In France, YggTorrent is by far the largest and most active torrent community, serving millions of users.

The torrent site is not a typical torrent indexer. The community is powered by a dedicated tracker, something that’s quite rare these days.

Last year, YggTorrent made registrations mandatory in a bid to keep anti-piracy agencies at bay. But today, the tracker is facing internal struggles rather than external blockades after it introduced a controversial policy change.

Ygg Launches Paid ‘Turbo Mode’

Shortly before Christmas, YggTorrent introduced a new tier called ‘Turbo Mode,’ where users can enjoy unrestricted access for a lifetime fee of €86. Effectively, this means that people now have to pay to enjoy the regular experience.

Put differently, non-paying users will be downgraded to a lower tier where they can download a maximum of five torrents per day. These torrents can be downloaded after a 30-second countdown timer.

According to YggTorrent’s staff, these changes are needed to guarantee that the site will continue to run smoothly.

“This measure addresses a significant increase in bots, ghost leeching, and ‘hit-and-run’ behavior. The tracker currently manages millions of peers, a significant portion of which are automated,” Ygg’s moderator writes.

Turbo Mode announcement (translated)

Users and Uploaders Revolt

Understandably, YggTorrent’s users were not pleased by this announcement. The controversy reached a boiling point when Team_QTZ, a release group with years of experience and over 3,300 high-quality torrents, publicly revolted against the new policy.

Team_QTZ accused YggTorrent’s administration of trying to profit off the backs of uploaders. They saw this ‘Turbo Mode’ move as the final straw and called for a site-wide strike, urging others to stop seeding too.

The French news site Numerama reports that YggTorrent’s response was uncompromising. The site swiftly removed Team_QTZ’s message, and the entire team was banned from the platform.

The new paid tier and the harsh response to criticism fuel rumors. According to some online commenters, the recent actions reek of an exit scam in which YggTorrent might cash in before running off, but there is no evidence that that is the case.

That said, it is clear that many users are not pleased with the recent changes, with some actively looking for alternative French torrent trackers such as Sharewood or TheOldSchool.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 24 December 2025 at 4:01 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

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

However, its archival ambitions don’t stop at text. This weekend, the site announced that it had successfully backed up Spotify, which must come as a shock to the music industry.

“A while ago, we discovered a way to scrape Spotify at scale. We saw a role for us here to build a music archive primarily aimed at preservation,” Anna’s Archive volunteer “ez” writes.

The site acknowledges that there have been many successful music preservation initiatives, particularly among torrenting audiophiles at dedicated private trackers. However, a dedicated preservation archive for music is not generally available, at least not yet.

300TB of Music

With its latest scraping effort, Anna’s Archive aims to fill this gap. While Spotify doesn’t have all the music in the world, the streaming service does have an impressive 256 million tracks from more than 15 million artists, spanning 58 million albums.

Anna’s Archive says it has archived roughly 86 million music files, almost 300 TB in total. Relatively popular songs are stored in their original 160kbit/s OGG Vorbis quality, while the rest use 75kbit/s to save hundreds of terabytes of storage. Altogether, these tracks represent 99.6% of all Spotify listens.

This music heist will be shared in a single torrent file. Unlike books, these tracks will not be available as individual downloads, although that could change if there’s enough interest.

At the time of writing, no music has been released. The first torrent focuses on metadata instead; releasing 199.9GB of compressed artist, album, and track metadata in one go. The next stage will include music files.

For now, the metadata release is being shared by more than 200 people, which means that there is plenty of interest. And we suspect that this will pick up further when the music archives are released.

That said, seeding 300TB will be a significant challenge, as most people don’t have 300TB of free storage space. Therefore, it makes sense that these music archives will be released in batches.

The AI Angle

The metadata is a goldmine for archivists and audio researchers. In a blog post, Anna’s Archive shares a series of charts and graphs comparing key statistics, such as the top music genres by artist count or the distribution of tracks by duration.

The massive data repositories, including the music itself, will also be very appealing to tech companies developing AI models. However, after many U.S. tech giants were sued for actively sharing Anna’s Archive’s text data, they will be cautious to cross this line again.

Of course, foreign AI companies may have fewer reservations. In fact, Anna’s Archive already offers high-speed access to its data for groups training Large Language Models (LLMs) in exchange for donations.

Spotify Responds

Spotify, meanwhile, is aware of the reported breach and has launched an investigation to find out how it was possible.

“An investigation into unauthorized access identified that a third party scraped public metadata and used illicit tactics to circumvent DRM to access some of the platform’s audio files. We are actively investigating and mitigating the incident,” the company told Billboard.

Anna’s Archive volunteer ‘ez’, meanwhile, stresses that they are ‘merely’ trying to safeguard musical heritage with this scraping effort.

“With your help, humanity’s musical heritage will be forever protected from destruction by natural disasters, wars, budget cuts, and other catastrophes,” ‘ez’ notes.

—

Update: Shortly after publication, a Spotify spokesperson informed TorrentFreak that they disabled the scraping accounts, while also taking other countermeasures.

“Spotify has identified and disabled the nefarious user accounts that engaged in unlawful scraping. We’ve implemented new safeguards for these types of anti-copyright attacks and are actively monitoring for suspicious behavior. Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against piracy, and we are actively working with our industry partners to protect creators and defend their rights.”

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 23 December 2025 at 5:54 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “Predator: Badlands” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on December 22 are:

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

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 23 December 2025 at 3:37 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

YouTube downloaders and other nifty tools are seen as a major piracy threat by the music industry.

To curb this trend, music companies have taken legal action against various stream-ripping services. This includes Yout.com, which is operated by the American developer Johnathan Nader.

Nader is not easily defeated, however. In 2020 he took the RIAA to court in an attempt to have the site declared legal.

Criminal Conviction

The RIAA case is still under appeal, but meanwhile, Nader faced more immediate threats. In 2021, Yout’s owner learned that the Public Prosecutor’s Office of São Paulo, Brazil, had filed a criminal complaint against him.

In 2022, the prosecution offered Yout.com a way out in the form of a deal. In exchange for reaching an agreement on several predetermined terms, the public prosecutor was willing to suspend the criminal prosecution. This would come at a cost, however.

Under the proposed terms, Yout’s operator would have to pay the authorities 1.9 million Brazilian reals, roughly $400,000, which Nader rejected.

Without a deal, the defense tried to get the case dismissed outright. Yout’s attorneys argued, among other things, that the site functions like an Internet DVR; it doesn’t store any infringing material and has sufficient legal uses.

DVR
 

However, the court eventually concluded that the requirements for criminal prosecution had been met, and allowed the prosecution to go ahead.

Yout Operator Found Guilty

In a detailed 21-page ruling issued last Friday, Judge Eva Lobo Chaib Dias Jorge of the 12th Criminal Court of São Paulo, found Yout’s Johnathan Nader guilty of large-scale copyright infringement. The court dismissed the defense’s arguments, concluding that the stream-ripper is a dedicated piracy tool.

The finding was based on technical evidence provided by the court-appointed expert, Ricardo Andrian Capozzi, who concluded that Yout wasn’t merely a “neutral” recording tool. Instead, Yout is specifically created to bypass the security measures implemented by sites like YouTube.

The Judge was not swayed by the defense’s argument that Yout.com can be used in plenty of “fair use” situations too.

“Ultimately, it is evident that the service operated by the defendant directly contravenes the constitutional protection of copyright, misappropriating the works of others and causing both financial and moral harm to the legitimate rights holders. For this reason, holding the defendant accountable is not only legitimate but necessary for the preservation of the legal order and the integrity of the cultural market itself,” the verdict reads (translated).

“Given the evidence contained in the records, it is understood that there is substantial proof of a violation of the Copyright Law (Law No. 9,610/1998), and the service offered by Yout.com constitutes an illegal practice, directly infringing upon copyrights.”

Substituted Prison Sentence

The court determined that, with millions of Brazilian visits to Yout.com, copyright infringement was committed millions of times. As the responsible party, Nader was technically sentenced to a prison term of three years and four months, but for now his immediate future won’t be inside a Brazilian cell.

Because Nader is a first-time offender, the judge substituted the prison term with two “alternative” restrictive penalties under Article 44 of the Penal Code. Instead of serving a prison sentence, Nader is required to pay a total of 200 monthly minimum wages to a Public Security Incentive Fund (FISP).

The sentence
 

The verdict doesn’t mention what the applied daily minimum wage rate is. Online searches suggest that the 2025 monthly minimum in Brazil is R$1,518.00, which would put the total penalty at R$303,600 (~USD$55,000). We want to stress, however, the verdict doesn’t list any amount.

The prison sentence is not completely off the radar either, as a failure to pay the fine or comply with the court’s conditions could eventually bring it back into play.

Brazil’s Jurisdiction over a U.S. Operation

One of the most significant aspects of the ruling is the judge’s rejection of Nader’s jurisdictional defense. Nader argued that, as a Connecticut-based operator of a U.S. company, he should not be subject to Brazilian criminal law.

The judge ruled that, since the site was visited millions of times by Brazilians, the stream-ripper has a real impact within national borders. As a result, the court concluded that Brazilian law applies regardless of where Yout.com’s servers or its developer are located.

“The fact that the defendant’s conduct was not considered punishable in its country of origin in no way undermines its illegality when the results are reflected in our National Territory,” the verdict reads.

The ruling comes as a significant setback for Yout.com’s operator, who is expected to appeal the verdict. Yout.com, meanwhile, remains blocked by Brazilian Internet providers.

—

A copy of the verdict, issued by Judge Eva Lobo Chaib Dias Jorge of the 12th Criminal Court of São Paulo, is available in Portuguese here.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 23 December 2025 at 3:35 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

There are only a few torrent sites still alive today that can boast more than 20 years online, yet only two – The Pirate Bay and RuTracker – have managed that feat under perpetual public scrutiny.

A little younger than its Swedish counterpart and on balance, a survivor of fewer wars, RuTracker has nevertheless lived through domain seizures (its torrents.ru domain was lost in 2010) and intense site-blocking measures both in Russia and multiple countries overseas.

No Particular Enemies, Just Most Rightsholders, Generally

Much like The Pirate Bay, RuTracker has also featured in countless critical rightsholder reports submitted to various authorities. Offering content across most categories means that the majority of large entertainment industry groups have had a problem with RuTracker at some point over the past two decades.

At the time of writing, UK music industry group BPI leads the pack on search engine takedowns; it has targeted almost 287,000 URLs on the site’s .org domain, the most recent just 10 days ago.

Despite having sent in excess of 26,000 URL takedown notices against RuTracker’s main domain alone, the Entertainment Software Association’s notices lag behind those sent by the music industry; since it has vastly fewer individual videogames to protect than the labels have music tracks, that’s to be expected.

Nevertheless, the RuTracker problem is significant and stubbornly persistent; no doubt the ESA’s members would like this issue to reach a favorable conclusion, sooner rather than later.

