For many pirate sites and apps, ad revenue is the only viable lifeline. This is why the advertising industry is an important ally in the fight against piracy.

Over the years, several ad-focused anti-piracy initiatives and partnerships have tried to prevent branded ads from appearing on these sites.

This includes a European Union-led Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in which several leading advertising companies, including Google, signed up to play their part. The origins of this agreement date back to 2016, and the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has monitored progress ever since.

The latest report on the state of the pirate advertising landscape was published this week. As in previous years, the EUIPO commissioned UK-based research firm White Bullet to provide a detailed overview of what types of ads appeared on pirate sites throughout 2024.

The report: Online Advertising on IPR-Infringing Websites and Apps 2024
 

The report looked at advertisements on 7,250 websites and 398 mobile applications across 18 EU member states. All ‘pirate’ sites and apps provided access to copyright-infringing content and were classified as either “illegal” or “high-risk”.

White Bullet compiled a similar advertising report for EUIPO in 2021, which makes it possible to measure progress over the past four years.

Major Brand Ads Surge 567% on Pirate Sites

The headline figures reported by EUIPO this week suggest that advertising volume on piracy sites grew rapidly throughout last year. Globally (EU+UK+US), the monitored websites generated 28.3 billion ad impressions over the year, with a 92% increase in impressions from the first to the fourth quarter.

More concerning, perhaps, is that adverts run by major brands are still common on pirate sites. No names are mentioned in the report, but EUIPO notes that advertising impressions from major brands increased 567% between 2021 and 2024.

Overall, branded advertising accounted for 61% of ad impressions on monitored websites and 96% on the monitored apps. This includes ads for both major and less-well known brands.

The EUIPO highlights this significant increase in its “main conclusions” alongside some other concerning developments.

EUIPO’s main conclusions
 

The report explicitly links this resurgence of major brand ads to a breakdown in industry cooperation, noting that education campaigns for advertisers were halted right before the spike occurred.

“The massive growth in Major Brand advertising on IPR-infringing websites may be correlated with the 2023 termination of several coordinated outreach programmes focused on educating brands that had been placing advertising on IPR-infringing websites,” EUIPO’s report reads.

It’s all Relative

While the headline numbers reported by EUIPO are correct, they deserve some nuance. The number of ad impressions on pirate sites by major brands did not increase 567%; not by a long shot.

What the report found is that major brand ads went from just 3% of all ad impressions on websites in 2021, to 20% of all ad impressions in 2024. While that technically represents a 567% increase in market share, the number of displayed ads tanked at the same time.

Across all monitored countries, ad impressions on pirate sites crashed from 146.1 billion in 2021 to 28.3 billion in 2024. So, the total number of ads on these sites fell by roughly 80%.

While the “567% increase” statistic is technically accurate when looking at relative market share, the increase is largely driven by the collapse of low-quality, non-brand ads. In real terms, the number of major brand ads served increased by roughly 30%.

Fraud & Malware Increase/Decrease

The same logic applies to a reported surge in fraud and malware advertising, which was also highlighted in the EUIPO’s main conclusions.

“The report also notes a 250% increase in fraud and malware advertising from 2021 to 2024, showing that infringing websites not only exploit brand reputations but also expose users and advertisers to broader digital risks,” EUIPO writes.

Again, this 250% increase is relative. Looking at the absolute numbers, fraud and malware ads actually decreased by roughly 1.8 billion impressions from 2021 to 2024. That’s roughly a ~31% reduction in malicious ads.

The above makes it clear that absolute and relative comparisons can show an entirely different picture. This is largely attributable to a key change that took place over the past few years, which, strangely enough, is not mentioned in EUIPO’s main conclusions.

EU: Pirate Ad-Impressions & Revenue Plunged

The fact that the EUIPO report found an unprecedented 80% drop in pirate site ads receives very little attention. Yet, the numbers clearly show that, in the 18 monitored EU Member States, pirate site ad impressions also plunged: from 70.3 billion in 2021 to 14.4 billion in 2024.

The report links this drastic decline to an increasingly fragmented landscape of pirate sites, leading to lower traffic numbers overall. That sounds like a welcome result, but in the report the finding receives no obvious emphasis.

The same applies to the associated decrease in advertising revenue for pirate sites. The report notes that the advertising revenues from the monitored countries dropped 78%, from €102.5 million in 2021 to €22 million last year.

The Missing Number: €8.29 per day

While the EUIPO focuses mostly on the relative increases of major brand ads and fraud advertisements, one key number was not highlighted. That is, the average estimated revenue these 7,250 sites generate per day from visitors in the 18 monitored EU countries.

That number is not reported, but if we crunch the numbers, we see that the average pirate site generates roughly €8.29 per day from these EU users.

The EUIPO report puts the global revenue of these sites at ~€91 per day. This leads to the logical conclusion that the EU advertising traffic only represents a fraction of the total income of these sites. That’s worth calling out, we think.

—

The full report, which includes many more data points and intriguing statistics, is available here (pdf).

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Posted Friday 21 November 2025 at 3:45 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

Offering a wide range of services useful for the majority of websites, including many provided completely free of charge, Cloudflare continues on an upward trajectory.

While its popularity isn’t in question, Cloudflare’s stance on copyright issues has placed it at odds with copyright holders who believe that the company should do more to fight against piracy.

For its part, Cloudflare counters that its policies are in line or exceed legal requirements, including those established in the United States where, under appropriate circumstances, the company cannot be held liable for infringement carried out by its customers.

Complaint and Settlement (2018/2019)

Disappointed by Cloudflare’s stance in response to their allegations concerning several manga piracy sites, in 2018 major publishers Shueisha, Kodansha, Kadokawa, and Shogakukan filed a motion at the Tokyo District Court.

They argued that since Cloudflare was in a position to curtail infringement, the company should stop providing services to the pirate sites. Caching and replicating the sites’ content was described as especially problematic, with the publishers arguing that this amounted to Cloudflare delivering infringing content to the public.

A 2019 settlement with Cloudflare wasn’t revealed until 2020 but the premise was fairly straightforward. If the Tokyo District Court ruled that the sites in question were illegal, Cloudflare would “stop the replication of the sites to Cloudflare’s servers in Japan,” the publishers said.

Publishers File a Copyright Lawsuit in Tokyo

Late January 2022, it was reported that the same publishers were again preparing to sue Cloudflare in Japan over its provision of services to known pirate sites.

The publishers said that they requested Cloudflare to bring the infringements to a halt and Cloudflare advised that they had “taken the necessary measures.” When technical analysis revealed that the pirate sites were still using Cloudflare’s services and cache, legal action was inevitable.

Within days the publishers revealed a “partial claim” against Cloudflare, concerning just four copyrighted works, one for each of the manga publishers. Their claim for damages was a relatively modest US$4m but arguably more important was the request for an injunction. That would not only restrain the company in the current action, it would also establish ground rules for similar disputes moving forward.

“With regard to the infringing content illegally stored on the sites, we asked Cloudflare to stop the temporary reproduction (cache) on the company’s servers in Japan [and] terminate their contracts with pirate sites that are clearly illegal,” the companies said.

Cloudflare said that it had gone “above and beyond its obligations” to assist rightsholders in Japan, including by adopting an abuse process to connect rightsholders with hosting providers “actually able to remove infringing content from the Internet.”

Tokyo Court Declares Cloudflare Liable

After a wait of more than three and a half years, the Tokyo District Court rendered its decision this morning. In a statement provided to TorrentFreak by the publishers, they declare “Victory Against Cloudflare” after the Court determined that Cloudflare is indeed liable for the pirate sites’ activities.

In a statement provided to TorrentFreak, the publishers explain that they alerted Cloudflare to the massive scale of the infringement, involving over 4,000 works and 300 million monthly visits, but their requests to stop distribution were ignored.

“We requested that the company take measures such as stopping the distribution of pirated content from servers under its management. However, Cloudflare continued to provide services to the manga piracy sites even after receiving notices from the plaintiffs,” the group says.

The publishers add that Cloudflare continued to provide services even after receiving information disclosure orders from U.S. courts, leaving them with “no choice but to file this lawsuit.”

Factors Considered in Determining Liability

Decisions in favor of Cloudflare in the United States have proven valuable over the past several years. Yet while the Tokyo District Court considered many of the same key issues, various factors led to a finding of liability instead, the publishers note.

“The judgment recognized that Cloudflare’s failure to take timely and appropriate action despite receiving infringement notices from the plaintiffs, and its negligent continuation of pirated content distribution, constituted aiding and abetting copyright infringement, and that Cloudflare bears liability for damages to the plaintiffs,” they write.

“The judgment, in that regard, attached importance to the fact that Cloudflare, without conducting any identity verification procedures, had enabled a massive manga piracy site to operate ‘under circumstances where strong anonymity was secured,’ as a basis for recognizing the company’s liability.”

The publishers confirm that the litigation involved one protected work per company and that the overall damages recognized in the judgment total approximately 3.6 billion yen (US$24 million). However, since their claim sought to recover less than the damages suffered, the judgment against Cloudflare of 500 million yen, around US$3.2 million, isn’t as punishing as it could’ve been.

Moving Forward

The publishers believe that the judgment clarifies the conditions under which a company such as Cloudflare incurs liability for copyright infringement. Failure to carry out identity verification appears at the top of the publishers’ list, followed by a lack of timely and appropriate action in response to infringement notices sent by rightsholders.

“We believe this is an important decision given the current situation where piracy site operators often hide their identities and repeatedly conduct large-scale distribution using CDN services from overseas. We hope that this judgment will be a step toward ensuring proper use of CDN services. We will continue our efforts to protect the rights of works, creators, and related parties, while aiming for further expansion of legitimate content,” the publishers conclude.

Cloudflare May Have Already Signaled its Response

According to Japanese media, Cloudflare plans to appeal the verdict, which was expected. In comments to the USTR last month, Cloudflare referred to a long-running dispute in Japan with the potential to negatively affect future business.

“One particular dispute reflects years of effort by Japan’s government and its publishing industry to impose additional obligations on intermediaries like CDNs,” the company’s submission reads (pdf).

“A fully adjudicated ruling that finds CDNs liable for monetary damages for infringing material would set a dangerous global precedent and necessitate U.S. CDN providers to limit the provision of global services to avoid liability, severely restricting market growth and expansion into Asian Pacific markets.”

Whether that heralds Cloudflare’s exit from the region is unclear. The statement to the USTR seems to suggest that the company knew that a decision was coming and probably wouldn’t reflect the protections available to it in the United States.

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Posted Thursday 20 November 2025 at 11:55 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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With millions of regular users, YTS is arguably the most visited torrent site on the internet today.

The current operators ‘unofficially’ took over the YTS brand in 2015 after the original group threw in the towel. Since then, it has amassed a rather impressive user base.

After adopting one of the most iconic piracy brands, YTS faced its fair share of legal troubles. In 2019, the popular torrent site and its operator were accused of mass copyright infringement in multiple lawsuits filed by filmmakers in the United States. Surprisingly, YTS managed to settle these lawsuits to live another day, although that came at a price.

YTS also dealt with various domain name challenges. When the site first entered the scene, it was operating from the YTS.ag domain name, which it traded in for YTS.am a few years later. In 2019, the torrent site moved to YTS.lt, which it swapped for the YTS.mx domain in 2020.

YTS.mx = Gone

Over the past five years, the Mexican ccTLD proved to be a rather stable domain option, but that didn’t last.

Visitors to YTS yesterday became aware that the YTS.mx domain had stopped resolving. Many simply assumed that the site had issues due to the global Cloudflare outage but hours after Cloudflare’s troubles had been resolved, YTS.mx remained unreachable.

This was not a simple domain suspension either, as the domain’s nameservers appear to have completely vanished.

NXDOMAIN
 

In fact, according to the Mexican domain name registry, YTS.mx no longer exists. This is highly unusual since the domain was prepaid through 2028. Clearly, an external intervention forced the action.

YTS Relocates to .LT

Initially, the YTS team remained quiet, but through various official communication channels, they eventually confirmed that something was up. While the operators don’t explain what the problem was, they note that the site has relocated to YTS.lt.

“Please use https://yts.lt (YTS.LT) for now to access our site. We’re working on some updates, and this domain will be the best way to stay connected. Stay tuned for more info!,” they note.

YTS Update
 

As we were writing this article, the official YTS Status site was also updated. All mentions of the .mx domain name have been removed in what appears to be more than a temporary update.

Indeed, in an edited blog post on YTS.lt, the team now confirms that YTS.MX is no longer used.

Domain update

Legal Pressure?

While it is apparent that the .MX domain name issues are serious, it is not immediately clear what caused them. TorrentFreak asked Registry .MX for a comment on the situation, but the organization did not immediately respond.

It is possible that third-party pressure by copyright holders may have played a role here. Earlier this year, the U.S. Trade Representative identified YTS.mx as a notorious piracy market. And a few weeks ago, YTS was nominated as a notorious market again by various rightsholders.

