaint also asks the court to direct Cloudflare to preserve all records relating to the gay-torrents.org domain, including DNS configuration records and customer communications, without taking the site offline.

In total, the complaint lists seven counts, including copyright claims for direct, contributory, and vicarious infringement, and a separate inducement count against the alleged operator and administrators.

To support these secondary liability claims, Flava cites the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Cox Communications v. Sony, arguing that the Bulgarian shell entities are “tailored to infringement” and without any “substantial noninfringing use.”

The remaining three are state-law claims for unjust enrichment, civil conspiracy, and fraudulent concealment. The latter is built around the alleged payment-routing scheme through 247host.eu and cloud2max.club.

As compensation, Flava requests statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement. The exact number of works is not listed, but with hundreds of titles in Flava’s catalog, the potential damages run into the many millions of dollars.

Finally, it is worth noting that this is not Flava’s only case against a private torrent tracker. Last March, the adult company filed a copyright lawsuit against an alleged Canadian leaker of its videos, as well as 47 users of the private torrent tracker GayTorrent.ru. This lawsuit remains pending at the Illinois federal court.

—

A copy of the complaint, filed this week by FlavaWorks Entertainment, Inc. at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, is available here (pdf).

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Posted Monday 4 May 2026 at 7:27 am AEST (my time).

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Links between piracy and organized crime have been around for several decades.

The framing first emerged in the late 1990s, when the IFPI raised concerns about transborder smuggling of pirated CDs by criminal networks. Back then, most piracy took place offline.

A terrorism angle was added to the mix in 2003, when the U.S. House held a hearing on piracy’s “links to organized crime and terrorism.” Four months later, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble told Congress that intellectual property crime had become “the preferred method of funding for a number of terrorist groups.”

In December that year, the messaging made it into a new campaign by the UK anti-piracy group FACT, warning moviegoers that “piracy funds organised crime” and “piracy funds terrorism.”

The most pivotal study appeared in 2009, when a RAND report linked film piracy, organized crime, and terrorism. This movie industry-funded report was not without critique, as it blurred the line between counterfeiting and piracy, while evidence for structural crime connections was missing.

Nonetheless, the RAND study introduced case studies that have been cited ever since. This includes the Barakat Network in the Tri-Border Area, D-Company in India, and the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland, which all reappeared in a new study this week.

Report: Organized. Piracy. Crime.

The new report titled “Organized. Piracy. Crime.” was released by anti-piracy group IP House and the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA). Despite the long history described here, the report describes online piracy as “a new flavor of organized crime,” not something that has been around for decades.

Or, as IP-House puts it on LinkedIn: “Piracy is not what it used to be. It has evolved into something far more structured and sophisticated.”

While the old counterfeiting references are not completely gone, the new report offers several new insights and confirms that times have changed. In 2009, the largest pirate sites were still operated by people who started out as hobbyists with a passion for technology and file-sharing. The same can’t be said for many large pirate streaming networks that operate today.

Piracy Networks as Organized Crime

The new report cites more than a dozen recent enforcement actions to argue that today’s pirate streaming networks meet the formal definitions of organized crime set by Interpol, Europol, and the UN. The cases come from Spain, Italy, Brazil, Canada, India, and the United States, among others.

The most prominent example is the high-profile European “Kratos” takedown that took place in November 2024, which targeted an IPTV operation that reportedly served 22 million subscribers across multiple countries.

The report mentions that raids across eleven countries found $1.9 million in cryptocurrency, $46,000 in cash, and “drugs and weapons.” The report sees this as evidence that piracy operators now sit alongside more traditional criminal trades.

From the report
 

Several other IPTV operations have also been connected to other types of crime. The Spanish ‘Operation Fake,’ for example, targeted an IPTV enterprise that allegedly combined content theft with cryptocurrency mining, property fraud, drug trafficking, and money laundering.

Italy is prominently featured too, with the report referencing a former pirate operator turned informant who told Italian television that “those who pay for IPTV are funding the Camorra.” These links between IPTV operations and the Mafia are not new, but they remain difficult to verify through public records.

A Multi-Layered Model

A clear line needs to be drawn between hard evidence, such as weapons and drug seizures, and hearsay. However, those who have been observing the piracy landscape over the past 20 years have clearly seen more organized and money-driven operations emerge.

Where pirate sites would previously foster a sense of community, modern streaming operations often use a franchise model, sourcing pirated content and complete pirate site scripts through a “Piracy as a Service” model.

The report recognizes and documents this shift and argues that piracy has adopted a franchise structure that mirrors organized crime more broadly. Among other things, it mentions the 2019 takedown of Xtream Codes, a management platform that powered thousands of IPTV brands worldwide, as a key example. Wholesale operators sold turnkey kits to retail-level resellers, the report says, leaving the core operation insulated when downstream services were shut down.

This organizational structure, where various parts of piracy operators are compartmentalized, was also used by KickassTorrents, Z-Library, and the SPARKS group, the report notes. Importantly, however, it does not connect these examples to other types of crime.

The IP House and DCA report offers a detailed overview of the piracy landscape, moving toward organized and profit driven operations. It is fair to say that piracy is no longer the realm of copyleft or anarchist hobbyists. At the same time, not all piracy operations are created equal, and the cases collected in the report cover a wide range of business models, scales, and degrees of sophistication.

This will be something for policymakers to keep in mind when the report lands on their desks.

Report Calls on U.S. Congress to Implement Site Blocking

After spending most of its 42 pages arguing that piracy networks are now organized crime, the report closes with a policy section directed at the U.S. Congress. Specifically, the report recommends site-blocking legislation, noting that this blocking approach is already adopted by “more than 50 countries.”

In addition to site blocking, the report also calls for harsher penalties, payment-processor obligations, and expanded Treasury Department authority to designate foreign piracy operations as “primary money laundering concerns.”

There is some tension between the report’s threat model and its proposed solution.

The report describes piracy operations as sophisticated, adaptive criminal organizations that diversify across revenue streams. If site blocking works by lowering that revenue, these criminals may shift their focus to other endeavors, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking, and weapons smuggling.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, IP House CEO Jan van Voorn says that site blocking doesn’t answer all problems and that other crimes remain a separate challenge. However, he notes that doing nothing is worse.

“By cutting off a low-risk, high-margin revenue stream, site-blocking targets how organized networks monetize piracy to fund broader transnational activity. It’s not a silver bullet, but a practical tool to add friction and reduce illicit income,” he says.

“Doing nothing leaves a highly profitable channel intact. More broadly, different criminal activities require the right legal tools. Site-blocking addresses piracy, and where additional measures are needed to combat other crimes, those should be considered as well.”

The recommendation comes at a time when lawmakers in U.S. Congress are working on a bipartisan and bicameral site-blocking bill. As a result, the lobbying efforts have clearly started to pick up.

Earlier this week, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) used World IP Day to make a similar site-blocking pitch. In addition, a new MPA-funded study on the links between piracy and cyberthreats in Latin America (pdf) also references site blocking as a potential countermeasure.

Whether the renewed U.S. site-blocking push will succeed, and whether it can address the organized crime or cybersecurity threats it claims to target, remains to be seen.

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Posted Saturday 2 May 2026 at 7:37 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

For a long time, pirate site blocking was regarded as a topic most U.S. politicians would rather avoid.

This lingering remnant of the SOPA debacle drove copyright holders to focus on the introduction of blocking efforts in other countries instead, and not unsuccessfully.

More than 14 years after the last serious try, site-blocking calls have gained momentum once again.

As we reported in early April, lawmakers, including Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Senator Tillis (R-NC) are working on a unified, bipartisan site-blocking bill. Both sides initially started working on their own bills, FADPA and Block BEARD, but together they will have a stronger front.

MPA Flags Live Sports Piracy Challenge

The site blocking lobby has mostly taken place behind closed doors. Slowly but gradually, however, stakeholders are also commenting in public. This week, the Motion Picture Association used World IP Day to make a fresh case for U.S. site-blocking legislation.

In a blog post, MPA Senior Executive Vice President and Global General Counsel Karyn Temple addressed the planned U.S. site-blocking push, with a particular focus on live sports. According to Temple, these live events deserve all the protection they can get due to their time-sensitive nature.

“All forms of online piracy are harmful. But live sports piracy is uniquely corrosive. Matches and live events are extremely time sensitive—their value drops sharply after that final whistle blows, the clock runs out, and the winning team is announced,” Temple writes.

