The Oscars remain the most anticipated movie awards show of the year, followed closely by hundreds of millions of film enthusiasts around the globe.

In March, the 98th Academy Awards ceremony will return to the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, where millions of fans will watch the crowning of this year’s “Best Picture”.
.
There are currently ten contenders in the race for the prestigious award. The nominees range from Hollywood heavyweights such as F1 and One Battle After Another, to international critical darlings such as Norway’s Sentimental Value and Brazil’s The Secret Agent.

Sinners’ Oscar Nominations Record

While these are all serious contenders, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners clearly stands out. The movie received a record-breaking number of sixteen nominations last week, including one for the best picture category.

The record elevated the press attention for the film, which directly impacted legal demand. After the nominations, Sinners immediately shot back into the Top 10 on Max, while VOD sales on Prime Video and Apple TV also got a boost.

There is also a darker side to this increased exposure in the form of online piracy. Pirates are simply a subset of movie fans, and when legal demand increases, interest in pirate sites follows in the same direction.

We have reported on this phenomenon in the past, but this year offers one of the most clear examples.

Sinners’ Piracy Triples

By looking at the BitTorrent download estimates collected through a large sample of data, we can see the interest in Sinners tripling after the nominations were announced last Thursday.

Oscar Nominations Piracy (sample)

These data, collected with help from Iknow, also show a healthy 50% boost in downloads for Bugonia, another best picture nominee. However, that pales in comparison to the Sinners surge.

Meanwhile, the 2025 Superman release, which acts as a control group because it wasn’t nominated, saw no download boost at all. This confirms that the other observed increases are triggered by the Oscars nominations.

These findings once again show how the Oscar nominations can have a clear and direct effect on piracy numbers. And if Sinners can convert its record number of nominations into a record number of wins, we can expect an even bigger surge.

In closing, it is worth stressing that the download estimates reported here are based on a large sample of BitTorrent activity. This represents merely a fraction of the overall piracy interest, which also includes pirate streaming portals that are good for many millions of unauthorized views.

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Posted Wednesday 28 January 2026 at 7:07 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have one newcomer on the list. “Zootopia 2” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 26 are:

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

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Posted Tuesday 27 January 2026 at 4:45 am AEST (my time).

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In recent years, Aylo has taken an aggressive stance against pirate sites, doing everything possible to shut these down.

The parent company of Pornhub, which owns popular brands such as “Reality Kings”, “Brazzers”, “MOFOS”, has already won several lawsuits against high profile targets such as Daftsex and Goodporn.

Early last year, Aylo filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against a collection of pirate adult websites, including ‘Freshporno,’ ‘Kojka’, ‘PornHeal’. These eight sites were allegedly operated by someone named Anton Popravkin.

The complaint

To stop the infringing activity, Aylo’s copyright enforcement arm sent more than 10,000 DMCA takedown notices to the piracy ring. However. These notices failed to get the infringing videos removed, so Aylo decided to take the matter to court.

Aylo Requests Multi-Million Dollar Default

Aylo accused the piracy network, which reportedly received more than three million monthly visits, of publicly displaying many thousands of works without permission. This was done with a profit motive, making the operator liable for willful copyright infringement.

“Popravkin Anton willfully infringed Plaintiff’s Works at least 9,006 times: Plaintiff identified 9,006 of its copyrighted registered works being displayed across 27,105 infringing URLs on the Websites,” the complaint read.

“The sheer volume of infringements demonstrates Popravkin Anton’s deliberate and willful disregard for copyright law, as well as his ongoing operation of a business that operates by monetizing copyright infringement.”

The operator of the site never responded to the lawsuit, which left Aylo no other option than to request a default judgment. While Aylo could theoretically request $150,000 per work, for a total of more than a billion dollars in damages, it settled for a tenth of that.

In its motion for a default judgment, Aylo requested $15,000 in statutory damages per work infringed. With 9,006 works, this brings the total to $135,090,000 in statutory damages.

Court Awards $90,060,000 in Damages

Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Kymberly K. Evanson granted Aylo’s motion for default judgment. However, instead of awarding $15,000 per work, she reduced it to $10,000 per infringed work. In addition, Aylo was granted attorney’s fees and costs of $20,350.

In the order, Judge Evanson notes that Aylo hasn’t shared any persuasive evidence to justify its $15,000 claim. In addition, the court deems $10,000 per work sufficient to send a deterrent message to other prospective pirates.

“Because Plaintiff has not presented persuasive evidence to support its $15,000 valuation of each infringed work, the Court declines to assume that the full amount requested is appropriate,” the order reads.

“The amount awarded will nonetheless discourage wrongful conduct and uphold the integrity of copyright laws,” Judge Evanson adds.

Domain Name Seizures

While a $90 million damages award sounds good, it is unlikely that Aylo will recoup this, as the main defendant was not located. And since Anton Popravkin likely doesn’t reside in the United States, they will likely ignore the court order.

Therefore, the real value of the default judgment lies in the domain name transfers that were granted in response to the “willful” and “malicious” copyright ingringement.

The court issued a broad permanent injunction ordering the U.S.-based domain name registry Verisign to change the registrar for the eight targeted domains to EuroDNS. EuroDNS is subsequently instructed to change the registrant for those domain names directly to Aylo Premium Ltd.

“Verisign, Inc. shall change the registrar for the domain names 3prn.com, freshporno.net, frprn.com, homexvideo.com, kojka.com,mojva.com, onlineporno.cc, and pornheal.com to EuroDNS, and instruct EuroDNS to change the registrant for those domain names to Aylo Premium Ltd,” the order reads.

At the time of writing, all domains remain linked to the piracy ring, but it is expected that these will become unavailable later this week, when Aylo takes them over. Whether that will permanently keep the pirate sites offline remains to be seen.

—

A copy of the order granting the default judgment, issued by U.S. District Judge Kymberly K. Evanson, is available here (pdf). The order signed by the court clerk can be found here (pdf).

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Posted Tuesday 27 January 2026 at 4:31 am AEST (my time).

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The Diary of Anne Frank, written by a young girl hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II, is one of the best-known literary works in history.

While the diary’s importance is widely agreed upon, the accessibility of its digital likeness remains at the center of a modern-day copyright battle.

These copyrights are controlled by the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds, which was the sole heir of Anne’s father, Otto Frank. The Fonds states that many print versions of the diary remain protected for decades, and even the manuscripts are not freely available everywhere.

In the Netherlands, for example, certain sections of the manuscripts remain protected by copyright until 2037, even though they have entered the public domain in neighboring countries like Belgium.

Anne Frank ©

To navigate these conflicting laws, the Dutch Anne Frank Stichting published a scholarly edition online using “state-of-the-art” geo-blocking to prevent Dutch residents from accessing the site. Visitors from the Netherlands and other countries where the work is protected are met with a clear message, informing them about these access restrictions.

“The scholarly edition of the Anne Frank manuscripts cannot be made available in all countries, due to copyright considerations,” is the message disallowed visitors get to see.

Despite these blocking measures, the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds was not pleased. The Fonds essentially argued that if a block isn’t 100% bypass-proof, the content shouldn’t be online at all.

The Dutch lower court dismissed this argument, stating the defendants had taken reasonable measures to prevent access from the Netherlands. The Fonds appealed, without result, and the case is now before the Dutch Supreme Court, which referred several questions to the EU’s top court (CJEU) to decide the fate of VPN neutrality and the sufficiency of geo-blocking.

Court Adviser Backs VPN Neutrality

In an opinion published this month, Advocate General Rantos of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) sides with common sense, concluding that geo-blocking is a sufficient measure to protect against unauthorized access.

The opinion concludes that digital copyright protections can always be broken or bypassed. That by itself should not automatically mean that the publisher is liable, especially if ‘state-of-the-art’ geo-blocking measures are in place, as the Anne Frank Stichting argued.

“Liability would only arise if the technical measures were found to be deliberately ineffective so that they could be easily circumvented,” the opinion reads.

Equally important, Rantos concludes that a VPN provider isn’t liable for the unlawful actions of users who use their service to bypass geographical restrictions.

“The mere fact that those or similar services may be used for [unlawful] purposes is not sufficient to establish that the service providers themselves communicate the protected work to the public,” the Advocate General writes.

“It would be different if those service providers actively encouraged the unlawful use of their services. In that case, the service providers could be regarded as playing an essential role in making the works in question available.”

From the opinion
 

In other words, the opinion concludes that VPNs are neutral services and that they can only be held liable if they actively encourage copyright infringement or other wrongdoing.

What’s Next?

The opinion is not binding for the CJEU, which is expected to issue its final ruling later this year. This final ruling will be key for the digital future of the Anne Frank Diary, as well as all other geo-blocked content on the Internet.

If the court agrees with the opinion of Advocate General Rantos, the status quo will remain. However, if geo-blocking were somehow not to be sufficient, this would impact hundreds of popular sites and services, including all popular video streaming platforms.

Even worse, if VPNs were to be held liable for the actions of users without the providers’ awareness, that would create some significant backlash.

—

A copy of the opinion of Advocate General Athanasios Rantos, delivered on 15 January, is available here (pdf).

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Posted Monday 26 January 2026 at 4:45 am AEST (my time).

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For fans of manga and manhwa comics, Bato.to has been an icon for many years.

The pirate site has reportedly changed owners over the years, but through the main site and dozens of mirrors, it kept its many millions of monthly visitors on board.