For now, all we know for sure is that YTS.mx is gone. If more information becomes available, we will update this article accordingly.

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Posted Thursday 20 November 2025 at 3:56 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

Brazil’s Special Task Force to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco), part of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Ceará (MPCE), carried out a large operation on Tuesday targeting individuals and companies believed to be behind several pirate streaming platforms.

With assistance from the Civil Police of Ceará (PCCE), Operation Endpoint saw the execution of 19 search and seizure warrants and five arrest warrants in Alagoas (AL), Ceará (CE) and Santa Catarina. Three people were arrested. Two individuals with outstanding warrants are reportedly still at large.

Investigation

Based on a combination of reports from the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, the Prosecutor’s Office, law enforcement bodies, and local TV news, the investigation began following claims made against the operators of popular pirate streaming services.

Sold under brands including DezPila, Tyflex, and Onlyflix, it was alleged that the operators of the IPTV services were not only committing large scale copyright infringement, but are also involved in wider criminality, including money laundering as part of an organized criminal group.

The authorities claim that the pirate services presented as legitimate subscription TV providers, offering live TV, movies, and TV shows to customers. While they may have appeared legitimate, countless videos posted to YouTube suggest that many customers were aware that authorization from rightsholders was unlikely to be part of the equation.

Asset Seizures, Blocked Sites, Search Engine Delisting

The Prosecutor’s Office says that those higher up in the group used “front men” to facilitate the movement of funds generated by the services, in an effort to conceal the true owners of various assets. To counter the group’s obfuscation efforts, investigators were authorized to obtain information normally protected under Brazil’s banking, tax, and digital secrecy laws.

Social media platforms including WhatsApp and Telegram were reportedly used to attract customers to the streaming services, and via websites hosted by companies including Wix and Hostinger, new customers were signed up.

Online payments were reportedly processed through specialist checkout services, with payments received by various means but predominantly via Pix, an instant payment platform operated by the Central Bank of Brazil.

“As the investigations progressed, it became necessary to request the seizure of assets and valuables from the Judiciary, totaling R$ 12 million (US$2.25m),” the Ministry of Justice reports.

“Simultaneously, 118 websites and social media profiles were blocked, search engines results were de-indexed, and cryptocurrencies were seized.”

Domains Down

TorrentFreak has been unable to find any sites displaying an official seizure banner. However, by matching registered domains to the three brands, and then using alleged use of Wix and Hostinger as a crude filter, hundreds of domains were reduced to a few registered in Brazil.

None are currently functional and some appear to have ‘clientHold’ status, a sign that things aren’t going according to plan. Surprisingly, WHOIS records don’t appear to be consistently redacted, leading to ostensibly real names making repeat appearances.

Maybe they’re bogus, maybe they’re not, but at least one matches a person that has attracted significant interest from the authorities in the past.

Keeping Things Cool

Items of equipment seized by the authorities include what appear to be high-powered fans/blowers or at least according to some searches, vacuum-type devices or even air conditioners. Whether they blow or suck, they presumably exist to prevent electronic equipment from overheating.

Fans of IPTV?

In the event that the equipment gets warm enough to catch fire, the spherical object in the image below (top right) will come in handy. Suspended above most fans, it’s actually a self-contained fire extinguisher. In the image top center, a car engine appears to be generating electricity. Bottom left features some quartz watches and a presentation box containing prop money.

An unusual collection

Further Investigations, Unanswered Questions

The Ministry of Justice says that investigators identified a number of legal entities linked to the group, used for the ‘transit and distribution’ of illicit funds.

“The investigation also identified partnerships between members of the scheme, who shared shell companies and irregularly traded machinery used for cryptocurrency mining.”

Whether that explains the images above is up for debate, but it’s certainly plausible.

Brazil’s Ciberlab also receives a mention for its technical and scientific support to track and dismantle digital infrastructures “that transcend geographical boundaries.”

The name ‘Operation Endpoint’ was apparently a strategic choice; instead of focusing on arresting individuals, the reported goal was to “target the access points — such as servers, domains, and monetization channels.”

Yet while domains and monetization channels can’t be photographed, the same can’t be said about servers. At least thus far, no images of servers have been released.

Whether the theory holds any weight is unclear, but some IPTV resellers in Brazil appear to be linking recent events in Argentina with the disappearance of DezPila, Tyflex, and Onlyflix, apparently thanks to their “reliance on a central server.”

That was eventually shut down but in line with tradition, others have already taken its place.

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Posted Thursday 20 November 2025 at 3:54 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have four newcomers on the list. “One Battle After Another” is the most shared title.

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

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

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Posted Wednesday 19 November 2025 at 5:29 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

For much of 2025, top-tier Spanish football league LaLiga has waged war against online piracy in controversial yet completely unapologetic fashion. A more single-minded approach may not have been deployed by any other entity, ever.

Launched around February, LaLiga’s persistent blocking of Cloudflare (and by extension, countless innocent customers) is a story still being told from distinct perspectives.

In LaLiga’s view, a court order granted it the necessary authority to block pirate sites. In the event that collateral damage even exists, that should be attributed to Cloudflare for a) harboring pirate sites and b) using innocent customers as ‘human shields’ by forcing them to use the same IP addresses as pirate sites. Cloudflare regrets that LaLiga saw fit to obtain a business-disrupting blocking order, without giving it an opportunity to appear in court, causing a rift that still hasn’t been bridged 10 months later.

Silent Cooperation No Longer Enough

The voices of the innocent sites and services, blocked by Spanish ISPs at LaLiga’s behest, have complained but haven’t really been heard. When approached by customers for comment, the ISPs carrying out the blocking haven’t been heard either, mostly because they have said very little indeed. Compliance with a court order has been mentioned in their roles as ISPs; as internet broadcasters with rights to air LaLiga broadcasts that presumably benefit from their own blocking? No comment.

The role of Spanish ISPs in whatever comes next won’t be a secret. As LaLiga opens up the bidding process for the seasons 2027/2028 until 2031/32, the league’s expectations are detailed in black and white.

First impressions raise questions of autonomy; specifically, how much independence will ISPs be required to sacrifice under an anti-piracy regime controlled by LaLiga, one in which it dictates policy, compels support for legal action, and mandates cooperation in investigations against their own customers.

Obligations to Collaborate

There’s little doubt that LaLiga views piracy seriously, but should any remain, none have any hope of surviving the obligations laid out in its anti-fraud policy.

The first paragraph states that successful bidders must ensure exclusive access to LaLiga content within the designated territory and implement at minimum several specified security measures. They include Digital Rights Management (DRM), anti-VPN systems, geo-blocking systems at the device and CDN levels, and security marking at both the source and CDN.

Visible watermarking is required to identify users, and measures must be in place to verify their locations. LaLiga also expects documentation to show the location and sources of any unauthorized retransmissions.

General Obligations

LaLiga says that its partners must “collaborate efficiently” and proactively, including against “the provision of public information aimed at promoting or facilitating unauthorized access to said contents,” whether on Facebook and YouTube, or on Whatsapp, Telegram, and Discord. User Generated Content (UGC) platforms, web-based illegal streaming sites, card-sharing services, IPTV suppliers, and BitTorrent-like systems such as Acestream, are all seen as legitimate targets.

Also under the spotlight, authorized entities “who exploit the content abusively and fraudulently.” When LaLiga initiates legal proceedings against these entities, its broadcasting partners are required to participate as an injured party.

LaLiga also places restrictions on the type of viewing devices broadcasters make available to their customers. LaLiga says that there are only three “safe environments” for installing software – Google Play Store, Huawei AppGallery and iOS Store. Functionality to load software from any other source must be prevented.

Create Synergies, Share Details of Users Detected as Pirates

When rights organization Promusicae sued Telefonica in 2005, demanding the identities of customers accused of pirating music, Telefonica fought all the way to Europe’s highest court to avoid handing over its customers’ personal details.

In 2008, the Court of Justice of the European Union handed Telefonica a landmark win.

But that was then, and this is now.

[T]he successful bidders who, by virtue of their status as telecommunications operators, are internet service providers, undertake to actively cooperate in judicial actions such as preliminary proceedings, aimed, at the request of LaLiga, at identifying those customers who access audiovisual content illicitly through the internet service, through illegal systems such as, for example, P2P (AceStream) or Cardsharing, avoiding formalizing an appeal against the judicial resolutions agreed upon in this area.

ISPs Must Promote Dynamic IP Address Blocking to the Courts

At a time when internet groups and researchers are issuing warnings over the dangers of IP address-based blocking, becoming a successful bidder for LaLiga broadcasting rights requires ISPs not to just ignore the advice, but to invest time and resources to ensure the courts endorse its use.

LaLiga says that the effectiveness of the measures must be promoted as effective against third-party intermediaries it perceives as undermining its blocking efforts.

They include VPN and DNS providers, anonymization services and, in a move unlikely to be well received at the White House, reverse proxy services. Despite receiving no direct mention here, a well-known American company would likely become a primary target.

Extracted from the original (Spanish)

The Successful Bidders also undertake to promote a joint policy against audiovisual fraud and to cooperate in speeding up the adoption of dynamic blocking of those websites and web resources identified as broadcasting, distributing, or sharing LALIGA content without consent, in particular, the modality of “live dynamic blocking” via IP, as well as through any of its technical modalities, collaborating to promote its adoption by the courts of justice and cooperating to achieve maximum effectiveness in the shortest possible time, providing, if necessary, the necessary personnel and means to ensure that such blocks, communicated by whoever is judicially designated for this purpose, take effect any day and time of the week immediately upon communication.

 

The successful bidders undertake to promote, together with LaLiga, the appropriate judicial and extrajudicial actions to promote the effectiveness of the blocks, in particular against third-party intermediaries whose services are used for the direct or indirect circumvention of the aforementioned blocks, such as, for example, providers of VPNs, reverse proxies, anonymization services, DNS, and/or hosting services.

Immediate Blocking Without Need For Judicial Intervention

An issue as potentially serious as this deserves another direct quote. For obvious reasons the statement here is translated from the original Spanish, but the original document is linked below and available for review.

The Successful Bidders, regardless of whether they are established in the territory or not, voluntarily, expressly and directly undertake, without the need for judicial intervention, to agree to the immediate blocking of those domains, subdomains, IP addresses and web pages and resources that, for violating intellectual property rights and other related rights, are notified to them by LALIGA or by the entity designated by it through any means of notification that allows proof of receipt, who will provide as proof of this evidentiary support extracted and compiled through any of the trusted providers approved by the Spanish or European authorities, together with a technical report issued by their audiovisual anti-fraud department, thereby taking effective knowledge of the illicit nature of the actions of the domains, subdomains and IPs.

 

Both the supporting evidence and the technical report will be recognized by all Successful Bidders as sufficient proof to directly and free of charge agree to the requested block, which will be facilitated immediately upon receipt of the request by LaLiga.

Surprisingly, the above isn’t even a full accounting of all requirements, far from it, so we’ll return to the topic later.

At this point it’s worth mentioning the tone of the document, which is absolutely uncompromising in both its determination and the instructions required to achieve its goals. On several occasions the Successful Bidders are warned that if they fail to meet LaLiga’s requirements, and then fail to improve or correct the issue at hand, they will have their contracts terminated.

Failure to comply with these obligations, or their partial or defective compliance, after a reasonable period has been provided for their correction, will be a mandatory cause for automatic termination of the contract, with written notification from LaLiga accompanied by a technical report from its Audiovisual Anti-Fraud Department demonstrating the verification of the non-compliance being sufficient proof for this.

There are further examples in the ‘Competitive Tender Process’ document here (pdf)

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Posted Wednesday 19 November 2025 at 5:19 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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With an impressive 185 million visitors in May this year, Mangajikan was one of the largest piracy sites on the Internet.

The site’s popularity did not go unnoticed by manga publisher Shueisha, which took legal action at a California federal court this summer to uncover the operator’s identity.

Shueisha filed a request for a DMCA subpoena, directed at Cloudflare, hoping to expose the operator. This appeared to yield results right away, as mangajikan.com and the related domain alammanga.com were voluntarily taken down soon after.

Motion to Quash / Protect

While Shueisha must have been pleased with the quick result, the publisher was still eager to identify the culprit. The operator, in turn, filed a motion to quash, hoping to protect their identity.

In court, the parties disagreed on whether Cloudflare is a proper recipient for DMCA subpoenas. In October, the California federal court eventually ruled that Cloudflare’s caching made it a valid subpoena target.

As a result, Cloudflare is required to share all information it holds on the pirate site operator. However, before any information was handed over, the court instructed the pirate site operator and Shueisha to agree on the terms of a protective order. That’s easier said than done.

Recently, the parties failed to reach an agreement on what Shueisha is allowed to do with the operator’s identifying information. To resolve this new dispute, they are now back in court, seeking a breakthrough.

Pirate Site Operator Seeks Privacy Fortress

Seeking maximum privacy, the pirate site operator wants the information handed over by Cloudflare classified as “Attorneys’-Eyes-Only”.