ESA member list

After placing greater emphasis on relatively young gaming-focused piracy platforms over the last couple of years (FitGirl-Repacks, Dodi-Repacks, nsw2u.com) the ESA’s October submission to the USTR contained just one paragraph about RuTracker.

By now the background is understood, and the numbers tend to speak for themselves, but a new development this week suggests that the ESA may be interested in breaking the status quo.

DMCA Subpoena to Cloudflare

At the US District Court for the District of Columbia this week, counsel for ESA requested a subpoena pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(h), commonly known as a DMCA subpoena. The target was Cloudflare and the complaint concerns the unlicensed distribution of ESA members’ copyrighted works via RuTracker.

The requested subpoena and the required DMCA notification to Cloudflare are both dated December 16 so it’s unclear whether Cloudflare had the opportunity to review the notice in advance. Since Cloudflare can’t remove individual links, a detailed link-by-link review may not routinely take place. In this case, however, any review would involve guesswork, apart from in one or two isolated cases.

The ESA notice contains a list of videogame titles and nothing else. The table below contains the titles and additional information added by us for reference, but where to find the infringing links is entirely absent.

There’s no hard requirement to specify the precise location of content in a DMCA notice, and a representative list of titles is fine too, but websites published in Russian and guesswork tend not to mix. It may be a sign that there’s no expectation of anything being taken down, which wouldn’t be at all misplaced.

ESA Wants to Track Down RuTracker’s Operator

In its notification to Cloudflare, the ESA strongly implies that the conduct of RuTracker’s operator may not be in keeping with Cloudflare’s terms of service. It stops short of demanding cessation of business but then follows up with a reminder.

The communication is meant to facilitate removal of the infringing material, not “suggest or imply that Cloudflare’s activities and services are within the scope of the DMCA safe harbor.”

More immediately, the ESA hopes that Cloudflare is able to provide the following:

Whether anything useful will emerge from the considerable volume of data held by Cloudflare remains to be seen but after 21 years of evading copyright holders, nothing can be ruled in – or ruled out.

ESA’s DMCA subpoena application and supporting documents are available here 1,2 (pdf)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 22 December 2025 at 4:02 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

Fifteen years ago, Google processed 250,000 takedown notices in a single year. The takedown counter for 2025 has already exceeded five billion.

This figure isn’t just hard to fathom; it represents an explosion in removal requests. The all-time ten billion milestone was passed just over a year ago.

If we break this down further, we see that on average, rights holders flagged more than 14 million allegedly-infringing URLs per day, or close to 10,000 every minute. That stream of takedowns continued throughout the entire year, day and night, a pace that human moderators couldn’t track with a stopwatch, let alone a spreadsheet.

Battle of the Bots?

While little is known about how Google processes these requests, it’s safe to say that these takedowns are not all reviewed manually. Instead, they are likely processed by an algorithm that greenlights URL removals unless there are clear signs that something is wrong.

Similarly, rightsholders also rely on their own ‘bots.’ This definitely applies to Link-Busters, the takedown partner of many major book publishers and the leading sender of takedown notices by far.

In 2025 alone, Link-Busters was good for more than 3.2 billion reported URLs, which dwarfs all other senders. Rivendell is the runner-up with roughly 420 million reported links, followed by MG Premium, the copyright enforcement arm of Pornhub parent company Aylo, which requested 390 million removals.

Not surprisingly, the most targeted domain names are also related to publishing. In fact, the top three domains are all linked to shadow library search engine Anna’s Archive, which has hundreds of millions of URLs flagged.

In terms of accuracy, Link-Busters has a good track record. The company appears to be strictly focused on a subset of problematic sites, mostly shadow libraries. It doesn’t target other domains, which lowers the risk of errors. But the same can’t be said for all senders.

How Google Responded

Every year there are plenty of rightsholders who target seemingly innocent URLs, including IMDb links, Wikipedia entries, New York Times articles, dictionaries, and official government websites. Google is typically good at spotting these errors, as long as the targeted sites have a certain audience and reputation.

If Google spots a problem, it takes “no action”, a response seen in roughly 3% of all URL reports in 2025. A further 8% of URLs could not be removed because the same URL had already been reported previously.

While most reports target live search results, many of the URLs reported in 2025 hadn’t yet been crawled by Google. These are categorized as “not in index,” and they accounted for roughly 35% of all requests this year, totaling more than 1.7 billion links.

These “non-indexed” URLs are placed on a preemptive blacklist by Google to ensure that they don’t appear in future search results. This activity is also emblematic of the “bot battle”, as it often includes mirror domains or new URL structures of pirate sites. These are then picked up or predicted by takedown bots before they’re indexed by Google.

Ultimately, the “removed” category remains the largest. In 2025, Google successfully removed over 2.7 billion URLs, which is roughly 54% of all requests. When we combine this with the “not in index” figures, it’s clear that the vast majority of rightsholder reports result in either successful removal or blacklisting.

As we head into 2026, the question is no longer whether the volume will grow, but rather how much more the system can take. Currently, Link-Busters’ volume appears to be capped at 10 million takedowns per day, but that might change in the future.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Sunday 21 December 2025 at 4:34 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

After years of preparations, the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) will kick off this Sunday at Rabat’s Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium in Morocco.

Hosts Morocco will get the tournament underway by taking on Comoros in the opening match, where a win would extend Morocco’s winning streak to 19 consecutive matches. The hosts are favored to come out on top in Africa’s biggest sporting event, which is expected to attract around two billion viewers across 180 countries.

How many will watch the tournament via an illegal IPTV or web-based streaming platform is naturally a hot topic.

IPTV Piracy Rampant, Achievable Enforcement “Not Adequate”

In a January 2025 report to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the International Intellectual Property Alliance recommended that Morocco should be placed on the USTR’s ‘Watch List’ (pdf).

The reasons include “extremely high rates” of piracy for film and music, a weak legal framework that fails to empower authorities to tackle digital piracy, administrative authorities that do have the power to act, but fail to do so, and a public that “lacks basic understanding of copyright principles.”

The report dedicated six full pages to Morocco, laying out exactly what needs to be done to meet standards acceptable to the United States.

Describing IPTV piracy as “rampant” and inaction by the Moroccan Copyright and Related Rights Office (BMDAV) as a source of frustration, IIPA added that despite receiving complaints, BMDAV had initiated zero enforcement actions to date.

Yet taken on face value, there are now signs of unexpected improvement.

BMDAV Summit Supported by a Who’s-Who of Anti-Piracy Players

With the Africa Cup of Nations approaching, local news outlet SNRT caught up with BMDAV director Dalal Mhamdi Alaoui who spoke about the need to prevent the “proliferation” of pirate platforms broadcasting football matches without authorization.

The report revealed that an international anti-piracy summit would take place on December 16, organized by BMDAV in partnership with the French National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) and the Delegation of the European Union to Morocco.

The summit was also supported by INTERPOL, which held its 93rd General Assembly in Marrakech, Morocco, in late November, and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), whose members’ content regularly appears on pirate services, including those based in Morocco.

“Vast” Anti-IPTV Piracy Operation

The MPA is one the five members of the IIPA and the driving force behind anti-piracy coalition ACE, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. ACE was also listed for the anti-piracy summit, where one of the central topics was how to tackle unauthorized broadcasting of sporting events.

Despite the alleged lack of enforcement in Morocco, BMDAV informed SNRT that, in partnership with her office, broadcasting rightsholders are preparing to conduct a “vast anti-piracy operation” in which “all necessary legal measures” would be taken to prosecute illegal platforms.

A separate local report from Morocco World News provides more context.

“Recent investigations by ACE reveal a high concentration of piracy operators in Morocco in recent years, particularly in IPTV services, streaming, and content ripping. The organization’s research shows that some of these networks operate vast criminal systems targeting audiences across North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East,” the report notes.

“With AFCON 2025 approaching, experts anticipate a significant increase in illegal live match streaming attempts. The conference aims to strengthen coordination between regulatory authorities, the judicial system, security services, and the private sector while raising awareness about the economic, social, and cultural impact of piracy.”

Working on the assumption that ACE and its partners would play key roles in local enforcement action, telegraphing a “vast” anti-piracy operation via the media isn’t the type of strategy the coalition has ever been known to deploy. Of course, indicating the scale of an operation says nothing about timing, even in the days leading up to an event that will almost certainly be heavily pirated.

In the background, meanwhile, broadcaster beIN has been exploring the potential for site-blocking measures in Morocco.

beIN sues Morocco ISPs

In the second half of 2024, beIN Sports was preparing to launch legal action against three local ISPs, including the largest telecoms company in Morocco, Maroc Telecom.

Details on the specifics are thin, but it appears that beIN’s goal was to obtain a ruling that forced the ISPs to block the illegal sports streaming site live-kooora.com. At the time it was one of the most popular sites of its type in Morocco and may have originally been part of a longer list of targets.

Whether blocking depends on a finding of ISP liability for pirated content isn’t clear, but since beIN’s demands aimed to force the ISPs to block the site to prevent their customers from accessing it, that’s one possibility.

At what stage these are lawsuits are currently at isn’t clear, but on December 10, beIN Media Group announced the launch of its TOD platform in Morocco, from where the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations will be available to stream in 4K.

Not for free, of course, but for those who simply must have uninterrupted, flawless 4K, beIN’s offer is likely to be the only option available.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 20 December 2025 at 12:41 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

In a world where standardized streaming portals have become a commodity, Hayase is a breath of fresh air.

The standalone torrent client, formerly known as Miru, offers a clean and organized media player interface to stream anime content.

The torrent streaming functionality is similar to the likes of Popcorn Time, while Hayase’s reliance on third-party extensions is reminiscent of Kodi. On the official GitHub page, the dev team bills its multi-platform software as a bring-your-own-content streaming tool.

“Hayase is a bring-your-own-content torrent streaming client designed for anime enthusiasts. It provides the technology to stream torrents in real-time, with no waiting for downloads to finish,’ they write.

The decision not to include any content is in part legally driven. After all, most anime torrent sources rely on pirated content. These third-party sources are something Hayase explicitly distances itself from in a disclaimer.

“Hayase is purely a torrent client and media player. It does not provide, index, host, or link to any content sources, torrent files, or unofficial repositories. Users are fully responsible for sourcing their own content legally and in compliance with their local laws.”

Disclaimer

Crunchyroll Asks GitHub to Take Action

While Hayase does not host or link to any infringing content, many users configure it as a pirate streaming anime player. This is a thorn in the side of rightsholders including the American subscription service Crunchyroll, which would rather see it gone.

Through their Indian takedown partner, MarkScan, Crunchyroll recently asked GitHub to remove links to various Hayase releases. Notably, the notice cites Indian IT regulations alongside U.S. copyright law to support its demands.

The takedown notice

“This notice is to bring to your attention that we have found copyright infringement on the application named ‘Hayase’ that is using your services,” MarkScan writes.