The MPA, ACE, and others have already booked some decent successes on this front. Most notable is the takedown of a massive Streameast-branded live sports piracy network last year. While that was a major win, the original Streameast operation and many other sports piracy threats remained online.

MPA, ACE, and other stakeholders will do their best to address these and other piracy threats through their enforcement efforts. However, they also hope that U.S. lawmakers will also offer a helping hand by implementing site-blocking legislation.

Congress Should Create a Site Blocking Tool

Temple recognizes that Congress is trying to bridge the gaps and get site blocking passed. This is much needed and long overdue, she argues, pointing out that dozens of other countries have similar powers in place.

“To truly protect American sports fans, teams, and rightsholders in the era of live piracy, the U.S. Congress should create a judicially supervised website blocking tool similar to those proven to work in over 55 nations around the world, including many of our strongest allies,” Temple writes.

“By blocking access to lawless foreign piracy sites from inside the U.S., judicial site blocking shuts down piracy in real time, critical in all cases but especially so in the case of live sports events,” she adds.

From Temple’s blog post
 

MPA’s Senior Executive Vice President notes that more than 28,000 websites are now blocked globally in these countries, without sharing further detail.

To get a complete picture of the global site-blocking efforts, we asked the MPA for more information about the 55 countries that were mentioned, but that request remained unanswered. There is no doubt, however, that site blocking is relatively widespread, particularly in Europe.

Unintended Consequences

Thus far, there hasn’t been a lot of public opposition against the U.S. site-blocking plans from intermediaries. Internet providers remain silent on the issues, and the same applies to large DNS resolvers such as Google, Cisco, and Cloudflare, who will likely be targeted as well.

These intermediaries might wait with a formal response until they know what the final text of the law will be that Congress will have to decide on.

According to MPA’s Karyn Temple, there is little to be concerned about. She suggests that unintended consequences, affecting free speech, are no longer much of an issue after years of foreign site-blocking experience.

“While questions were once raised about unintended consequences or the impact of site blocking tools on free speech, it is now clear based on well over a decade of experience around the globe, that we can establish a safe, effective, judicial site blocking remedy that protects consumers, distributors, and rightsholders, without any meaningful risk to lawful expression and participation online,” Temple writes.

This is partly true when looking at countries such as Belgium, where site blocking is fully transparent and limited to domain names. However, recent site-blocking efforts in Spain and Italy have shown that IP address blocking can harm many legitimate sites and services, if they target shared server infrastructure.

How risk-free the American site-blocking proposal will be depends on the details, which, thus far, have yet to be finalized.

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Posted Friday 1 May 2026 at 7:27 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

Since 2024, the Paris Judicial Court has gradually expanded France’s piracy site blocking orders beyond residential Internet providers.

First, it required Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco to actively block access to pirate sites through their own DNS resolvers, confirming that third-party intermediaries can be required to take responsibility. Not much later, VPN providers were added to the blocking roster, as well as search engines.

These intermediaries were targeted because they could help pirates to bypass other blocking measures. If these alternative routes are cut off as well, the overall effectiveness of the anti-piracy injunction would improve.

This broader blocking push was further strengthened in March when the Paris court issued a series of blocking measures all at once. By ordering ISPs, DNS resolvers, and VPN providers to block pirate sites all at once, it should be even more effective.

These bundled orders appear to be the new standard. On April 17, the Paris court issued a series of 18 orders, with half protecting pirate Formula 1 streams and the other half targeting MotoGP infringers.

The series of 18 separate court orders, which we conveniently list in a table below, were all handed down on the same day. They include a wide variety of intermediaries, including a notable new name: DNS4EU.

DNS4EU Must Block Pirate Sites

DNS4EU is a public DNS resolver service co-funded by the European Commission and operated by a consortium led by Czech cybersecurity company Whalebone. The service, which officially launched last June, is presented as a sovereign European alternative to non-EU resolvers such as Google Public DNS and Cloudflare.

“The goal of DNS4EU is to ensure the digital sovereignty of the EU by providing a private, safe, and independent European DNS resolver,” the project’s website states.

On April 17, the Paris court issued two rulings against DNS4EU/Whalebone, requiring the DNS resolver to block 16 pirate streaming domains linked to pirated MotoGP streams and 21 domains linked to Formula 1 streams.

“Order Whalebone to implement, within the framework of its domain name resolution system called ‘Dns4eu,’ all blocking measures to prevent access from French territory, including all overseas territories of France, by any effective means to the identified internet sites and IPTV services accessible from [these domain names],” the translated order reads.

These orders were requested by French broadcaster Canal+, which holds the rights to these broadcasts, and the orders remain valid until the end of the season.

The list of targeted domains includes pirate IPTV and streaming sites such as antenawest.store, daddylive3.com, rereyano.ru, iptvsupra.com, king365tv.me, sportzonline.live, and smartbox-tv.com, with many of the same domains appearing in both orders.

Targeted domains

Default Judgment

The rulings against Whalebone are default judgments. The company did not appear at the February 19 hearing and filed no defense. As a result, the Paris court ruled in Canal+’s favor without any opposing arguments.

DNS4EU is not the only DNS provider to forfeit a defense in the French proceedings. Quad9, a Swiss-based non-profit foundation that operates a privacy-focused public DNS resolver, also defaulted in a parallel ruling handed down the same day.

Other intermediaries did put up a fight. Google, NordVPN, Surfshark, ProtonVPN, and Cloudflare (referred to in the published ruling under the pseudonym) all contested the blocking requests, without result.

Other intermediaries did put up a fight. Google, NordVPN, Surfshark, ProtonVPN, and Cloudflare all contested the blocking requests, without result. Cloudflare appears in the published rulings under pseudonyms, possibly due to French anonymization rules.

The Paris court rejected claims that VPNs and DNS resolvers fall outside the scope of Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code, which permits dynamic site blocking against “any person likely to contribute” to remedying infringement.

The court also rejected the defendants’ technical arguments about cost, encryption, and general monitoring obligations, citing the lack of “quantified and verifiable” evidence.

Google and Cloudflare previously objected to similar rulings, but their opposition was also rejected on appeal. The companies’ request to refer the case to the EU’s highest court has also been rejected.

DNS4EU has not explained why it chose not to defend itself. The organization did not respond to a request for comment, and parent company Whalebone did not return our request for clarification either.

Global Blocking Fallout

While we do not know for sure what DNS4EU’s official position is, TorrentFreak’s tests of the DNS4EU public resolvers from outside France showed that, as of this writing, several targeted domains show SSL errors.

This includes Rightflourish.net, which shows the following error message, also to users outside of France

SSL error on rightflourish.net

Visitors who proceed to ignore the SSL warning and continue to the blocked domain will eventually see a blocking notification, confirming that DNS4EU is complying with the French court order. The blocking message was added this week.

Confirmation
 

The block also appears to extend beyond France, applying to users in other EU member states. Technically, that could be considered overblocking. However, without a response from the EU-funded project, it remains unclear whether this cross-border application is intentional or an oversight.

We will update this article accordingly when DNS4EU responds.

—

An overview of all orders handed down by the Paris Court on April 17, protecting the Formula 1 and MotoGP broadcasts, is available in the table below.

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Posted Wednesday 29 April 2026 at 5:27 pm AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

In June 2024, major publishers, including Cengage Learning, Macmillan Learning, Elsevier, and McGraw Hill, filed a copyright lawsuit against Google in federal court in New York.

The companies accused the search giant of running Shopping ads for so-called “Pirate Sellers,” merchants who used Google’s platform to promote infringing copies of their textbooks.

The lawsuit has been narrowed significantly since it was first filed. Last June, Judge Jennifer L. Rochon dismissed the publishers’ vicarious copyright infringement claim and their alleged violations of New York General Business Law.

A trademark infringement claim and the core contributory copyright infringement claim survived. However, Google now argues that last month’s Supreme Court ruling in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment renders the remaining copyright claim legally viable.

Google: Cox Changes Everything

In a motion for partial judgment, filed at the Southern District of New York last week, Google argues that the publishers’ contributory copyright infringement claim rests entirely on a now-defunct theory.

Previously, some lower courts held that “”knowledge of” plus “material contribution” to infringing activities or others could be sufficient to be held liable for contributory copyright infringement. However, the new Supreme Court ruling narrowed this standard.