This restriction effectively means that the operator’s identity would only be revealed to Shueisha’s external U.S. lawyers. The information would be explicitly hidden from Shueisha’s own employees, in-house lawyers, and executives in Japan.

The proposed protective order would forbid Shueisha’s lawyers from sharing the identifying information with anyone else, including other copyright holders, who may have had their pirated content appear on the site.

Importantly, Mangajikan’s operator proposes a 180-day ultimatum to use the obtained details to file a U.S. copyright lawsuit. If Shueisha’s lawyers don’t take action within this timeframe, they must destroy all copies of the identifying information.

Shueisha Wants Broad and Global Action

In its submission, Shueisha fiercely opposes these strict limitations. The company argues that an extreme protective order rewards concealment efforts and obstructs enforcement. Their proposal is the polar opposite, and aims to facilitate a global enforcement strategy.

Specifically, Shueisha is demanding the right to share the name of the operator internally, including with its employees in Japan. This ‘confidential’ information may also be used for legal action abroad, not just in the United States.

In addition, Shueisha should be able to share the name with law enforcement and other affected parties when that’s appropriate.

“Shueisha must be free to use identifying information to pursue claims wherever appropriate, coordinate with law enforcement, seek additional subpoenas if the identifying information in the production is insufficient, or notify others whose works were infringed,” they note.

The Court Decides

Since the parties failed to reach a compromise, the terms of the protective order will be determined by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

This isn’t just a procedural squabble. The judge’s ruling will set a precedent for how much power a DMCA subpoena can truly hold. Are they only designed to help U.S. legal efforts, or can information be used globally?

Needless to say, other rightsholders will monitor the outcome of this battle with great interest. The same holds for pirates who may want to put up a similar defense in the future.

—

A copy of the Joint Discovery Letter, where both parties explain their respective positions to the court, is available here (pdf). The associated proposed protective orders can be found here (operator) and here (Shueisha)

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Posted Tuesday 18 November 2025 at 2:42 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

Today’s internet is arguably better than it’s ever been. Yet there are significant privacy and security concerns that, despite best efforts, only seem to be getting worse.

Calls for governments to get much more involved carry the not insignificant risk of them doing just that. Not necessarily to tackle the issues that led to the cordial invitation, of course, but when blocking and access restrictions are heavily promoted as the solution to one problem, suddenly everyone has a problem. Governments looking for solutions unsurprisingly have many times more.

The Normalization of Blocking

A little over fifteen years ago, there wasn’t much appetite for online blocking, at least beyond abusive images and videos, for which blocking still receives overwhelming public support. Today it doesn’t really matter if the public approves or not, site blocking is permitted almost everywhere. Whether for suppressing piracy or silencing perceived overseas propaganda, or brandished as punishment for non-compliance with local rules, the potential seems unlimited.

Yet the majority of content blocking experienced day-to-day isn’t imposed, it’s a personal choice. Most browsers have an option to block popups, for example. Blocking intrusive advertising is increasingly popular too, since without some type of defense, any veneer of online privacy quickly heads south, taking usability with it. For many, the browser-based uBlock Origin remains the gold standard but thanks to ISPs’ site blocking efforts, running software like Pi-hole takes care of the ads and with its own DNS, simultaneously unblocks the pipes.

For those averse to tinkering under the hood, personal blocking performance is almost completely reliant on the decisions made by third-party blocklist maintainers. Make the right decisions and deploy reputable blocklists, overall things can go very well indeed. That doesn’t necessarily mean everything always goes according to plan, but with the right approach, getting back on track is simplicity itself.

Blocklists Always Contain Errors

The standard lists bundled with uBlock Origin and Pi-hole are generally perceived as very good. Indeed, many view uBlock as an indispensable first line of defense against the endless appearance of malicious ads. On GitHub, all kinds of DNS blocklists are available from Hagezi’s repo, all with a common and genuine mission to keep the internet as ‘clean’ and as safe as possible.

Essentially a one-man labor of love crammed into his spare time, by many accounts Hagezi’s main lists strike a fair balance between blocking unwanted trackers and not breaking websites, which for most people is the sweet spot. For those with more specific needs, there’s no shortage of choice.

The threat intelligence-led blocklist has been used here without any issues, likewise the feed for NRDs (newly registered domains) which often contains new streaming site domains, purchased as replacements in the wake of anti-piracy blocking. Others clearly have specific goals in mind, one in particular.

The ‘Anti Piracy – Protects Against Piracy!’ Blocklist

This blocklist contains over 11,000 entries, in theory blocking access to just as many pirate sites. In practice, it may block a few thousand but since domains come and go quickly, only well-funded anti-piracy groups have the necessary resources to stay anywhere near up to date, and the list naturally reflects that.

No third-party list will ever be comprehensive, and this one makes no claims to the contrary. Indeed, a disclaimer concerning all lists notes that the ultimate responsibility for using or not using a blocklist lies with the user. We completely agree, and we’ll return to that in just a moment.

The fact that many domains on the list today fell out of action a decade or more ago, presents issues. These issues are not unique to this blocklist; they also apply to any region where enthusiasm for pirate site blocking isn’t matched by corresponding unblocking when domains are repurposed.

The key differences deserve early emphasis: Pirate site blocking lists are imposed and either fully closed or open to limited scrutiny. Hagezi’s blocklists are free, voluntary, and transparent. While that means errors get pointed out (see below), that’s what gives open source its strength.

Welcometothescene.com was home to The Scene, a drama miniseries set around the topic of piracy. Created by Jun Group, the show was free to watch online, including on peer-to-peer networks, under a Creative Commons license. Released to a pre-YouTube audience in 2004, the last episode aired 20 years ago.

Long since repurposed, the domain appears both dead and alive in DuckDuckGo’s search results, and very much alive in the Anti-Piracy Blocklist.

How the domain got onto the anti-piracy blocklist is anyone’s guess, likewise why it’s somehow still there today. Other problematic entries are more current and at times, quite puzzling too.

A Few Examples

We’ve highlighted a few obvious blunders below, but the context means that when compared to similar blunders made elsewhere, these are much less serious. Mistakes are inevitable, yet transparency and the ability to put things right make a world of difference.

Open Source Projects

 

torrent.fedoraproject.org | torrent.ubuntu.com | fosstorrents.com | tracker.parrotlinux.org | tracker.parrotsec.org | Webtorrent.io | Instant.io

 

Free Music / Independent Artists / Pro-Sharing Bands

 

Jamendo.com | bt.etree.org

 

Anti-Piracy | Transparency Database | Piracy News

 

Alliance4Creativity.com | Lumendatabase.org | Torrentfreak.com

 

Government | Satire

 

Parliamentlive.tv | Southparkstudios.com

These issues shouldn’t detract from the quality found elsewhere in the project, where most of the attention is focused. While an erroneously blocked domain is still one too many, the open nature of these blocklists is undoubtedly one of the most important things to consider when weighing the pros and cons of any kind of content blocking.

Try not to spend too much time looking, small sections like this are entirely accurate but seriously headache-inducing.

Transparency, Accountability, and the Future of Site-Blocking

With absolutely no charge to the end user, Hagezi’s entirely open approach allows the individual to make their own choices about what happens on their networks and on their machines. Some errors will exist, they always do, so if anyone feels that a blocklist isn’t for them, so be it – nobody is being forced to do anything they don’t want to.

It’s about personal choice and striking a balance between the expected end result and the likelihood that it won’t ever be perfect, but probably good enough. And when things do go wrong, the person responsible is always around.

Formal anti-piracy blocking regimes, on the other hand, are mandatory for everyone within their increasingly broad jurisdictions. In most countries they are the antithesis of open source, despite having a direct effect on the majority of internet connections.

There’s no element of personal choice, and any balancing exercise involves someone else’s vision of a good end result. It won’t ever be perfect, but “probably good enough” takes on different light when things go wrong in this context.

Opacity as a Feature

Overblocking is not subject to public reporting and since members of the public have no direct access to blocklists, errors can’t be caught early or even caught at all. For victims of overblocking seeking answers, the almost impossible challenge is to a) prove it b) find out who’s responsible c) report it to the body set up to deal with overblocking and d) come to terms with the reality that the system protects rightsholders and ISPs, period.

If a court authorizes blocking, all parties point to each other and ultimately back to the court in the event of overblocking; bodies to deal with overblocking don’t exist, because effectively, overblocking itself doesn’t exist. That’s clearly evidenced by the lack of complaints, despite that being directly attributable to reporting opacity.

The lack of transparency is often explained as a necessary component of site-blocking strategy, in that secrecy prevents site operators from knowing that their domains are being blocked. The idea that they don’t already know only makes sense if the impact was too limited to notice. In any event, transparency with a 24-hour delay would be sufficient for the public record but unlike the imposition of secret blocklists, publication isn’t mandatory.

While Hagezi’s lists are open source and offer significant benefits for those who choose to use them, company records are proprietary. This is the future of site-blocking and the realization that it won’t arrive tomorrow, requires acceptance of a difficult truth:

For the last 15 years, it always arrived yesterday.

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Posted Monday 17 November 2025 at 3:44 am AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

In 2004, the online piracy epidemic was becoming more serious for the movie industry, largely due to the spectacular growth of bandwidth-efficient torrent sites.

This concern was recognized by the Motion Picture Association (MPA[A]) and its renowned CEO, Jack Valenti, who had been in charge of the Hollywood group since 1966.

“If we don’t react promptly to an ascending curve of illegal uploading and downloading soon to be reinforced with dazzling speeds rising from file-trafficking networks, we will live with an intense regret,” Valenti said in June 2004.

Valenti’s warning came two weeks before his official retirement. As the founding father of the MPA’s anti-piracy division, he saw a combination of increased enforcement, new legislation, and public awareness campaigns as the key to tackling the piracy scourge.

You Wouldn’t Steal a Car

These words were put into action as the MPA worked on an aggressive educational campaign. At the ShoWest industry conference, held in Las Vegas in March 2004, attendees were shown a preview of two new PSAs that equated movie piracy to other types of stealing.

The now-iconic “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” PSA was created under the MPA’s wings, but the group never promoted it publicly through its main website. Via various international partners, however, the PSA soon became a global phenomenon.

“You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” PSA

As far as we know, the first public mention dates back to July 12, when the Industry Trust for IP Awareness launched a broad campaign at the piracyisacrime.com website. This effort was partly funded by the main Hollywood studios, including MPA members.

The “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” PSA wasn’t just featured by the UK campaign, it also inspired its name and logo.

Piracyisacrime.com
 

The MPA obviously didn’t mind the global exposure. In fact, a few days after the UK launch, the MPA teamed up with Singapore’s Intellectual Property Office to share the “you wouldn’t steal” mantra there as well.

Who Created the PSA?

While the MPA’s role is clear from historical documents, neatly preserved by the invaluable Internet Archive, the true origins of the campaign always remained a mystery. None of the public announcements mention who created the iconic PSA. That is, until two French journalists dove into it.

Nicolas Delage and Christophe Wilson embarked on a two-year investigation that they summarize in a YouTube video. Ironically, even the MPA seemed to have forgotten that the PSA idea originated at an MPA meeting, as they pointed to the UK anti-piracy group FACT instead.

The French journalists persevered nonetheless. They discovered that the PSA was filmed at the Paramount backlot in Los Angeles, and after numerous inquiries, they eventually learned that Warner Bros. was behind the production. They spoke to several people who were involved, including creative director Ricky Mintz.

“When we made that video, I thought it would play in theaters for a week, maybe. In a million years, I never would have imagined it would end up on almost every DVD in the 2000s. Until my kids told me, I had no idea,” Mintz recalls in the video.

Ricky Mintz (from the video)
 

Speaking with TorrentFreak, journalist Nicolas Delage says that he and Christophe reached out to over 70 people during their investigation. Many people declined to talk, and those who did could often only fill in some of the blanks.

“The studios and the MPA were such large organizations that no one really seemed to know who was responsible for what, which made things a lot more complicated when we started digging for specific information.”

“For the team at Warner Bros. in charge of producing it, it was apparently just a quick gig between two movie trailers,” Nicolas says.

The documentary includes many more intriguing details that we won’t spoil here, and it is a must-watch for those who are interested in the history of the iconic PSA. The journalists deserve all the credit for finding many missing pieces of the puzzle, which greatly help to update the historical record.

The ‘Stolen’ Font Controversy

There is one key element in the video for which we would like to provide some additional context. This relates to allegations that surfaced earlier this year, which suggested that the piracyisacrime.com website used a ‘copied’ font in their campaign PDF material.

The French journalists note in the video that “piracyisacrime.com has nothing to do with the Piracy It’s a Crime ad” and that the PSA had “zero connection” with piracyisacrime.com. That’s a bit of an overstatement.

While piracyisacrime.com was not involved in the creation of the PSA, it did promote the video in its campaign material and hosted the videos, with permission from the MPA. This makes sense, as the UK website was funded by MPA members through the Industry Trust for IP Awareness.