Since last November, the site has not been running smoothly, however. Several moderators reported that the site’s operator, Larry, had become unreachable, which resulted in various technical problems.

Batoto Communities Shut Down

Earlier this week, the trouble appeared to worsen when the official Batoto Discord server, run by the moderation team, announced that it would shut down as well, citing legal challenges and ongoing issues with the site. This effectively confirmed that the site’s moderators were throwing in the towel.

Legal challenges

Not much later, the official Batoto subreddit followed the same route. While it would not shut down completely, the moderators officially cut its ties with anything piracy or Batoto-related.

“Due to recent legal developments, it is clear that all activity, discussion, or support related to the former website and its services has permanently ended,” the subreddit mods wrote.

“Out of respect for creators, rights holders, and applicable laws, this subreddit will no longer be affiliated with, connected to, or associated with the website in any way.”

Subreddit Compliance
 

The seemingly obligatory mention of supporting legal services suggests that this soft shutdown was also the result of legal action. In fact, it appears that Batoto-related people and communication channels are targeted across the board.

This includes newly launched Discord channels. Only those who abide by a strict set of rules to ban any type of infringement appear to survive. This includes the newly launched Yoru reading community, which specifically prohibits illegal content, pointing people to official Webtoon and Tapas releases instead.

Kakao Entertainment Takes Credit

While it is clear that legal pressure is being applied, the source remained unmentioned. Today we can officially confirm that Kakao Entertainment is driving the action.

Through its dedicated anti-piracy enforcement arm, P.CoK, the South Korean entertainment giant is categorically targeting Bato.to and many related people and services.

The most significant blow to the operation is the identification of Bato.to’s founder and core developer. P.CoK confirmed to TorrentFreak that they have tracked the individual to their country of residence, where legal proceedings are now active.

Responding to this threat, the P.CoK team tackled the problem from multiple sides. In addition to preparing a lawsuit against the operator, it went after other key channels, including the aforementioned communities on Reddit and Discord.

“We adopted a strategy that categorizes individuals involved in the operation into multiple tiers and applies tailored countermeasures to each group. Legal proceedings are currently underway in the country of residence of the founder and core developer,” P.CoK notes.

The P.CoK team

Cease and Desist

The people in lower tiers, including admins and moderators, were also identified. These all received personalized cease-and-desist letters, urging them to shut down their operation, or else.

“We have identified the majority of individuals who are directly or indirectly involved in the operation—such as sub-developers, moderators, and community administrators—and have sequentially issued Cease and Desist (C&D) letters to them,” P.CoK told us.

These cease-and-desist notices came with the relevant legal justification and a specific set of actions these people were expected to take. That likely means showing respect for rightsholders, as we have seen in a few of the public responses.

New Targets?

A final update by the subreddit team confirms the pressure from Kakao Entertainment. Clearly worried that ‘Reddit mods could be next,’ the subreddit was set to restricted.

The subreddit also clearly distances itself from a new Batoto-‘inspired’ site that surfaced online this week.

New?

P.CoK, which has a history of unconventional but effective anti-piracy actions, will undoubtedly keep an eye on any new sites that emerge. At the same time, it is also going after MangaPark and AniXL, which have repeatedly been linked to Batoto. In fact, the anti-piracy group notes that new legal proceedings are already being prepared.

“We are aware that some of these individuals are also involved in the operation of MangaPark and AniXL, and we are preparing strong legal actions against Mangapark as well as newly established Bato-affiliated sites,” P.CoK concludes, suggesting that their work is not done yet.

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Posted Saturday 24 January 2026 at 4:42 am AEST (my time).

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Originally the home of The Pirate Bay, Sweden has a long and well-documented history when it comes to online piracy.

As in other countries, however, many Swedish pirates have made the switch from relatively cumbersome torrents to on-demand streaming. That includes pirate IPTV services.

According to recent estimates, some 700,000 Swedish households have access to illegal IPTV services. These low-cost subscriptions are substantially cheaper than those offered by legitimate streaming services, but they nonetheless bring in serious revenue for the operators.

To curb the IPTV problem, Sweden has convicted operators and issued blocking orders. In addition, the Government plans to update local law to make it possible to issue fines to IPTV subscribers, effectively outlawing the purchase of these subscriptions.

New IPTV Crackdown

These potential fines are relevant again after Swedish authorities recently toppled the high-profile IPTV operation Nordicplay. As reported by Expressen, the prosecution has charged a 43-year-old man and a 55-year-old associate with gross accounting fraud.

The younger man is the main suspect, and he reportedly earned an estimated 35 million Swedish Kronor (approx. $3.8 million USD) in revenue. These IPTV payments came in through several companies, which acted as a front to disguise the operation.

Many of these payments came in through the Swedish mobile payment system Swish, as shown below. Swish is tied directly to a personal identity number, which likely explains why the subscribers could be accurately identified.

Some payments (screenshot via Expressen)
 

The men, who both deny any wrongdoing, are not being prosecuted for copyright-related crimes, but for fraud. According to the prosecution, they failed to report the proceeds for tax purposes.

The 43-year-old, who was previously convicted of fraud, was a relatively large reseller of Nordic One, which reportedly serves half of the Swedish IPTV market. And indeed, with many thousands of subscribers, the size of the operation was substantial.

4,886 Subscribers

When investigators searched the computer and phone of the main suspect, they found a list of more than 20,000 contact details. After follow-up investigations, 4,886 of these could be linked to payments.

These subscribers are not being prosecuted, but Sara Lindbäck of the local anti-piracy outfit Rights Alliance, suggests that the police could reach out to these subscribers to send a warning.

“If the police would inform them that ‘Hi, your customer information is found in a criminal investigation,’ I think people might become a little more aware,” Lindbäck told Expressen.

This type of outreach would not be unprecedented. Previously, similar warnings went out to IPTV customers in the UK.

In the near future, however, Sweden could have an even stronger deterrent. As announced last September by Minister of Culture, Parisa Liljestrand, new legislation aims to make it possible to fine IPTV subscribers.

This updated legislation explicitly outlaws the consumption/viewing of pirate IPTV services, which is largely seen as a legal grey area now. If approved, this proposal will go into effect on July 1, 2026.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 6:10 pm AEST (my time).

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

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

While Anna’s Archive initially released only Spotify metadata, and no actual music, the industry was on high alert. Over Christmas, Spotify and the major labels prepared a legal response in U.S. federal court.

Music Companies File Complaint Under Seal

On December 29, Spotify, UMG, Sony, Warner, and other labels filed their complaint at the Southern District of New York. They accuse Anna’s Archive of mass copyright infringement, breach of contract, DMCA violations, and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The complaint
 

The lawsuit alleges that Anna’s Archive “brazenly” circumvented Spotify’s DRM. The site scraped 86 million music files and metadata for 256 million tracks from Spotify, which would all eventually be released publicly.

“…Anna’s Archive has threatened to imminently mass-release and freely distribute its pirated copies of the sound recording files to the public, without authorization from or compensation to the relevant rights holders. Such widespread and illegal infringement would irreparably harm the music industry..,” the complaint reads.

The complaint comes with a request for a preliminary injunction and a restraining order that aim to take Anna’s Archive offline. All these documents were filed under seal, as the shadow library might otherwise be tipped off and take countermeasures.

These documents were filed ex-parte and kept away from Anna’s Archive. According to Spotify and the labels, this is needed “so that Anna’s Archive cannot pre-emptively frustrate” the countermeasures they seek.

Restraining Order Takes Out Anna’s Domains

The lawsuit, which was unsealed recently, explains directly why Anna’s Archive lost several of its domain names over the past weeks. The .ORG domain was suspended by the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry (PIR) in early January, while a domain registrar took the .SE variant offline a few days later.

“We don’t believe this has to do with our Spotify backup,” AnnaArchivist said at the time, but court records prove them wrong.

The unsealed paperwork shows that the court granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) on January 2, which aimed to target Anna’s Archive hosting and domain names. The sealed nature of this order also explains why the .ORG registry informed us that it could not comment on the suspension last week.

While the .ORG and the .SE domains are suspended now, other domains remain operational. This suggests that the responsible registrars and registries do not automatically comply with U.S. court orders.

Injunction Also Targets Hosting Companies and Cloudflare

While the TRO was not public, a preliminary injunction that was issued by U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff on January 16th shows how broad the granted powers are.

After reviewing the evidence, and without a defense, the court concluded that the music companies’ copyright infringement claim will hold up. Therefore, the court ordered that Anna’s Archive is enjoined from ‘hosting, linking to, [or] distributing’ the copyrighted works.

Since it’s uncertain whether Anna’s Archive will comply, the injunction also targets many third-party intermediaries, including domain registries and registrars, hosting companies, and other service providers.

These companies should assist in stopping the infringing activity on Anna’s Archive.

Third parties
 

To avoid uncertainty, the court explicitly mentions that the targeted companies include the Public Interest Registry; Cloudflare Inc.; Switch Foundation; The Swedish Internet
Foundation; National Internet Exchange of India; Njalla SRL; IQWeb FZ-LLC; Immaterialism Ltd.; Hosting Concepts B.V.; and Tucows Domains Inc.

The addition of Cloudflare stands out because the company operates a proxy service, without hosting Anna’s Archive’s content permanently. However, that was sufficient for the court to issue the order.

Spotify Downloads Disappear from Anna’s Archive

While the unsealed documents resolve the domain suspension mystery, it is only the start of the legal battle in court. It is expected that Spotify and the music companies will do everything in their power to take further action, if needed.