“Hayase enables unauthorized access to anime content, an activity which is well established as copyright infringement under applicable laws and relevant case law,” the notice adds.

Crunchyroll’s DMCA notice requests the removal of nearly two dozen URLs but provides no detail on the alleged infringements. Instead, it refers to screenshots in Appendix B, which are not included in the publicly posted notice.

Hayase Takes Action

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the Hayase team notes that GitHub did not send them the references appendix. This means that the developers also have no clue what the alleged infringements are. Consequently, they lack the required information to file a proper counter-notice.

Hayase’s developers could, in theory, try to follow this up with GitHub. However, instead of dragging the matter out, the team simply chose to remove the contested files. These URLs all point to 404 errors now, so GitHub was not required to take action.

The removals don’t appear to impact Hayase, as the links are no longer actively used as live download links on the official website. Also, it’s worth noting that even if the entire GitHub repository is removed, installed applications would still work.

Hayase.watch

Google Play, Discord, and Other Takedown Attempts

Given recent history, it is likely that this won’t be Crunchyroll’s last attempt to disrupt Hayase. Previously, its takedown partner MarkScan sent a DMCA takedown notice to GitHub in October.

Hayase has also been targeted outside of GitHub. On Discord, for example, various messages in the channel were removed for alleged copyright infringement. Whether Crunchyroll is behind these takedowns is unknown, as Discord did not share that information.

The most problematic takedown effort targeted Google Play, where it was indeed removed. The Play Store was the go-to destination for many Android users to download the app. While these people can still download the Hayase APK on the official site, that’s a hurdle for some.

With recently announced changes at Crunchyroll, anti-piracy enforcement will arguably become even more important in the new year. At the end of 2025, Crunchyroll will officially discontinue its free ad-supported service, presumably to convert more fans into paying customers.

Ironically, however, one of the most popular reactions to the news, which generated over 5 million views on X, mentions Hayase as something worth looking into.

Work to do…

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 19 December 2025 at 7:22 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

The emergence of new technologies that appear to undermine provisions in existing law can present problems for those hoping to protect their content.

In Denmark, the government believes that laws designed to protect against older technologies are now too specific to tackle today’s challenges. Draft proposals submitted earlier this month aim to modernize the law but have already sparked controversy.

The Stated Need For Amendments

The draft proposals submitted by the Ministry of Culture in early December include measures to combat viewing of content on “illegal IPTV services” and the “illegal use of VPN connections.”

Legal standing under existing law doesn’t appear to be in doubt as both are clearly labeled “illegal”. Yet as things stand, both are considered “not suitable for cracking down on” since existing law is tailored towards older broadcasting technologies.

“[T]he rules are primarily aimed at illegal decoders and other decoding equipment. Pirate decoders and pirate cards are out of date, and it is therefore necessary to update the rules so that they can handle today’s piracy activities,” the proposals read.

The proposals go further than a simple update to tackle piracy as it stands today. The goal is to “future-proof” the law to ensure that it is able to deal with a “continuously and rapidly developing technical landscape.”

More specifically, the aim is to ensure that the “prohibition against online piracy becomes technology-neutral and can thereby take technological development into account. It is further clarified that the prohibition against online piracy in accordance with current law applies both for commercial purposes and for private use.”

Proposed Amendments

Among other things, provisions first introduced in 1997 targeted “pirate decoders and pirate decoder cards” which were used to circumvent signal encryption and avoid paying broadcasters for a subscription. Advertising and promoting these devices and similarly capable equipment was also banned.

In 2000, the existing commercial piracy ban was expanded to the private space; possession of a pirate decoder was rendered illegal, to send a “preventative message” to households that may have been considering purchasing one. In today’s environment, banning devices alone is insufficient, so the amendments envision the following:

“(i)t is not permitted to manufacture, import or sell equipment, software or other technical solutions with the purpose of providing unauthorized access to the content of an encrypted radio or television program or the content of any other content service where access is restricted by technical measures or arrangements. It is also prohibited to acquire, possess, install or use equipment, software or other technical solution, for the purpose of obtaining unauthorized access..”

This represents a core change. Rather than focusing on banning the sale and possession of physical devices, there’s a shift towards targeting the circumvention of access restrictions of all kinds, and providing the means to do so.

Focus Shifts From Devices to Circumvention

Most obviously this outlaws illegal access to content only available via legitimate services in exchange for a fee; in this case a fee the user hopes to avoid paying. In isolation that’s hardly a ground-breaking amendment, but the intended scope is substantially broader than that.

The same restrictions also apply when a user accesses content for which they have already paid the appropriate fee, but geo-restrictions dictate that the content is not ordinarily available in the user’s region.

In other words, accessing geo-blocked content will become illegal, regardless of whether the user paid for the content or not. As much is clearly signaled in the proposals, which also reveal that there are no limits on the type of content either.

The concept of ‘other content from any other content service, access to which is restricted by technical measures or arrangements’ should be understood broadly. It is noted that online piracy is no longer limited to radio and television broadcasts. The proposed amendment will mean that all audiovisual content, including films, television series, music, (e-)books, articles, etc., where access may be limited by a requirement for subscription or fee payment, etc., is covered by the protection in Section 91. Television or streaming transmissions of live events, such as sporting events and concerts, will also be covered by the provision.

And the potential legal violations for accessing pirated and/or geo-blocked content – paid for or not – don’t stop there.

Since the proposals also prohibit the acquisition, possession, installation, or use of equipment, software or other technical solutions, buying and using a VPN to access pirated content – or even geo-blocked content the user has paid for – would constitute an offense.

The same also applies to using any technical means to bypass Denmark’s existing site-blocking measures

Minister of Culture “Never Proposed” a VPN Ban

Public discussion over the proposals inevitably led some to conclude that what the government really wants is a “total VPN ban” in Denmark. While that claim is not supported by the current text, it’s sufficiently extreme to provide cover for denial on the details which, depending on the user, may have that type of effect nonetheless.

“The purpose of the bill was, among other things, to combat illegal streaming of football matches. Since then, debate has arisen about whether the government wants a total ban on VPN connections, which is not the case,” the Ministry of Culture wrote in a statement this week.

Minister of Culture Jakob Engel-Schmidt added the following:

“I am not in favor of making VPN illegal, and I have never proposed that. But I must admit that the bill has not been formulated precisely enough, when someone can see so many ghosts in the current wording. Therefore, I am removing the part about VPN in the bill, so that there can no longer be any doubt that I in no way want to ban the use of VPN.”

Removing ‘VPN’ From Future-Proofed Proposals Changes Nothing

Considering the intent underpinning the proposals, and the shortcomings in current legislation that the proposals aim to fix, removing the term ‘VPN’ seems unlikely to have any effect. After all, the enduring strength of the proposed amendments are due to their technology-neutral framing. Indeed, removing references to VPNs means nothing when the proposals state the following:

“The concept of ‘other technical solution’ should be understood broadly. The broad wording is intended to mean that the proposed amendment will cover any technical solution used to provide unauthorized access to media content.”

Posting on X, the Culture Minister described claims of a total VPN ban as “Fake news”.

“I do not advocate for criminalizing VPN and will certainly not propose that. In all honesty, this seems like a deliberate misunderstanding of a fairly modest bill, which solely establishes that it is illegal to stream sports without paying.”

In 2024, a legal battle in Denmark involving LaLiga and Rojadirecta, already concluded that live sports broadcasts are protected copyright works.

Under the proposals, advertising or promoting VPNs to unblock geo-protected content would also be an offense. Not necessarily VPNs either – anything capable of achieving the same result.

Denmark’s Supreme Court confirmed in 2020 that providing information on how to use Popcorn Time was a criminal offense.

The proposals are available here: Portal, bill, consultation letter, hearing list

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Thursday 18 December 2025 at 6:00 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

The filing fee for a DMCA subpoena application is just $52.00, so given their potential to expose an alleged infringer’s personal details, they punch well above their weight.

Provided the paperwork is in order, DMCA subpoenas are usually signed off by a court clerk before being served on an intermediary, such as an ISP or web hosting company.

If all goes to plan, the alleged infringer’s details are handed over to the rightsholder in timely fashion and the matter can be considered closed. Even in cases where the stakes are unusually high, DMCA subpoenas are still easy to obtain, but may face additional scrutiny when those affected push back.

100 Infringing Domains

During May 2025, attorneys acting for gaming company Tamaris (Gibraltar) Limited sent a DMCA notice to GoDaddy complaining about more than 100 domain names and associated websites, in some cases also hosted by GoDaddy, reportedly infringing on the company’s intellectual property rights.

Doing business as Pragmatic Play, Tamaris explained that the sites are effectively illegal clones of its own platform, exploiting everything from trademarks and logos, copyright-protected photographs, images and animations, through to the underlying software platform itself. Since GoDaddy had been made aware of the ongoing infringement, Tamaris hoped for decisive action.

“With express notice that a customer has misused your services to conduct activities in violation of the law, and presumably in violation of your Terms of Service, we expect that you are able to make a reasonable determination to deny further services for the Infringing Sites,” Tamaris wrote.

DMCA Subpoena Obtained, Subsequent Motion to Quash

Tamaris obtained a DMCA subpoena from a Maryland district court on June 2, aiming to identify the operators of 104 allegedly-infringing domains. Two months later on August 1, the anonymous operator of two domains appearing on the list filed a motion to quash.

‘John Doe’ said that the subpoena ordered disclosure of highly sensitive, personally identifying information, including names, addresses, telephone numbers, payment details, IP addresses, time stamps and contents of emails. No attempt had been made to contact opposing counsel or identify specific infringement, the motion added.

“The request is overbroad, unsupported by individualized allegations of infringement, and improperly seeks to unmask Movant, who is associated only with two of the multiple listed domains, and others through a mass investigatory request with no judicial oversight,” the motion continued.

Noting that proof to show GoDaddy had even been served was absent from the docket, John Doe argued that a requirement to issue a narrowly targeted DMCA notice in advance of obtaining a subpoena had not been met. Instead, the effort was described as a “phishing expedition” lacking specificity, while exceeding the limited scope of section 512(h) of the DMCA.

“No lawsuit is pending, and the court has not made any determination of good cause or necessity. The absence of pending action weighs heavily in favor of quashing,” the motion continued, adding that disclosure of identity would seriously undermine privacy, especially in the event domains are used for expressive content.

“Courts have long protected anonymous speech from premature unmasking,” John Doe added.

A battle over First Amendment rights would certainly complicate matters, but only in the event the subpoena survived the basics. Focusing on the trademark allegations in the initial complaint to GoDaddy, John Doe’s motion to quash pointed out that since trademarks are not copyright-protected works, a prima facie case of copyright infringement may not have been made out.

Case referred to Chief Magistrate Judge

Tamaris filed its opposition to John Doe’s motion to quash on August 15, providing proof that while GoDaddy had been served in a timely fashion, John Doe’s motion to quash wasn’t timely at all.