In Cox, the Supreme Court stated that contributory liability requires proof that the provider intended its service to be used for infringement. That intent can only be shown in one of two ways. Either the provider actively induced infringement, or the service is one that is tailored to piracy without substantial non-infringing uses.

Dismiss Final Copyright Claim

According to Google, the publishers can’t meet this standard. Therefore, their final copyright infringement claim should be dismissed.

“Plaintiffs do not (and cannot) claim that Google provided a service ‘tailored to’ infringement; the Shopping platform plainly has noninfringing uses. And they do not even use the word ‘induce’ or its variants in the complaint. Nor do they assert that Google intended the Shopping platform to be used for infringement,” Google writes.

“Instead the theory Plaintiffs set forth in their complaint is one of material contribution: that Google can be deemed to have the requisite intent to cause infringement because Google continued to run ads from merchants knowing that those merchants were advertising infringing content. This is precisely the theory that Cox rejected.”

Request to Dismiss

Legal Battle Continues

Whether the court agrees with Google’s arguments has yet to be seen, but the request makes clear how far the impact of the Cox Supreme Court ruling can potentially reach.

That said, even if Google’s motion succeeds, the case is not over. The trademark infringement claim under the Lanham Act survived the previous dismissal order and is not addressed in the current motion. The publishers allege that Google Shopping ads displayed unauthorized images of their trademarked textbook covers, and Judge Rochon found that claim was adequately pleaded.

In a separate filing last week, Google also answered the second amended complaint. Among other things, the company cited fair use and innocent infringement as defenses against the trademark claim.

Google also questions whether the publishers have the right to sue at all. The company argues that the textbooks were created as works-made-for-hire, meaning the universities that employed the authors own the copyrights, not the publishers.

Whether that angle will need to be pursued in detail depends on whether the copyright claim will survive the dismissal request, of course.

—

A copy of Google’s motion for partial judgment on the pleadings, filed April 17 at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is available here (pdf). Google’s second amended answer, filed April 14, can be found here (pdf).

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Posted Monday 27 April 2026 at 7:36 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Following Paramount Skydance’s move to launch an investigation into how its upcoming Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender animated feature leaked onto the internet, a suspect has been taken into custody by police.

The Straits Times reports Singaporean police have arrested a 26-year-old man who is alleged to have uploaded the new Avatar movie (previously titled The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender) online after accessing a server where the project was being held ahead of its scheduled October 9th premiere on Paramount Plus. According to the authorities, a copy of the entire movie was found on the suspect’s electronic devices. If he is ultimately found guilty for unauthorized access to computer material, he could face a jail sentence of up to 10 years as well a fine of $50,000.

The leaks first appeared in an April 11th X post from an anonymous user who claimed that someone at Nickelodeon (which is owned by Paramount Skydance) “accidentally emailed [them] the entire Avatar Aang Movie.” While the post has since been taken down, it initially stayed up for hours, and the leaked footage quickly began to spread online.

It’s not clear whether the X account user is the same person who has been arrested. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, a person claiming to be behind the leak account said that they were trying to “troll a little bit” because of Paramount’s decision to release Avatar Aang directly to its streaming service rather than giving it a theatrical debut as the studio originally announced. But this specific leaker also told THR that they did not plan to upload the entire film after originally receiving it from a hacker associated with the PeggleCrew hacking collective. After its internal investigation, Paramount determined that the leaks did not come from anyone working in the company itself.

Though leaks are nothing new for the entertainment industry, it was shocking to see basically all of a completed film hit the internet months before its intended release in such high definition.The situation hit Avatar fans particularly hard given how Avatar Aang — the first of three planned animated films — marked the first time that series co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino would return to the franchise following their sudden exit from Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the original animated show.

People with direct professional connections to the Avatar franchise also spoke out. Michaela Jill Murphy (Toph Beifong’s original voice actress) — who urged her fans on TikTok not to engage with the leaks at all out of respect for the movie’s creative team. Animator Julia Schoel, who worked on Avatar Aang, spoke bluntly on X about the leaker’s logic and said that “Paramount’s awful decision” to punt the movie to streaming did not justify posting the film ahead of schedule.

“I totally understand folks not wanting to pay for/support [Paramount Plus],” Schoel explained. “But pirating the movie after its release would have at least been better than this. This is incredibly disrespectful to all of the hard work the artists put in.”

News of the alleged leaker’s arrest comes just a few days after the Tokyo District court sentenced a man to prison for running a website dedicated to posting spoiler-filled summaries of newly released series and films. And while piracy isn’t likely going to end any time soon, it’s really starting to look like the studios are ready to start playing hardball when it comes to protecting their intellectual property.

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Posted Saturday 25 April 2026 at 7:52 am AEST (my time).

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Launched in 2015, Zoowoman was a popular Spanish non-commercial film repository.

The site did not store any movies, but it hosted links to approximately 11,000 titles before it was shut down.

The site was purportedly operated by a group of people, including film enthusiast “El Feo,” who is also the creator of La Filmoteca Maldita, a YouTube channel with over 400,000 subscribers dedicated to film analysis and criticism.

El Feo told TorrentFreak that the site focused specifically on films that were out of circulation commercially, discontinued, or otherwise difficult to access through normal channels. As such, the project was recognized for its uniqueness and reportedly used as a teaching resource by several universities across Spain and Latin America.

La Filmoteca Maldita on X (translated)
 

However, despite their educational value, the films were not necessarily in the public domain, and many were protected by active copyrights. As a result, Zoowoman eventually attracted attention from rightsholders. And while the site specifically asked “creativity vampires” to leave it alone, that didn’t last.

Zoowoman Raid and Prosecution

In 2021, El Feo’s home was raided, with the authorities taking over the Zoowoman WordPress admin account using credentials recovered from his phone. The police locked the admin out of the site and blocked public access to the archive while leaving the hosting account untouched.

The enforcement action eventually led to a lawsuit backed by EGEDA, the Spanish audiovisual rights management headed by Enrique Cerezo, who is a film producer and president of the football club Atlético de Madrid. Through court, EGEDA requested two and a half years in prison and damages of €870,000.

The action against Zoowoman coincided with the launch of FlixOlé, a subscription streaming platform for classic Spanish cinema also backed by Cerezo, which served an overlapping audience.

Zoowoman in 2020 (translated)
 

After several years, the Zoowoman case went to trial earlier this month, where the prosecution presented evidence that the defendant generated approximately €12,000 in streaming income from YouTube, Patreon, and PayPal over four years. While this revenue wasn’t generated from the Zoowoman website, the prosecution argued that the defendant profited from the overall ecosystem.

The prosecution also argued that the film archive facilitated widespread copyright infringement, which also affected EGEDA as a collective rights management outfit.

“El Feo” Fights Back

Speaking with TorrentFreak, El Feo noted that the €12,000 in revenue cited by the prosecution is completely unrelated to the defunct film archive. In fact, the defense argued that he had stepped back from the project in late 2019, roughly two years before his arrest, because his YouTube work had become too demanding.

“El Feo”
 

Nonetheless, the police investigation highlighted him as the sole and main defendant. According to El Feo, the other WordPress admins were reclassified as regular users by the investigators, effectively reducing the case to a single defendant.

“They came in, converted the rest of the admins into users, to focus the investigation on me. Better to have one defendant than 15,” El Feo told us (translated from Spanish), while stressing that he is glad that the other people who were involved in Zoowoman did not get in trouble.

Critically, El Feo also noted that the police failed to preserve the site’s server logs. As a result, there was no record of which administrators were accessing the site or from which IP addresses. According to El Feo, this means that he wasn’t able to mount a proper defense.

El Feo released a video on his case on the La filmoteca maldita YouTube channel earlier this month, after the trial was completed. At the time of writing, however, the verdict has yet to be released.

The verdict is expected to be released soon. The outcome is likely to be watched closely by digital preservation communities across Spain and Latin America, where Zoowoman built a dedicated following among cinephiles and academics.

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Posted Saturday 25 April 2026 at 7:51 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Cox Communications last month, it was immediately clear that the decision would also reach other ISP piracy cases.

Many of the same record labels that fought Cox, also have active cases against other ISPs. This includes high-profile cases against Verizon and Altice.