Interestingly, however, it appears that the music industry lawsuit may have already reached its goal. A few days ago, the dedicated Spotify download section was removed by Anna’s Archive.

‘Unavailable until further notice’
 

Whether this removal is linked to the legal troubles is unknown. However, it appears that Anna’s Archive stopped the specific distribution of Spotify content alleged in the complaint, seemingly in partial compliance with the injunction’s ban on ‘making available’ the scraped files.

Whether this will mean that all troubles are now over has yet to be seen. For now, the copyright infringement allegations and other claims remain unresolved in court.

—

A copy of the unsealed complaint filed by Spotify and the labels is available here (pdf). The preliminary injunction can be found here (pdf).

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 4:44 am AEST (my time).

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

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

This week we have one newcomer on the list. “Zootopia 2” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 19 are:

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

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Posted Tuesday 20 January 2026 at 4:38 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

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, Retro-48B, InstructRetro, and Megatron. These are trained using their own hardware and with help from large text libraries, much like other tech giants do.

Authors Sue NVIDIA for Copyright Infringement

Like other tech companies, NVIDIA has also seen significant legal pushback from copyright holders in response to its training methods. This includes authors, who, in various lawsuits, accused tech companies of training their models on pirated books.

In early 2024, for example, several authors 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. Since this happened without permission, the authors demanded compensation.

In response, NVIDIA defended its actions as fair use, noting that books are nothing more than statistical correlations to its AI models. However, the allegations didn’t go away. On the contrary, the plaintiffs found more evidence during discovery.

‘NVIDIA Contacted Anna’s Archive’

Last Friday, the authors filed an amended complaint that significantly expands the scope of the lawsuit. In addition to adding more books, authors, and AI models, it also includes broader “shadow library” claims and allegations.

The authors, including Abdi Nazemian, now cite various internal Nvidia emails and documents, suggesting that the company willingly downloaded millions of copyrighted books.

The new complaint alleges that “competitive pressures drove NVIDIA to piracy”, which allegedly included collaborating with the controversial Anna’s Archive library.

Competitive pressures
 

According to the amended complaint, a member of Nvidia’s data strategy team reached out to Anna’s Archive to find out what the pirate library could offer the trillion-dollar company

“Desperate for books, NVIDIA contacted Anna’s Archive—the largest and most brazen of the remaining shadow libraries—about acquiring its millions of pirated materials and ‘including Anna’s Archive in pre-training data for our LLMs’,” the complaint notes.

“Because Anna’s Archive charged tens of thousands of dollars for ‘high-speed access’ to its pirated collections […] NVIDIA sought to find out what “high-speed access” to the data would look like.”

Anna’s Archive Points Out Legal ‘Concern’

According to the complaint, Anna’s Archive then warned Nvidia that its library was illegally acquired and maintained. Because the site previously wasted time on other AI companies, the pirate library asked NVIDIA executives if they had internal permission to move forward.

This permission was allegedly granted within a week, after which Anna’s Archive provided the chip giant with access to its pirated books.

“Within a week of contacting Anna’s Archive, and days after being warned by Anna’s Archive of the illegal nature of their collections, NVIDIA management gave ‘the green light’ to proceed with the piracy. Anna’s Archive offered NVIDIA millions of pirated copyrighted books.”

The complaint states that Anna’s Archive promised to provide NVIDIA with access to roughly 500 terabytes of data. This included millions of books that are usually only accessible through Internet Archive’s digital lending system, which itself has been targeted in court.

The complaint does not explicitly mention whether NVIDIA ended up paying Anna’s Archive for access to the data.

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that NVIDIA also stands accused of using other pirated sources. In addition to the previously included Books3 database, the new complaint also alleges that the company downloaded books from LibGen, Sci-Hub, and Z-Library.

Direct and Vicarious Copyright Infringement

In addition to downloading and using pirated books for its own AI training, the authors allege NVIDIA distributed scripts and tools that allowed its corporate customers to automatically download “The Pile“, which contains the Books3 pirated dataset.

These allegations lead to new claims of vicarious and contributory infringement, alleging that NVIDIA generated revenue from customers by facilitating access to these pirated datasets.

Based on these and other claims, the authors request to be compensated for the damages they suffered. This applies to the named authors, but also to potentially hundreds of others who may later join the class action lawsuit.

As far as we know, this is the first time that correspondence between a major U.S. tech company and Anna’s Archive was revealed in public. This will only raise the profile of the pirate library, which just lost several domain names, even further.

—

A copy of the first consolidated and amended complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf). The named authors include Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, Stewart O’Nan, Andre Dubus III, and Susan Orlean.

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Posted Tuesday 20 January 2026 at 4:30 am AEST (my time).

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It is rare for a “legal threat” made in a news article to actually materialize into a class-action lawsuit years later, but that is precisely what has happened with Brandon Clement and his fellow storm chasers.

Back in 2022, we reported on the “never-ending stream of infringements” these independent videographers were facing on Facebook and Instagram.

At the time, Clement was deeply frustrated with a system where billions of views were being siphoned off by “copyright hijackers”. He warned them that legal action might be needed to force a breakthrough, asking copyright lawyers to reach out.

Fast-forward to January 2026, and that early warning has escalated into a class-action complaint filed in a Texas federal court. The lawsuit accuses Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms, of various types of copyright infringement.

Meta Fails to Take Down Infringing Videos

Filed by a group of extreme weather videographers, whose content often spreads virally, the complaint alleges that Meta often fails to enforce its own terms, which prohibit copyright infringement.

The complaint
 

In this case, the plaintiffs are not referring to an occasional takedown notice that was ignored. The plaintiffs claim to have sent ‘hundreds of thousands’ of notices over the years, and the lawsuit identifies hundreds of specific DMCA requests that Meta allegedly ignored or improperly handled.

“Despite submitting compliant DMCA take-down requests, Meta, for various improper reasons, failed to take-down the unauthorized uses of Plaintiffs’ various works by the Infringing Users,” the complaint reads.

Allegedly, the content that was not removed by Meta could often be linked to popular accounts that presumably earned the social media giant significant revenues.

“Meta, without providing any reasoning, has numerous times incorrectly determined that a conflicting party with millions of followers has ‘won’ a video ownership conflict as to certain videos, which then precludes Plaintiffs from using Rights Manager to locate infringing uses for their copyrighted videos,” the complaint notes.

According to the complaint, Meta temporarily blocked one of the videographers from using its “Rights Manager” takedown tool because they were “misusing this feature by going too fast.

Too Fast
 

In addition, Meta also allegedly acted as the ‘judge and jury’ by making fair use determinations, often without providing any legal reasoning or an opportunity for the creators to appeal.

One of the videos referenced in the evidence list was shot and copyrighted by Max Olson, covering a 2022 storm surge. A watermarked clip featuring more than two minutes of this footage was posted on Facebook by Ariana News. It remains online today, after Facebook effectively brushed aside the infringement claim by citing fair use.

Information shared with TorrentFreak shows Facebook’s full response below. Despite the length of the clip and the original creator’s watermark, the company claims it is not clear whether the video infringes any copyrights.

Facebook’s response

Leaked Documents as a Smoking Gun

The complaint lists more than 200 specific instances where Meta allegedly failed to act. In doing so, it also mentions various popular accounts by name, some of which the videographers see as persistent infringers with millions of followers.

One of the examples
 

To further bolster the allegation that Meta willingly ignores abuse, the complaint cites leaked documents that were reported by Reuters last November. These documents showed that fraudulent advertising was a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream for Meta.

While this is not directly linked to copyright infringement, it reportedly revealed that scams of small advertisers would be shut down after eight warnings, while so-called ‘High Value Accounts’ could accrue more than 500 strikes before Meta would take action.

This allegedly shows that Meta can sometimes prioritize its own profits over protecting the legitimate interests of others. The plaintiffs believe that this also applies to their case.

Infringements and Damages Claims

The plaintiffs accuse Meta of failing to properly respond to DMCA takedown notices, which means that it no longer should be able to claim Safe Harbor protection. In addition, the company’s alleged arbitrary fair use determinations make it liable for direct copyright infringement too.

“Meta has failed to comply with the take-down requirements under the DMCA and its own intellectual property policies regarding repeat infringers, indicating gross negligence in its legal compliance which is essential for a company with Meta’s reach, capabilities, and level of sophistication.”

“Meta’s failure to effectively enforce its own copyright policies indicates de facto willful infringement,” the complaint adds.

The lawsuit includes various claims, including direct copyright infringement, contributory infringement, vicarious infringement, and inducement. The videographers don’t ask for a specific damages amount, but with potential damages of $150,000 per work, this can easily run into the millions of dollars.

Meta has yet to respond formally to the complaint, but it is expected to contest these allegations to the best of its abilities.

—

A copy of the class action complaint, filed this week at the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, is available here (pdf).

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Posted Monday 19 January 2026 at 5:15 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

Anna’s Archive has had its fair share of domain troubles over the past two weeks.

First, the site lost control over its original annas-archive.org domain after the U.S.-based Public Interest Registry (PIR) placed it on serverHold.

PIR typically only takes these kinds of measures based on a court order. However, when we asked for more details, the registry informed us that it was “unable to comment on the situation at this time,” only adding to the mystery.