Filed way beyond the June 16 return date, the motion failed to satisfy the legal standard, so it should be denied, Tamaris informed the court.

The case was referred to Chief Magistrate Judge Timothy J. Sullivan who weighed arguments from both sides in forming his memorandum opinion handed down on December 11. The Judge wrote that a hearing to determine the outcome of John Doe’s motion would not be necessary.

Memorandum Opinion

Judge Sullivan examined four key disputes before ruling on John Doe’s motion to quash.

Local Rule 104.7 requires counsel to make a “reasonable effort” to resolve discovery disputes. The parties are required to meet in person or otherwise communicate for a reasonable time to demonstrate a good-faith effort to resolve disputes.

Since that didn’t happen, John Doe argued that the DMCA subpoena should be quashed. The Court disagreed. The rule only applies to disputes arising between parties to litigation.

“This is not the case here, as a DMCA subpoena is a prelitigation subpoena designed to facilitate disclosure of identifying information when there is no pending lawsuit,” Judge Sullivan writes.

“The Court is unpersuaded that Movant’s failure to comply with Local Rule 104.7 is a basis to deny the Motion.”

Timeliness of Motion to Dismiss

Judge Sullivan notes that for a motion to quash to be considered ‘timely’, it should be filed prior to the subpoena’s return date. While John Doe’s motion was filed a month after that date, the delay wasn’t his fault.

GoDaddy was served on June 3 and required to produce information by June 16. Yet it took until July 25 to notify John Doe, who then took just five days to file his response on August 1. Since Tamaris wasn’t prejudiced by the delay, the Court excused the motion’s untimeliness.

Scope of DMCA’s Section 512(h)

John Doe’s claim, that the DMCA subpoena exceeded the scope of Section 512(h) by attempting the “mass unmasking” of over 100 domain owners “without an individualized showing of infringement,” was rejected by the Court.

Not only does the DMCA place no limits on the number of identities revealed per subpoena, the Judge explained, there are no requirements for supporting evidence or an individualized showing of infringement. Tamaris’ notification to GoDaddy was sufficient so the DMCA subpoena was issued accordingly.

First Amendment Fails to Protect

John Doe argued that Tamaris’ need for discovery carried less weight than his right under the First Amendment to engage in anonymous speech. Tamaris argued that John Doe’s personal details receive no protection under the First Amendment.

The Court found no guidance on the issue in relevant case law but found various aspects of the case sufficient to reach the following conclusions:

• Tamaris did enough to show a prima facie case of copyright infringement
• The DMCA process is the only means for Tamaris to identify copyright infringers
• The personal information requested by Tamaris was sufficiently specific

• How use of gaming software constitutes expressive conduct was not explained.
• Doe engaged in ‘commercial’ speech with minimal First Amendment protection
• First Amendment can’t be used as cover to infringe intellectual property rights
• When the free speech at issue is alleged copyright infringement, a customer’s privacy interest in contact information associated with an IP address is “minimal at best”

Concluding that John Doe’s identifying information is not a “protected matter” under Rule 45(d)(3)(A)(iii) and with most factors favoring disclosure, John Doe’s motion to quash was denied, bringing the matter to a close.

Judge Sullivan’s Memorandum and Opinion, is available here (pdf)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 17 December 2025 at 5:22 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “Predator: Badlands” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on December 15 are:

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

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 16 December 2025 at 4:08 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

For many online pirates, the H.264 and H.265 standards are synonymous with high quality pirate releases.

The underlying codecs and compression technologies they describe have established themselves as the preferred video piracy formats, appearing in thousands of online releases.

There are even dedicated ‘Scene’ rules for releasing pirated content in these formats. Yet, at the same time, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, rely on the same technology.

Disney Sued for Patent Infringement

InterDigital owns more than 10,000 video and codec patents, including those essential to H.264 and H.265. To play content encoded in these formats, device makers such as computer and TV vendors must license their use.

Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ use these codecs to encode their videos but, according to Interdigital, this is not always done with permission.

In February, the Pennsylvania-based patent corporation sued Disney for patent infringement. A complaint filed at a California federal court accused Disney of using the patented codecs for ESPN, Hulu, and Disney+.

InterDigital reached out to Disney in July 2022 to discuss a licensing agreement, but after that led nowhere, the company felt compelled to take legal action.

“Today, Defendants continue their widespread infringement of the Asserted Patents by utilizing the claimed technology that enables the efficiency and efficacy of Defendants’ video streaming business.”

Disney is not alone in this. Last month, InterDigital filed a nearly identical lawsuit against Amazon, accusing the retail giant of unauthorized use of the same video compression technology for Prime Video.

MPA Backs Disney

These high-stakes lawsuits strike at the core of the video streaming landscape. There is widespread concern, including at the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which submitted an amicus brief in the Disney lawsuit last week.

The MPA’s filing is submitted as part of Disney’s counter-lawsuit, filed in a Delaware federal court in August, which accuses InterDigital of antitrust practices.

The MPA, which counts Disney and the other major video streaming services among its members, is typically known for protecting IP-rights. In this case, however, it rallies against what it believes to be IP-abuse.

The brief notes that InterDigital stands accused of orchestrating a “global holdup campaign” designed to generate windfall profits, using extortionary demands and actions to force streaming services on board.

From MPA’s brief
 

MPA sees InterDigital’s aggressive patent tactics as an antitrust violation. Their brief argues that InterDigital is effectively “double-dipping” by attempting to charge streaming services for the same video transmissions device manufacturers have already paid for.

Essentially, the patent holder wants to get paid for encoding and decoding the same video.

“InterDigital has sought to ‘double-dip,’ demanding that streaming providers take royalty-bearing licenses even where those providers stream content to devices whose manufacturers already are paying InterDigital to license the same patents,” the MPA writes.

InterDigital notes that, while the H.264/HEVC standards are mandatory for device makers, they are technically “optional” for streaming services. The company argues that Disney and others can use non-standard technology if they want to avoid the fees.

The MPA dismisses this counterargument as a “contrived excuse,” noting that the use of non-standard technology would make these streaming services incompatible with virtually every TV and smartphone on the market.

Beyond the “double-dipping” mechanics, the MPA’s brief supports Disney’s broader allegations that InterDigital engaged in a deceptive scheme where RAND obligations were effectively bypassed.

Price Hikes for Streaming Services

Ultimately, the MPA warns that this legal battle over patents will have real-world consequences for consumers. The movie industry group argues that, if “unscrupulous” patent holders are allowed to stack fees on top of fees, streaming services will face higher costs.

In its brief, the MPA draws a direct line between InterDigital’s conduct and the monthly bills paid by streaming subscribers.

“All of this involves substantial costs, which could lead to higher subscription fees or a reduction in the production and dissemination of content that is streamed,” the MPA notes.

Needless to say, the stakes in this patent battle are high, and the effects are felt globally. InterDigital has already obtained injunctions to block Disney’s content in both Germany and Brazil.

The Delaware court must now decide whether Disney’s antitrust claims should be dismissed, as requested by InterDigital, or if the case can continue.

—

A copy of the MPA’s amicus curiae brief, filed at the Delaware federal court last week, is available here (pdf)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 16 December 2025 at 4:03 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

In a report published this month, French telecoms regulator Arcom highlights the many challenges faced by those combating online piracy, particularly live sporting events.

Arcom reports big plans for fighting piracy in 2026 but begins by reviewing progress since 2009 when France launched its controversial ‘three strikes’ model to tackle once-dominant peer-to-peer file-sharing.

Citing an 80% decrease in P2P use over the past 16 years, and the 75% of ‘first warning’ notice recipients who don’t go on to receive a second, Arcom says that the impact of the French system on behavior “is undeniable.” Arcom further reports that the overall audience for illicit services in France “is now at the lowest level ever measured,” down 35% between 2021 and 2025, supported by blocking measures against 13,000 domains.

Existing Systems No Longer Effective

With the success of existing anti-piracy measures strictly confined to the past, few are given any chance of success moving forward. Internet users quickly move to new technologies and as a result, better tools are needed to mitigate piracy. Despite best efforts, Arcom says that online piracy “remains at worrying levels, even today.”

Loss of revenue for rights holders is now estimated at €1.5 billion, or 12% of the legal audiovisual market, a figure that doesn’t include blocking costs incurred by ISPs and sports rightsholders. Nor does it include Arcom’s annual anti-piracy expenses of approximately €2.2 million and the estimated €400 million reduction in state revenue attributable to non-payment of various taxes.

“In this context, the tools devised by legislators, while initially effective, are now proving insufficient to guarantee the effectiveness of the fight against piracy in the face of cyclical changes in illicit consumption patterns, which have continually adapted to government responses,” the regulator reports.

Meeting the Demands of Live Sports Blocking

The first focus of Arcom’s plan for 2026 and beyond are the demands of live sports broadcasters. Through simplification and automation of existing blocking systems, and revising its control to be more flexible and responsive, Arcom believes it has the right formula to move forward.

Inspired by models in place in the UK and Italy, the plan is to establish an automated, dynamic, real-time blocking system, under Arcom’s control, to satisfy the urgent need to protect live broadcasts.

Simplification and Automation

Under the current system, manual verification and preparation of official reports can take several working days, compared to the proposed system in which it’s envisioned that blocking would be implemented in real time, or at least, within “timeframes compatible with the duration of sports transmissions.”

Automation is also expected to return significant improvements in blocking volumes. Right now, IP address blocking amounts to a few hundred requests per week, whereas an automated system is expected to process thousands while increasing blocking effectiveness against pirates who rapidly change their IP addresses.

Within this framework, Arcom sees its role shifting; the current requirement for systematic verification of blocking requests against each domain would be replaced by Arcom monitoring rights holders’ detection systems and general monitoring of the quality of submitted complaints.

Intermediaries: Carrots and Sticks

Arcom recognizes a need to “facilitate the actions of intermediaries” by maintaining an up-to-date list of pirate sites and services subject to blocking and improving the system so that new services can be added to boost effectiveness. It’s hoped that sharing the list with third parties will encourage a broader range of intermediaries to engage in the process voluntarily.

“Alternative DNS providers and VPNs, whose misuse for illicit purposes affects 66% of illicit consumers, are key partners. Beyond these players, the entire digital ecosystem must be involved in the fight against piracy: hosting providers, content delivery networks (CDNs), and online stores,” Arcom notes.

If intermediaries fail to comply with their legal obligations, granting Arcom “coercive power” would “strengthen the authority’s credibility in the digital space,” the regulator notes.

In the event that DNS providers and VPN companies view blocking as a marketing tool for their products, Arcom says that should be handled under laws regulating commercial influence and misuse of social media.

Legal Amendments Required But Arcom Will Press Ahead

Arcom’s proposals are reliant on changes to the existing legal framework, as outlined in the draft law on the organization, management, and financing of professional sport. Nevertheless, Arcom is already working with ISPs and sports rightsholders in anticipation of a green light during the next six months.