These cases were already paused last year, awaiting the Supreme Court decision. This week, it became clear that both sides have agreed to dismiss the cases. In both cases, the parties filed joint stipulations voluntarily dismissing the lawsuits.

According to the legal paperwork, the dismissals are with prejudice, meaning the claims cannot be refiled. In addition, all parties will pay their own costs and expenses.

“[All parties] hereby jointly stipulate to dismissal of all claims in this matter with prejudice under Fed. R. Civ. P. Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(ii), with each side bearing its own costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees,” the filings read.

Billions of Dollars at Stake

The Verizon case, filed in July 2024, is particularly noteworthy as the record labels requested more than $2.6 billion in damages in that case alone.

In that lawsuit, UMG, Warner Music, Sony Music, and ABKCO, accused Verizon of burying its head in the sand by ignoring hundreds of thousands of copyright infringement notices. This includes more than 500 subscribers for whom the ISP received more than 100 notices each.

Joint stipulation
 

The Altice lawsuit was filed in December 2023 by Warner Records, Sony Music Entertainment, and dozens of affiliated labels and publishers. The complaint also accused the ISP of not doing enough to stop piracy, with potential damages exceeding $1.6 billion.

In both cases, the music companies argued that the ISPs’ knowledge of the infringing activity, combined with their failure to act, was sufficient to be held liable for contributory copyright infringement. However, the new Supreme Court ruling narrowed this standard.

In Cox, the Supreme Court stated that contributory liability requires proof that the provider intended its service to be used for infringement. That intent can only be shown in one of two ways. Either the provider actively induced infringement, or the service is one that is tailored to piracy without substantial non-infringing uses.

The Cox Fallout Spreads

The Altice and Verizon dismissals are the most concrete sign yet that the labels see the post-Cox landscape as unfavorable terrain for this type of lawsuit. They are not the only fallout, however.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court also vacated the Fifth Circuit’s $46.7 million verdict against Grande Communications, sending the case back for reconsideration in light of Cox.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s X Corp. cited the Cox decision within days of its release in its bid to dismiss the music publishers’ “weaponized DMCA” lawsuit.

Interestingly, however, not all ISP lawsuits appear to be ready for dismissal yet. The record labels still have an active case against Internet provider RCN in New Jersey. In that case, RCN recently informed the court of the impact of the Cox ruling, but there is no mention of a potential dismissal in that docket yet.

—

A copy of the Joint Stipulation of Dismissal filed by the labels and Altice in Texas federal court is available here (pdf). The joint stipulation filed by the labels and Verizon in New York federal court is available here (pdf).

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Posted Friday 24 April 2026 at 4:11 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

In piracy circles, names like Sflix, Watchseries, HDtoday, and Fmovies are essentially “zombie” brands.

While the original iterations of these sites were shut down or “retired” years ago, their names remain immensely popular with users.

The pirate streaming sites continue to draw in millions of monthly visitors without much hassle. However, that changed this week when dozens of domains suddenly became unreachable, all pointing to a Cloudflare 521 error.

Web server is down (Error 521)

The error indicates that the origin web server refuses the connection. This does not mean that Cloudflare intervened. Instead, it suggests that the backend server, which hosts the website, has stopped responding.

None of the affected sites have offered an explanation, nor has any anti-piracy organization claimed credit for a takedown. However, it is clear that these sites were seen as a major threat.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA), for example, identified the Myflixerz and Sflix networks as a priority threat in its notorious markets submission to the U.S. Trade Representative last fall. This piracy ring alone was good for 622 million visits in August 2025, MPA reported.

Those domains, including sflix.to, sflix2.to, moviesjoytv.to, myflixerz.to, and hdtodayz.to, are now among those returning 521 errors.

A Shared Backend

Why would so many sites go down simultaneously? They are not necessarily all operated by the same people. However, there is likely a common denominator, which was also cited by the MPA’s report.

Many of the affected sites rely on a shared backend infrastructure, which anti-piracy groups have dubbed “Piracy-as-a-Service” (PaaS). Instead of hosting video files themselves, the front-end piracy sites use services such as MegaCloud and VidCloud that actually serve the streams. And more recently, these PaaS services have also offered website hosting.

The MPA described exactly this setup in its notorious markets recommendation, specifically referring to the Sflix and Myflixerz network:

“These sites rely on their own PaaS infrastructure (formerly known as 2embed[.]to, which ACE took down in June 2023) and despite enforcement, they continue to thrive through alternative domains and backend hosting on platforms such as MegaCloud, VidCloud, and RapidCloud. Unlike the previous CMS model, which explicitly enabled pirate sites to embed movies and monetize streams, this new model functions as a backend hosting network powering popular pirate domains such as those mentioned above. These services act as a media source server, serving video files directly allowing a myriad of sites to provide streams to users.”

If many sites indeed rely on the same backend hosting network, similar Cloudflare errors would appear across all dependent sites if it goes offline. This would explain what we’re seeing today.

Shared infrastructure?

If the backend PaaS infrastructure has indeed been targeted, it would represent one of the most significant blows to the streaming piracy landscape since the original 2embed takedown in 2023.

For now, the cause of this massive outage remains unconfirmed. Whether the affected domain names will make their way back online or if the 521 error is the final curtain call has yet to be seen. However, the “zombie” brands will likely reappear in some shape or form.

—

Below is an example of some of the affected domain names, but there are many more.

– myflixerz.to
– sflix.to
– moviesjoytv.to
– flixhq.to
– hdtoday.cc
– hdtoday.tv
– watchseries.pe
– watch32.sx
– myflixtor.tv
– theflixertv.to
– zoechip.cc
– fmovie.ws
– 9animetv.to
– hdtodayz.to
– fboxtv.com
– freehdmovies.to
– freemoviesfull.com
– actvid.rs
– dopebox.to

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Posted Friday 24 April 2026 at 7:16 am AEST (my time).

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A little over a week ago, an unreleased version of the movie Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender leaked online.

The Paramount Pictures production was not scheduled to come out before October, but that changed when copies of the film began spreading online.

The trouble started on April 12 when X user @ImStillDissin posted two clips from the film, misleadingly claiming that someone at Nickelodeon had “accidentally emailed me the entire Avatar Aang movie.” Both clips were taken down via DMCA notices shortly after.

The initial leaker later told the Hollywood Reporter that he actually received the film through a contact from his “hacker days.” He didn’t realize what it was until he looked it up, and decided to post the snippets online.

The clips carried a #PeggleCrew watermark, a nod to the hacking group that is allegedly behind the breach, although this remains unconfirmed.

The initial X clip leaks
 

Not long after the clips were removed, a second X user posted the full film, racking up over a million views before that too was removed. Paramount, meanwhile, remained quiet and did not issue a public statement on the leak.

Behind the scenes, however, the movie studio and its anti-piracy partners have been quite busy. Initially, they mostly dealt with copies of the film being reposted on X by different users, but their challenge was spreading elsewhere too.

DMCA Notice Whack-a-Mole

After the leak was public, the film started to spread through other platforms too. Records in the Lumen Database show that Paramount and its enforcement teams at MarkScan Digital, Marketly LLC, and Vobile Inc. all sprung into action, flagging various leaked copies.

This includes DMCA takedown requests directly targeting leaks on third-party services such as Google Drive and the video service Vimeo, both of which were swiftly taken down.

Vimeo takedown
 

However, some takedown requests include more indirect links too. For example, a DMCA notice sent on behalf of Paramount by MarkScan on April 13, targets a 4chan discussion thread, which typically only remains online briefly. This notice also listed a file that was posted on Rootz.

While Paramount clearly tried hard to contain the leak, it appeared that the problem only became harder to enforce.

The Piracy Ecosystem Takes Over

Unlike most movie leaks, the Avatar: Aang leak did not originate from a scene or P2P group. However, it found its way into the traditional piracy ecosystem within hours, where it continues to thrive today.

Multiple copies were uploaded to torrent sites and are widely shared, making it the second most pirated movie of the past week. This includes a copy that was uploaded to The Pirate Bay by “TheRedPill,” who referenced the ongoing whack-a-mole at other platforms in the upload description.

“Found this copy on twitter of all places via a wetranfer link. Supposedly this is a webrip that was sent to someone who then leaked it online. it has been passed around all day with links going up and down,” the uploader wrote.