A few days ago, the domain trouble continued when Anna’s Archive’s .SE domain suddenly became unresponsive after being operational for years. For this domain, the registrar took action, as the site was put on clientHold. While we tried to get additional information from the registrar, our requests remained unanswered.

While it is clear that ‘something’ is going on, it’s not clear what. The troubles started not long after Anna’s Archive announced that it had backed up Spotify, but there is no concrete link to a music industry push against the site.

OCLC Seeks Permanent Injunction

What we do know for certain is that Anna’s Archive’s troubles are not over yet. Yesterday, a federal court in Ohio issued a default judgment and permanent injunction against the site’s unidentified operator(s).

This order was requested by OCLC, which owns the proprietary WorldCat database that was scraped and published by Anna’s Archive more than two years ago. OCLC initially demanded millions of dollars in damages but eventually dropped this request, focusing on taking the site down through an injunction that would also apply to intermediaries.

“Anna’s Archive’s flagrantly illegal actions have damaged and continue to irreparably damage OCLC. As such, issuance of a permanent injunction is necessary to stop any further harm to OCLC,” the request read.

This pivot makes sense since Anna’s Archive did not respond to the lawsuit and would likely ignore all payment demands too. However, with the right type of court order, third-party services such as hosting companies and domain registrars might come along.

Court Grants Default Judgment

The permanent injunction, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson yesterday, does not mention any third-party services by name. However, it is directed at all parties that are “in active concert and participation with” Anna’s Archive.

Specifically, the site’s operator and these third parties are prohibited from scraping WorldCat data, storing or distributing the data on Anna’s Archive websites, and encouraging others to store, use or share this data.

Additionally, the site has to delete all WorldCat data, which also includes all torrents.

The order
 

Judge Watson denied the default judgment for ‘unjust enrichment’ and ‘tortious interference.’ However, he granted the order based on the ‘trespass to chattels’ and ‘breach of contract’ claims.

The latter is particularly noteworthy, as the judge ruled that because Anna’s Archive is a ‘sophisticated party’ that scraped the site daily, it had constructive notice of the terms and entered into a ‘browsewrap‘ agreement simply by using the service.

While these nuances are important for legal experts, the result for Anna’s Archive is that it lost. And while there are no monetary damages, the permanent injunction can certainly have an impact.

More Trouble Ahead?

It is expected that OCLC will use the injunction to motivate third-party intermediaries to take action against Anna’s Archive.

Whether intermediaries are considered in “active concert” with Anna’s Archive will differ based on who you ask. However, OCLC previously said that it intends to “take the
judgment to website hosting services to remove WorldCat data from Anna’s Archive’s websites”.

The injunction that was issued yesterday obviously cannot explain the earlier domain name troubles. That said, it’s not unthinkable that OCLC will also send the injunction to domain registrars and registries, to add further pressure.

—

A copy of the opinion and order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Watson is available here (pdf).

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Posted Saturday 17 January 2026 at 5:10 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

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

Initially, rightsholders set their aim at DNS resolvers. This resulted in orders targeted at Cloudflare, Google, and others, requiring them to actively block access to pirate sites through their public DNS resolvers.

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

Last year, rightsholders cast their net even wider by targeting VPN providers with similar blocking demands. Again, the Paris Court acknowledged the threat of circumvention, ordering CyberGhost, ExpressVPN, NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and Surfshark to start blocking access to specific websites in France.

VPN Blocking Expands

The VPN blocking effort was not a one-off. After the first order was granted in May, more followed in June and July. These additional orders target various sports piracy sites as requested by the French entertainment powerhouse Canal Plus (SECP) and beIN Sports.

After this initial barrage, the blocking activity seemed to have quieted down, but it is far from over. On December 18, the Paris Judicial Court issued a new blocking order. This time around, the French top football league (LFP) and its commercial arm are the requesting parties.

As in previous orders, ProtonVPN, Nordvpn, Cyberghost, Surfshark and ExpressVPN are the main targets. These VPN providers have to block access to several domains that provide access to pirated sports streams.

The order covers 13 initial domains, including miztv.top, strikeout.im, and prosmarterstv.com. However, it is a ‘dynamic’ order in the sense that, through the overseeing body ARCOM, LFP can add new domains in case additional mirrors and proxies are launched. These blocks remain active for the entire 2025/2026 football season.

The court concludes that these VPNs help people to bypass existing site-blocking measures, rendering ISP blocking ineffective. While the VPN blockades are no silver bullet, combined with other blocking measures they should make it more difficult to access these pirate sites.

The No-Log Defense

All VPN providers, except ProtonVPN, appeared in court to argue a defense. They raised various arguments, with the “no-log” defense from Surfshark and NordVPN standing out.

Specifically, the VPNs argued that their “no-log” policy means they do not track user IP addresses or geolocate their users. Therefore, a court order to block access only for French users would violate their contractual obligations.

The court was not very receptive to this argument. Instead, it bluntly concluded that “the contractual stipulations binding VPN service providers to their clients cannot be invoked against [the plaintiffs] who have demonstrated an infringement of their rights.”

The court stressed that blocking the domains does not require the service to permanently store information on its users. The VPNs simply have to make sure that the sites are blocked from France.

In addition, the court rejected the notion that the blocking measures would constitute a “general monitoring obligation”, which is not allowed under the EU’s DSA, because the measures are limited to specific domains and end after the 2025-2026 football season.

Court Rejects Other Defenses

The VPNs also argued that their services don’t qualify as “technical intermediaries” under Article L. 333-10 of the Sports Code, but that was denied by the Paris court as well. The same applies to the proportionality and effectiveness arguments, which all failed.

The court’s logic throughout the order is that technical neutrality does not equal legal immunity.

By citing the DSA and the Sports Code, the judge effectively argues that VPN services can be key intermediaries in the piracy ecosystem. Therefore, they are legally obligated to act.

“Contrary to the assertions of Surfshark and NordVPN, the mere act of serving as a bridge to enable access to the pirate sites fulfills the function of transmission. Even if an intermediary acts in a passive, automatic, and neutral manner during the connection between internet domains, it nonetheless remains an essential agent in the transmission of data from one domain to another,” the (translated) order reads.

What Happens Next?

The latest ruling confirms that VPN providers can be obligated to block pirate sites, at least in France. However, the final word hasn’t been said.

Speaking with TorrentFreak this week, a NordVPN spokesperson confirms that their appeal is already underway. The company did not directly explain how it complies with the court order but instead said that site-blocking measures are futile.

“While it may address superficial cases, it fails to tackle the root causes of piracy. Pirates can easily circumvent these blocks by using subdomains: blocking does not eliminate the content itself or reduce the incentives for piracy,” NordVPN notes.

“Effective piracy control should focus on eliminating the source of the content, targeting hosting providers, cutting off financing for illegal operations, and increasing the availability of legitimate content.”

In addition, NordVPN notes that, since the French order targets reputable VPNs, users may choose lower-quality free VPNs that will remain a loophole for pirates.

For now, however, the targeted VPN providers have to find a way to implement the blocking order. The court order doesn’t specify any technical measures, so they are free to do as they please, as long as the targeted sites are unavailable.

If the French VPN blockades are ultimately upheld, some providers may choose to leave the country entirely, but none have made this drastic step yet.

—

A copy of the order issued by the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris in favor of LFP is available here (pdf). A list of all the targeted domain names is available below.

1. miztv.top
2. strikeout.im
3. qatarstreams.me
4. iptvfrancai.com
5. vip.kata17.xyz
6. iptv-france4k.fr
7. front-main.4k-drm.com
8. prosmarterstv.com
9. line.line-dino.com
10. iptvninja.fr
11. cdnhome.pro
12. elitetv.fr
13. smatest.xyz

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Posted Friday 16 January 2026 at 4:38 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

The battle against online piracy takes place on many fronts.

In addition to tackling infringing content at the source, copyright holders are increasingly focused on the platforms where these services are advertised and promoted.

These advertisements increase the exposure of illegal services, including pirate IPTV subscriptions. Additionally, advertisements on mainstream sites and platforms can give the impression that these pirate services are legitimate deals.

A Groupon IPTV Deal?

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN is one of the organizations that scours the web for these types of pirate ads. This includes monitoring the traditional advertising platforms such as Google, but also indirect promotion hubs such as Groupon.

Groupon offers its users a wide variety of deals, and BREIN recently spotted one for an IPTV service that was too good to be true. BREIN reported its findings to Groupon, which took “almost immediate” action, according to the anti-piracy group.

BREIN does not name the IPTV service, but the only Dutch IPTV-related advertisement we see on Groupon is for OpliTV. This now-removed deal offered a 32% discount on top of an already extremely cheap annual plan.

OpliTV offer (translated & now offline)

Needless to say, these types of services have serious drawbacks. They may be linked to criminal activity and can be pulled offline at any minute, for example, which may also make them rather expensive in hindsight.

Trusted Flagger

BREIN is pleased with Groupon’s swift action, noting that this is essential to stop promotions for these types of services.

“It is crucial that online infringements are stopped quickly to prevent irreparable damage. This is especially true for well-known, legal platforms where consumers can be confused about the legality of the offering,” BREIN notes.

Interestingly, BREIN suggests that its status as “trusted flagger” under the EU Digital Services Act helps to get intermediaries to act quickly.

“This swift action underscores the importance of the BREIN Foundation’s status as a ‘Trusted Flagger,’ which requires intermediaries to take action as a matter of priority,” the anti-piracy group writes.