From the piracyisacrime.com campaign PDF
 

As we mentioned in our earlier coverage on the font controversy, there is no evidence that the PSA video itself used the ‘copied’ font, so in that sense the creators are not “connected” to these allegations.

More History, To be Continued

Needless to say, after more than two decades, the “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” PSA continues to intrigue. Or should we say the “Downloader” PSA, which was the official title for the online piracy ad, as mentioned by the French journalists.

While researching the various claims for this article, we stumbled upon a form from the movie theater organization NATO (now Cinema United), where members could order copies of the PSA to show before films. This form confirms the “Downloader” name and also lists the name of the counterfeit DVD version: “Street Vendor“.

NATO’s order form
 

The same document, published in August 2004, also confirms that the MPA provided these videos, offering theaters the option to order a DVD if they had trouble accessing the copies online.

It appears that there are still plenty of intriguing details to uncover about the iconic PSA. The French journalists realize this too. At the end of their video, they tease a follow-up about the PSA’s music. This will likely cover the debunked claim that the music was “pirated”, a certain Prodigy track, and much more.

We’re looking forward to it already.

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Posted Sunday 16 November 2025 at 6:01 pm AEST (my time).

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RIP Matrix

In July, adult content producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta.

The complaint accused the tech company of using adult films to assist its AI model training. Similar claims have been made by other rightsholders, including many book authors.

This latest case specifically focuses on Meta’s BitTorrent activity. That’s no surprise, as plaintiff Strike 3 is the most active copyright litigant in the United States, known for targeting thousands of alleged BitTorrent pirates.

Meta Wants Lawsuit Dismissed

In late October, Meta responded to the allegations by filing a motion to dismiss at a California federal court. Taking a page from the BitTorrent piracy defense playbook, Meta argues that the IP address evidence presented by the plaintiffs is meaningless without context.

The porn producers had linked numerous Meta IP addresses to unauthorized sharing activity. According to Meta, however, there is no evidence that the alleged activity on its corporate network was centrally orchestrated by the company. In fact, it countered that many alleged downloads predate Meta’s AI training activity.

In addition to denying the allegations, the tech company offered an alternative explanation. Meta suggested that employees or visitors may have downloaded the pirated videos for personal use.

“[T]he small number of downloads—roughly 22 per year on average across dozens of Meta IP addresses—is plainly indicative of private personal use, not a concerted effort to collect the massive datasets Plaintiffs allege are necessary for effective AI training,” Meta wrote.

Porn Producers Counter Personal Use Defense

The plaintiffs responded to Meta’s defense this week, characterizing the “personal use” explanation as implausible, given the amount of data involved and the piracy patterns they observed.

“Plaintiffs provide data demonstrating unique patterns of Meta’s piracy suggestive of a centralized algorithm coordinating the infringements. Meta’s excuse that employees must be infringing Plaintiffs’ copyrights for ‘personal use’ does not fit the facts,” they write.

The rightsholders point out several download patterns that they believe suggest non-human involvement. Interestingly, these patterns are not linked to their own works, but to those of other rightsholders.

For example, they highlight data from June 29, 2024, suggesting that Meta’s corporate, residential, and “hidden” IP addresses all downloaded multiple different versions of Microsoft Office within hours of each other.

“No reasonable person needs this many versions of a word processing software,” they write.

Additionally, the rebuttal mentions that on April 7, 2024, various IP addresses downloaded content linked to the word “origin”, without any other obvious connection. This includes Dan Brown’s book “Origin” the game “Origin Offline Start,” and the 2023 movie “Origin”.

“This is the kind of systematic, hyper-literal search consistent with an algorithm, and not just a person casually searching for files,” the adult companies note. They suggest that downloading data for AI training, as Meta previously admitted in the books lawsuit, is the ultimate goal.

The “Tit-for-Tat” Motive

The rightsholders also offer a secondary motive to explain why Meta might want to use its videos as part of the broader AI training scheme. They suggest that the tech giant allegedly used popular adult films as ‘BitTorrent currency’.

The companies allege that these downloads would benefit BitTorrent’s reciprocal “tit-for-tat” mechanism. They previously explained in their complaint that this could boost Meta’s other download efforts.

“Meta does not produce popular creative works and thus has no ‘currency’ for the swarm of peers in the BitTorrent network. As a result, Meta must steal someone else’s cachet to stay in these swarms so that it can download files,” the opposition brief reads.

“Plaintiffs’ works are ideal. Not only do they serve as unique data for AI training, they are popular both commercially and in the BitTorrent network, ensuring that Meta could stay in swarms and download even more files,” they add.

While this is an interesting argument, our understanding of the BitTorrent protocol is that the reciprocal “tit-for-tat” advantages are limited to single torrent swarms. This means that the “currency” benefits do not extend to other downloads in different swarms. We assume that Meta’s legal team will have some thoughts on this as well.

All in all, the porn producers believe that Meta’s defenses are not up to par. They argue there is sufficient ground to survive a motion to dismiss and move the case forward, so it can be argued on its merits.

“Meta’s Motion is an attempt to thwart the protections Congress enacted in the Copyright Act. Respectfully, Plaintiffs simply ask for their day in court and ask this Court to deny the Motion.”

—

A copy of the opposition brief Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media filed in response to Meta’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf). A hearing on the motion to dismiss is scheduled for January 21, 2026.

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Posted Sunday 16 November 2025 at 4:50 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

When a US-based web host receives a credible DMCA takedown notice, it’s often a sign that action is required to resolve the complaint. That usually means taking down allegedly infringing content uploaded by a third party.

Having met its obligations under the DMCA, compliance typically means that the host avoids liability for third-party infringement. Some overseas hosts operate somewhat differently, however, embracing non-compliance as a beneficial service feature.

DISH Network vs. Virtual Systems, LLC

In the world of ‘offshore’ and ‘bulletproof’ hosting, DMCA non-compliance typically comes as standard. Ukraine-based Virtual Systems, LLC (also known as VSYS Host) advertises itself as a ‘DMCA-ignored’ host, meaning that when DMCA notices instruct the company to take content down, no action is taken.

In October 2024, a lawsuit filed at a Seattle district court accused Virtual Systems, LLC, and its alleged owner and CEO, Vyacheslav Smyrnov, of doing just that.

Filed by broadcaster DISH Network and supported by the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP), the complaint alleged that pirate IPTV services used Virtual Systems’ servers to illegally ‘transmit’ linear streams and VOD content, to which DISH owns the rights.

“Users accessed the Works through a set-top box (STB) or a website that links to the Works or provides a playlist used to access the Works. Users often had to purchase a subscription to view the Pirate Services’ content, in addition to purchasing any required STB. DISH did not authorize the Pirate Services to distribute or publicly perform the Works and received no compensation from them,” the complaint alleged.

DMCA Takedown Notices Universally Ignored

At least in part, the lawsuit targeted unfinished business. Three of the IPTV providers hosted by Virtual Systems were on the losing end of previous legal action in the United States. They were restrained from further infringement under a permanent injunction with the same applying to Virtual Systems. DMCA non-compliance was an additional aggravating factor.

“Virtual Systems and Smyrnov, collectively, were the recipients of at least 512 Infringement Notices. Virtual Systems did not respond to the Infringement Notices and did not take any measures to stop the Pirate Services’ infringement occurring on its servers and network. The Pirate Services kept infringing DISH’s copyrights in Works aired on the Channels, even using the same IP addresses and URLs previously reported to Virtual Systems,” the complaint continued.

In May 2025, a DISH status report[1] running to 370-pages described work to comply with the requirements of Ukraine, with Smyrnov reportedly served under the Hague Convention. Local issues included what appeared to be an attempt by Smyrnov to file a pro se answer to the DISH complaint. But with no signature and other critical shortcomings, the complaint officially went unanswered.

$41.8m Judgment in Favor of the Plaintiff

A default judgment was perhaps the most likely outcome from the beginning and with no direct contact and no answer on file, a win by default seemed all but inevitable.

An order issued this week dated November 12 notes Virtual Systems’ policy on DMCA compliance, which seems to strongly favor the customer, including those with “occasional” copyright issues.

The court also restated the three willful secondary copyright infringement claims in the original DISH complaint, the company’s request for damages, plus a permanent injunction.

Count I – Materially Contributing to Copyright Infringement;
Count II – Inducing Copyright Infringement; and
Count III – Vicarious Copyright Infringement.

 

Damages up to $150,000 for each registered work infringed.

Finding no obstacle to granting a default judgment, the court considered DISH’s request for maximum damages of $150,000 for willful infringement of each of the 279 copyrighted works listed in the complaint.

A Reasonable Request for a Significant Sum of Money

Noting that a judgment of $41,850,000 is expressly authorized by the Copyright Act, the court nevertheless described the eight-figure claim as “a significant sum of money.”

After weighing various factors, including DISH’s withdrawal of claims for profits attributable to the infringement, plus attorneys’ fees and costs, overall DISH claimed for less than it was entitled. As a result, a judgment of $41,850,000 was viewed as reasonable.

DISH was also granted a permanent injunction, which includes “a prohibition on providing any servers or network used in streaming or transmitting the material and requires termination of any current or future accounts of customers that stream or transmit the material.”

Chris Kuelling, executive director of IBCAP, welcomes the judgment and notes that failing to comply with takedown notices can prove expensive, including on a personal level.

“This ruling against Virtual Systems and its owner is another example of the consequences for hosting providers that choose to ignore takedown notices from IBCAP,” Kuelling says.

“IBCAP does not tolerate hosting providers and content delivery networks that disregard the law and fail to comply with our takedown notices. The result of such noncompliance is not only a permanent injunction, but also significant monetary damages, in this case more than $41 million, personally owed by the owner, Mr. Smyrnov.”

In comments to TorrentFreak, Kuelling says that the Ukrainian courts “seem to be in session and working despite the war” so IBCAP are ready for the next stage.

“With this order now in hand the attorneys will turn their efforts to collection and enforcement of the injunction,” he concludes.

The order granting default judgment is available here (pdf)

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Posted Saturday 15 November 2025 at 4:14 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

For the third Oct/Nov period, three years in a row, once again it’s Fire Stick Crackdown Malware Armageddon Month in the UK.

The annual event begins with the usual publications finding inspiration to write about the most popular streaming device in the UK, with drama injected into the mix by any means available to ensure maximum engagement.

If only there was some way of measuring interest in these articles or related searches, it could potentially provide valuable information on the UK piracy landscape, or even help to achieve behavioral change.

The news surge coincides with the anniversary of the BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign, which launched around September 2023 and is still going strong. Published just this week, the campaign’s latest research is an important part of the puzzle that begins (but won’t end) with the new policy from Amazon.

Amazon and Sideloaded Apps

While we have yet to see any evidence that a campaign is actually underway at any scale, this recent statement from Amazon concerning Fire TV and sideloading is indeed genuine.

Amazon’s statement:

Piracy is illegal, and we’ve always worked to block it from our Appstore. Through an expanded program led by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition fighting digital piracy, we’ll now block apps identified as providing access to pirated content, including those downloaded from outside our Appstore.

Apps that somehow made it through Amazon’s vetting process or changed their behavior afterward, have been blocked on several occasions in the past. However, the new policy seems to go much further than that, by effectively signaling the beginning of the end for mass piracy via Amazon devices

How it will make its presence known at the consumer end, where loyal Amazon customers can often be found, is currently unknown. The manner in which the news has been released suggests that awareness is an accepted and important part of the equation, and preferred over a formal announcement alongside ACE, of which Amazon is already a member.

AFTVNews reports that the new approach will launch in Germany and France before rolling out globally to what is believed to be over 250 million devices. At least at this stage, there are no indications that the policy will apply retroactively, i.e by disabling apps already sideloaded to users’ devices.

Amazon could do that with the flick of a switch but probably won’t. Fire TV products also generate revenue for Amazon and partners including Netflix, so a gentle migration across to the piracy-restricted Vega OS-based Fire TV Stick 4K Select, seems the least disruptive option.

Unnamed Apps, Unclear Parameters

Apps deemed suitable for initial blocking haven’t been named and given the existing site blocking policy at the MPA (of which Amazon is also a member), it seems unlikely that apps will suddenly find themselves named in the media. That being said, “providing access to pirated content” is open for interpretation.

Self-contained apps that proactively present infringing content to the user, seem to be the most obvious candidates for blocking. Open apps, essentially video players that require users to provide their own playlists or login to a remote system, aren’t so easily defined.

They’re easy to identify and at the point of download, usually completely legal too. Whether Amazon sees itself splitting hairs over legality is unknown, but in a second statement, slightly different from the first, Amazon does seem to hint at a particular type of app being of particular interest.

“[Blocking piracy apps] builds on our ongoing efforts to support creators and protect customers, as piracy can also expose users to malware, viruses and fraud,” Amazon notes.

There’s no indication that piracy apps with or without any of these three features will be treated differently than any other. However, from the company’s perspective, blocking apps for being malicious would be much more straightforward than defending its position based on the semantics of copyright law.