“All stakeholders (ISPs, sports rights holders and Arcom) are preparing for operational implementation no later than the end of the first half of 2026,” Arcom reports.

Arcom’s report, ‘The Challenges and Various Tools For Combating Piracy in the Cultural and Sporting Sectors’ is available here (pdf, French)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 15 December 2025 at 3:23 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

The general belief in Hollywood is that piracy causes billions of dollars in lost revenue and is predominantly harmful.

However, if research has shown anything over the years, it’s that piracy can have positive effects too.

Indeed, a new study from researchers at Monash University and San Jose State University, published in Research Policy, provides fresh evidence for this. It suggests that, under the right conditions, piracy can boost box office ticket sales.

The paper, titled “Avengers assemble! When digital piracy increases box office demand”, uses a dataset that matches U.S. box office revenue with the timing of high-quality piracy releases between 2004 and 2020.

The paper: Avengers assemble!
 

The researchers find that the impact of piracy on movie theater attendance differs for various types of films.

The ‘Spectacle’ vs. ‘Story’ Divide

For this study, the researchers make a distinction between “Spectacle” films, which include stunning visual blockbusters or action flicks, and “Story” films, such as dramas and comedies.

Spectacle films are broadly defined as movies where the in-theater experience significantly adds to the experience. For example, through stunning visuals and immersive surround sound. Story films, however, rely more on the dialogue, screenwriting, and acting—qualities that can also be enjoyed on a laptop or TV.

After categorizing the films, the researchers analyzed a dataset of U.S. box office figures, matching these with upload data from The Pirate Bay to track when high-quality pirated copies appeared online. Since the timing of these pirate releases is quasi-random, the research effectively infers a causal effect of piracy on box office revenues, depending on the movie type.

‘High-Quality Piracy Boosts Box Office Revenue’

These narrowed-down results are striking. While piracy seemingly hurt dramas and comedies, it appears to act as a promotional tool for ‘spectacle’ films, driving audiences to the movie theater rather than keeping them at home.

This isn’t a small effect either. The study estimates that high-quality pirate releases increase weekly box-office revenue by approximately 24.4% for spectacle films. For story films, the effect flips, as pirate releases lead to a 26.6% decline in weekly box-office revenue.

“Our research shows that digital piracy does not harm all movies equally,” says the paper’s co-author Wendy Bradley, who works as an assistant professor of management at San José State University. She notes that, for spectacle-oriented films, piracy can act as a nudge to go to the box office.

“Watching a pirated copy may convince people that the real value of the film comes from the shared cinematic experience, not just the story, and encourage them to watch in theaters. In contrast, story-driven movies are more vulnerable because piracy is a better substitute for in-theater visits,” Bradley says.

This is corroborated by the paper’s lead author, Klaus Ackermann, who notes that some movies are simply better suited for today’s movie theater experience.

“A romantic comedy or ‘chick flick’ like 27 Dresses offers a limited in-cinema experience by itself, while Marvel movies are a different story,” Ackermann notes, adding that movie theaters have already started to respond to this by offering more ‘experiences’ and special events.

‘Low-Quality Releases Hurt Revenues’

Importantly, the positive effects on box office revenues are unique to high-quality piracy leaks, which include “BluRay” or “HD” rips. The researchers found that low-quality versions, including CAM rips, consistently hurt box office revenues across all genres.

The impact is substantial here as well, as low-quality pirate releases were typically linked to a 24% drop in box office revenues.

27 Dresses
 

While these results may seem counterintuitive, the authors have statistically ruled out several alternative explanations. That said, the study relies on a quasi-random research design that tried to simulate causality. Therefore, follow-up research is needed to replicate and potentially expand these spectacular results.

A Structural Shift?

The paper suggests that future research may also want to consider the effect of piracy on legal streaming subscription services like Netflix, or other forms of entertainment, such as video games.

For the movie industry, the paper once again suggests that a focus on adding value is key to competing with piracy. This is in line with research we covered last month, which showed that investments in the movie theater experience can help deter piracy.

Bradley stresses that their research indicates that piracy does not have to be met with more enforcement all the time. Instead, studios may want to focus on offering a better theater experience. Then, high quality pirate releases serve as promotion.

“My takeaway for studios is that digital piracy isn’t going away,” Bradley says.

“Rather than fighting it predominantly through legal means, whether that be lobbying for anti-piracy policy or expensive IP litigation, studios can strategically design, price, and release movies so that theatrical value becomes harder to replicate at home,” she concludes.

—-

Ackermann, K., Bradley, W. A., & Cameron, J. F. (2025). Avengers assemble! When digital piracy increases box office demand. Research Policy, 54, 105266. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2025.105266.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Sunday 14 December 2025 at 3:20 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

In 2017, American Chemical Society (ACS), a leading source of academic publications in the field of chemistry, won a lawsuit against Sci-Hub and its operator, Alexandra Elbakyan.

The ‘Pirate Bay of Science’ had failed to appear at a Virginia federal court, resulting in an easy win for the publisher and a $4.8 million default judgment award for damages.

A Broad Anti-Piracy Injunction (2018)

More important, perhaps, was the broad permanent injunction that the Virginia federal court signed off on in 2017. This order effectively gave ACS free rein to take down existing and newly registered Sci-Hub domain names.

The injunction also required all parties “in active concert or participation” with Sci-Hub to “cease facilitating access” to these domain names, including search engines, hosting providers, ISPs, and domain name registrars, the order clarified.

From the 2018 injunction
 

On paper, this injunction enabled ACS to request American ISPs and search engines to ‘block’ existing and future Sci-Hub domains. However, there was no sign that the publisher was doing so. Aside from a few suspended domains, Sci-Hub remained widely accessible.

Whether ACS did not feel the need to enforce the order against search engines and other intermediaries or if these companies actively objected to the requested actions was unknown. And as time passed, the injunction became a distant memory, at least for a few years.

Google Complies with Zombie Injunction? (2025)

Earlier this week we spotted a unique request in the Lumen Database, where the 2018 injunction was cited. The notice in question asks Google to deindex 34 (sub)domains linked to Sci-Hub.

None of these domains were referenced in the 2018 injunction but are indeed linked to Sci-Hub. Many of the partially redacted domains appear to be domain variations of the scihubtw.tw mirror network, such as edu.scihubtw.tw and freeus.scihubtw.tw.

Court order notice
 

It’s surprising to see this type of enforcement seven years after the injunction was issued, but the request is legitimate. Google is certainly taking it seriously and has deindexed these domains from its search results in America. In other countries, the same domains remain accessible.

First “US-Only” Sci-Hub Removals

The December 2 notice was sent by UK law firm Wiggin LLP, which sent a similar request in September this year, targeting a few dozen other Sci-Hub domains. In total, we spotted seven notices, with the earliest dating back to 2022.

The results of these removals are also clearly visible in Google search. Those who search for Sci-Hub in the U.S. will see the following notice at the bottom of the results.

Removed by legal request

It’s not clear why it took five years before ACS urged Google to take action in response to the injunction. However, these removals are similar to Google’s removal of pirate site domains in other countries in response to ISP-blocking orders. Voluntary cooperation by Google was uncovered shortly before ACS first notified the search engine.

“In Active Concert”?

Google’s voluntary cooperation with ISP blocking orders in Australia, the Netherlands, France, the UK, and elsewhere also brings up an important question. Is Google cooperating with the permanent injunction in the U.S. because it feels legally compelled to do so, or is that a voluntary gesture too?

The 2018 injunction requires all parties “in active concert or participation” with Sci-Hub to take action. While search engines are mentioned as an example, Google and other tech companies have previously argued that neutral third-party services are not necessarily “in active concert or participation”.

It is likely that Google maintains this stance, opting to voluntarily comply with orders targeting other third parties. That would mirror its response to site-blocking orders elsewhere.

We contacted Google hoping to hear answers to these questions, but the company did not respond to our request for comment.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 13 December 2025 at 5:26 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

After spending just 20 minutes watching piracy-related uploads on Instagram during the past few weeks, the hard reality of the Indian piracy scene is impossible to ignore.

In the wake of enforcement action against iBomma, a sprawling streaming platform supposedly blocked back in 2022, it transpires that people refer to the site’s operator using his real name. The media describe Immadi Ravi as a piracy ‘kingpin’, yet to his hyper-enthusiastic fan base, he’s somewhat of a hero, someone to admire and defend.

Since the 39-year-old is reportedly still behind bars following his arrest at the hands of the Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police during November, the defense aspect may yet find itself put to the test.

iBomma Down, Bappam TV Down, Other Platforms Too

On November 15, Telangana police arrested Ravi after reportedly monitoring his activities for the previous three months. The authorities say he operated iBomma from the Caribbean but managed to apprehend him in Kukatpally, Hyderabad, after learning he’d be flying in from France. Ravi reportedly fled the country on October 1 after a case was filed against him.

At a post-arrest press conference attended by movie suits, directors, producers, and actors, the name and reputation of iBomma founder were placed on the line and then dragged through the mud.

The claim that Ravi had amassed the personal data of around 5 million users, provided a backdrop of data theft and cybercrime to which other details were soon revealed.

Ravi’s 21,000-title pirate movie library was slammed for its major contribution to the losses suffered by the industry. In 2024 alone, losses reportedly amounted to 3,700 crore; in U.S. dollars, that’s a significant amount of money: US$428 million, give or take.

Getting Rich, Making Mistakes

A student of computer science, Ravi reportedly pocketed Rs 30 crore (US$3.2 million) for himself, deposited in 35 bank accounts, held in cryptocurrency, and otherwise spent to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Yet, while massively successful, police implied that he wasn’t universally smart. When allegedly purchasing the initial iBomma domain from Njalla, the privacy-focused registrar founded by The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde, Ravi reportedly provided his real personal details and paid using a personal debit card.

“Since he used his own credentials, he cannot deny ownership of the domain,” ACP Srinivasulu said, perhaps forgetting that when acquiring a domain from Njalla, the service retains legal ownership – customers simply get to use them.

With the two named pirate operations out of action, other sites reportedly went dark too. That’s not unusual, since panic tends to spread rapidly when police start knocking on doors. In the early stages, it can be impossible for outsiders to differentiate between cautious downtime and the effects of a full blown raid. That doesn’t prevent people from trying to connect the dots, however.

iBomma and Bappam TV – Or Potentially More?

Describing a globe-trotting life and visits to new countries every week, Hyderabad Additional Commissioner of Police told reporters that Ravi regularly traveled overseas, including to meet with representatives of 1win and 1xBet, the gambling companies said to benefit from his pirate site businesses.

Officially reported as the operator of iBomma and Bappam TV, widespread unofficial claims state that Ravi was also behind pirate streaming platform MKVCinemas. The site reportedly went dark around the same time as iBomma and Bappam TV.

In a timely announcement issued Thursday, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment says it was responsible for the ‘dismantling’ of MKVCinemas and the shutdown of a “high-traffic drive-to-drive cloning tool” frequently used by piracy services in India and Indonesia.

“Collectively, the MKVCinemas domains accounted for 142.4 million global visits between 2024 and 2025. The piracy tool received 231.4 million visits in the same time period,” the ACE announcement reads.

“Following an extensive investigation, ACE identified the operator in Bihar, India, who agreed to shut down the operation and transfer 25 associated domains.”

Searching For Answers

There are at least dozens and conservatively well in excess of 100 MKVCinemas-branded domains, so when no domains are mentioned by name, determining which sites were shut down can prove challenging.

Ultimately, we were able to identify all 25 domains mentioned by ACE and a few others, all confirmed as linked to each other.

At the time of writing, eight domains have been fully transferred to ACE, but the number will almost certainly increase in the coming hours.

So are there any proven, likely, or even circumstantial links between MKVCinemas and iBomma?

Circumstantial Isn’t Good Enough, But India is a Very Big Place

We already knew that ACE was interested in MKVCinemas back in April 2025, as much was revealed in the documents supporting its application for a DMCA subpoena in the United States.

In India, ZeeTV obtained a blocking injunction (CS(COMM) 650/2022) against iBomma in 2022, which included an order to cancel registration of the domain zee5.org, which appears to have been designed to irritate more than anything else.

Whether ACE or ZeeTV discovered anything useful via the DMCA subpoena and injunction is unknown. That being said, a detail in the ACE statement seems like it could be important.

“Following an extensive investigation, ACE identified the operator in Bihar, India.”

In the wake of Ravi’s arrest, actor Konidela Chiranjeevi (known locally as Mega Star), fellow actor Nagarjuna Akkineni, and film director SS Rajamouli, met with Hyderabad city police commissioner VC Sajjanar. According to Indian Express, the men expressed their gratitude, with Chiranjeevi noting how movies had “suffered greatly” while pirates took money from the industry’s pockets.

“I heard a 22-year-old from Bihar was earning huge money through piracy. It’s unbearable,” he said.

Hardly conclusive, but we suspect things may be a little more bearable now.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 13 December 2025 at 4:05 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

Japan’s government has never been shy about expanding its “Cool Japan” campaign, in which manga and anime have become increasingly important export products.

According to a new government-backed strategy, Japan aims to quadruple its overseas sales of anime, manga, and video games by 2033.

The goal is to reach 20 trillion yen (~US$133 billion) in overseas sales by 2033. To put that figure in perspective, Japanese officials now explicitly compare this target to the current value of the country’s massive car export industry.

However, before manga and anime can overtake Toyota and Honda, there’s a massive roadblock to pass.

The U.S. Piracy Roadblock

A report on the latest global piracy statistics, released by anti-piracy group Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) and conducted by Photonic System Solutions, shows that manga piracy sites alone draw 2.85 billion monthly visits globally.

The majority of this traffic goes to English web reading portals, and of all English-speaking countries, the United States is the top consumer of pirated manga, with 317 million monthly visits. That puts the U.S. in third place in terms of global manga piracy consumption, just behind Japan and Indonesia.

American consumers on average have more to spend than their Indonesian counterparts. So it’s safe to say that U.S. piracy is the main concern for Japan’s export ambitions.

^{Source report: Photonic System Solutions / ABJ (June 2025 Data)}

What’s equally concerning for publishers is the apparent normalization of online piracy among manga fans. A separate ABJ behavioral survey found that 30% of U.S. manga readers admit to using unauthorized apps or websites to read content.

When asked why, American respondents often mention “saving money” as the primary reason. These manga pirates are not necessarily oblivious to copyright concerns, but the survey suggests that they typically make a calculated financial choice.

The $55 Billion Question

The piracy visits data is based on June 2025 survey data, in which 914 active manga pirate sites were examined. The majority of these (over 90%) were online reading portals, but some direct download and torrent sites were included too.

In an attempt to put a number on the financial damage these sites cause, the report uses a rather basic formula to calculate the estimated losses.

Specifically, the report calculates financial “damage” by taking the time spent on pirate (reading) sites, and multiplying that by the number of mangas that can be read per hour. This figure is then multiplied by the average cost of a manga book: 500 yen (~$3.25).

The Formula: Hours Spent on Pirate Sites × 2 Books × 500 Yen = Financial Damage

The report (translated from Japanese)
 

For June 2025, the report calculated that 700 million hours were spent on pirate sites, resulting in a calculated loss of 704.8 billion yen ($4.5 billion) for that single month. That’s $55 billion annually.

This means that manga piracy losses alone exceed piracy damage estimates cited by the movie or music industries, which seems rather high.

This report’s damages calculation relies on the classic and controversial “lost sale” fallacy. It assumes that for every hour spent on a pirate site, a user would have otherwise purchased two manga volumes at full retail price.

In reality, however, there’s no 100% replacement effect. Also, the report does not consider any regional differences, suggesting that piracy in the U.S., Indonesia, and elsewhere is equally damaging.

Regardless of the economic accuracy, the $55 billion damages figure certainly helps to grab the attention of the Japanese authorities, while also increasing the pressure on other rightsholders.

U.S. Piracy Intermediaries?

Not coincidentally, the ABJ report also looked at the domain registrars used by pirate sites. The American company Namecheap came out on top as it’s used by 27% of the sites, followed at a distance by two other U.S. businesses: Namesilo (5%) and GoDaddy (5%).

Similarly, the earlier-mentioned behavioral survey already identified American platforms as a primary gateway for pirate traffic. It listed Google Search as the number one discovery method for pirate sites, while YouTube was ranked second, with nearly half of surveyed users using the video platform to find pirate mangas.

Looking at the front-facing IP-addresses of these sites, Cloudflare was linked to 73% of the sites. While the California company doesn’t necessarily host these sites, it is commonly used as a CDN.

The report doesn’t explicitly state that these intermediaries are liable for pirate sites, but that is ultimately what many rightsholders want.

Last month, Japanese manga publishers Shueisha, Kodansha, Kadokawa, and Shogakukan booked a key success in this regard. The Tokyo court held Cloudflare liable for damages after it failed to sufficiently prevent manga piracy.

In response to that court order, Cloudflare warned that it had “serious implications for the efficiency, security, and reliability of the internet”. However, the publishers clearly disagree, and with billions of dollars of export revenues at stake, they have backing from the government and AI technology.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Thursday 11 December 2025 at 3:03 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

In common with many countries in Europe, rightsholders in Sweden are attempting to tackle demand for pirate IPTV services and the many suppliers more than willing to meet it.

Assisted by rightsholders, Swedish law enforcement only has the resources to pursue a relatively small number of cases all the way to prosecution and trial. The case against a man said to be behind one of the most popular platforms was among a select handful of similar cases in recent years.

Indicted for Copyright Violations

In 2023, the man was indicted for his alleged ‘involvement’ in Viking IPTV, a pirate IPTV service popular in Sweden and recognized across the Scandinavian region.

Viking provided access to a wide range of content, and with demand from the public only increasing, the service had no shortage of customers. Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance reported that Viking IPTV had become a well-known brand in Sweden, with a level of business befitting that of a leading provider.

During the trial at Sweden’s Patent and Market Court (PMD) in May 2024, much evidence was presented to establish the man’s guilt. He had logged into the service’s support email and managed Viking’s Facebook page, among other things. The court also heard that he generated substantial profits from the service.

Making Money, Moving Cryptocurrency

In common with similar services, customers of Viking had options to pay: the convenience of PayPal or cryptocurrency.

Those who opted for Bitcoin sent cash via Swedish mobile payment service Swish to an exchange, with Bitcoin forwarded to wallets operated by unnamed individuals further up the chain. Rights Alliance and the police agreed that the success of the service meant there was plenty of Bitcoin to send.

Viking IPTV had several thousand customers and turned over a significant amount of money. A police cryptocurrency analysis revealed clusters of Bitcoin wallets linked to the man, which received roughly 308 Bitcoin in the period 2018 to 2022, and worth over US$20 million at the rates prevailing at the time, authorities said.

Convicted and Sentenced

In comments to local tabloid Expressen in 2020, the man reportedly boasted of an annual turnover of 12 million kronor, with 80% of that amount being profit. The paper also published snippets of chats which it linked to the operation of Viking IPTV. One message claimed that it had taken just 20 days to generate €75,000, an amount subsequently spent on a new Italian kitchen.

After being convicted of copyright crimes in May 2024, a total of 12.7 Bitcoin seized by the police were always headed in the wrong direction. Yet, things could’ve been much worse. Rights Alliance reported that the man was handed a suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay daily fines. The length of the suspended sentence and level of daily fines weren’t revealed.

State Disposes of Pirate Booty

In an announcement on Monday, Rights Alliance said the convicted man filed an appeal against his conviction but subsequently withdrew it. That meant that the judgment handed down by the Patent and Market Court in 2024 became legally binding.

In late November, revealed that the Swedish Enforcement Authority (Kronofogden) was preparing to dispose of four batches of digital assets in separate auctions.

The 12.7 bitcoin from the Viking case would have a reserve price of 9 million kronor (US$958.3K) versus a market price at the time estimated at 10.6 million kronor (~US$1.13 million)

“The preliminary investigation indicates that the man earned significant proceeds from the crime,” Rights Alliance commented on Monday.

“That criminals earn enormous sums from illegal IPTV is not news; it is evident in most judgments and investigations. The convicted man withdrew his appeal last autumn, and the Patent and Market Court’s ruling thus became legally binding. The Swedish Enforcement Authority has now sold the seized 12.77 Bitcoins for SEK 9,550,000 [~US$1.02 million]. The media describes the sale as a “record auction.”

While the film and TV company plaintiffs in the case won’t see any return from the money now headed to the public purse, the Court awarded damages to Svensk Filmindustri, Nordisk Film, and several companies from the TV sector.

Rights Alliance previously said that total damages claims were just under US$1.5 million.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Wednesday 10 December 2025 at 4:34 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

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

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

This week we have two newcomers on the list. “Predator: Badlands” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on December 8 are:

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

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 9 December 2025 at 3:57 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

When Napster found its way to millions of desktop computers 25 years ago, the music industry was terrified by this apparent existential threat.

Determined to make the problem disappear, the legal response was swift. Within a year, the RIAA sued Napster, and artists such as Metallica and Dr. Dre soon followed.

This strategy seemed to work, as the RIAA lawsuit effectively shut down Napster two years after it launched. However, the genie was out of the bottle, and the ‘magic’ of unlimited access inspired many new sharing apps, such as LimeWire and Kazaa. These new applications eventually ran into trouble as well.

Report: The Economics of Copyright and AI

The massive legal response against file-sharing software in the early 2000s shows parallels with today’s copyright clashes between rightsholders and AI companies. Many rightsholders see AI as an existential threat, and there are dozens of high-profile lawsuits on the way. Meanwhile, lawmakers are considering if they need to intervene.

According to a new report prepared for the European Parliament, lawsuits were not the right answer to piracy, and they are not going to solve the current AI challenges either. Titled “The Economics of Copyright and AI”, the report was commissioned by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) to help shape future legislation.

The Economics of Copyright and AI
 

The report’s author, Christian Peukert, Professor of Digitization, Innovation, and Intellectual Property, has extensively researched both AI and piracy-related copyright challenges in the past.

Enforcement Doesn’t Work

The general conclusion is that creating too many barriers to using content for AI training data will harm the economy and the public. Instead, the EU should look to the “lessons from history” provided by online piracy.

One of the lessons is that early anti-piracy actions and legislation, such as the lawsuits against Napster or new anti-piracy laws in France and Sweden, were largely ineffective. These measures typically led to short-lived sales increases that quickly disappeared, as pirates simply switched to new sites and services.

The turning point came when licensed downloads and streaming services were made available to the public. Starting with iTunes, which pioneered music downloads, later spreading to streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix.

“These innovations successfully shifted consumer behavior towards legal consumption. Aggregate data indicate that unlicensed music consumption has been continuously decreasing since 2010, while consumption of unlicensed movie and TV show content has been stagnant and slower to decrease,” Professor Peukert writes.

Compulsory, Statutory Licensing

Instead of slowing down AI development by restricting access to copyrighted content, the report suggests a system of compulsory, statutory licensing. This would effectively give AI developers the guaranteed right to use all published works. In exchange, an independent authority would set a royalty rate to compensate rightsholders.

This would effectively authorize the use of copyrighted works for AI training, as some countries are already doing. However, in this case, rightsholders would receive compensation.

Key Findings
 

Statutory licensing is different from the licensing deals reached with online streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix. The report recognizes that but notes that direct licensing models are not a great solution for the scale of AI training.

While Spotify deals with a manageable number of record labels and publishers, AI models require training data from the entire internet, including billions of texts, images, and videos. The report argues that identifying and negotiating with millions of individual website owners, creators, and photographers is effectively impossible.

This individual license approach would be particularly problematic for smaller AI startups, which don’t have the resources to negotiate thousands of deals.

No Opt-Out

Perhaps most controversially, the report warns against an “opt-out” model where rightsholders can exclude their content. It argues that opt-outs create “holes” in training data, which will lead to biased AI models.

From an economic welfare perspective, the report ranks the “opt-out” model as the worst possible option, even worse than doing nothing.

“When a rightsholder exercises opt-out, they do not take into account that this decreases value for society,” the report notes. The report concludes that rightsholders should not be allowed to opt-out from AI-training under any circumstance.

Napster Lessons

In the Napster case 25 years ago, the court explicitly rejected statutory licensing because it would allow an infringer to essentially pay a fine to keep breaking the law.

The report suggests that, this time around, the logic should be reversed. AI promises massive consumer benefit, estimated at $97 billion annually in the US alone, which is why the report argues that AI development should not be hindered.

For AI training, companies should be allowed to “continue operations” by paying a fee, because restricting access to copyrighted works would destroy too much economic value.

“… AI is very different from historical cases of online piracy, as it creates large net benefits for society while using copyrighted works as input. Hence, a regime that allows to ‘continue operations’ is in the best interest of society,” the report reads.

Napster arguments
 

Based on these historical lessons and detailed economic welfare models, the report sees compulsory statutory licensing as the best way to tackle the AI copyright challenges in Europe. Whether rightsholders and lawmakers will agree has yet to be seen, of course.

—

Peukert, C. (2025). The Economics of Copyright and AI. European Parliament, Policy Department for Justice, Civil Liberties and Institutional Affairs. doi:10.2861/0246137 (pdf)

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Tuesday 9 December 2025 at 3:44 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

Generally speaking, pirates tend to dislike restrictions, because more often than not, restrictions mean either less piracy or less convenient piracy.

News from Amazon last month indicated that apps linked to piracy would start to face new restrictions when sideloaded to Fire TV devices, although exactly how that would manifest itself was still unknown.

The ‘announcement’ was ‘quietly’ delivered via the media and spread quickly. That produced predictable headlines, mostly warning of an Amazon Crackdown / Piracy Ban plus additional drama conjured up from nowhere.

First Apps Flagged By Amazon

While there are reports that more than one app has been flagged by Amazon since then, one stands out for being reported most often, backed up by independent screenshots showing Amazon’s message.

BeeTV is an Android-based app providing access to pirated movies and TV shows. In one form or another, BeeTV apps have been around for years. That’s not because of longevity and continuity as a single app, but because anyone with an app looking for installs can put a BeeTV logo on it and get instantly recognized.

As the image shows, when Fire TV users tried to sideload a BeeTV app, Amazon spotted it too.

BeeTV Meets Amazon ‘Crackdown’

While the message is clear, Amazon’s alleged crackdown is accompanied by a convenient one-click circumvention option. This is not exactly as some have advertised, and it may, or may not, be the start of a tapered approach..

For some, that’s still enough to arouse scattered suspicions that ‘Launch Anyway’ could lead to being flagged by the authorities or reported to anti-piracy groups. Theoretical consequences such as these do give some people pause for thought, but overall deterrent value seems limited, as the disguised Reddit thread below suggests.

What Happens After ‘Launch Anyway’? 

NOTHING

So does nothing happen, or does nothing appear to happen?

Something Happens: Free Movies & TV Shows plus Bonus Extras

The most popular BeeTV variants appear to be at versions 4.4.4 to 4.4.7, with various MOD versions promising no advertising. We carried out a series of tests on all three versions and can report that many things can happen, but conveniently the user sees nothing.

Our assessment here is based on what an app like this needs to function. For pragmatic reasons, allowances are made for monetization via ads etc. with additional ‘functionality’ viewed case-by-case. Declared permissions that go beyond those needed for a regular app to provide the same services are generally unacceptable by default.

Without granting permission to access the internet, not much will happen, and in the event functionality exists to download a video, denying access to external storage would be an issue too. Let’s assume all permissions are granted, and since many users will also sideload the app onto their cellphones, we will cover some of the main issues across all devices at the same time.

Permissions Permissions Permissions

Here’s just some of what the app can do, beyond what it needs to be able to do. We’ll consider the implications later.

• Location: Even with allowances made for access to localized content, identifying the user’s approximate location is not the same as always being able to identify a user’s location accurate to a few feet.

• External Storage Read/Write: The app has broad access to external storage, including read/write permissions. What people store on their devices tends to vary depending on the individual.

• Bookmarks/Browsing History: Tests indicate the app not only has permission to read bookmarks and browsing history, it can write to them as well.

Other Security Issues of Concern

• SMS/Call Logs: When providing access to a movie or TV show, there’s no reason why the app should obtain the name of the device’s network operator. Being able to query a user’s SMS messages and obtain their content definitely isn’t needed, nor is it acceptable to query a device’s contact list, or access its call logs.

There are also some serious issues on the technical side outside the scope of this article, but one apparent double standard is worth highlighting.

On one hand, the app uses SSL certificate pinning to prevent MITM attacks (eavesdropping) on communications it aims to keep private. On the other, it proactively enables cleartext traffic, which enables eavesdropping (and modification) of transmitted data it presumably wishes to see (and potentially tamper with), without being detected by the user.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Apart from intercepting unencrypted network traffic, potentially including credentials, API keys, and other sensitive information, a potential attacker could track the user’s location in real-time. This could enable anything from stalking to targeted phishing attacks based on known daily routines, augmented by information from contact lists, call logs, and the content of SMS data.

If more data was needed to carry out identity theft, a simulated identity theft warning sent to the user by SMS, claiming to be from the user’s own bank (confirmed by entries in their contact list and SMS), could lead to some people clicking a link to a bogus banking page. They might even be persuaded to hand over the rest of their info.

Of course, savvy users don’t click links in unsolicited messages, it’s too risky. Instead, they visit their own bank with a communication that they themselves initiate; just quickly dig out the bookmark and……

Almost Nothing Happens?

In summary, then, aside from launching at boot and the ability to install additional software, the app can harvest personal information, obtain information on contacts, and the content of their messages on the device. It can intercept communications, manipulate device behavior, and track movements and activities in real-time, while recording locations (home, workplace, gym) and times.

On the plus side, version 4.4.4 does not appear to have the ability to use a device’s camera to photograph anything it likes, at any time, without the user’s knowledge or permission. It’s an oversight that seems to have been ‘corrected’ in 4.4.7.

There are the movies and TV shows to consider, of course, accessed from well over 200 pirate site domains embedded in the app. There’s also the superficially ‘clean’ detection reports on VirusTotal to put any remaining doubts to rest.

A fitness app carrying out 24/7 monitoring wouldn’t be flagged for being malicious, and there’s not much difference in this case either. The app asked for permission, and without considering intent, permission was granted. There’s not much that can be done about that.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 8 December 2025 at 4:58 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

In 2023, Lithuania amended its Code of Administrative Offenses, allowing media watchdog LRTK to fine pirates, without going to court.

This legislative change was specifically designed to deter piracy in the European country. With potential fines on the line, pirates would reconsider their habits, the idea was.

Tracking Torrent Tracker Pirates

Over the past two years, dozens of fines were handed out. The targets were mostly first-time offenders who received the minimum fine of 140 euros. For repeat offenses, however, fines can potentially reach 850 euros.

What makes these fines stand out is that LRTK predominantly targets users of the private torrent trackers Linkomanija and Torrent.lt. These are two of the most-visited pirate sites in the Eastern European country.

The media watchdog does not only target local piracy communities; it also focuses on protecting locally produced media. In a recent announcement, LRTK notes that, this year, it fined more than 30 people who shared a copy of the film “Pietinia Kronikas” (The Southern Chronicles).

These targets are again linked to the Linkomanija and Torrent.lt torrent trackers, and ten of them were fined in November, suggesting an increase in enforcement activity.

In most cases, the suspects were fined in their absence, as they failed to respond to inquiries from the media watchdog.

“The LRTK contacted the violators in writing, requesting explanations and inviting them to participate in the investigation of the administrative offense. However, the majority of individuals did not respond to the invitations and failed to appear for the investigation,” LRTK writes.

From 250+ Blocked Domains to Malware Threats

In addition to targeted fines, the regulator is also expanding its site blocking efforts. According to new figures, LRTK blocked more than 700 IP addresses and 250 domain names linked to pirate sites in 2025 alone.

Andrius Katinas, Head of the Supervision Division at LRTK, admits that while piracy activity has decreased, it remains a significant problem. Therefore, the regulator is adding a “consumer safety” narrative by warning that pirate sites are linked to malware and other cyber threats.

In a report by local news outlet Delfi, the watchdog links pirate sites to data theft, malicious software, ransomware, stolen credit cards or bank details, compromised accounts, and hacked social media.

“These cases constantly happen,” Katinas warns. “Individuals who lost access to their personal or work accounts often receive offers to recover them for a ransom, are threatened with the publishing of compromising content, or are otherwise manipulated.”

Changing Piracy Rates?

There is no silver bullet to stop piracy. While site blocking, fines, and awareness campaigns have some effect, some people continue to return to pirate sites. That includes the heavily targeted Linkomanija and Torrent.lt trackers.

Historically, piracy rates have always been high in Lithuania, but, according to LRTK Chairman Mantas Martišius, piracy is now clearly on the decline.

Martišius notes that enforcement has paid off. Importantly, however, the economic situation in Lithuania is improving, so people now have the opportunity to spend money on legal platforms and services.

All in all, LRTK is adamant that its efforts to curb piracy are paying off. That becaome apparent earlier this year when the watchdog publicly criticized data reported by piracy tracking firm MUSO, stressing that “Lithuania is no longer the leader in piracy”.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Sunday 7 December 2025 at 4:10 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

The New York Times has escalated its legal battle against the AI startup Perplexity, as it’s now suing the AI “answer engine” for allegedly producing and profiting from responses that are “verbatim or substantially similar copies” of the publication’s work.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court on Friday, claims Perplexity “unlawfully crawls, scrapes, copies, and distributes” content from the NYT. It comes after the outlet’s repeated demands for Perplexity to stop using content from its website, as the NYT sent cease-and-desist notices to the AI startup last year and most recently in July, according to the lawsuit. The Chicago Tribune also filed a copyright lawsuit against Perplexity on Thursday.

The New York Times sued OpenAI for copyright infringement in December 2023, and later inked a deal with Amazon, bringing its content to products like Alexa.

Perplexity became the subject of several lawsuits after reporting from Forbes and Wired revealed that the startup had been skirting websites’ paywalls to provide AI-generated summaries — and in some cases, copies — of their work. The NYT makes similar accusations in its lawsuit, stating that Perplexity’s crawlers “have intentionally ignored or evaded technical content protection measures,” such as the robots.txt file, which indicates the parts of a website crawlers can access.

Perplexity attempted to smooth things over by launching a program to share ad revenue with publishers last year, which it later expanded to include its Comet web browser in August.

“By copying The Times’s copyrighted content and creating substitutive output derived from its works, obviating the need for users to visit The Times’s website or purchase its newspaper, Perplexity is misappropriating substantial subscription, advertising, licensing, and affiliate revenue opportunities that belong rightfully and exclusively to The Times,” the lawsuit states.

The NYT is seeking damages and is also asking the court to permanently block the AI startup from engaging in its allegedly unlawful behavior. “Publishers have been suing new tech companies for a hundred years, starting with radio, TV, the internet, social media and now AI,” Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said in an emailed statement to The Verge. “Fortunately it’s never worked, or we’d all be talking about this by telegraph.”

Update, December 5th: Added a statement from Perplexity.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 6 December 2025 at 3:27 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

Over the past few months, Belgium has issued several site-blocking orders targeting hundreds of piracy-linked domain names.

These blockades follow a newly instated two-step process. A local court first issues a blocking order, after which a special government body determines how it will be implemented. This process aims to prevent errors and overblocking.

Pirate DNS Blocking

While site blocking is common in Europe, these new Belgian blockades go beyond the typical ISP blockade. Similar to France and Italy , the orders were also directed at third-party public DNS resolvers.

The first implementation order, issued by the Belgian Department for Combating Online Infringement in April, required both ISPs and DNS resolvers to restrict access to pirate sites. Specifically, Cloudflare, Google, and Cisco’s OpenDNS were ordered to stop resolving over 100 pirate sites or face fines of €100,000 euros per day.

This order prompted significant pushback, most notably from Cisco, which ceased operating its OpenDNS service in Belgium soon after the order was announced.

In July, another order by the Belgian authority ordered blockades of shadow library websites, including Libgen, Zlibrary, and Anna’s Archive. This sweeping court order required ISPs to take action and also involved other intermediaries, such as hosting providers, search engines, and DNS services.

The underlying court order also called for a broad blockade of the Internet Archive’s Open Library service. While that was ultimately prevented, the involvement of a broad range of intermediaries caused concern about the escalating scope of the blocking orders.

New ‘Limited’ Piracy Blocking Order

On November 26, the Belgian Department for Combating Online Infringement published a new blocking implementation order. While this effectively adds dozens of new domains to the Belgian blocklist, the scope of this order is surprisingly limited.

Instead of casting a wide net, the order strictly targets Belgium’s five major Internet Service Providers: Proximus, Telenet, Orange Belgium, DIGI Communications Belgium, and Mobile Vikings.

From the order

The list of “addressees” no longer includes the DNS resolvers, Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco, which were central targets in the April blocking order. There is no mention of hosting services, advertisers, or other intermediaries either.

The official implementation order does not mention the rightsholder(s) who requested the blocking measures, nor does it mention the targeted sites. However, the blocked domains are published in a separate spreadsheet showing that 1337x, Fmovies, Soap2Day, and Sflix branded domains are among the key targets.

From the blocking spreadsheet
 

Since these pirate targets often switch domain names to evade enforcement, rightsholders can submit a new list of mirror sites or proxies once per week, capped at 50 new domains per week. When these are approved by the Belgian Department, ISPs have five working days to update the blocklist.

Retreat or a Pause?

The decision to exclude DNS resolvers from this latest order is likely not a coincidence. It might very well be a direct consequence of the legal pushback Cisco initiated earlier this year, when it appealed the April blocking order at the Brussels Business Court.

This appeal was not without result, as the court suspended enforcement of that blocking order against Cisco in July, after which OpenDNS became available again in Belgium.

“The OpenDNS service has been reactivated in Belgium following a decision by the Brussels court to suspend enforcement of the order requiring Cisco to implement DNS blocking measures. The suspension of the order is pending a final ruling in the legal proceedings which remain ongoing,” a Cisco representative wrote in a community update.

To find out more about the suspended blocking measures, we reached out to the Belgian Department for Combating Online Infringement, which did not respond to our inquiry. Without further details, we don’t know whether the suspension also applies to other DNS resolvers. Confusingly, the official transparency portal makes no mention of an appeal at all.

It is likely, however, that since the legality of the blocking orders against third-party DNS resolvers is still being litigated, rightsholders have chosen to limit their blocking requests to ISPs. This would suggest that it’s a pause, not a formal retreat.

—

A copy of the latest blocking implementation order, published by the Department for Combating Infringements of Copyright and Related Rights Committed Online and the Illegal Exploitation of Online Games of Chance on the 26th of November, 2025, is available here (pdf).

The full blocking spreadsheet, last updated November 26, is available at the Belgian government website.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Saturday 6 December 2025 at 3:26 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix

While Australia’s site-blocking mechanism has made few enemies since 2018, it hasn’t been known for being fast.

As discussed earlier this year, accuracy has traditionally been favored over speed, which is contrary to less cautious approaches taken in other countries.

After an unprecedented request and cooperation from the Federal Court, Australia will now step up several gears and show whether it can achieve both.

Not Just Another Blocking Order

When Justice Halley handed down his order in Universal City Studios LLC v Telstra Limited [2025] FCA 1390 on November 12, in most respects it was much like any other issued in recent years.

Member studios of the MPA – Universal, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, Warner Bros., Netflix and Apple (plus Viacom) requested an injunction under Section 115A of the Copyright Act, requiring around 50 local ISPs (operating as Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG Telecom, Aussie Broadband and Superloop) to block 52 overseas-based pirate streaming sites.

The copyright works applicants aim to protect necessarily play a key role in blocking proceedings. The difference in this case was the emphasis placed on the Universal Pictures movie Wicked: For Good and its inevitable appearance on high-traffic sites using familiar branding: HydraHD, Hurawatch, Braflix, Soap2Day, MyFlixer, HiAnime, OnionPlay, 123movies, SolarMovies, Gomovies, Fmovies – the list goes on……and on.

With Wicked: For Good‘s international release scheduled for November 17, Australian ISPs agreed to take all reasonable steps to disable access to 23 sites as a matter of urgency, with the remaining 29 to be blocked within the usual span of 15 business days.

In order to have a fighting chance against adaptable piracy platforms, a dynamic blocking order was issued, meaning that new domains and IP addresses could be added to deal with the inevitable countermeasures. Under normal circumstances, that can take time but for Wicked: For Good‘s theatrical release in Australia, time was already running out.

Additional Urgent Access Means

Less than two weeks after handing down the initial order, Justice Halley was handing down a second. Dated November 25, the order reveals that studios filed an urgent application for an order to tackle countermeasures deployed by the sites.

Operating from new domains, described in the order as “Additional Urgent Access Means”, the sites were already illegally distributing Wicked: For Good which was set to continue playing in theaters in Australia until the end of 2025.

New domains, IP addresses, and/or URLs are normally reported by rightsholders to the ISPs, who are then expected to respond within seven working days. If neither the respondent nor the court requires the matter to be relisted, the ISPs have a further 15 working days to disable access.

The prospect of the movie being distributed unhindered for free until Christmas Eve was considered unacceptable.

Urgent Additional Blocking Order

On November 28, just over two weeks after handing down the initial blocking order, Justice Halley authorized a second.

In response to the studios’ calls for urgency, Universal City Studios LLC v Telstra Limited [2025] FCA 1485 targeted the ‘Additional Urgent Access Means’ (new domain names/IP addresses/URLs) deployed by the sites to circumvent the previously implemented blocks.

The court recognized that standard procedures, which require notification and then a response period, would allow the sites to operate unhindered for at least 22 days.

“This would have the consequence that those sites would remain accessible for the majority of the theatrical release period for the film ‘Wicked: For Good’ which would have the likely effect of reducing the commercial success of the film as infringing copies of the film would be available without charge from the Additional Urgent Access Means,” Justice Halley noted in his order.

Rapid Response

To combat this, the new order required the ISPs to disable access to the new means of access, whether domain names, IP addresses, or URLs, by 4.00 pm on Friday, November 28, 2025. As far as we’re aware, a response time this short is unprecedented in Australia.

The ability to quickly respond to blocking countermeasures is crucial. For Australia, this is new territory but shouldn’t be unnecessarily difficult. However, as months of delay have decreased to weeks and now just days, rightsholders elsewhere in the world – especially in the live sports arena – still aren’t satisfied, even when blocking takes place within hours. In some areas, rightsholders consider 10 minutes to be reasonable.

Under those demands, Australia’s traditional accuracy would face challenges, with or without a reduction in overall piracy rates. Right now, despite aggressive worldwide blocking measures, piracy continues to trend up.

The orders dated November 12 and November 28 are available here and here

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Friday 5 December 2025 at 3:46 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of November): 5,412

RIP Matrix