BREIN officially received the trusted flagger status last September which raised its profile. According to BREIN Director Bastiaan van Ramshorst, this immediately made a difference.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Van Ramshorst says that intermediaries such as Groupon now treat BREIN as a trusted party, which typically means that takedown notices are handled with priority, as the IPTV example shows.

The rapid takedown does not prevent similar deals from showing up at Groupon, however. While writing this article, we spotted a deal for another dirt-cheap IPTV service that offers access to 29,000+ channels. According to Groupon, this ‘hot’ deal has been sold more than 1,000 times already.

Premium IPTV Subscription Offer (still online)
 

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Posted Thursday 15 January 2026 at 5:05 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

 Formerly known as Mindgeek, Aylo is the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube. It also owns many adult brands, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.

The company controls an impressive library of more than 40,000 registered copyrighted works. When this content appears on third-party sites, it doesn’t hesitate to take legal action.

Last summer, for example, Aylo Premium sued the operators of PornXP, who were initially identified as “John Does.” As the case moved forward, Aylo pinpointed the alleged operator, Alex Abdullaev, in Kyrgyzstan. However, when Aylo sent someone to personally serve their suspect in the Central Asian country, no one answered the door.

Without a formal response from the defendant, Aylo eventually requested a default judgment at the U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Washington. According to Aylo, the pirate site network cost them over $172 million per month in potential lost subscriptions, based on PornXP’s 17 million monthly visitors.

In an attempt to recoup part of the damage, the adult entertainment company requested $15,000 in damages for each of the 2,040 infringing works, totaling more than $30 million.

Court Grants $10m and Domain Seizures

In an order issued last month, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle issued a default judgment in favor of Aylo. While the Kyrgyzstani operator is held liable, the court reduced the requested damages by a third, to a little over $10 million.

“Aylo has demonstrated Abdullaev willfully infringed its copyrighted works and a statutory damages award is warranted and required. However, the Court in its discretion declines to award Aylo the $30.6 million it requests,” Judge Settle writes.

“The Court finds that only a fraction of the visitors would have paid for Aylo’s services. In its discretion and in the interests of justice, the Court will award $5,000 for each of the 2,040 offending works, totaling $10,200,000,” the order adds.

From the court’s order
 

In these types of cases it is highly unlikely that the defendant will pay anything. More important, perhaps, is the domain seizure order that was also granted by Judge Settle. Specifically, the order specifies that registries have to disable and transfer the PornXP domains.

Porkbun Does Not (Have to) Comply

At first glance, it appeared that the order allowed Aylo to seize control of the PornXP domains. However, Aylo’s enforcement arm immediately ran into trouble when it asked the American domain registrar Porkbun to comply.

On December 19, Aylo’s attorney, Ethan Jacobs, asked Porkbun to transfer a dozen domain names, including pornxp.click, pornxp.club, pornxp.download, pornxp.lat, pornxp.one, and pornxp.pics. However, that didn’t go as planned, as Porkbun refused to comply.

In a response to Aylo, the company argued that the court’s order only commanded “registries” (which manage the domains) to disable and transfer the domains, not “registrars”, which are the companies that sell these domain names.

No registrars

This distinction is more than just semantics. In the Internet ecosystem, registries and registrars have different technical capabilities and legal obligations. By specifically naming registries in the permanent injunction, registrars such as Porkbun are not required to comply.

Aylo Requests Amended Court Order

For Aylo, it is key that domain registrars are covered. Many of these companies, such as Porkbun, Namesilo, and GoDaddy, are based in the U.S. and directly subject to the court’s jurisdiction. The same doesn’t automatically apply to foreign domain registries, which may not comply with American court orders.

In response to Porkbun’s refusal, Aylo filed an ex parte motion last Friday, asking the court to amend the order to explicitly include the “registrars”. This would compel Porkbun to disable the PornXP domains. Yesterday, this amended order was signed by Judge Settle.

The updated injunction now outlines a specific technical process and names the registrars and registries. For example, it requires registrars like Porkbun, NameSilo, and Spaceship to change the registrar of record to EuroDNS, which will then move the domains into Aylo’s name.

Amended Judgment
 

For now, most of the roughly three-dozen PornXP domains listed in the legal paperwork remain active, either directly or through a redirect. That includes the Porkbun-linked domains, which will likely go offline soon after the registrar processes the amended order.

Interestingly, several domains that are linked to foreign domain registries remain online too. For example, PornXP’s .eu domain is managed by EURid which is linked to the European Commission, while the .me domain is sponsored by the Government of Montenegro. This suggests that these foreign entities have not complied with the original injunction either. Whether that will change now that they are directly named has yet to be seen.

The American registries Verisign (.com) and the Public Interest Registry (.org) did comply with the injunction, however.

This isn’t Aylo’s first legal go-around. The company followed a nearly identical playbook in its previous battles against Goodporn and Daftsex, securing judgments of $2.1 million and $32 million, respectively. These sites also proved to be rather difficult to shut down, and their remnants can still be found online.

—

A copy of the initial court order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle is available here (pdf). The amended judgment can be found here (pdf).

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Posted Wednesday 14 January 2026 at 4:00 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have one newcomer on the list. “Zootopia 2” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 12 are:

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

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Posted Tuesday 13 January 2026 at 4:06 am AEST (my time).

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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.

Super Dynamic++ Anti-Hydra Injunctions

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.

To deal with this problem, the dynamic injunction was invented. These orders were issued to more effectively deny access to content made available on pirate sites. ISPs were not only required to block original domains but also any clones and mirror sites that surfaced after the order was signed.

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.

Hollywood Targets U.S. Companies Through India

The ability to target domain name registrants proved to be a game changer. Over the past two years, it allowed rightsholders to disable domains of various prominent pirate sites, some with dozens of millions of visitors. While these sites could simply register new domains, the legal efforts certainly affected their operation.

For this reason, it is no surprise to see that several American movie industry players have ramped up their enforcement actions in India, targeting hundreds of domains at a time. And since these orders effectively suspend domains at various domain name registrars, new requests keep coming in.

As reported by Verdictum a few days ago, the High Court in New Delhi issued a new blocking injunction on December 18, targeting more than 150 pirate site domains, including yflix.to, animesuge.bz, bs.to, and many others.

The complaint is filed by Warner Bros., Apple, Crunchyroll, Disney, and Netflix, which are all connected to the MPA’s anti-piracy arm, ACE. The referenced works include some of the most pirated titles, such as Stranger Things, Squid Game, and Silo.

Global Kill Switch Fails

In addition to targeting Indian ISPs, the order also lists various domain name registries and related organizations as defendants. This includes American registrars such as Namecheap and GoDaddy, but also the government of the Kingdom of Tonga, which is linked to .to domains.

By requiring domain name registrars to take action, the Indian court orders have a global impact.

In addition to suspending the domain names within three days days, the domain name registrars are given four weeks to disclose the relevant subscriber information connected to these domains.

“[The registrars] shall lock and suspend Defendant Nos. 1 to 47 websites within 72 hours of being communicated with a copy of this Order and shall file all the Basic Subscriber Information, including the name, address, contact information, email addresses, bank details, IP logs, and any other relevant information […] within four weeks of being communicated with a copy of this Order,” the High Court wrote.

Not All Domain ‘Registrars’ Comply

While the “Dynamic+” injunction is designed to be a global kill switch, its effectiveness depends entirely on the cooperation of the domain name registrars. Since most of these are based outside of India, their compliance is not guaranteed.

By now, the 72-hour deadline to comply has long passed, so we can effectively see which registrars have taken action and which ones haven’t.

According to our analysis, it appears that most domain names have not been suspended. These pirate sites domains continue to be accessible today. Some continue running from their original domains, while others redirect to new ones, suggesting that they remain controlling their original owners.

This includes domains that are linked to Namecheap, Tucows, GoDaddy, NameSilo, Dynadot, OVH and others. The government of the Kingdom of Tonga did not comply with the Indian court order either.

Tonga!
 

As far as we can see, domains linked to the American registrar Porkbun, the UK-based WHG Hosting services, and the Lithuanian registrar Hostinger were fully suspended. Registrar.eu also put some domains on clientHold, and the one that remains accessible (animesuge.bz) is linked to Namecheap now.

Non-compliant registrars
 

It’s not unprecedented for foreign companies, including American ones, not to comply with Indian court orders. However, in this case, it is worth noting that Namecheap previously appeared to comply with similar orders from the Delhi High Court.

The non-compliance must come as a disappointment to Netflix, Warner Bros. and the others. However, they will likely be back in court for more blocking and suspension orders soon enough.

All in all, it is clear that India’s High Court has a streamlined process in place that effectively orders local ISPs to block pirate sites. However, the intended global reach seems to be restricted to a few registrars, for now.

—

A copy of the High Court order, issued on December 18, 2025, by Justice Tejas Karia, is available here (pdf). The court order includes 163 unique domain names, some of which are not linked to a registrar. An overview of the 125 domains that are linked to targeted registrars and related entities is provided below. .

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Posted Tuesday 13 January 2026 at 3:52 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

Launched in 2024, Italy’s elaborate ‘Piracy Shield‘ blocking scheme was billed as the future of anti-piracy efforts.

To effectively tackle live sports piracy, its broad blocking powers aim to block piracy-related domain names and IP addresses within 30 minutes.

While many pirate sources have indeed been blocked, the Piracy Shield is not without controversy. There have been multiple reports of overblocking, where the anti-piracy system blocked access to legitimate sites and services.