This wasn’t the only copy of the leak that surfaced on torrent sites, as many others appeared around the same time. Meanwhile, pirate streaming sites began indexing the leak as well, further expanding its audience by millions of people.

Leaked copies on 1337x
 

As shown above, torrent site 1337x currently hosts a wide variety of leaked copies. These all originate from the same source but are reported in different qualities.

Little Recourse Beyond Google

Dozens of notices posted in the Lumen database show that Paramount and its enforcement partners are also targeting these pirate sites. However, since most of these sites don’t respond to takedown notices, these sites present a persistent problem.

For these pirate sites, Paramount typically asks Google to delist the URLs from search results, which reduces discoverability but does not take the infringing content offline.

The notice below, for example, was sent to Google yesterday and targets various torrent and streaming sites. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

DMCA notice sent to Google
 

Also, it’s worth stressing that the notices in the Lumen Database reported here are only the fraction of Paramount’s takedown efforts that’s public. Most of their efforts, including any notices sent directly to X or other platforms that do not report to Lumen, remain unknown.

In addition to taking down content, Paramount will also be interested in finding the source of the leak. According to Variety, unnamed sources said that the matter is under investigation, but the leak reportedly did not originate from within the studio.

For now, Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender remains on course for its October 9 premiere on Paramount+. By then, most of its target audience has already had the opportunity to watch an early, perhaps unfinished, version of the film for free.

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Posted Wednesday 22 April 2026 at 7:14 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have one newcomer on the list.

“Project Hail Mary” is the most shared title. It beats “The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender“, which ends up in second place after an early (likely unfinished) version of the movie leaked online months before its official release.

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

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

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Posted Tuesday 21 April 2026 at 7:45 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Pirate sites and services can be a real challenge for rightsholders to deal with. In India, however, recent court orders have proven to be quite effective.

Indian courts have issued pirate site blocking orders for over a decade. Initially, these orders were relatively basic, requiring local Internet providers to block specific domain names.

These regular injunctions were only partially effective. After the High Court granted a blocking injunction, pirate sites would often switch to new domains, requiring rightsholders to return to court to get these blocked as well.

Expanding Site Blocking Injunctions

To deal with this problem, the dynamic injunction was invented. These orders were issued to block pirate sites more effectively. ISPs were not only required to block original domains but also any clones and mirror sites that surfaced after the case was finalized.

When dynamic injunctions were no longer sufficient to slay the piracy hydra, rightsholders suggested upgrading the Indian blocking regime with Dynamic++ injunctions. These orders also protect copyrighted content that has yet to be registered.

In addition, Dynamic++ orders and their ‘superlative‘ variant also include domain name registrars as defendants. This includes blocking orders targeted at U.S. domain registrars, much to the delight of U.S. rightsholders.

Delhi High Court Slams the Brakes

The expanding scope of these orders has not gone unquestioned. In a recent ruling in a trademark case, the Delhi High Court has put a hard limit on the addition of new domain names, creating a strong divergence with earlier dynamic site blocking orders that were previously issued by the same High Court.

The case itself started as a routine trademark dispute. Mahindra and Mahindra, one of India’s largest conglomerates, sued a string of packers and movers businesses operating under domain names that incorporated the “MAHINDRA” mark.

The court ordered GoDaddy and other registrars to block five infringing domains, directed India’s telecoms regulator to instruct ISPs to do the same, and required Google to delist the relevant results. All parties complied with this order.

When the case reached its conclusion earlier this year, Mahindra requested to make the order future-proof. The company asked the court to allow a court official to add newly discovered mirror and redirect domains to the blocking order on an ongoing basis, without the need to return to a judge each time.

To back up this request, Mahindra pointed to two Delhi High Court rulings that implemented the same procedure: a 2019 decision against 1337x, The Pirate Bay, and others, and a 2023 ruling targeting cyberlocker sites including Mixdrop.

The same procedure had been used routinely in piracy cases ever since, so the company did not expect much pushback. However, after reviewing the matter, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela said no.

Case Closed

The reason for the denial comes down to a straightforward point about how courts work. Once a judge signs a final ruling and closes a case, the court’s authority over that matter ends. It can still fix typos and calculation errors, but it cannot reopen proceedings to add new defendants or extend the reach of its orders.

That principle applies directly here. Once the case was closed, the blocking order against the original five domains became part of the final judgment.

From the judgment
 

Additionally, Justice Gedela said that it is “beyond comprehension” that a court officer could add new parties and extend dynamic injunctions, even when the judge no longer has the power to do so.

According to Tejaswini Kaushal, analyst at the Indian intellectual property publication SpicyIP, rightsholders can still request injunctions under the new ruling. However, they will have to file a new proceeding to block additional domains after a case is closed.

“This means that practitioners will now have to rely on execution proceedings or initiate fresh litigation to address new instances of infringement,” Kaushal writes.

The ruling effectively creates a divergence between judges of the same court. A rights holder appearing before a different Delhi HC judge could receive the opposite answer today. The question will remain unsettled until a higher bench resolves it.

Legislature, Step In

Justice Gedela did not leave the matter there. The judgment calls on India’s Parliament to update is civil procedure rules and regulations governing online intermediaries, to create a proper legal basis for post-judgment blocking orders.

“There is an urgent and alarming need for the Central Government and the Legislature to act in haste to bring about radical changes,” the judgment states, noting that rightsholders should not be powerless against new infringers who simply weren’t part of the original proceedings.

The ruling effectively means that infringing domains names that appear after a case closes will now require fresh legal action, at least until a higher court settles the question.

This significantly changes the game for film studios, Netflix, and sports rightsholders who repeatedly relied on post-judgment expansions. They can still get these additional blockades by going back to court, but that means more time, and more money, to achieve the same result.

For now, the ball is in Parliament’s court.

—-

A copy of the judgment in Mahindra and Mahindra Limited & Anr. v. Diksha Sharma Proprietor of Mahindra Packers Movers & Ors. (CS(COMM) 209/2023) is available here.

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Posted Monday 20 April 2026 at 5:38 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

GitHub, home to hundreds of millions of code repositories, takes pride in being the largest and most advanced development platform in the world.

Like other platforms that host user-generated content, this massive code library occasionally runs into copyright infringement issues too.

As an intermediary, GitHub allows rightsholders to submit DMCA takedown notices to get infringing content removed. In addition, it also accepts DMCA anti-circumvention notices, requesting the removal of projects that bypass copy controls and restrictions.

The best-documented anti-circumvention claim on GitHub was sent by the RIAA back in 2020. At the time, the music industry group requested the removal of the open-source youtube-dl project, which is used by YouTube ripper software.

After initially removing the repository, GitHub later decided to reinstate the project, arguing that it doesn’t violate the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions. This decision still holds today, as the project remains on GitHub, despite having its website taken down by similar complaints.

Circumvention Claims Increased 41%

When the RIAA sent its anti-circumvention notices, these were still rare. In that year, GitHub only received 63 of these per year. That has increased more than tenfold since.

GitHub’s full-year transparency report that was just released reveals that it received 645 circumvention claims in 2025. That’s up 41% from a year earlier, and the bar chart shared by GitHub shows that these removal requests are clearly in an upward trend.

Circumvention Claims

The initial boost in reports came in 2022, after GitHub updated its DMCA takedown submission form with questions explicitly related to circumvention. Providing that option triggered many more submitters to tick that box, raising the number of ‘circumvention’ claims.

Processing circumvention notices is quite costly for the company, as they are carefully reviewed by legal experts and engineers, to ensure that developers’ projects are not taken down without valid reasons.

“In cases where we are unable to determine whether a claim is valid, we will err on the side of the developer, and leave the content up,” GitHub writes in its policy, also pointing out that it has a million-dollar Developer Defense Fund for those who need it.

Surge in DMCA removals

The transparency report also covers ordinary takedown notices, which are much more common. In 2025, GitHub processed 2,661 takedown notices in 2025, which affected 47,228 repositories.

The number of targeted repositories surged 51.6% compared to 2024, while the number of notices also went up by roughly a third.

Repos Affected by Takedowns
 

As shown above, August and November accounted for nearly half the year’s total, with 12,030 and 11,357 repositories taken down respectively. That pattern strongly suggests a small number of bulk complaints against projects with many forks, rather than a broad industry-wide surge.

Taken down

GitHub Applauds Landmark DMCA Liability Ruling

The latest transparency report was announced in a blog post this week, where GitHub also referenced the Supreme Court ruling in Cox v. Sony. Which also affects its platform.