Zero tolerance of malware and fraud is also widely accepted, even among consumer-level pirates. Yet in theory, this gives them no reason to stay in the Amazon ecosystem. As a result, they will have important decisions to make.

Buy a Brand New Fire TV 4K Select?

From today’s piracy perspective, Amazon’s latest device is an unattractive proposition and, at some point, older devices will be viewed that way too. That leads to a scenario where anti-piracy campaigns based on the threat of malware and fraud will likely become even more relevant.

While yet to appear on the official website, this week BeStreamWise has been circulating some basic information on what it says are the results of a new study. The premise is straightforward: Around 40% of people who stream content illegally suffer some kind of financial fraud as a result.

The research – among more than 2,000 Brits – found that, of those that have accessed illegally streamed content in the past 12 months, an alarming four in ten (39%) have suffered financial losses after being targeted by criminals. The average amount stolen was £1,680 – more than half of the average monthly gross salary in the UK – while one in 10 (11%) people lost more than £7,500.

Countering these claims seems pointless for two key reasons. Firstly, victims of this type of fraud typically have no idea who was responsible. They can try to narrow things down, but it rarely amounts to much. It’s self-reported guesswork at best; 65% of respondents said they had “near misses with hacking attempts whilst watching content illegally online” but what a near miss is supposed to look like depends on what the respondent believes they saw.

A Genuine Crisis

The second point is more important: studies like this are easily criticized, but there is mounting evidence that large parts of the world are under attack from malware known as infostealers. There’s no substitute for reading about the issue directly but the headline figure today of 33,411,241 machines infected speaks for itself.

There clearly is a significant problem with some pirate streaming sites and that is not going away.

HudsonRock.com obtains data stolen from user devices that have been compromised by infostealers and through this data it can see what the hackers had access to. This includes logins and passwords for the sites users visit. The site’s search engine can therefore show how many users of a certain domain have been compromised.

This does not mean that the site in question was the infection vector or that visiting the site is now unsafe. It simply means that those credentials were likely obtained when the user was compromised. The data is terrifying.

People will shrug and declare it doesn’t affect them, but one look at the set-top device crisis Brazil faces right now really puts things into perspective. Read Microsoft’s reports and Google’s lawsuit, which attempt to shut down pirate set-top box botnets that are typically delivered from China with malware already installed.

So, when Fire TV bites the dust and pirates migrate away from what was a relatively safe option, what devices will they buy next? Perhaps more to the point, through what mechanism will pirates be discouraged from doing so?

Because it’s likely that, by then, nothing printed in the media will have any credibility among pirates, and it will be years before they even start listening again.

By then, it might already be too late.

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Posted Friday 14 November 2025 at 4:01 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

Pirate site blocking is a common practice in dozens of countries around the world, and the Netherlands is no exception.

After a decade-long legal battle between anti-piracy group BREIN and three local Internet providers, the latter were ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay in 2020.

This was a pivotal moment, as it opened the door to more blocking requests targeting other torrent sites, streaming portals, and shadow libraries. A year later, the blocking process was further streamlined when all major ISPs signed a covenant where they agreed to block pirate sites when rightsholders obtain a blocking order against one of their fellow providers.

Blocking Music Pirate Sites

Today, BREIN obtained a fresh site-blocking injunction at the Rotterdam Court. The order requires Internet provider Ziggo to block access to music piracy platforms ‘newalbumreleases’ and ‘Israbox’ that reportedly had 100,000 monthly visits in the country.

Ziggo was one of the ISPs that previously pushed back against BREIN’s blocking requests in the Pirate Bay case. This time around, the ISP also objected, again without the desired result.

In court, Ziggo argued that the underlying Pirate Bay jurisprudence should not apply to this case, as the targeted music sites rely on cyberlocker links instead of torrents. The court firmly rejected this line of reasoning. It ruled that the technology doesn’t matter as long as a site “deliberately and with a profit motive” links to unauthorized content.

New Album Releases
 

Ziggo also argued that BREIN failed the “subsidiarity” test by not doing enough to stop the sites before it requested the injunction. Again, the court disagreed and concluded that BREIN had “done more than was expected” based on the agreed covenant.

The legal paperwork reveals that BREIN reached out to the owners of both sites. The anti-piracy group also contacted their hosting providers, domain name registrars, several related cyberlockers, and the registrants and registrars of various proxies and mirror sites, among others.

Finally, Ziggo’s concerns over effectiveness and proportionality were also rejected. The court sees DNS blocking as a “clear and verifiable” measure with sufficient protections against overblocking. While blockades can be circumvented by subscribers, they are “sufficiently effective” to block casual pirates.

Blocklist Expands for All Major ISPs

The injunction requires Ziggo to block the ‘newalbumreleases’ and ‘Israbox’ domain names within five working days. This is a dynamic order, so any new (sub)domains, proxies, or mirrors that BREIN reports to the ISP will be added to the blocklist too.

Under the agreed covenant, these blockades will also apply to other Dutch Internet providers, including KPN, DELTA, and Odido. This means that, without workarounds, the two music piracy sites will soon be inaccessible in the Netherlands.

While Ziggo is likely disappointed with the outcome, in a comment to TorrentFreak a spokesperson for the company indicates that it will not fight the ruling.

“We have taken note of the verdict of Rotterdam Court regarding the blocking of several unauthorized music websites. We respect the ruling and will comply, in accordance with the agreements in the Website Blocking Covenant,” Ziggo informs us.

‘Site Blocking Is Essential’

BREIN director Bastiaan van Ramshorst is pleased with the outcome, and he frames these types of measures as a necessary last resort.

“When illegal services ignore takedown requests… and hide behind non-cooperative foreign hosts and domain registrars, there is no other option than to block these via Dutch access providers,” van Ramshorst says, adding that ISPs are the ‘best placed’ party to effectively counter these infringements.

Following this victory, BREIN will likely share the court order with Google, which has an unwritten policy of voluntarily removing court-ordered blocked domains from its Dutch search results. That further increases the scope of the injunction.

—

TorrentFreak has seen the injunction, but a redacted copy of the court order has yet to be published online by the Rotterdam court. We will update this article accordingly when it is available.

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Posted Thursday 13 November 2025 at 1:45 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

Twenty years ago, the first post was published on TorrentFreak.

At the time, I was a young graduate student, eager to learn and research. My interest soon exceeded the academic world and was drawn to a vibrant digital playground: the Internet.

In the early 2000s, new technologies and communications channels were suddenly at everyone’s fingertips. There was a whole new world to explore. Being somewhat of a digital late bloomer, I was completely fascinated by it all.

When torrents first crossed my path, they felt like a genuine revolution. Earlier file-sharing technologies already shown what was technically possible, but the web-based nature of torrents spawned online communities everywhere. This was a time when “pirates” were still seen as digital revolutionaries, who freed information from physical shackles such as CDs and DVDs.

TorrentFreak Est. 2005

The rise of public torrent sites and private torrent trackers was fascinating to watch. In 2005, it eventually led to the launch of TorrentFreak. There wasn’t much in-depth coverage of the file-sharing space at the time, and the goal was to document the developments in this ecosystem with a strong focus on news.

In the mid-2000s, copyright industry groups were already quite vocal and their anti-piracy messaging was generally repeated in the media without question. TorrentFreak’s goal was to critically assess the information and add, in our view, more balance to the discourse.

In hindsight, the timing for TorrentFreak’s launch was perfect. The Internet had torn down the information barriers. Writing news and opinions was no longer exclusive to companies that had access to a printing machine or a TV channel; everyone could become their own news publisher.

This self-publishing power may seem obvious today, but, in 2005, it felt both empowering and liberating.

TorrentFreak in 2007
 

In the early years, TorrentFreak had a strong focus on the rapidly growing file-sharing landscape. We never endorsed piracy in any shape or form but did try to fill information gaps, offering a counterweight to polarized claims and unbalanced studies.

A Changing Landscape

TorrentFreak started as a solo journey, but after a year, Andy Maxwell joined. While many others have contributed to the site along the way, today the two of us work independently and are still the site’s backbone, writing all news stories for the site.

As the years passed, the file-sharing ecosystem itself changed. The name of the site still includes ‘torrent’ but most of our coverage today is on the broader piracy ecosystem and related copyright challenges, which are nothing like they were twenty years ago.

The ‘pirate’ hobbyists of the early days were increasingly replaced by individuals and groups trying to make a quick buck — or even millions. This introduced more criminal elements to the piracy scene, which continue to run rampant today, as is evidenced by the many lawsuits and criminal prosecutions we report on.

Rightsholders and anti-piracy groups have also become much more active, both on the enforcement and lobbying fronts. They point out various threats and concerns, demanding action. At the same time, their anti-piracy actions and enforcement efforts cause concerns for legitimate companies and the public at large.

As time passed, TorrentFreak has mostly adopted the role of a neutral, yet critical, observer. We don’t shy away from highlighting extremes on both ends of any issue. Because if I’ve learned anything over the past two decades, it’s that there are always multiple sides to a story, and the most extreme positions are usually the least effective.

TorrentFreak’s Next Chapter

If I look back at the past two decades, I realize how much luck played a role in getting TorrentFreak to survive. The key to building a lasting site is to keep writing, but that would not have been possible without the help and advice from the many people who crossed my path along the way. Not all would appreciate a public callout, but you know who you are.

I would like to thank all readers who followed us on our journey. The same is true for all sources, tipsters, and other friends we made along the way. You all served as a key motivator that helped TorrentFreak to get where it is today.

Today, the 20-something-year-old person who started TorrentFreak is a few years away from turning 50. That’s a scary thought, but a blessed one at the same time. The countless hours of work have taken their toll at times, but the writing spark is still there.

This brings me to the next chapter….

In a way, I feel that TorrentFreak has already accomplished its mission. That’s a reassuring thought, but I intend to keep the site online indefinitely. It’s a life’s work, not just for me but also for Andy.

Regular readers may have already noticed that our article output decreased over the past year. This helped us to cope with the regular writing pressure while focusing on the topics where we can add value. We were never fond of regurgitating press releases or rewriting mainstream news. Instead, we prefer to follow our interests and expertise.

TorrentFreak thrives in its own small niche, and we hope to keep our spot for the next few years, documenting whatever crosses our path at our own pace. We’re grateful for every reader who follows along, as you are ultimately what makes our work count. Thank you!

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Posted Thursday 13 November 2025 at 1:24 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have four newcomers on the list. “Frankenstein” is the most shared title.

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

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

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 1:02 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

Every day, millions of clips from movies and TV shows are shared on social media and other online platforms.

These short clips may qualify as fair use when used as part of memes or parodies, for example. Depending on context, they can also trigger a criminal investigation, as happened in Denmark.

In 2023, police started looking into a dedicated subreddit called ‘SeDetForPlottet’ (WatchItForthePlot) that shared sexually explicit scenes of actresses taken from movies and TV series. This community was highlighted by the local radio program “Kulturen,” where over a dozen actresses complained about it.

While the actresses were fine with the original sex or nude scenes, they never intended for them to be displayed online, without context. Some reported feeling molested or abused after seeing the curated clips that were clearly intended to be consumed in a sexualized way.

Criminal Conviction for Nude Clips and Superbits Uploads

The controversy motivated anti-piracy group Rights Alliance to report the issue to the police on behalf of the Danish Actors’ Association, broadcasters DR and TV2, and other rightsholders. The group noted that copyright protection extends beyond financial considerations to encompass moral rights – including the right to respect and integrity.

Danish police launched a criminal investigation and apprehended a now 40-year-old man from Valby. Known as “KlammereFyr” on Reddit, he was the moderator of ‘SeDetForPlottet’ where at least 347 clips featuring over 100 actresses were shared and viewed millions of times.

The man, who uploaded the clips to redgifs.com, eventually confessed to the charges last month, including the moral rights violations. This week the Court of Frederiksberg handed down a 7-month conditional prison sentence, as well as 120 hours of community service.

The criminal conviction wasn’t just for the nude clips shared on Reddit. The man was also found guilty of sharing over 25 terabytes of pirated content via the private torrent tracker Superbits.org.

Landmark Moral Rights Copyright Conviction

The verdict is unique in Denmark as it goes beyond typical piracy charges. It’s the first criminal conviction based on the copyright law’s “right of respect” (respektret), which protects an artist’s integrity.

The prosecution successfully argued that by taking scenes out of their original artistic context and sexualizing them, the defendant violated the integrity of the actors and directors. This includes edits such as cropping the clips and changing the lighting to accentuate certain features.

One scene featured actress Signe Egholm Olsen in ‘Nordkraft’ (© movie still, Nimbus)

Commenting on the verdict, special prosecutor Jan Østergaard says that he is pleased with the outcome, as it confirms that the court takes these types of offenses seriously.

Maria Ventegodt, director of the Danish Actors’ Association, is also happy with the outcome, as it confirms that the moral rights of their members were violated by these clips.

“The decision is also important for the art of film and the opportunity to make good stories on film, because the actors can now have confidence that the authorities will crack down hard on the screening of nude scenes out of context,” Ventegodt notes.