Many of these overblocking instances involved the American Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, which has been particularly critical of Italy’s Piracy Shield. In addition to protesting the measures in public, Cloudflare allegedly refused to filter pirate sites through its public 1.1.1.1 DNS.

1.1.1.1: Too Big to Block?

This refusal prompted an investigation by AGCOM, which now concluded that Cloudflare openly violated its legal requirements in the country. Following an amendment, the Piracy Shield also requires DNS providers and VPNs to block websites.

The dispute centers specifically on the refusal to comply with AGCOM Order 49/25/CONS, which was issued in February 2025. The order required Cloudflare to block DNS resolution and traffic to a list of domains and IP addresses linked to copyright infringement.

Cloudflare reportedly refused to enforce these blocking requirements through its public DNS resolver. Among other things, Cloudflare countered that filtering its DNS would be unreasonable and disproportionate.

Cloudflare’s arguments (translated)

The company warned that doing so would affect billions of daily queries and have an “extremely negative impact on latency,” slowing down the service for legitimate users worldwide.

AGCOM was unmoved by this “too big to block” argument.

The regulator countered that Cloudflare has all the technological expertise and resources to implement the blocking measures. AGCOM argued the company is known for its complex traffic management and rejected the suggestion that complying with the blocking order would break its service.

€14,247,698 Fine

After weighing all arguments, AGCOM imposed a €14,247,698 (USD $16.7m) fine against Cloudflare, concluding that the company failed to comply with the required anti-piracy measures. The fine represents 1% of the company’s global revenue, where the law allows for a maximum of 2%.

AGCOM’s conclusion (translated)
 

According to AGCOM, this is the first fine of this type, both in scope and size. This is fitting, as the regulator argued that Cloudflare plays a central role.

“The measure, in addition to being one of the first financial penalties imposed in the copyright sector, is particularly significant given the role played by Cloudflare” AGCOM notes, adding that Cloudflare is linked to roughly 70% of the pirate sites targeted under its regime.

In its detailed analysis, the regulator further highlighted that Cloudflare’s cooperation is “essential” for the enforcement of Italian anti-piracy laws, as its services allow pirate sites to evade standard blocking measures.

What’s Next?

Cloudflare has strongly contested the accusations throughout AGCOM’s proceedings and previously criticized the Piracy Shield system for lacking transparency and due process.

While the company did not immediately respond to our request for comment, it will almost certainly appeal the fine. This appeal may also draw the interest of other public DNS resolvers, such as Google and OpenDNS.

AGCOM, meanwhile, says that it remains fully committed to enforcing the local piracy law. The regulator notes that since the Piracy Shield started in February 2024, 65,000 domain names and 14,000 IP addresses were blocked.

—

A copy of AGCOM’s detailed analysis and the associated order (N. 333/25/CONS) available here (pdf).

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Posted Saturday 10 January 2026 at 6:13 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

The legal battle between X Corp. and the music industry has just escalated from a straightforward copyright lawsuit into a full-blown antitrust war.

The dispute started in 2023, with various music publishers accusing X of ‘breeding’ mass copyright infringement, and appeared to steer toward a settlement last summer.

X Sues Music Publishers

That settlement never came. Instead, the legal battle motivated X to gather sufficient evidence for a counterstrike, where many key industry companies and music publishers are accused of a conspiracy to weaponize the DMCA.

In a scathing 53-page complaint filed in the Northern District of Texas today, X Corp. is suing the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and a coalition of major music publishers, including Sony, Universal, and Warner Chappell, for alleged violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

X Corp vs. Music Inc.

The lawsuit essentially argues that the NMPA didn’t send thousands of DMCA takedown notices to protect artist rights. Instead, X claims the notices were used as an “extortionate campaign” to motivate X into paying “supracompetitive” licensing fees.

“As part of this conspiracy, Defendants weaponized the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the “DMCA”) against X, using the DMCA as a pretext for their extortionate campaign,” the complaint reads.

Weaponize the DMCA

The core of X’s argument is that the NMPA and many its members allegedly agreed not to make individual deals with the platform. Instead of negotiating separate licenses, X alleges the industry colluded to get a much better price.

According to the complaint, NMPA President David Israelite emailed X in October 2021 (when it was still Twitter), threatening a “massive program” of DMCA notices on a scale “larger than any previous effort in DMCA history” if X did not agree to a partnership.

Massive
 

When X refused to sign a deal, the floodgates opened. X claims that starting in December 2021, the NMPA began sending weekly notices identifying thousands of posts. In the first year alone, these notices targeted over 200,000 posts. Since the scheme began, the campaign has resulted in the suspension of more than 50,000 users.

X describes this as a “weaponization” of the DMCA, aimed not at curbing piracy, but at hurting X’s business by targeting its “most popular users”.

Weaponize

Allegations of Hypocrisy

Perhaps the most colorful allegations in the new complaint focus on the NMPA’s supposed hypocrisy. X argues that, while the NMPA was demanding the removal of fan-made content, its own executives were posting the exact same material.

The complaint cites an instance where an NMPA Senior Vice President reposted a “remix” video by a user known as “KylePlantEmoji,” which featured copyrighted songs by Nelly and Papa Roach.

“The NMPA lawyer did not report this post as infringing a copyright. Quite the opposite: the lawyer supported the video by reposting it on her own feed,” the complaint notes.

Remix
 

In another example, X points to a takedown notice issued for a video of a high school sports award ceremony. The video was flagged because of brief background music played while a student walked on stage to accept an award.

Ceremony

“Although there is no reasonable basis for censoring this video focused on a high school athlete’s achievement based on the de minimis, non-commercial use of background music in the video, X had to take it down because of Defendants’ scheme,” the complaint notes.

The Majors Joined the “Conspiracy”

X’s lawsuit also explains how the major music publishers, Universal, Sony, and Warner Chappell, allegedly joined the conspiracy later. Initially, these labels were not part of the NMPA’s takedown blitz.

However, X claims that the publishers eventually joined when their desired licensing deals did not come to fruition.

With this antitrust action, X is seeking damages and a permanent injunction to stop the alleged anticompetitive conduct. With claims for civil conspiracy, unfair competition, and attempted monopolization, among others, this is a high-stakes case.

—-

The full complaint filed today by X Corp. at a federal court in the Northern District of Texas is available here (pdf).

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Posted Saturday 10 January 2026 at 6:09 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

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

Since 2024, the Paris Judicial Court has ordered Cloudflare, Google and other intermediaries to actively block access to pirate sites through their DNS resolvers, confirming that third-party intermediaries can be required to take responsibility.

These blockades are requested by sports rights holders, covering Formula 1, football, and MotoGP, among others. They argue that public DNS resolvers help users to bypass existing ISP blockades, so these intermediaries should be ordered to block domains too.

Google DNS Blocks Expand

These blocking efforts didn’t stop. After the first blocking requests were granted, the Paris Court issued various additional blocking orders. Most recently, Google was compelled to take action following a complaint from French broadcaster Canal+ and its subsidiaries regarding Champions League piracy..

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

After reviewing the evidence and hearing arguments from both sides, the Paris Court granted the blocking request, ordering Google to block nineteen domain names, including antenashop.site, daddylive3.com, livetv860.me, streamysport.org and vavoo.to.

The latest blocking order covers the entire 2025/2026 Champions League series, which ends on May 30, 2026. It’s a dynamic order too, which means that if these sites switch to new domains, as verified by ARCOM, these have to be blocked as well.

Cloudflare-First Defense Fails

Google objected to the blocking request. Among other things, it argued that several domains were linked to Cloudflare’s CDN. Therefore, suspending the sites on the CDN level would be more effective, as that would render them inaccessible.

Based on the subsidiarity principle, Google argued that blocking measures should only be ordered if attempts to block the pirate sites through more direct means have failed.

The court dismissed these arguments, noting that intermediaries cannot dictate the enforcement strategy or blocking order. Intermediaries cannot require “prior steps” against other technical intermediaries, especially given the “irremediable” character of live sports piracy.

The judge found the block proportional because Google remains free to choose the technical method, even if the result is mandated. Internet providers, search engines, CDNs, and DNS resolvers can all be required to block, irrespective of what other measures were taken previously.

Proportional

Google further argued that the blocking measures were disproportionate because they were complex, costly, easily bypassed, and had effects beyond the borders of France.

The Paris court rejected these claims. It argued that Google failed to demonstrate that implementing these blocking measures would result in “important costs” or technical impossibilities.

Additionally, the court recognized that there would still be options for people to bypass these blocking measures. However, the blocks are a necessary step to “completely cease” the infringing activities.

The ruling further solidifies France’s position as a pioneer in aggressive, real-time anti-piracy enforcement. Over the past two years, the court has systematically rejected defenses from Google and other DNS resolvers. While further appeals may be underway, the Paris Judicial Court clearly sees an anti-piracy role for all intermediaries.

—

A copy of the order issued by the Tribunal Judiciaire de Paris (RG nº 25/11816) is available here (pdf). The order specifically excludes New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, and French Polynesia due to specific local legal frameworks.