Previously, copyright holders had successfully pushed expansive theories of secondary liability, arguing that platforms could be held contributorily liable for user infringement even without direct involvement. That made intermediaries less likely to defend or protect users. The Supreme Court decision changed this.

“The Court’s opinion reinforced that service providers are not automatically liable for copyright infringement by users without evidence of intent to encourage or materially contribute to infringement,” GitHub’s Margaret Tucker noted.

This echoes comments it made earlier, where GitHub characterized the ruling as a key victory.

“This is a landmark victory for the open internet and for every developer who depends on platforms like GitHub to build, share, and collaborate on code. GitHub will always stand up for developers and for keeping the internet open,” GitHub wrote.

This doesn’t mean that GitHub will fundamentally change its DMCA policy, of course; this just gives them more room to side with developers, when appropriate.

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Posted Monday 20 April 2026 at 6:44 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Tu Manga Online (TMO) has long been the go-to destination for many Spanish-speaking manga fans.

Through multiple domains, it offered access to manga and manhwa comics free of charge, attracting many millions of visitors.

In 2024, a detailed report from Deepsee flagged Zonatmo.com as a particularly popular domain. Together with the other TMO properties, it was estimated to generate a billion views in November that year.

The same research linked the TMO operation to the Spanish company Nakamas Web SL, which was reportedly responsible for the sites.

This level of openness is unusual for a pirate site. DeepSee.io CEO Rocky Moss projected that the site would be stopped before the end of 2025. That projection was off by a few months, as TMO went offline in early 2026.

TMO’s website started having problems around March 18. This was widely noticed on social media, including a post by Animetrends that has been viewed close to 2.5 million times.

Without an official explanation from the site’s operators, many fans kept hope that it would make a comeback. A notice on the site suggesting it was “under maintenance” added to that impression.

However, after a few days that hope faded, as the main ZonaTMO domain was put on clienthold. This suspension status is typically set by a domain registrar in response to a legal complaint, and effectively renders the domain inaccessible.

The WHOIS data for zonatmo.com also clearly lists Nakamas Web as the company behind the site.

While TMO’s future was looking more and more troubled, the operators remained silent. Information received by TorrentFreak suggested that Korean webtoon platforms were involved, helped by serious anti-piracy forces. That information was officially confirmed today.

Spanish Takedown Following Cross-Border Investigation

The Copyright Overseas Promotion Association (COA), which represents many Korean publishers, including Kakao and Webtoon, announced that it conducted a multi-month investigation into the piracy operation.

COA worked with the commercial anti-piracy outfit IP-House and Spanish law firm Santiago Mediano Abogados, who eventually shared their gathered evidence with the local authorities for follow-up action.

This operation eventually led to an enforcement effort in Almeria, Spain, which resulted in the takedown of a network of interconnected websites, including Visortmo and TuMangaOnline.

While it is now confirmed that Korean rightsholders are behind the Spanish shutdown, not many details are shared. There is no mention of any arrests, for example, and no suspects have been identified either.

The involvement of the company Nakamas Web remains unconfirmed as well, although it’s worth noting that this company is based in Almeria, which was the center of the police operation. A request for comment to the company, whose website is still online, remains unanswered.

Pending Law Enforcement Investigation

Speaking with TorrentFreak, COA confirms that its members had their eyes set on TMO for a long time. While the group confirms the takedown, it can’t share further information at this point as the law enforcement investigation is ongoing.

“Zonatmo (TuMangaOnline, TMO) has long been recognized as a major illegal platform known for distributing unauthorized translations of Korean content in Spanish. Korean rightsholders had been monitoring the platform since its earlier stages, and in response, have pursued concrete legal enforcement actions overseas through COA.”

“At present, several matters remain at the stage of investigation in cooperation with local law enforcement authorities. As such, we are not in a position to disclose specific additional targets at this time,” a COA spokesperson adds.

TMO
 

For details, COA referred us to IP-House, which we asked about the suspects that were identified, whether any arrests were made, or whether a deal was reached with the operator of TMO. However, IP House declined to answer, citing an active investigation.

IP-House CEO Jan van Voorn commented on the action in broad terms in a press statement.

“This outcome reflects the strength of cross-border collaboration in addressing complex digital piracy to protect creators, consumers, and the integrity of the global content ecosystem,” Van Voorn said.

“We are proud to have supported COA in advancing this investigation and commend the Spanish National Police for their leadership and effectiveness in executing this enforcement action,” he added.

Part of a Wider Wave

The TMO takedown coincided with one of the most active periods of manga and anime piracy enforcement in history. In March 2026, HiAnime also went offline. The reason for HiAnime’s closure has not been officially confirmed, though it followed sustained pressure from the anti-piracy alliance ACE and a recent callout by the USTR.

Earlier, in January 2026, the manga aggregator Bato.to was shut down following action by Japanese anti-piracy body CODA and pressure from the Korean company Kakao Entertainment, with its operator identified and subject to criminal investigation in China.

According to COA, the TMO takedown is not the last enforcement action that’s planned on their end.

“This action forms part of a broader enforcement initiative led by COA, representing the K-content alliance” COA told TorrentFreak, adding that it “is actively investigating operators of such platforms and preparing coordinated legal actions across multiple jurisdictions.”

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Posted Friday 17 April 2026 at 5:50 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Pirate streaming apps and unauthorized IPTV services have continued to gain popularity worldwide.

This is also the case in Chile, where there’s no shortage of options. This includes brands such as MagisTV, FlujoTV, and, XuperTV, which are popular throughout many countries in the region.

These services are a thorn in the side of rightsholders, including the American Hollywood giant Warner Bros. Entertainment, which filed a formal complaint. This effort paid off in February, when Chile’s Department of Telecommunications issued a dynamic blocking order, requiring ISPs to block domains linked to these pirate brands.

Warner Bros. Raises the Stakes

While the blocking action sorted some effect, the IPTV problem remained. This prompted Warner Bros. to raise the stakes by filing a criminal complaint against a company named Streaming Chile SpA that allegedly sells copyright-infringing IPTV subscriptions.

Chilean newspaper La Tercera reports that Warner Bros. accuses the company and its representatives, the 56-year-old Marta Leyton and her son Joaquín Ávila (25) of copyright infringement and computer fraud.

The complaint mentions that IPTV services are widely adopted. While some of these streaming services operate legally, many operate without permission of rightsholders.

“Alongside the growth of a legal IPTV service industry, an illegal industry of unauthorized IPTV service providers has grown alarmingly. These providers offer their clients pay television services via the internet, providing them with access to various content (channels),” the complaint alleges.

Warner Bros. is represented by attorney Daniel Steinmetz, who noted that illegal IPTV services often rebroadcast legal streams without permission from rightsholder, bypassing copyright protections.

Several Linked IPTV Services

TorrentFreak has not seen a copy of the complaint, and the available reporting does not identify any associated URLs. However, the website streaming-chile.net notes in the its footer that it is owned by Streaming Chile SpA, which fits the picture.

streaming-chile.net
 

The website in question mentions that the operation serves more than 35,000 customers worldwide. The same company, which also offers reseller services, is linked to other streaming platforms such as mejoriptv.net, maxtv.cl, and plandetv.cl.

Our customers say…
 

As seen above, these IPTV services are also mentioned in the “our customers say” section on the main website. The Trustpilot page has less favorable reviews.

Part of a Broader Crackdown

Warner Bros. referral is part of a broader regional push against IPTV piracy. In February, for example, an Argentine court expanded the crackdown on pirate IPTV services by blocking more than 70 domains while ordering Google to disable sideloaded Android apps.

In Chile, the criminal referral against Streaming Chile SpA stands out because it targets a company and its representative by name, under criminal law rather than a civil procedure.

The Warner Bros. complaint is also the first known Chilean case to invoke the Ley de Delitos Económicos (Economic Crimes Law). Enacted in 2023, the law allows courts to order confiscation of all profits derived from criminal conduct. In addition, it imposes fines that scale with the defendant’s income, well beyond the penalties available under standard copyright law alone.

For now, the criminal complaint is at an early investigative stage. No arrests have been reported, and, as far as we can see, the IPTV services that we could link to the company remain online.

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Posted Friday 17 April 2026 at 7:35 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Anna’s Archive is generally known as a meta-search engine for shadow libraries, helping users find pirated books and other related resources.

However, last December, the site announced that it had also backed up Spotify, which came as a shock to the music industry.

Anna’s Archive initially released only Spotify metadata, and no actual music, but that put the music industry on high alert. Together with the likes of Universal, Warner, and Sony, Spotify filed a lawsuit days later, hoping to shut the site down.

Through a preliminary injunction targeting domain registrars and registries, the shadow library lost several domain names. However, not all were taken down, and the site registered various new domain names as backups.

The legal pressure also appeared to pay off in other ways. Not long after the lawsuit was filed, the shadow library removed the Spotify listing for their torrents page. The same applies to the first batch of music files that was accidentally released in February.

The site’s operator, Anna’s Archivist, hoped that these removals would motivate the music industry to back down, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, they returned to court requesting a $322 million default judgment after the defendant failed to show up in court.

$322 Million, Granted in Full

Yesterday, Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York entered a default judgment against the site’s unknown operators, awarding Spotify and the major labels the requested $322 million damages award in full.

Default judgment

The music labels get the statutory maximum of $150,000 in damages for around 50 works. Spotify adds a DMCA circumvention claim of $2,500 for 120,000 music files, bringing the total to more than $322 million.

The plaintiff previously described their damages request as “extremely conservative.” The DMCA claim is based only on the 120,000 files, not the full 2.8 million that were released. Had they applied the $2,500 rate to all released files, the damages figure would exceed $7 billion.

Anna’s Archive did not show up in court, and the operators of the site remain unidentified. The judgment attempts to address this directly, by ordering Anna’s Archive to file a compliance report within ten business days, under penalty of perjury, that includes valid contact information for the site and its managing agents.

Whether the site will comply with this order is highly uncertain.

For now, the monetary judgment is mostly a victory on paper, as recouping money from an unknown entity is impossible. For this reason, the music companies also requested a permanent injunction.

Permanent Injunction Targets Domains

In addition to the damages award, Rakoff entered a permanent worldwide injunction covering ten Anna’s Archive domains: annas-archive.org, .li, .se, .in, .pm, .gl, .ch, .pk, .gd, and .vg.

Domain registries and registrars of record, along with hosting and internet service providers, are ordered to permanently disable access to those domains, disable authoritative nameservers, cease hosting services, and preserve evidence that could identify the site’s operators.

Domain names

The judgment names specific third parties bound by those obligations, including Public Interest Registry, Cloudflare, Switch Foundation, The Swedish Internet Foundation, Njalla SRL, IQWeb FZ-LLC, Immaterialism Ltd., Hosting Concepts B.V., Tucows Domains Inc., and OwnRegistrar, Inc.

Anna’s Archive is also ordered to destroy all copies of works scraped from Spotify and to file a compliance report within ten business days, under penalty of perjury, including valid contact information for the site and its managing agents. That last requirement could prove significant, given that the identity of the site’s operators remains unknown.

A Way Out, at a Price

In theory, Anna’s Archive has the option to prevent the domain suspension. The permanent injunction allows the site to seek relief from this measure, after showing that it has paid the full $322 million damages award and complied with all injunctive obligations.

That’s an unlikely option, to say the least. At the same time, however, it is not guaranteed that the site’s domain names will be suspended.

As reported previously, several domain names, including the Greenland-based .gl version, are linked to registries and registrars outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. court. As such, they previously did not comply to the preliminary injunction, and it is unknown whether the latest order changes that.

—

A copy of the default judgment entered by Judge Rakoff is available here (pdf).

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Posted Thursday 16 April 2026 at 9:24 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix

Since the first court order late 2000’s, European countries have been at the forefront of pirate site-blocking efforts.

These blocking actions initially relied on measures that required Internet providers to restrict access to notorious pirate sites. More recently, however, blocking requirements have spread to other online intermediaries.

For example, in several countries, blocking injunctions expanded to third-party DNS resolvers such as Cloudflare, OpenDNS and Google. Not much later, VPN services became a target, as these could also be used to circumvent blocking orders.

While major rightsholders argue these measures are effective and proportionate, critics highlighted overblocking incidents where anti-piracy measures restricted access to legitimate sites and services, restricting the free flow of information.

A new report published by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) today adds substantial weight to that critique. CEPS is not part of the EU, but it operates as a leading independent think tank that advises on EU policy.

Benefits and Costs of Website-Blocking Legislation

The study, titled The Benefits and Costs of Website-Blocking Legislation: An Economic, Legal and Policy Assessment, examines website-blocking measures across all 27 EU Member States and assesses whether those measures are effective, proportionate, and compatible with EU law.

The report’s central finding is blunt. It concludes that site blocking is associated with substantial risk of unintended consequences and harmful side effects. These adverse effects, including overblocking, are not always fully recognized before site-blocking measures are enacted.

The report
 

The report suggests that blocking schemes are prone to overblocking because these rightsholders are not liable for mistakes, nor do they bear the costs, which are typically paid by the ISPs or other intermediaries.

“These problems are exacerbated by the fact that rightsholders bear none of the costs of website blocking and are thus incentivised to pursue stringent blocking orders without concern for the collateral damage they cause – there is no back-pressure,” the report reads.

Italy and Spain: A Pattern of Collateral Damage

The report examines six EU jurisdictions in detail, and in each case, the findings are critical of site blocking.

Italy’s Piracy Shield, operated by regulator AGCOM, requires ISPs to block notified domains and IP addresses within 30 minutes, with no prior court order. This system has repeatedly resulted in overblocking, where the anti-piracy system blocked access to legitimate sites and services.

Instead of addressing the collateral damage concerns, AGCOM fined Cloudflare €14.2 million in January, after the company refused to globally filter its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver. Cloudflare has since appealed the fine, while challenging the legitimacy of the Piracy Shield system.

Spain has also seen reports of similar collateral damage through its blocking regime. For example, the report notes that when LaLiga was granted a court order in its favor, it targeted a series of Cloudflare-owned IP addresses starting in February 2025. These blocked pirate streams, but also 3,300 lawful services that used the same infrastructure.

“The collateral damage was significant for ordinary users, businesses, and services that had no connection whatsoever to piracy,” the report notes, adding that the court formally dismissed Cloudflare’s appeal in March 2025.

Meanwhile, in Belgium, site-blocking orders have targeted DNS resolvers, which led to OpenDNS temporarily exiting the country in April 2025. The company eventually returned as the ruling was suspended pending appeal, but by then it had already done its damage.

“The episode illustrates how overreaching court orders can have unintended consequences for the broader digital ecosystem, and how disproportionate liability exposure can sometimes incentivise service provider withdrawal rather than compliance,” the report writes.

Report Questions Blocking Effectiveness

Beyond the collateral damage, the report also questions whether blocking achieves its stated objective of stopping piracy. After all, users are typically good at bypassing blocking measures.

The report cites various academic studies, including a 2023 paper published by researchers from Chapman University and Carnegie Mellon University, which found that site blocking led to a modest increase in visits to legal sites. According to the report, it’s unclear if these effects last.

“Recent research confirms that blocking can sharply reduce access to targeted IPTV and streaming piracy services, but no study in the past five years provides a rigorous estimate of how long these effects persist,” the report reads.

Interpret with caution
 

The report does find that illegal consumption of films and music has declined substantially over time. However, it attributes this to increasing availability and affordability of legal content, not to enforcement.

Rightsholders are well aware of the limits of site blocking. In response, they expanded their blocking requests to also cover DNS resolvers and VPN providers, as we have seen in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere.

The CEPS report does not see stricter blocking measures as a solution; it suggests a wide range of other recommendations for the EU, member states, and copyright holders.

IP Blocking Should Be Abolished

The report makes 12 formal recommendations. The most significant is that IP-based blocking should be avoided altogether, due to its inherent tendency to block large numbers of legitimate service sites. DNS-level or URL-level blocking should be used instead.

CEPS points out that this conclusion was also reached following reviews conducted by local telecoms regulator TKK, which effectively banned IP-address blocking in the country.

“To the extent that blocking is used at all, better targeted mechanisms such as DNS-level or URL-level blocking should be used instead, consistent with the Austrian TKK’s reasoning. IP-based blocking is inherently overinclusive because shared IP addresses serve thousands or millions of legitimate domains,” the report reads.

Other recommendations include a requirement for rightsholders to contribute to the costs of implementing blocking measures, and the option to be held liable for damages caused by overblocking at their request.

The report also calls for all blocking orders to be subject to prior or rapid judicial review, to be time-limited with periodic reviews, and narrow in scope.

According to the report, the UK blocking model comes closest to its ideal. English High Court orders are time-limited, technically evidenced, and require rightsholders to demonstrate that proposed blocking methods will not affect legitimate content. There hasn’t been any significant overblocking reported in the UK either.

Nord Security Funded the Study

CEPS writes that the study was conducted at the request of and with the support of Nord Security, parent company of NordVPN. However, the think tank states that the analysis and conclusions are entirely independent and reflect the views of the authors alone.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, a Nord Security spokesperson confirmed its support of the study while stressing that the research was conducted independently.

“Website-blocking measures are expanding across Europe, yet there has been limited independent analysis of whether they are effective, proportionate, and compatible with EU law. Nord Security funded this CEPS study because we believe policy in this area should be shaped by evidence, not assumptions,” Nord told us.

As one of the world’s most widely used VPN services, NordVPN has a major stake in the blocking debate. The company has been targeted by blocking orders, including in France, where it recently lost its appeal together with other VPN services.

Nord Security also attended the report’s presentation in Brussels this afternoon, where its Regulatory Policy & Compliance Counsel Emilija Beržanskaitė was critical about site-blocking efforts. At the same hearing, the EU’s Intellectual Property Office and the EU’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology were also present.

For now, the report arrives at a moment when intermediaries are pushing back against blocking regimes across Europe, while the European Commission is yet to issue harmonized guidance on how member states should address blocking concerns.

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Posted Wednesday 15 April 2026 at 7:30 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

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

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

This week we have one newcomer on the list. “Project Hail Mary” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on April 13 are:

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

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Posted Monday 13 April 2026 at 5:59 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

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Since 2024, the Paris Judicial Court has gradually expanded the typical piracy site blocking orders beyond residential Internet providers.

The initial order required Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco to actively block access to pirate sites through their own DNS resolvers, confirming that third-party intermediaries can be required to take responsibility. Not much later, VPN providers were added to the blocking roster.

Initially, these orders were to address circumvention techniques for domains that were already blocked through ISPs. The DNS resolver and VPN provider blockades limited these loopholes. Several blocking orders have followed since, but a series of orders that came out at the Paris Judicial Court take a different approach.

On March 18, Judge Jean-Christophe Gayet issued seven simultaneous rulings, targeting a broad range of online intermediaries that enable access to pirate sports streams in France. The cases were filed by the Spanish professional football league LaLiga, which requested blocking measures against 35 domain names of sports streaming sites.

The pirate sites listed include librefutboltv.su, which has over 27 million monthly visits, as well as smaller ones such as tflix.live, daddylive.dad, yallashooot.video, ballcontrol.click, and kora-live.im.

The targeted intermediaries span every layer of the technical stack: this includes major French ISPs, alternative DNS resolvers such as Google, Cloudflare, and Quad9, as well as several of the world’s largest VPN providers.

Court: LaLiga Lacks Standing

Interestingly, however, LaLiga was not victorious in court. In each of the seven cases, the court declared the league’s claims inadmissible.

The court explained that, under Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code, the right to bring blocking injunctions applies to rightsholders, broadcasting companies, and professional sports leagues. However, the court interprets that last category narrowly.

To qualify for protection, sports leagues must be created by a state-delegated federation under French law, specifically under Articles L. 131-14 and L. 132-1 of the Sports Code. As a Spanish association with no delegation from the French state, LaLiga does not meet that definition.

LaLiga argued that the law should also cover foreign leagues that commercialize their audiovisual rights, and that reading it otherwise would discriminate against non-French rights holders. However, the court rejected these arguments.

The restriction has nothing to do with LaLiga’s nationality, the court noted; the league simply needs a subdelegation from the French state to qualify for protection via site-blocking orders. Additionally, the court concluded that LaLiga is not directly harmed by piracy in France, as it assigned its exclusive French broadcast rights to beIN Sports France.

This same reasoning applied to all seven cases and initially appears to be a major setback for the football league. However, help was just around the corner.

beIN Sports Steps In

beIN Sports France, which holds exclusive broadcast rights to LaLiga in France as part of a deal with the Spanish league, intervened voluntarily in all seven cases.

As the company that acquired exclusive French broadcasting rights for LaLiga, it qualifies under the second category in Article L. 333-10. Unlike LaLiga, beIN could also point to documented harm, including evidence that 35 disputed domain names were streaming LaLiga matches, with beIN Sports branding visible in the pirate feeds.

The court ultimately concluded that there was grave and repeated infringement of beIN Sports France’s exclusive rights in all seven cases and granted the blocking orders in its name.

Blocking The Full Stack

What further stands out is the fact that these orders all came out on the same day, targeting nineteen French ISPs, three DNS resolvers, a CDN provider, and four VPN services. This broad approach ensures that the most popular circumvention options are immediately cut off.

The orders run until June 21, 2026, and are also dynamic in nature. This means that new domain names can be added in the future, once they are approved for blocking by France’s audiovisual regulator, ARCOM.

The ISP order will have the most direct impact. It includes France’s largest providers, such as Orange, SFR, Free, and Bouygues Telecom, as well as various smaller ones.

If subscribers try to circumvent these blocking measures by switching to alternative DNS resolvers, orders against Google, Cloudflare, and Quad9 will prevent this.

VPN providers are not necessarily an option either, as the court granted blocking orders against ProtonVPN, as well as CyberGhost and ExpressVPN. LaLiga also referenced orders against NordVPN and Surfshark jointly, but TorrentFreak was unable to locate these.

The Cloudflare order is the most technically comprehensive of the batch. It covers not only Cloudflare’s public DNS resolver but also its CDN, reverse proxy service, and WARP service under a single ruling. The court requires Cloudflare to block the domains across its infrastructure, by whatever technical means it chooses.

Some of the defendants raised counterarguments in court. For example, several VPN providers argued that Article L. 333-10 conflicts with the EU E-Commerce Directive, while others sought a referral to the Court of Justice. However, none of these arguments convinced the court.

Site Blocking Evolution

The seven court orders represent the most comprehensive single-day blocking action under France’s sports piracy framework, as far as we know. Whereas initial orders targeted single intermediary categories, these come in one full sweep.

LaLiga president Javier Tebas is pleased with the outcome and thanks beIN for their cooperation.

“These rulings represent a significant step forward because they extend protection to the entire technical ecosystem that piracy currently relies on. The fight against audiovisual fraud must grow through collaboration, as is the case here with beIN Sports France, which has been key to developing a solid and effective defense in the French market,” Tebas said.

After multiple successful site-blocking petitions, it’s clear that the French court sees a blocking role for a wide variety of intermediaries. This was recently confirmed by the Paris Court of Appeal too.

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A copy of the ISP blocking order (RG 25/10055) is available here (pdf). The Cloudflare order (RG 25/08543) can be found here (pdf). The Google order (RG 25/08548) is available here (pdf). The Quad9 order (RG 25/10053) is available here (pdf). The ProtonVPN order (RG 25/10054) is available here (pdf). The CyberGhost/ExpressVPN order (RG 25/08569) is available here (pdf).

Below is a list of all 35 targeted domain names:

• daddylive.dad
• daddylive2.top
• daddylivehd.world
• daddyliveru.top
• rojadirecta.at
• rojadirectaenvivo.me
• rojadirectaenvivo.sx
• la12hd.com
• jalaace2.cc
• jalaliveace3.cc
• stream196tp.com
• hoca4u.xyz
• bfpc.jllivetx.cc
• bienkoora.live
• kora-live.im
• yalla1shoot.com
• camel1.live
• yacine-tv.com
• ppv.to
• live-match-tv.net
• librefutboltv.su
• yallashooot.video
• tv.tflix.app
• hesgoal.im
• rojadirecta-tv.net
• directfr.sbs
• koora-live.net
• live.sia-live.live
• s3.stream-on.live
• yacine-tv.watch
• ar.kora-top.space
• envivolibre.com
• pl.yalashoot.xyz
• tflix.live
• ballcontrol.click

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Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 13 April 2026 at 5:58 pm AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of March) 1,297

RIP Matrix