Future Consequences

It’s not immediately clear how this sentencing will translate to other countries, such as the United States. While Hollywood’s sex scenes are generally less explicit, there are entire subreddits and other communities dedicated to sharing nude clips from American productions too.

Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund notes that the Danish verdict clearly signals that the integrity of actors can be protected. This will also be important in the future, where deepfakes and other manipulated content will become increasingly common.

“Respect for artists’ rights is a fundamental prerequisite for a well-functioning digital society, and in a future where we expect far more AI-generated and manipulated content, it is crucial that the legal system, as clearly as is the case here, marks where the line is drawn,” Fredenslund commented.

The case isn’t completely over. On behalf of the rightsholders, Rights Alliance also sought 15,000 to 30,000 Danish kroner ($2,300 – $4,600 USD) in damages per nude clip. That request will be handled in a separate civil lawsuit.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 12:58 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

The Supreme Court case between several major record labels and Internet provider Cox Communications is one of the landmark copyright battles of this decade.

The outcome will determine how Internet providers should deal with pirating subscribers on their networks.

Should alleged pirates be disconnected from the Internet after repeated third-party allegations of copyright infringement? Or does that go too far?

In its opening brief, Cox argued that the company should not be held liable for contributory copyright infringement because it failed to terminate subscribers after multiple warnings. The U.S. Government, various tech companies, and other interested parties, supported Cox’s position.

Last month, the major record labels, including Sony and Universal Music, countered these arguments in their response brief. Describing Cox as a company that willingly prioritized profits over piracy, they argued that the $1 billion verdict against the ISP should be upheld. They also received broad support, including from lawmakers and legal experts.

Cox: Labels Must Defend Two-Strike Rule

Before the Supreme Court Justices hear the case, Cox took the opportunity to have the final word. The Internet provider submitted a reply brief where it doubled down on its earlier arguments while accusing the labels of distancing themselves from the “two-notices-and-terminate” rule that won them the $1 billion verdict at trial.

The labels wrote in their response brief that they are not pushing for a “two-notices-and-terminate theory,” nor are they asking for mass terminations of subscribers. Instead, they characterized Cox as a hypocritical bad actor that should take responsibility.

Cox suggests that, with this positioning, the labels are effectively trying to reframe the judicial history. The ISP argues that Sony’s brief confirms this, noting that the labels sued over subscribers with “at least three notices,” which legally means Cox is being held liable for failing to act after the second piracy notice.

This relatively low threshold would lead to mass suspensions, according to Cox, and the labels should effectively defend this position at the Supreme Court.

“For years, Plaintiffs have deluged the nation’s ISPs with automated notices, then sued those ISPs on the same flawed theory: Once an ISP receives two notices for any internet account, it must terminate the account—or become a willful contributory infringer
for all future infringement,” Cox informs the Court.

“They cannot deny that the courts below applied this two-notice threshold uniformly across 57,000 homes and businesses. The record unquestionably shows that included ‘hospitals’ and ‘senior citizens,’ dorms and barracks, and even regional ISPs.”

Cox forces the labels to own the most extreme version of their argument. If they do so, the ISP can point out that this will lead to many disconnections of innocent users. Alternatively, if the labels abandon the “two-notices-and-terminate” rule, Cox can argue that the $1 billion verdict should be invalidated.

Knowledge vs. Culpable Purpose

At the core of the Supreme Court battle is the question of whether ISPs can be held liable for having “passive knowledge” about infringements or if liability requires “culpable intent” to facilitate those infringements. Cox argues the latter.

The reply brief reiterates many of these arguments, and as a sign of strength, Cox explicitly mentions that it has the U.S. government on its side.

“Cox and the Government have laid out a simple culpable-conduct rule derived from this Court’s copyright and aiding-and-abetting cases: Contributory liability depends on proof of an affirmative act demonstrating a culpable intent to further infringement,” the reply brief reads.

Not a Bad Actor

The brief also addresses the record labels’ bad actor arguments. This includes an email in which a manager responsible for the company’s DMCA compliance told his team, “F the dmca!!!”. Cox notes that these frustrated, private emails do not suggest that the company actively encouraged or fostered copyright infringement.

Similarly, Cox also dismissed the profit-related bad actor argument, including the accusation that it failed to disconnect pirates to retain revenue. The ISP points out that the Fourth Circuit already rejected the profit argument when it threw out the separate vicarious liability verdict.

Finally, the ISP points out that it did have a graduated response system in place where subscribers suspected of piracy were issued with warnings. This had a 98% deterrence rate, Cox argues, which directly contradicts the ‘bad actor’ narrative.

“Cox’s anti-infringement program suspended over 67,000 accounts during the claim period alone, and deterred 98% of infringers,” the reply brief reads.

“If Plaintiffs can now vilify that program as a failure to ‘tak[e] any serious effort to stop these infringers from infringing,’ no ISP is safe.”

Government Agrees It’s Not “Willful”

In addition to the liability question, the Supreme Court will also review whether Cox’s actions were willful. This is relevant to the damages calculations, which ultimately resulted in the $1 billion verdict. Here, Cox again uses the government’s position as a key argument.

Cox argues it cannot be found “willful” just for knowing its customers were infringing if it did not believe that its failure to act was unlawful. That was a reasonable belief, Cox argues, especially since the U.S. Government now agrees with it.

“Plaintiffs are also wrong in repeatedly conflating an ISP’s knowledge that a specified user is infringing with knowledge that the ISP is itself illegally ‘facilitating’ the misuse unless it cuts the cord. If the United States Government rejects that equation, then surely
an ISP can reasonably reject it.”

With the final reply brief filed, all the key written arguments are now on the record. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments from Cox, the record labels, and the U.S. Government, in a few weeks. A final decision in this landmark case is expected next year.

—

A copy of Cox’s reply brief, filed with the Supreme Court, is available here (pdf)

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Posted Tuesday 11 November 2025 at 12:45 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

Investigations, prosecutions and substantial prison sentences are an important part of the anti-piracy arsenal. The public downfall of a prolific pirate provides the kind of deterrent messaging that can put people off before they even get started.

At least, that’s a possibility, if everything goes according to plan.

Sky Investigates TikTok Star

UK man Simon Hannigan is a popular food and cooking star on social media. Active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, his ‘DadtheDish’ account on the latter has over 523,000 followers and 6.4 million likes.

At what point Sky’s investigation linked Hannigan to piracy is unclear but at his sentencing last week, his Facebook groups – including one with 4,775 members – were described as “shop windows” for his sales of pirate IPTV subscriptions. Reportedly using streams sourced from an operation in Europe, Hannigan’s Android app provided 3,500 channels (including those belonging to Sky) for £28 for six months or just £50 per year. Payments for subscriptions were recorded as “paid adverts.”

According to local news outlet MEN, business was good.

“The court heard how Hannigan had previously gloated about his success in text messages, claiming that ‘business was booming’ and ‘phones were blowing up’.”

Sky Investigates, Police Step in to Make the Arrest

On March 23, 2022, what’s described as a Sky-led investigation culminated in Hannigan’s arrest. He reportedly confessed to providing ‘links’ but denied breaching copyright laws, “arguing he wasn’t in control of the system,” MEN reports.

“One of the ‘mother systems’ used to facilitate the operation was based in Europe, serving 50 million people globally,” the publication continues.

The investigation eventually traced 2,644 payments made directly into Hannigan’s bank account, together worth around £152,000.

His arrest in March 2022 apparently came as a relief; the now 35-year-old said being a ‘downstream middle man’ was ‘very difficult’ and took its toll. He was reportedly glad to see an end to the stress it had caused him but with a potential prison sentence looming at his sentencing last Thursday, would the stress return?

Sentencing

At Preston Crown Court, Hannigan received a two-year sentence suspended for 24 months, and was told to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work. So perhaps some stress, but nothing compared to the stress of a Manchester prison. For a legal system that currently hands down years in prison for offensive tweets, Hannigan might consider himself lucky.

He pleaded guilty to offenses that began in 2019 and only ended upon his arrest three years later; participating in a fraudulent business, concealing and transferring criminal property, and providing a service contrary to copyright law.

Local news reports published Friday following Hannigan’s sentencing are notable for something else; the complete absence of official commentary.

No statement from Sky is unusual, something that also raises questions about the nature of the prosecution. In common with the Premier League, Sky often carries out private prosecutions and the mention of a Sky-led investigation does seem to point in that general direction. If that’s indeed the case, balancing the prospect of future prosecutions against community service may be a difficult exercise.

The absence of any commentary from regional police is unusual too, even when considering the lack of a custodial sentence. The absence of both Sky and police is even more unusual but whether the suspended sentence dampened enthusiasm is unknown.

Whether Hannigan’s mitigation tipped the scales is unclear, but a closer look at his portrayal in the media is certainly interesting.

Get Knocked Down, and Keep Getting Back Up Again

Even before his arrest in 2022, Hannigan had appeared in national media. In April 2021, an interview with prominent broadcaster ITV revealed how 11 years earlier, Hannigan found himself homeless and living in a second hand £250 car.

A 2023 interview with national newspaper The Sun revealed that those days were long gone.

“A chef who makes thousands from sharing recipes online used to be homeless and living out of his car,” the interview begins.

“Simon makes between £2,500 – £5,000 per post, collaborating with some of the UK‘s biggest supermarket and homeware brands for sponsored content. His creative endeavor began as a bit of fun two years ago when he set up an Instagram teaching people how to cook during lockdown.”

The article also mentions how Hannigan made the leap from sleeping in a car to selling lots of them. Hannigan told The Sun he sold the car after being motivated by a kind stranger and then immediately launched a new business.

“I turned that one car into eighty cars with six months, buying and selling them, for £2,000 each,” he said, adding that landed him a job at Ford and at just 24, he became “head of business” at Ford UK on a salary of £150,000. Then he started his own recruitment company, a a post on LinkedIn reveals.

A Changed, Copyright-Aware Man

During mitigation, the Court heard that prior to the pirate IPTV business, Hannigan had been hospitalized with a burst appendix. When he returned home, he discovered that his partner had left him for his friend, and once again found himself in ‘dire financial straits’. Looking for work, he reportedly posted on Facebook and stumbled into IPTV sales, initially catering to family and friends.

MEN reports that Hannigan is now proposing to “assist Sky News and the British Copyright Council” to help deter others so that they don’t end up in a similar predicament. Yet as deterrent messaging goes, his case may not be the best example.

Instead of news that Hannigan will be sampling prison food for the next few months, any hope of sending a deterrent message on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, lies in shreds. Even Hannigan’s entrepreneurial spirit and never say die attitude may not be especially motivational, at least according to the paperwork.

From a car retail business, recruitment company, clothing and vodka businesses, to Dad the Dish Limited and his latest venture, Munch Box, the overwhelming majority were incorporated and then dissolved by the government for failing to file even their first set of accounts.

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Posted Tuesday 11 November 2025 at 1:52 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

In May 2024, the Paris Judicial Court ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to block access to several pirate sports streaming sites.

The move was a major enforcement escalation by French rightsholders, but in hindsight it was only the beginning.

In the months that followed, additional rightsholders such as DAZN and beIN joined in on the action with similar requests, while more DNS providers were added as targets, including Quad9 and Vercel. This pitted notably smaller players against these billion-dollar companies in court.

An Existential Threat

Quad9 was no stranger to site blocking requests, having previously dealt with a similar legal battle in Germany. That said, for the small Swiss non-profit organization, these proceedings are more than a legal disagreement. They present an existential threat.

For billion-dollar tech companies Google and Cloudflare, dealing with these legal challenges is a nuisance, but they have the means to fight back. In a recent blog post, Quad9 explains that its foundation doesn’t have this luxury.

“For large commercial players such as Google, Cloudflare, or Cisco, these costs — legal, lobbying, or engineering — are absorbed as part of their business overhead.

“For small, mission-driven nonprofits like Quad9, they represent an existential threat,” the DNS provider adds.

Ideally Quad9 would like to defend itself in these blocking cases, as Google and Cloudflare have done. However, since it doesn’t have the financial resources to do so, it chose not to make an appearance in one of the recent site-blocking cases.

Breaking the Internet’s Plumbing

Quad9 argues that copyright holders are increasingly trying to hold neutral intermediaries liable for piracy. Instead of going after the infringers directly, ISPs, VPNs, and DNS providers have to take on the enforcement burden.

This is particularly problematic for smaller operations that, according to Quad9, simply don’t have the means to do so indefinitely. Not only that, by going after DNS providers, these orders also directly affect key internet infrastructure providers.

“Instead of targeting the platforms that profit from infringement, IP owners are increasingly going after the neutral infrastructure providers that simply make the internet work,” Quad9 writes.

Breaking the Internet’s Plumbing
 

In response to the French blocking efforts, Cisco decided to leave France, so the effects of these measures are already being felt.

Other companies, such as Google and Cloudflare, have the technical means to restrict the blockades to France, but not all providers can do so easily. That includes Quad9, which had no other choice than to apply the French blocking request worldwide.

Big Questions

In France, the courts have clearly decided that these blocking orders are warranted, and while some are under appeal, there’s no indication that they will be reversed anytime soon. That said, Quad9 believes that a broader discussion is warranted, and it poses several questions that go to the heart of how the internet should function.

In its blog post, the foundation asks, among other things:

“Should neutral, technical infrastructure be held responsible for the actions of others?”

“How far should courts reach across jurisdictions to impose national laws on global networks?”

“Can small nonprofits survive under legal obligations designed for global corporations?”

“What happens to privacy and resiliency when only a handful of corporations can afford to comply?”

“At what point does legal compliance become de facto censorship?”

These are not just rhetorical questions for the Swiss non-profit. After fighting and winning a multi-year, costly legal battle against Sony in Germany, Quad9’s “existential threat” has reemerged in France.

Ultimately, Quad9 warns that these blocking battles may lead to a less open, less private, and more centralized internet, leaving the “plumbing” in the hands of a few corporate giants who can afford to pay the legal bills.

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Posted Monday 10 November 2025 at 12:44 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

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

Launched by former members of ExtraTorrent which had shut down in 2018, TorrentGalaxy soon established itself as one of the most stable torrent sites.

TorrentGalaxy’s Mystery Shutdown

In the summer of 2014, things changed when the original founders sold the site to a new, undisclosed party. The handover was immediately noticeable to outsiders, as the typically stable site suddenly began experiencing repeated stretches of downtime.

The site’s troubles escalated in January 2025, when the new operators posted a message claiming they were in “financial difficulties“, asking users to chip in for server costs. In late February, the site became unreachable, and by March, the site’s popular upload bots also stopped working.

The reason for the sudden shutdown was a mystery and couldn’t be explained by financial issues. The site’s staffers were also left in the dark, and there was no farewell message of any kind to officially mark the site’s ending.

In March, the staffers still had hope for a miracle comeback, but the chances of that were not seen as very high and dramatically shrank in the passing months. Meanwhile, what truly happened behind the scenes was still unknown.

A Memecoin Promo

Today, the TorrentGalaxy saga gets an unexpected new chapter. The main torrentgalaxy.to domain is suddenly operational again. However, it does not list any torrents.

Instead, it now promotes a memecoin project for a token named $1 on the Solana network. Whether TorrentGalaxy’s new owners are connected to this or if the site changed hands is unknown.

Needless to say, this has nothing to do with the original TorrentGalaxy site. We can’t guarantee that the site is free of trouble, aside from the inherent crypto risks, so potential visitors should tread with caution.

Memecoin

A look at the site’s source code reveals it is powered by a standard configuration script that’s used for memecoin projects. For now, most links on the page are not functional either. They simply point to a “#” placeholder, suggesting that it is still work in progress.

We see no point in scrutinizing this memecoin in detail, as there are better outlets for that. However, the sudden TorrentGalaxy comeback does strongly suggest that the torrent site has been abandoned completely, marking the end of an era.

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Posted Monday 10 November 2025 at 3:13 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

•     Global temperatures rising faster, sea levels increasing rapidly
•     Coral die-off marks first climate tipping point, Amazon and Atlantic current at risk
•     US climate work hit by Trump plans to cut, but other countries still spending on science

BELEM, Brazil, Nov 9 (Reuters) - With the pace of climate change speeding up, extreme weather and other impacts are taking an increasing toll on populations and environments across the globe. Here are some of the developments this year in climate science:

WARMER, FASTER

Global temperatures are not just climbing, they are now climbing faster than before, with new records logged for 2023 and 2024, and at points in 2025. That finding was part of a key study in June that updated baseline data used in the science reports done every few years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The new research shows the average global temperature rising at a rate of 0.27 degrees Celsius each decade – or almost 50% faster than in the 1990s and 2000s when the warming rate was around 0.2 C per decade.

Sea levels are rising faster now too – at about 4.5 millimeters per year over the last decade, compared with 1.85 mm per year measured across the decades since 1900.

The world is now on track to cross the 1.5 C warming threshold around 2030, after which scientists warn we will likely trigger catastrophic, irreversible impacts. Already, the world has warmed by 1.3-1.4 C since the pre-industrial era, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

TIPPING POINTS

Warm-water corals are in an almost irreversible die-off from successive marine heatwaves - marking what would be the first so-called climate tipping point, when an environmental system begins to shift into a different state.

Researchers in October also warned that the Amazon rainforest could begin to die back and transform into a different ecosystem, such as savannah, if rapid deforestation continues as global warming crosses 1.5 C, which is earlier than previously estimated.

They said meltwater from the thawing ice sheet atop Greenland could help cause an earlier collapse in the ocean current called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, that keeps winters mild in Europe.

In Antarctica, where ice sheets are also under threat, scientists are worried about declining sea ice surrounding the southernmost continent. Similar to what is happening in the Arctic, ice loss exposes dark water that can absorb more solar radiation - which amplifies the overall warming trend. It also jeopardizes the growth of phytoplankton that consume much of the world's CO2.

LAND ON FIRE

Along with heatwaves and drought, wildfires still threaten to be frequent and severe.

This year’s State of Wildfires report led by a group of weather agencies and universities, counted some 3.7 million square kilometers (1.4 million square miles) as having burned between March 2024 and February 2025 - an area about the size of India and Norway combined.

That was slightly less than the annual average burned for the last two decades. But the fires produced higher CO2 emissions than before, as more carbon-dense forests burned.

DEADLY HEAT

Researchers are working on ways to assess heat-related health risks and tolls, as U.N. health and weather agencies estimate about half the world's population is already struggling.

The agencies also estimate worker productivity dropping 2-3% for every degree above 20 C, while another study in the Lancet journal in October estimates global losses of more than $1 trillion from that lost productivity for last year alone.

There is no consistent international definition for a heat-related death, but technology advances are helping scientists to bridge data gaps and compare conditions from place to place.

For example in Europe, one team at the UK's Imperial College used mortality trends to estimate more than 24,400 deaths this summer related to heat exposure across about 30% of the European population. They attributed up to 70% of those deaths to climate-fueled heat, based on the same mortality trends applied to a model of Europe without global warming.

For last year's record-hot European summer, another team used computer modeling to examine mortality statistics along with temperature data and health parameters, estimating more than 62,700 heat-related deaths across 32 countries, or about 70% of the continent's population.

SCIENCE UNDER ATTACK

The U.S. administration under climate-denying President Donald Trump is hoping to slash funding for agencies that collect and monitor climate and weather data, worrying a scientific community that says U.S. leadership will be hard to replace.

Trump's 2026 budget request, yet to be approved by Congress, proposes halving the annual budget for NASA Earth Science to about $1 billion and cutting NOAA's spending by more than a quarter to $4.5 billion while eliminating its climate research arm, among other cuts.

Elsewhere, however, public science spending is increasing, with record budgets for science research in China, the UK, Japan, and the European Union. The EU also last month opened its real-time weather data monitoring to public access.

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There’s a common belief that people pirate content to save money, whether on another streaming subscription or a pricey box office ticket.

That said, movie theaters still draw millions of visitors, many of whom may also turn to pirate sites occasionally.

Since piracy isn’t going away, understanding what drives a person to choose the theater over a ‘free’ pirate option, and vice versa, is crucial for the industry.

A new paper aims to take on this task. Through a structural econometric model that relies on real-world data from 2014 to 2019, it tries to quantify the choice between the movie theater and piracy. It considers the quality of piracy releases, but also the price and quality of the movie theater experience.

Accepted peer-reviewed paper
 

The study was conducted by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California, Davis, and Boston University. The paper will be published in the Manufacturing & Service Operations Management journal, but an early copy was already published through SSRN, which allows us to take a look at the results.

Instead of conducting surveys to model consumer behavior, the researchers use official box office figures, demographic data, and piracy data, covering both volume and quality, differentiating between low-quality (e.g. CAM) and high-quality (e.g. HDRip) releases.

Through a series of simulations, the researchers looked at what types of movie industry interventions could help to address the piracy challenge and which ones proved futile.

HDRips Are a Bigger Threat than CAMs

The study largely confirms the intuitive notion that quality matters. If high-quality pirated copies are available within a week of a movie’s theatrical release, it leads to an average 7.9% reduction in box office revenue over the first 8 weeks, compared to a scenario where only low-quality “cam” rips are available.

This finding isn’t all that surprising. After all, high-quality releases are much more popular among pirates, resulting in many more downloads and streams. This logically draws more people away from the box office.

Interestingly, the paper shows that the revenue decrease caused by high-quality piracy is most problematic for “smaller-grossing” movies. Films that earn between $100M-$200M face a 9.4% revenue loss, which is more than double the 4.3% loss for blockbusters.

“This result implies that high-quality unauthorized content may hurt creativity in film production in the motion picture industry, as it does greater harm to smaller-budget movies and independent movies,” the paper reads.

Box Office Discounts Are Not the Answer

Pirates often cite high costs as a reason to pirate, so it would seem to make sense that lower prices reduce piracy rates. Indeed, that is what the researchers found. However, lower prices eventually reduce overall revenue, so that’s not the answer.

The researchers found that cutting box office prices by 10% reduces overall revenue by 4.6%, as the increase in sales doesn’t cover the per-ticket loss. Similarly, efforts to reduce travel costs by increasing the number of screens had no meaningful effect either.

“Based on our results, we argue that theaters and/or studios can not effectively compete against “free” by reducing the costs of consuming legal content in the theatrical channel,” the researchers note.

Competing on Quality Works

Instead of competing on price, it appears movie theaters are better off competing on quality; investing in better seating, improved audio-visual technology, or other theater features, for example.

The study’s simulations show that a “modest improvement” in the quality of the movie theater experience can completely evaporate the negative effects of early high-quality piracy releases.

Specifically, the researchers found that a 3.7% increase in the consumer’s preference (utility) for the theater experience is enough to fully offset the 7.9% revenue loss.

“We therefore recommend that theater chains and studios prioritize investments in upgrading equipment and in-theater technologies to create a more immersive, comfortable, and engaging environment,” the paper concludes.

The study’s findings offer a clear opportunity for the movie industry. While theaters can’t compete with ‘free’, they can win by offering a premium experience that pirates can’t replicate.

A copy of the forthcoming paper, which discusses several additional findings and methodological limitations, is on SSRN.

—

Zeng, Helen and Huang, Yan and Burtch, Gordon and Smith, Michael D., Operational Decision-making Around Movie Piracy & Theatrical Release A Structural Model of Movie Piracy vs. Legal (in-Theater) Consumption (October 08, 2025). Accepted at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.

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Posted Sunday 9 November 2025 at 5:44 pm AEST (my time).

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Filing lawsuits against internet users who allegedly shared copyrighted content online without permission, has led to countless cash settlements over the years and for some, a lucrative business model in its own right.

There’s also no shortage of cases going wrong for all kinds of reasons . A recent case in Canada, seeking “extraordinary equitable relief” upon which cases like this either live or die, collapsed in dramatic fashion at the very first hurdle, and went further downhill from there.

Background to a Familiar Claim

Hellboy Productions, Inc. filed its statement of claim at Federal Court in Toronto on March 4, 2025. The basis for the claim was very familiar, having made hundreds of appearances in cases previously filed at courts in Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, Scandinavia, and beyond.

Anonymous for now….

The movie in question, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, fits the profile for an appearance in a settlement lawsuit. Hellboy movies have never performed well at the box office and after generating just $1.4m worldwide, the latest outing continued the trend.

While many fans of the Hellboy brand still wanted to watch The Crooked Man, average reviews of 4.5/10 most likely dampened enthusiasm for paying to do so. That can lead to activity on pirate sites for as long as it lasts and in this instance, long enough for the copyright holder to capture ~2,400 IP addresses linked to three Canadian ISPs – Telus, Cogeco, and Bell.

Turning IP Addresses into Names and Physical Addresses

In common with the UK, Ireland, and Australia, unmasking alleged pirates in Canada typically requires the plaintiffs to obtain a Norwich Pharmacal order, or simply Norwich order for short. Obtained from a court, Norwich orders compel a third party, who for various reasons have become unwittingly involved in someone else’s wrongdoing, to disclose information (usually documents/records) that can help a plaintiff identify an alleged infringer.

In this case, the claimant (Hellboy Productions, Inc.) alleges that infringers used internet connections provided by Telus, Cogeco, and Bell to pirate the movie. If served with a Norwich order, the ISPs would be required to match the IP addresses and timestamps provided by the plaintiffs, to activity logs that identify the corresponding account holders.

A small sample of the IP addresses collected by the plaintiff

Once in the hands of the movie company, this information triggers a process to contact as many account holders as possible, on the assumption that they (or someone close) are infringers, and therefore liable to pay compensation for any damages caused. The amount tends to vary but whether the demand was CAD 1,000 or more, the potential revenue from 2,400 subscribers would easily exceed worldwide box office sales.

At least, if all went to plan.

Does the Claimant Have a Bona Fide Claim?

In an order and reasons issued last week, Case Management Judge John C. Cotter notes that Telus did not oppose the order requested by the movie company, while the positions of Cogeco and Bell are simply unknown. The absence of ISPs doesn’t mean that a claimant automatically wins, however.

“A lack of opposition from an ISP is not sufficient on its own to grant the motion. The Court must be satisfied that the applicable test has been met. This is important given the privacy interests of the unidentified alleged wrongdoers,” Judge Cotter explains.

Before those interests are weighed against those of the rightsholder, the plaintiff must show that it has a bone fide claim for copyright infringement and can show, on balance, that the alleged infringers used the ISPs’ services to infringe its rights.

According to the Judge, the plaintiffs failed to produce sufficient evidence to show either.

Insufficient Grounds for Asserting Copyright Ownership

“An analysis of the merits of the claim in this case includes some minimal analysis of whether copyright subsists in the Work, and whether the plaintiff has standing to assert a claim for copyright infringement. In the context of this case, the issue of standing is whether plaintiff is the owner of the copyright in the Work, which is asserted in paragraph 4 of the statement of claim,” Judge Cotter writes. (see screenshot above)

“The plaintiff’s evidence did not include a certificate of copyright registration. The plaintiff’s evidence on copyright subsistence and ownership is limited to the following in the Law Clerk Affidavit (which is the same for each of the three motions):”

Plaintiff’s name appears in the credits (Law Clerk Affidavit)

Showing the company name in the credits above means that the plaintiff relied on presumptions available under Section 34.1 of the Copyright Act that a) copyright subsists in the work and b) since its name appears in the credits as the maker of the movie, it should be presumed that the plaintiff is indeed the maker.

According to Judge Cotter, those presumptions do not apply when the plaintiff has requested a Norwich order. Section 34.1(1) sets out a precondition for the engagement of the presumptions.

In this matter, the 2,400+ plus defendants are currently anonymous and without knowing who they are, it’s impossible to show that a defendant had “put the existence or title of the copyright in issue.”

Unable to trigger the precondition, no reliance could be placed on the presumptions available under Section 34.1. The Judge dismissed the evidence shown in the Law Clerk Affidavit as “at best, hearsay evidence for which the source is not specified,” and with no copyright certificate there was no way to prove ownership. Moreover, there was no evidence to show that copyright subsists in the movie.

With no bona fide copyright claim, the Judge dismissed all three motions for Norwich orders. He then addressed a few additional issues in need of an airing.

Evidence Should Be Organized, Easily Understood, Easy to Verify

In his order and reasons, Judge Cotter emphasizes that the Court is entitled to demand the “best available evidence” when granting the “extraordinary equitable relief of a Norwich order.”

While failure to establish copyright ownership proved fatal for all three motions, the image of the movie credits page also fell short of the expected standard. The Judge also criticized evidence presented in the affidavit of Thomas Nowak, the CEO of anti-piracy/BitTorrent monitoring company Maverickeye UG, the supplier of evidence in this case and scores of others in the past.

Showing that Telus, Cogeco, or Bell is the ISP for the alleged infringers was a requirement to obtain a Norwich order. Deficiencies in the example below and a series of issues detailed on pages 17-21 of Judge Cotter’s order, led to the conclusion that the plaintiff had failed to show that, while also failing to meet the evidence standard expected by the Court.

Deficiencies in the example above and a series of others detailed elsewhere, plus the failure to show ownership of the copyright it aimed to enforce, meant the plaintiff’s requests for Norwich orders were denied. As a result, the anonymous alleged infringers remain anonymous, but for how long is unknown.

Despite significant criticism, dismissal of the plaintiff’s motions, and denial of its request for an award of costs, Judge Cotter notes that his order does not preclude further motions by the plaintiff.

As sure as day follows night, those motions will arrive, only the timing is in doubt.

The original claim can be found here (pdf), Judge Cotter’s order is available here (pdf)

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Posted Saturday 8 November 2025 at 3:39 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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Every year, the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) publishes the National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers.

The report is compiled based on input from key industry players. This includes submissions from copyright industry groups that frequently highlight piracy challenges that in their view act as barriers to trade.

In previous years, for example, the MPA and others have called for more site-blocking efforts to counter the piracy threat. Interestingly, however, other American companies now inform the USTR that foreign site-blocking measures are becoming a significant trade barrier.

Cloudflare Sees Piracy Blockades as Trade Barriers

To share its concerns, Cloudflare decided to participate in the annual trade barriers consultation for the first time this year. The company describes itself as a “leading connectivity cloud company” running one of the world’s largest networks, providing security, performance, and reliability services.

According to Cloudflare, several foreign countries disproportionately impact U.S. technology providers, with many concerns relating to site-blocking measures that aim to deter online piracy.

Spain

Cloudflare writes that Spanish courts allow rightsholders to request “overbroad court orders” that authorize IP address blocking. Since a single IP address can serve thousands of domains, disrupting pirates often means that many legitimate sites and services are blocked too, causing widespread collateral damage.

“This practice results in the widespread and repeated disruption of tens of thousands of unrelated, legitimate websites, as well as the disruption of digital services, with no judicial opportunity for remedy,” Cloudflare writes.

“These actions, designed to protect a narrow set of commercial interests, have caused significant collateral harm to businesses and users who are not the intended targets, without recourse or the possibility for affected parties to challenge the underlying order.”

The Spanish Government is aware of the problems, which Cloudflare says are at odds with international standards, but has chosen not to intervene in the issue. Therefore, it continues to present a significant trade barrier.

Italy

Cloudflare reports similar concerns in Italy, where the “Piracy Shield” site-blocking law has a direct effect on American companies. This blocking regulation requires network providers, including CDNs, to comply with blocking notices within 30 minutes.

“The failure to include adequate safeguards against collateral damage has led to the inappropriate blocking of shared services of large cloud providers, which are disproportionately American businesses,” Cloudflare notes.

“For instance, the blocking of a Cloudflare IP address resulted in tens of thousands of non-targeted websites being blocked in February 2024. Furthermore, the blocking of the domain “drive.usercontent.google.com” in October denied Italian users access to Google Drive for over 12 hours.”

Cloudflare on Italy

Efforts to expand Piracy Shield to public DNS resolvers and VPN services only make the problem worse, Cloudflare says, noting that some U.S. companies have already decided to leave the European country.

Automated piracy blocks are not the only reported trade barrier in Italy. Cloudflare also notes that the country allows rightsholders to “abuse” the courts to disrupt U.S. businesses by granting ex parte blocking orders without giving the companies a chance to oppose them.

“This coercive, penalty-based approach to removal of content, without adequate judicial review or due process protections, is a significant barrier to doing business in Italy,” Cloudflare writes.

France

In France, Cloudflare highlights Article L.333-10 of the Sports Code as a key problem. This has resulted in several pirate site blocking orders that go beyond regular Internet providers, requiring DNS resolvers and VPN services to take action as well.

Cloudflare notes that some services lack the technical capabilities to implement these orders and as a result, several U.S. companies have already left the country.

Cloudflare on France

Recently, France passed a new anti-piracy bill that opens the door to automated IP-address blocking, similar to Italy’s Piracy Shield. This is a major concern for Cloudflare, which fears that this will only lead to more collateral damage.

“It increases the risk of overblocking legitimate content or mistakenly targeting websites that operate lawfully, potentially disrupting cross-border digital services,” Cloudflare writes.

South Korea

South Korea has also created trade barriers due to its site-blocking measures, Cloudflare reports. A revision to the Network Act in 2023 now requires “CDNs to restrict access to illegal content”.

As a result, Cloudflare and other American companies are required to maintain detailed and regularly updated blocklists.

“The South Korea Communication Commission (KCC) sends U.S. CDN providers a ‘block list’ of over 1.5 million URLs (with 30,000 new additions monthly),” Cloudflare writes, noting that this places an “unprecedented compliance burden” on companies.

Conflicting Demands at the U.S. Trade Office

Cloudflare urges the USTR to take these concerns into account for its upcoming National Trade Estimate Report. Ideally, it wants these trade barriers to be dismantled.

These calls run counter to requests from rightsholders, who urge the USTR to ensure that more foreign countries implement blocking measures. With potential site-blocking legislation being considered in U.S. Congress, that may impact local lobbying efforts as well.

If and how the USTR will address these concerns will become clearer early next year, when the 2026 National Trade Estimate Report is expected to be published.

—

A copy of Cloudflare’s submission for the USTR’s 2025 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers is available here (pdf)

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Posted Friday 7 November 2025 at 3:30 am AEST (my time).

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The action in Argentina two months ago was announced with a reasonable level of detail. Targeting dozens of IPTV services with an estimated eight million global subscribers, Spanish football league LaLiga described the operation as “historic” and as the dust settled, its importance wasn’t in doubt.

Targeting a Network with Eight Million Subscribers

Following an investigation by the Cybercrime Prosecutor’s Office of San Isidro (UFEIC), most likely fueled by investigations carried out by LATAM anti-piracy group Alianza, MPA/ACE, Nagravision, and others in the region, local police raided four office buildings in Vicente López, Buenos Aires.

The raids were conducted under the authority of San Isidro Guarantees Court No. 4 and images of DDI agents and tables covered with cash were soon circulating online. Publishing a statement containing a long list of branded and ‘dismantled’ IPTV services can end badly; however, LaLiga seemed unusually confident that resurrection wouldn’t play a role here.

LaLiga Seemed More Confident Than Usual

While there were no immediate reports of an existential IPTV crisis in Brazil, complaints about service issues were still quick to arrive and only seemed to increase throughout September.

Services Start Shutting Down

On-screen notices announcing a service’s demise aren’t especially common but since early September, IPTV subscribers in Brazil have been exposed to quite a few of them.

An early casualty was ‘My Family Cinema’ which had been one of the most recognizable IPTV brands in the region. The notice reportedly came via a set-top box update; some reports implied that updates were probably required to get back in the game.

End of the road for “this brand”…

LaLiga’s presumed confidence that services wouldn’t rise from the dead seemed to look a little precarious given the terminology in the shutdown announcement. Indeed, some former customers claimed that My Family Cinema was subsequently “taken over” by another service called VELA.

Intermittent service and other errors were reported there too, at least for a while.

Easy come, easy go….

Reports that My Family Cinema was still partly operational continued through October but perhaps more ominous news had already began to surface.

People keen to renew their subscriptions to various services complained that was no longer possible. Some said that after ‘upgrading’ to VELA and upgrading again to another substitute service (Konex), payments were successful. Or rather, payments went through as expected but resulted in either no service or a service with ads.

With some users preparing to dust off their torrent clients and others mulling the pros and cons of YouTube, heated discussions over consumer rights – including the possibility that the services were executing some kind of exit scam – helped to descend the situation further into chaos.

From a rightsholders’ perspective, mistrust and declining confidence in piracy are valuable commodities. Few things focus the mind more than throwing good money after bad, and if pirates pick up the blame, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Consumer rights failure…

Two Months After the Raids – Why Now?

Official news on how the case is progressing appears to be almost non-existent.

A comment from anti-piracy group Alianza confirmed that the legal process is indeed under seal. The practical issues observed on the ground are probably linked to advances made by the Argentine Public Prosecutor’s Office in its ongoing investigations against the platform’s operators, the theory goes.

Other information provided by Alianza clarifies that the eight million subscriber estimate concerns the network’s peak worldwide. Working on the basis of 6.2 million subscribers more recently, Alianza claims that 4.6 million subscribers can be found in Brazil, together generating between US$150 million and US$200 million.

As for the network’s operational structure, Alianza president Jorge Bacaloni says that management, IT/technical, and financial matters are handled in China.

The investigation in Argentina reportedly concerns a ‘command center’ that controls/coordinates pirate services across the region. An office in Buenos Aires was reportedly responsible for marketing the services and for what could be over US$100m in global piracy sales.

Common Denominator For Popular Brands

Since there are signs that new services are easily launched and if necessary, devices with subscriptions to defunct services can be remotely updated to access another service, common ownership/control seems a reasonable explanation, in broad terms at least.

Proving that’s actually the case to a criminal standard is quite rightly a matter for the prosecutor’s office. However, if there’s a central marketing/sales operation common to some or even all of the named services, that should be much easier to discover.

Since Alianza provided no real clues, we cannot say whether the marketing company apparently used by some of the IPTV services is just a marketing company, or whether it’s THE marketing company referenced by Alianza.

What we can confirm is that in this instance, zero effort was expended to hide the connections, despite that being technically trivial. What that says in the bigger picture, if indeed it says anything at all, is for the prosecutor’s office to determine.

Other signs that the overall business was approached from otherwise legitimate angles, include the trademark applications for ‘My Family Cinema’ filed in Paraguay.

Given that there are copyright complaints filed against several branded services and other entities with links to them, why it took around six years to take action is unclear. Perhaps timing and opportunity are still the most important factors.

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Posted Thursday 6 November 2025 at 3:01 am AEST (my time).

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