1. antenashop.site
2. antenawest.store
3. daddylive3.com
4. hesgoal-tv.me
5. livetv860.me
6. streamysport.org
7. vavoo.to
8. witv.soccer
9. veplay.top
10. jxoxkplay.xyz
11. andrenalynrushplay.cfd
12. marbleagree.net
13. emb.apl375.me
14. hornpot.net
15. td3wb1bchdvsahp.ngolpdkyoctjcddxshli469r.org
16. ott-premium.com
17. rex43.premium-ott.xyz
18. smartersiptvpro.fr
19. eta.play-cdn.vip:80

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Posted Thursday 8 January 2026 at 6:45 pm AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

First released in February 2003, Multi Theft Auto (MTA) is an unofficial multiplayer mod for several popular Grand Theft Auto games, starting with GTA III.

MTA does not rely on copyright-infringing code, the developers stress, as it works by code injection that hooks into an officially purchased copy of GTA.

The GitHub Takedown

With this setup, MTA managed to avoid any serious backlash from the GTA creator Take-Two Interactive. That is, until the game company purportedly sent a DMCA takedown notice to developer platform GitHub, where MTA’s main repository, ‘mtasa-blue‘ is hosted.

The DMCA notice alleged that the MTA repository included leaked source code and requested it to be removed in full.

“We are writing to submit a takedown request regarding a leaked source code hosted on GitHub that infringes on our copyrights. The infringer is sharing the leaked source code, on the [mtasa-blue] repository,” the notice read.

Takedown
 

GitHub received the DMCA takedown request in early December, and, soon after, the MTA repository was indeed made inaccessible on the platform.

Repo removed
 

The notice took MTA’s developers by surprise. In their Discord channel, they suggested that it might be fake, especially since the entire repository was targeted, without pointing out any concrete leaked or infringing code. Additionally, the sender also ‘forgot’ to target the repo’s forks, which is unusual.

GTA Files Counternotice

The MTA developers didn’t sit idly by. On December 22, they filed their formal counter-notice requesting GitHub to reinstate their repository, denying any copyright infringement claims. Instead, they explain that their mod hooks into the official GTA game.

“The repository referenced contains only original, independently developed source code and supporting materials created by contributors to the project. It does not include, reproduce, or distribute any copyrighted assets, source code, or proprietary files from the original game or its publisher.”

“The software operates by interacting at runtime with a lawfully installed, user-supplied copy of the original game. No copyrighted game content is extracted, copied, redistributed, or included within this repository,” the counternotice adds.

Counternotice
 

Filing a formal counternotice is a serious step. Under the DMCA, this requires GitHub to restore the repository within a window of 10 to 14 business days, unless the takedown sender files a formal court action. In other words, it was an invitation for Take-Two to take legal action if they indeed wanted the repository offline.

MTA Repository Restored

Apparently, Take-Two did not feel the need to follow-up on and earlier this week, the repository was fully restored.

Back
 

The comeback doesn’t mean that GitHub made a legal determination. Without a court order from Take-Two to keep the content offline, GitHub had to respond as its hands were legally tied by the DMCA.

When we reached out to GitHub, they declined to comment on the specific decision, including the authenticity of the original takedown. Instead, GitHub stated that they “reviewed and processed the notices in accordance with our DMCA Takedown Policy.”

In the hopes of getting additional information and commentary, TorrentFreak also reached out to Take-Two Interactive and a MTA developer. Unfortunately, however, neither responded before our deadline.

MTA

What’s Next?

While the restoration can be seen as a ‘win’ for MTA, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the result is final. If Take-Two was indeed behind the DMCA notice, it could still choose to take legal action later. This is also what happened to the ‘re3’ and ‘reVC’ repositories previously.

These reverse-engineered GTA mods were restored following a counternotice. However, they eventually were taken down again a few months later, when Take-Two sued the developers in U.S. court.

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Posted Thursday 8 January 2026 at 4:55 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have one newcomer on the list. “Zootopia 2” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 5 are:

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

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Posted Tuesday 6 January 2026 at 4:02 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

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

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

The site also actively provides assistance to AI researchers who want to use its library for model training. More recently, Anna’s Archive announced it had created a massive 300TB backup of Spotify, which it is slowly releasing to the public at large.

Since its launch, Anna’s Archive has also received pushback from rightsholders. The site has been blocked in various countries, and was sued in the U.S. after it scraped WorldCat.

Despite this legal pressure, the main annas-archive.org domain name remained operational, until it didn’t.

Anna’s .ORG Domain Suspended

A few hours ago, the site’s original domain name suddenly became unreachable globally. The annas-archive.org domain status was changed to “serverHold,” which is typically done by the domain registry. This status effectively means that the domain is suspended and under investigation. Similar action has previously been taken against other pirate sites.

It is rare to see a .org domain involved in domain name suspensions. The American non-profit Public Interest Registry (PIR), which oversees the .org domains, previously refused to suspend domain names voluntarily, including thepiratebay.org. The registry’s cautionary stance suggests that the actions against annas-archive.org are backed by a court order.

TorrentFreak asked PIR for a comment on their supposed involvement in the domain suspension, hoping to find out more about the legal grounds, but the organization did not immediately reply.

Update: PIR’s marketing director, Kendal Rowe, informs TorrentFreak that “unfortunately, PIR is unable to comment on the situation at this time.”

It is possible that, in response to the ‘DRM-circumventing’ Spotify backup, rightsholders requested an injunction targeting the domain name. However, we have seen no evidence of that. In the WorldCat lawsuit, OCLC requested an injunction to force action from intermediaries, including domain registries, but as far as we know, that hasn’t been granted yet.

Anna’s Archive Remains Resilient

This is not the first time Anna’s Archive has lost a domain name. The site previously moved from its .org domain to a .GS domain, anticipating a domain seizure in the WorldCat case.

Ironically, this move resulted in a swift suspension by the .GS registry, after which Anna’s Archive returned to its .org domain.

On Reddit, Anna’s Archive explains that the recent suspension is a mere hiccup too, pointing users to alternative domains.

“The .org domain apparently has been suspended. Our other domains work fine, and we’ve added some more. We recommend checking our Wikipedia page for the latest domains. This unfortunately happens to shadow libraries on a regular basis. ”

“We don’t believe this has to do with our Spotify backup,” AnnaArchivist adds.

At the time of writing, the site is indeed still operational from the older .li and .se domains, as well as the .in and .pm variants that were just added. However, with legal pressure mounting, there are no guarantees that these domains remain operational.

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Posted Tuesday 6 January 2026 at 3:52 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

In the summer of 2015, the then 29-year-old Priyank Pardeshi was arrested by the police in Pune, a large city in western India.

The authorities and rightsholders saw Priyank as a kingpin in the local piracy scene, and these allegations were widely repeated by many news sites at the time.

Priyank was certainly not a typical pirate site operator. He worked at IBM in California. However, during a work-related visit to his home country, he was suddenly arrested, after investigators found pirated movies on his system while they were collecting evidence in an unrelated matter.

TellyTorrents and Camcording

In addition to Priyank, the authorities also accused two others of being involved in the scheme, which also involved the popular torrent tracker TellyTorrents. This site was a high-profile target, as it was one of the prime locations where the Bollywood blockbuster Bahubali had leaked online.

The case seemed fairly straightforward too. According to the police, the alleged piracy kingpin confessed to running TellyTorrents, earning huge sums in revenue, and storing 1,243 pirated movies. Not just that, he allegedly also revealed that they were involved in camcording films in local theaters for subsequent pirate releases.

These revelations were also shared publicly in the media, to give the case additional weight.

“Priyank revealed that Rahul Mehta of Delhi and Toni of Ghaziabad used to shoot films from cinemas and multiplexes and would prepare their pirated movies. They used to supply it to Jabalpur and many cities across the country and even in Australia and France.”

The Case Collapses (After 10 years…)

Priyank spent 311 days in custody before he was released on bail. While the prosecution seemed convinced that they had a case, it completely fell apart in court a few weeks ago, when a judicial magistrate in Jabalpur fully acquitted the lead defendant and two co-accused due to a lack of evidence.

In a detailed judgment, Magistrate Kishan Dev Singh Patel dismantled the prosecution’s case, revealing that the police investigation was almost entirely devoid of technical evidence.

Despite the serious charges under the Copyright Act and IT Act, the court noted that:

– No Forensics: The police seized computers, laptops, and hard drives but failed to send any items to a forensic lab for analysis. There was no independent verification that the files on the devices were actually pirated movies.

– No Money Trail: Despite claims that “huge profits” were made, the prosecution did not produce a single bank statement or transaction record linking Priyank to the website’s revenue.

– No Domain Link: The police failed to provide any documents to prove that Priyank purchased or owned the TellyTorrents domain name or that he paid for the servers in question.

“There are no documents on record to show that the illegal website TellyTorrents was created/operated by Priyank Pardeshi,” the judgment reads, leaving no other option than to dismiss the claims.

The prosecution relied heavily on testimony from representatives of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce in Hyderabad, who acted as expert witnesses. In court, however, these witnesses admitted that there is no hard evidence that Priyank pirated movies or that he operated TellyTorrents.

A Systemic Failure

According to Kartik Sharma, an analyst at the renowned law blog SpicyIP, this acquittal is not an outlier but part of a pattern where Indian law enforcement fails to meet the basic standards of digital evidence.

“The crux of why the acquittal happened is quite evident,” Sharma informs TorrentFreak. “The witnesses from the Telugu Film Chamber acknowledged that they had not seen the accused uploading the pirated movies to the website.”

“Also, there was no testing done by an authorized official agency or lab to establish that the alleged content was pirated.”

Sharma notes that similar lapses have led to acquittals in other high-profile piracy cases, such as State v. Bhushan Kumar in Delhi, where police failed to compare seized VCDs with original copyrighted material.

The weak evidence in these cases, including a lack of digital forensics, is ultimately what leads to a full acquittal of the defendants. However, by then, most of the personal damage is already done.

The Human Cost

While the “kingpin” narrative has been dismantled by the recent court verdict, the decade-long process has taken its toll. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Priyank highlights the human cost.

“I was unable to work for the last 10 years because after I came out of jail, people looked at me like a big criminal,” he says.

“No company would hire me because, during background verification, they could see that a criminal case was pending against me. Other people stopped seeing me as a good person. Even getting married was difficult.”

The other defendants will have similar stories that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. In this light, it is particularly confronting that one of the co-accused, Dilip Gulwani, passed away while the trial was still ongoing.

A Living Hell

Looking back, the now 40-year-old Priyank feels as if he has been framed, and he’s considering fighting back legally to recoup some of the damages.

Priyank was no stranger to TellyTorrents but notes that his involvement with pirate sites was limited to installing a forum and setting up a website. The earlier-mentioned ‘confession’ was coerced, he alleges.

All in all, the whole experience was traumatizing. While Priyank had no sympathy for the anti-piracy forces that ruined his life, he would caution pirates to reconsider their options. If caught, Bollywood can turn lives into a living hell.

Priyank hopes to continue his life now. He started a family and earns enough to pay the bills. However, he believes that his career would have been much more successful if the criminal piracy prosecution was never started.

iBomma: The New Piracy Kingpin

Interestingly, as the TellyTorrents case concluded, a new alleged Indian piracy ‘kingpin’ was caught. On November 15, the Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police arrested Immadi Ravi as the suspected mastermind behind the popular pirate streaming platform iBomma.

This high-profile takedown occurred shortly after the theatrical release of Baahubali: The Epic (a remastered combination of the film franchise). The original Baahubali film, meanwhile, was at the center of the TellyTorrents case exactly ten years prior.

Notably, the film’s director, S.S. Rajamouli, has also gotten actively involved in the iBomma case and openly thanks the police for their hard work.

As with TellyTorrents at the time, the piracy allegations against Ravi are widely echoed in the press, ranging from a lavish lifestyle financed by millions of dollars in piracy proceeds to forged identity papers. While these could all be true, the TellyTorrents case shows that caution is warranted.

That brings us to the final point of interest, or a lack thereof. While most Indian media is widely reporting on all new allegations in the iBomma case, the acquittal of the criminal defendants in the TellyTorrents case does not get a single mention.

—

A copy of the original TellyTorrents court order, issued by Magistrate Kishan Dev Singh Patel and acquitting all defendants, is available here (pdf).

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Posted Sunday 4 January 2026 at 12:52 pm AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

In Belgium, the Department for Combating Online Infringement is responsible for overseeing the local pirate site blocking efforts.

The department reviews injunctions from the Business Court in Brussels and translates these into concrete blockade implementation orders.

The first blockade of this kind was announced in April 2025 and predominantly targeted sports streaming websites. Notably, however, these blocking requirements were not limited to ISPs; they also compelled DNS resolvers to comply.

These DNS resolvers, including Google and Cloudflare, were not pleased, and Cisco’s OpenDNS even went as far as stopping its service in Belgium to avoid having to meddle with DNS. This backlash apparently struck a nerve, as OpenDNS has since resumed its activities in Belgium as the case is under appeal.

U.S. Movie Giants Behind New Blocking Push

Meanwhile, other rightsholders joined in, with various book publishers securing a blocking order against shadow libraries last August. In late November, this was followed by a new blocking order targeting various movie piracy sites, such as 1337x and Soap2day.

Interestingly, this order is rather limited in its scope. Instead of casting a wide net, it strictly targets Belgium’s five major Internet Service Providers: Proximus, Telenet, Orange Belgium, DIGI Communications Belgium, and Mobile Vikings.

While the targeted ISPs and the blocked sites were listed in the implementation order, the requesting rightsholders were not mentioned.

However, after the Belgian government responded to our transparency request just before Christmas, we can now reveal that familiar names are behind the latest site-blocking campaign.

The underlying order from the French-speaking Business Court in Brussels lists a coalition of major studios: Disney, Netflix, Sony, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros. These companies, all members of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), are joined by another video entertainment giant: Apple.

The MPA has been a driving force behind site-blocking efforts around the world, so it is no surprise to see this activity in Belgium too. However, that doesn’t make the order any less interesting.

Ten Pirate Brands

While we now have access to the underlying order, the formal list of URLs (Annex 1) will remain confidential. The same is true for Annex 2.b., the official list of the ten pirate names or brands.

“In addition to the list of ‘target sites’ provided in Annex 1 of their application, the applicants also submit an Annex 2.a., classified as confidential, in which the applicants explain the phenomenon of pirate brands, before providing, in Annex 2.b, a list of 10 names,” the translated order reads.

These brands are important because the court order mandates that any future sites using this name or branding are also eligible for a spot on the blocklist.

While this list remains confidential, Belgium’s piracy blocklist is transparently published online. This includes the recently blocked URLs, from which it is not difficult to compile the likely list of blocked pirate brands. These include 1337x, Fmovies, Soap2day, Sflix, FlixHQ, Papadustream, French-Stream, Coflix and Wiflix.

American DNS Questions

The underlying court order further confirms that these heavyweight movie studios did not include any third-party DNS providers (like Google or Cloudflare) in their list of intermediaries. Whether this is motivated by the ongoing appeal in other Belgian blocking cases or a strategic shift remains unknown.

It appears that, for now, the movie companies currently prefer a more targeted approach, focusing exclusively on major Internet Service Providers.

Depending on the motivation, this choice can have implications beyond Belgium. In the United States, rightsholders, including these same movie studios, continue to push for site-blocking legislation, which they hope to see implemented this year. Thus far, we have seen proposed site-blocking bills with and without DNS resolvers, so it can go either way.

—

A copy of the order (RR/25/00092) from the French-speaking Business Court of Brussels is available with minor redactions of personal information here (pdf).

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Posted Saturday 3 January 2026 at 4:29 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

As the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States for several years in a row, Strike 3 Holdings has a name to keep up.

The porn producer is known for filing lawsuits against alleged pirates who download their ‘Milfy,’ ‘Tushy,’ and ‘Vixen’ videos via BitTorrent sites.

Strike 3 monitors pirate sites, and, when their videos are shared in public, it takes decisive action. After tracking down the pirating IP-addresses, it typically files a federal lawsuit, requesting a subpoena to obtain the subscriber’s details.

Once the target is identified, the case can then move forward. While these cases can technically go to trial, they typically result in out-of-court settlements of a few thousand dollars. It’s unknown how profitable these cases are, but the fact that Strike 3 files thousands a year suggests that the business model remains lucrative.

Record: 4,088 Lawsuits in 2025

Strike 3 kept its “settlement machine” going over the past 12 months. In 2025, the company filed 4,088^(*) new piracy lawsuits in U.S. federal courts, barely surpassing the previous record of 3,932 set just last year.

Almost all these cases were filed against John Does who are initially only identified by their IP-address. Historically, the lawsuits are settled swiftly after the defendant is identified, and that appears to hold true this year as well. Of all cases filed this year, 2,775 (67.9%) are already closed.

Most of these closed cases disappear from the docket within months, typically following a confidential settlement where defendants pay several thousand dollars to resolve the porn piracy lawsuit without further exposure.

The Cumulative 20,000-Case Milestone

Beyond the annual numbers, 2025 saw Strike 3 cross a historic threshold. Since filing its first case in 2017, the company has now initiated over 20,000 federal copyright lawsuits.

The graph below shows that the number of complaints filed per year has risen steadily since 2020, breaking record after record.

To put these numbers in perspective, Strike 3’s cases alone account for more than half of all copyright lawsuits in the United States in recent years.

While critics and judges have occasionally characterized the business model as a “high-tech shakedown” or an “ATM for the courts,” the company shows no signs of slowing down. On the contrary, it appears to expand to a new class of targets.

$359m Lawsuit Against Meta

While the thousands of “John Doe” cases against individuals have likely brought in millions for Strike 3 over the years, the company’s most ambitious move of 2025 was its lawsuit against tech giant Meta.

In July, Strike 3 accused the tech company of using adult films to assist its AI model training. This follows a broader trend of copyright litigation against AI developers, including several high-profile claims brought by book authors.

Strike 3’s cases specifically focus on Meta’s BitTorrent activity, with the porn producer seeking astronomical damages of up to $359 million. The lawsuit alleges that Meta willfully pirated and redistributed 2,396 adult films to train its AI models, including LLaMA and Movie Gen.

Responding to the lawsuit, Meta dismissed all claims of a coordinated download action. Instead of an AI training effort, Meta suggested that the alleged downloads were “personal use” by its own employees, contractors, or visitors using its corporate networks and servers.

Whether the Meta lawsuit ends in a landmark ruling or a quiet settlement, Strike 3’s litigation engine shows no signs of cooling down. Whatever happens on the AI front in 2026, the company’s “John Doe” settlement machine will likely continue to churn out new complaints in the background.

—

(*) Note: the data presented here are based on a PACER search for cases filed between January 1 and December 31, 2025, where ‘Strike 3’ is listed as a party. All known non-copyright cases have been filtered out.

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Posted Friday 2 January 2026 at 4:28 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix