TorrentFreak

After a decade of focusing efforts overseas, the push for pirate site blocking has landed back on American shores.

There are currently two bills in the making; the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) introduced by Representative Zoe Lofgren in February, and Representative Darrell Issa’s ‘American Copyright Protection Act’ (ACPA), which tackles the same issue from a different angle.

ACPA has yet to be formally introduced, but a draft of the framework was shared with stakeholders late May, with a request for input. While most of the back and forth takes place behind closed doors, the Re:Create Coalition and the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) shared their critical comments publicly.

Overblocking Fears

The Library Copyright Alliance is pleased that libraries will be exempt from the blocking proposal, as they are not categorized as service providers. However, there are still concerns that the bill, as currently drafted, could lead to overblocking.

“LCA remains concerned that ACPA’s no-fault injunction structure could lead to over-blocking that could restrict access to information and thereby harm library users,” LCA writes.

The LCA notes that most cases will likely result in default judgments, as foreign sites typically unresponsive to actions filed in U.S. courts. In addition, service providers are unlikely to oppose orders on behalf of these unknown third parties.

“A service provider’s objective would be to implement the blocking in the most expedient manner possible, regardless of possible over-blocking,” LCA notes.

This predicted lack of scrutiny means that some sites may be classified as foreign piracy sites, even when they fail to meet the statutory definition.

Re:Create also raises overblocking concerns, focusing on the destabilizing impact the measures could have on the broader internet, suggesting that the potential fallout should be taken seriously.

“Advocates for site-blocking have downplayed the threat of overblocking and pooh-poohed the idea of ‘breaking the internet,’ saying that site-blocking can be achieved without threatening the integrity of the internet or lawful internet use. However, the latest research suggests site-blocking advocates may be trying to rush their idea into law before the facts can catch up to them.”

Re:Create cites an i2Coalition report which found that overblocking is widespread, especially when restrictions are applied to shared infrastructure like cloud platforms and CDNs. This is considered a potential threat to the internet’s architecture, the digital economy, and fundamental rights.

Solution in search of a problem?

Both groups mention overblocking in detail, but they also highlight separate issues. Re:Create, for example, notes that it’s not clear that site blocking is needed, questioning research that estimated a significant negative economic impact of online piracy.

“Site-blocking is a solution in search of a problem,” the group writes, citing a rebuttal from the Computer & Communications Industry Association’s Research Center, which points out several flaws in a key report that estimated $29.2 billion in lost U.S. revenues.

From Re:Create’s submission

This estimate is biased and based on flawed methodology, resulting in a multi-billion dollar figure that is “wildly out of step with previous studies that had concluded impacts from piracy were much smaller, potentially as low as zero,” Re:Create notes.

Move Site Blocking to the ITC

The LCA doesn’t mention the alleged damages, nor is it entirely against a site blocking bill. However, to prevent the risk of overblocking due to default judgments, it would like to shift the proposed forum from specific district judges to the International Trade Commission (ITC).

The library association argues that ITC judges already have expertise in intellectual property, and the ITC staff would represent the public interest, helping to prevent over-blocking.

“The staff’s ongoing involvement would help prevent over-blocking. Significantly, the ITC is equipped to order temporary relief, so it could act quickly to protect the interests of copyright owners,” LCA writes.

The idea of using the ITC as a forum to handle piracy related cases isn’t entirely new. In 2012, Rep. Issa’s proposed the OPEN Act, which would have tasked the Commission with stopping money flows to pirate sites. The bill was an alternative to SOPA and PIPA, but never passed.

A Sunsetting Clause?

The libraries also mention a novelty that, to our knowledge, has never been mentioned in public; a proposed sunsetting clause that is being considered by Rep. Issa.

“During one of the roundtables, Chairman Issa mentioned the possibility of the site-blocking legislation sunsetting after a set number of years. We favor sunsetting the legislation after five years,” LCA writes.

A sunsetting clause means that the law will automatically terminate or expire on a specific date unless Congress takes deliberate action to extend it. It is essentially a built-in expiration date for the bill, which ensures a thorough reevaluation of its impact and effectiveness in the future.

The ACPA framework is still in the discussion phase and the initial feedback shows that there may be room for improvement. This is especially true considering that these two responses are just the tip of the iceberg; there are likely others calling for more drastic enforcement too.

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A copy of the comments shared by Re:Create can be found here (pdf) and the Library Copyright Alliance’s submission can be found here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Over the past two years, rightsholders of all kinds have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

Most of these cases allege that AI developers used copyrighted works to train LLMs without first obtaining authorization.

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

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

Motions for Summary Judgment

In March, both parties filed motions for partial summary judgment. Meta argued that its use of copyrighted material was ‘fair’. It discussed the various fair use factors and stressed, among other things, that Meta’s alleged infringements did not cause any market harm, nor can they be seen as competition for the original works.

Meanwhile, the authors argued that the downloading of millions of books cannot be classified as fair use, since the source of the books is clearly copyright-infringing. Therefore, they argued that Meta should be held liable for direct copyright infringement.

While the summary judgment motions are partial, as they don’t cover the distribution claims (BitTorrent uploading), they are closely watched by other rightsholders and tech companies as potential sources of clarity on the fair use battle.

Meta Secures Fair Use Win

Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria ruled on both motions, which at first sight offers a clear win for Meta. The court denied the authors’ motion to hold Meta liable for direct copyright infringement after it obtaining pirated books from shadow libraries via BitTorrent.

Judge Chhabria also granted Meta’s cross-motion for partial summary judgment, concluding that Meta’s use of the copyrighted books for LLM training indeed qualifies as fair use based on the arguments presented.

The order

The ruling centers around an evaluation of the various fair use factors, with “market harm” explicitly identified as the most important element of fair use.

The court acknowledged the transformative nature of AI training, noting that Meta’s use of the books had a “further purpose” and “different character” than the original works, as LLMs are “innovative tools that can be used to generate diverse text and perform a wide range of functions.”

No Market Harm

The authors presented two main theories of market harm, both of which the court ultimately rejected as “clear losers”.

First, the authors argued that Llama could recite significant portions of their books, thereby allowing users to access the works for free. The court found this theory unviable, citing expert testimony that Llama could not generate more than 50 words from any of the plaintiffs’ books, even with “adversarial prompting”.

Second, the plaintiffs argued that Meta’s unauthorized copying harmed the relatively new market for AI training licensing. The court dismissed this too, ruling that the harm from the loss of licensing fees is not “cognizable”.

The court also identified a third argument, which the authors didn’t pursue in great detail; market dilution. Under this theory, AI models trained on copyrighted works can generate “countless works that compete with the originals, even if those works aren’t themselves infringing,” Judge Chhabria wrote.

This market dilution or indirect substitution argument could prove to be key in AI fair use cases, Judge Chhabria stressed.

“No other use—whether it’s the creation of a single secondary work or the creation of other digital tools—has anything near the potential to flood the market with competing works the way that LLM training does,” the Judge nnotes.

“If someone bought a romance novel written by an LLM instead of a romance novel written by a human author, the LLM-generated novel is substituting for the human-written one.”

Dilution?

In this case, however, the authors provided no meaningful evidence on market dilution, relying on speculation rather than empirical data. Therefore, their motion was rejected, with the court granting Meta’s fair use motion instead.

A Warning Shot for AI Developers

Despite the clear win, the court’s ruling is a bittersweet victory for Meta. The motion only covers part of the copyright claim, as Meta’s alleged distribution of pirated books was not part of it. In addition, the ruling only applies to the thirteen named authors included in this case.

The ‘win’ doesn’t mean that the fair use defense will hold up in other AI-training copyright cases. In fact, the court hinted that Meta and others may have to get used to the idea of licensing content for this purpose.

Meta argued that a negative fair use ruling could stop AI technology in its tracks, as AI models need vast amounts of data to be trained on. However, the court dismissed this line of reasoning as ridiculous.

“The suggestion that adverse copyright rulings would stop this technology in its tracks is ridiculous,” Judge Chhabria wrote.

“These products are expected to generate billions, even trillions, of dollars for the companies that are developing them. If using copyrighted works to train the models is as necessary as the companies say, they will figure out a way to compensate copyright holders for it.”

The court ruling in favor of Meta is more the result of the authors’ failure to adequately argue the market dilution argument, rather than a clear fair use win for AI training.

Judge Chhabria stated that, given the state of the record, the court has no choice but to grant summary judgment in favor of Meta. However, it certainly doesn’t mean that similar arguments will hold up in other cases.

“As should now be clear, this ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful. It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one,” the ruling reads.

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A copy of the ruling, issued at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf). The court noted that Meta’s motion for summary judgment on the DMCA claim will be granted in a separate order.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Online piracy is a global problem for copyright holders, but some threats are relatively localized.

In addition to internationally oriented sites such as The Pirate Bay, Hianime, Cineby and many others, there are also many local favorites.

Filma24

Five years ago, Filma24 was Albania’s leading pirate site, with over half of its visitors hailing from the Southeastern European country, making it one of the nation’s most popular websites.

The site’s popularity attracted the attention of the MPA’s Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which attempted to identify the operators through a DMCA subpoena obtained at a U.S. court.

The MPA also mentioned the pirate site in its most recent notorious markets submission to the U.S. Trade Representative. While it wasn’t mentioned as a core threat, it was noted that the IO domain registry had kept Filma24’s .io domain online, despite rightsholders’ complaints.

MPA’s USTR comments

The original site has changed domains numerous times so may not have remained under the same ownership. The Filma24 brand certainly didn’t disappear. Filma24.bike, for example, had over two million visits in March this year, half of which came from Albania.

While these numbers may not sound like much for larger pirate sites, it’s a local juggernaut. Albania only has a population of just over three million, and Filma24.bike alone was listed as the 59th most visited domain in the country. And with dozens of alternative domain names in standby mode, it was prepared for trouble.

MPA/ACE Take over Filma24 Domains

Trouble eventually arrived last weekend. Official confirmation is lacking, but over the past few days Filma24.bike began redirecting to ACE’s takedown banner. The same applies to many other Filma24 domains including filma24.app, filma24.dev, filma24-al.com, filma24.lol, filma24.name, filma24.pro, filma24.top, filma24.uno and filma24.vip.

ACE message

In addition, the Zhblloko.com domain was also taken over by the Hollywood group. This website was promoted through the Filma24 website for years and informed people how they could bypass site-blocking efforts, by changing DNS servers for example, or through a VPN service.

Upon closer inspection, we can see that the domain names in question were signed over to the Motion Picture Association, which put the redirect in place. Since all domains were signed over nearly simultaneously, the operators may have been uncovered and handed over the domains as part of some type of agreement.

New domain owner

TorrentFreak reached out to the MPA and ACE, requesting a comment on the matter, but we have yet to hear back. That said, ACE regularly takes over domain names in a similar fashion and there appears to be no court order linked to this action.

Needless to say, the shutdown comes as a disappointment to many Albanian pirates who preferred Filma24 above other sites due to the availability of local subtitles. According to an unconfirmed Reddit thread, the site was asking for donations just days before it disappeared.

Whether this will truly be the end of the Filma24 brand is highly unlikely. There are already new sites using the same name and branding, which will likely be embraced by many as if nothing ever happened. Rinse and repeat.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Selling pirate IPTV subscriptions has always been illegal and after the EU’s top court confirmed as much in 2017, consuming unlicensed content is illegal too. Nevertheless, these offenses are typically treated differently.

Once identified, those who operate or sell access to illicit services are unlikely to get a free pass. Yet subscribers to those services have almost always walked away completely unscathed.

Limited Time For Success

The difference isn’t just about supply being more serious. Since fines and similar measures punish those directly responsible for those alleged lost sales reported so often, a successful outcome necessarily means getting those same people back on side and spending money.

Picking the right cases from which to harvest subscriber details is also important; a case concluded in Naples recently could hardly be more perfect.

Dismantling Italia TV

In December 2024, a popular IPTV supplier was shut down following an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza of Naples in collaboration with the Technological Fraud Unit of Rome. Alleged ringleader Cristian Fidato, 23, was reportedly responsible for sourcing the illegal content, with new clients onboarded by two colleagues, Ukraine-born Anatoliy Perrotta, 30, and 44-year-old Fiorino Della Corte.

The investigating judge found that Italia TV had around 6,000 subscribers, mostly in Campania in Southern Italy, but also in countries elsewhere in Europe, including Belgium, Switzerland, and Latvia. The IPTV platform’s servers were close to hand in Naples itself, at least until they were seized by the financial police and taken away for investigation.

Major Rightsholders’ Content

As a provider catering to mainstream demand, Italia TV offered content from the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime, plus Sky and DAZN which offer live sports, including all-important Serie A football matches.

Even before the raid, investigators at the Guardia di Finanza had reportedly blocked 19 sites that worked as a redirect mechanism for Italia TV, before adding another 25+ later to finish the job. Those who previously made it through became subscribers after making payments to bank accounts in Italy and beyond.

Early estimates suggested that Cristian Fidato opened around 32 accounts, sometimes under false names including “Gennaro Maddaloni”, variously claiming to be a student supported by his parents according to one report, or self-employed according to others.

Fidato allegedly claimed to have a nine-figure income but for tax purposes, nothing was reported to the state. Over four years of operations, Italia TV packages covering movies, TV shows and live sports, were available for €80 per year, generating an estimated €850,000 in revenue.

Lots of Powerful Hardware, Neatly Arranged

Around a third of the service’s subscribers (2,000) paid using cryptocurrency, which landed in dozens of wallets, all of which were identified by law enforcement. Italia TV’s interest in crypto went further than that, however.

After the raid in 2024, descriptions of the provider’s server room and reports of a possible crypto mining operation, remained just that. The usual images of servers and other hardware weren’t part of the package released to the media, but a little digging online more than makes up for their absence.

Showcasing everything from RGB-loaded gaming PCs and multi-GPU crypto mining rigs, to sundry servers and other hardware with less obvious tasks, TikTok was the platform of choice for Italia TV’s ringleader.

While in many ways typical of operations dismantled in the past, Fidato had a disturbing sideline business running in parallel.

Investigators discovered 1,600 CSAM images and videos which Fidato had been offering separately via WhatsApp groups, reportedly for the equivalent of pocket change each. Police also found an indoor area equipped with lighting and an irrigation system used for the cultivation of cannabis.

Sentenced: Four Years and Four Months in Prison

Fidato and Anatoliy Perrotta opted to have their cases handled under the abbreviated procedure. This means that the court makes a decision based purely on evidence obtained during the preliminary investigations. Less resources are expended getting a case to trial and once there, trials are wrapped up more quickly. In return, defendants typically get a one-third discount on their sentence.

At the Neapolitan Court on June 16, preliminary investigations Judge Leda Rossetti issued the following verdict:

• Cristian Fidato: 4 years and 4 months in prison. Fined €22,000. • Anatoliy Perrotta: 1 year and four months in prison (conditional/suspended)

A third defendant who pleaded guilty at an earlier stage received a one-year prison sentence.

Whether the affected rightsholders intend to pursue Fidato and Perrotta in a civil action for damages is still unclear. The fate of subscribers, meanwhile, appears to be headed in only one direction.

Subscribers Face Administrative Fines

As promised for many months, subscribers of Italia TV are now at risk of receiving an administrative fine.

Coordinated by Deputy Prosecutor of Naples Silvio Pavia and Deputy Prosecutor Alessandro Milita, it’s being reported that an investigation carried out by the Guardia di Finanza successfully identified more than 6,000 subscribers.

A La Stampa report (paywall) claims that according to its own investigation, some fines have already been sent out with some recipients paying the amount requested. The report makes no mention of the all-important fine amount, instead citing the range expected under law; a minimum of €51.33 for a first offense up to the repeat offender maximum of €5,000.

There are no reports of unexpectedly large fines in the initial batch sent out last month to 2,282 subscribers of a different service, so it’s likely that broadly the same parameters, whatever they are, will also be applied here.

Opinion: Punishments and the Long-Term Objective

In light of Cristian Fidato’s fine of just €22,000 for running a service, the theoretical maximum of €5,000 for viewing offenses seems somewhat disproportionate. Anatoliy Perrotta’s sentence, which carries no fine at all, raises the possibility of viewers being fined more than a person directly profiting from exactly the same platform.

Nobody will relish receiving a fine in the mail, which is the entire point of sending them. However, considering the long-term goal, perceptions of fairness could come into play at some point, adding another complication to an already risky strategy of using force against former and potential customers.

To be considered a success, fines need to do just enough to turn pirates into subscribers without destroying existing goodwill; limited damage is already inevitable.

Italian football clubs and their partner broadcasters currently have no other rightsholders to hide behind, but with the authorities positioned to act as a punishment proxy, they may have already bought a little more time. But not much.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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The High Court in Delhi, India, regularly issues site blocking orders, requiring Internet providers to block access to pirate sites.

These orders have targeted sites that stream movies and TV series, both from Hollywood and Bollywood, but also sites that specialize in pirated sports streams.

Last week we covered a new “superlative” injunction that temporarily extends blocking powers to deal with pirated cricket matches, protecting the ongoing England Tour of India. However, “dynamic+” orders are still being issued and while less advanced on paper, they can still be quite effective.

FIFA Club World Cup Piracy

In a recent complaint, broadcaster DAZN requested a blocking order against six sports streaming sites, including buffsports.me and vipbox.lc. With this action DAZN, which is available for roughly $5 per month in India, aims to protect its broadcasting rights for the FIFA Club World Cup 2025, which is currently ongoing.

The request targets nine local ISPs and five domain name registrars – 1API, NameCheap, Netim, and Tucows – all of which operate globally. The fifth company is Sarek Oy, also known as Njalla, which isn’t a typical registrar but acts as a privacy intermediary instead.

These requests are common by now and, after reviewing the evidence, the New Delhi High Court found a prima facie case of copyright infringement by the websites and granted the site blocking injunction.

From the order

“If an ex parte ad interim injunction in favor of the plaintiff is not granted, the plaintiff will likely suffer irreparable loss and injury,” Justice Saurabh Banerjee concluded.

ISPs and Domain Registrars Take Action

When presented with the order, the named ISPs and domain registrars (DNRs) must “..take steps to immediately block the said domain names associated with the defendant websites on real time basis.” That also applies to companies that are not incorporated in India.

Shared by Verdictum this week, the injunction was issued late last month and does indeed appear to be having an effect.

Aside from local ISPs blocking access to these domain names, buffsports.me, sporthd.me, and piratemedia.me are all offline. These domains all display the clientHold status code used by registrars to suspend domain names.

Defendant Websites and their Domain Name Registrars

Defendant No.WebsiteDNRSuspended?1.buffsports.me1API GmbhYes2.sporthd.meNETIMYes3.piratemedia.meNameCheap, Inc.Yes4.vipbox.lcTucows Domains Inc.No5.strimsy.topSarek OyNo6.vipstand.pmSarek OyNo

These suspensions suggest that NameCheap, 1API, and Netim have all taken action, likely in response to the Indian High Court order. The domains that were registered through Tucows and Njalla remain operational at the time of writing.

Global Reach

While this type of injunction has been granted before, the global reach of this type of Indian order is worth highlighting. The suspended domains are effectively unreachable around the world, which makes this a highly effective enforcement option.

Of course, the targeted websites can easily switch to new domains, which is typically what happens, but then rightsholders have the option to extend the scope of their request by asking registrars to block these additional domains as well.

Thus far, the pirate sports streaming problem is far from defeated. It largely remains a game of whack-a-mole, with new sites, domains, and services constantly appearing, while global calls for more effective blocking actions increase.

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A copy of the the Delhi High Court order issued by Justice Saurabh Banerjee is available here (pdf, via)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Hot on the heels of a live sports piracy report published last month, French telecoms/audiovisual regulator Arcom has just published its comprehensive annual report for 2024.

Weighing in at over 200 pages, the report covers all aspects of Arcom’s responsibilities, for which it received a €51.3 million budget in 2024.

From regulating the entire audiovisual sector, tackling online misinformation and hateful content, ensuring the safety of women and children, to the suppression of online piracy, Arcom is certainly busy. Especially so once piracy of live sporting events has been factored in.

The Fight Against Sports Piracy

Arcom data shows that overall, consumption of cultural content and live sports from all sources has increased quite dramatically among the French.

In 2024, 48.2 million were consumers, up 6 million on figures reported for 2020. On the plus side, Arcom says that the growth largely benefits legal platforms, with 67% consuming exclusively from legal sources in 2024.

Illicit consumption is reportedly on the wane; 26% of the population consumed at least one item illegally in 2020, a figure that fell by two points to 24% in 2024.

The reduction in overall piracy rates will be considered a plus but in common with other countries, live event piracy is a significant outlier in France.

Regular streaming, direct downloading, and peer-to-peer network use are all declining; for live events, use of pirate IPTV services and social networks is heading in the opposite direction.

Unwelcome Newcomer Blamed For Big Losses

Arcom describes the phenomenon as recent; two-thirds (66%) of illegal IPTV users say they started watching less than three years ago, with just 11% of users consuming for longer than that. Estimates on losses for various parties are as significant as those reported elsewhere.

“The regulator reassessed the loss of earnings linked to the illicit consumption of audiovisual content and retransmissions of sporting events, five years after an initial estimate. The loss was estimated at €1.5 billion, or around 12% of the market, to which is added a loss of €190 million for the State in tax and social security revenue,” Arcom reports.

“The loss of revenue for the audiovisual sector alone is estimated at €1.2 billion, and for the sports sector it’s €290 million, or 15% of the revenue generated by legal sports platforms and broadcasters in 2023.”

7 Rightsholders, 14 Sporting Events, 1 Common Response

Between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024, Arcom says it received a total of 4,919 requests for domain name blocking, from seven sports rights holders (three broadcasters and four sports leagues) concerning fourteen sporting events.

Football dominates as expected, with blocking requested for UEFA Champions League, Ligue 1 and Ligue 2, English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga, and the World Cup. Blocking requests were also received for several rugby events, tennis tournaments including Wimbledon and Roland-Garros, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, plus motorsports Formula 1 and Moto GP.

Surprise! ‘Shock Blockades’ Boost Overall Blocking in 2024

In March 2025, the clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille was notable for the enhanced blocking measures deployed to disrupt piracy. The clubs previously met in October 2024, a match where an estimated 55% of the TV audience watched via pirate streams.

For the return match, blocking was deployed in two waves an hour apart, targeting around 100 pirate services, hoping to cause as much disruption as possible by taking pirates by surprise. Arcom’s 2024 report says coup de poing operations like these were partly responsible for boosting the volume of domains blocked last year.

“Massive ‘shock block’ operations were carried out during 2024 in partnership with rights holders against IPTV services during particularly popular sporting events, notably the French Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. For example, 258 IPTV services were blocked on October 27, 2024, during the [Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille] match. As a result, the number of requests to block domain names allowing access to IPTV servers increased considerably during 2024,” Arcom reports.

Processing increasing numbers of blocking requests was streamlined last year with the introduction of a new system at Arcom.

Available since June 2024, the system automates referrals with Arcom reporting “an improvement in the processing of referrals and, consequently, an increase in the volume of blocked domain names.”

Following Arcom notifications to ISPs, overall requests for 2024 led to 3,797 ‘pirate services’ being blocked, an increase of 146% compared to 2023.

The total includes 1,769 domain names “providing access” to IPTV services, 439 domains for which public DNS resolvers such as Cloudflare and Google were also required to take action, and 1,085 domains that major search engines, most likely Google and Bing, were required to de-index from search results.

Impact of Blocking Measures

Whether blocking is effective against streaming piracy largely depends on the scope of the question. Arcom measures effectiveness based on estimates of the audience for illicit streaming platforms; if the estimated audience for those sites reduces, then that’s a clear sign that blocking works, Arcom suggests.

“Demonstrating the effectiveness of the measures to block illegal sports sites implemented since January 2022, the audience for illegal live streaming represented, on average each month in 2024, 1.6 million internet users, down 18% compared to 2023. Over a longer period, this mode of consumption has fallen by 41% compared to its peak consumption in 2021, and by 30% compared to 2018,” the report notes.

That being said, there are caveats. Arcom says that while the “effects of DNS blocking are real” it’s important to consider whether internet users have moved to other methods of access. Half of all French consumers of illicit content (57%) say they now use a VPN, while 46% say they have changed their DNS settings.

“The development of criminal uses of these tools requires research into the most relevant measures to implement, and to call on all stakeholders likely to intervene to put an end to infringement of the rights,” the regulator adds.

Graduated Response

The so-called ‘graduated response’ program to tackle piracy via peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent, has been running in France for 15 years. The shift away from BitTorrent to streaming services was inevitable due to the simplicity of the latter, meaning that the volume of claims from rightsholders and subsequent warning notifications sent to internet users, has continued to reduce year-on-year.

Arcom also considers other factors that may have contributed to the reduction.

“The decrease is due to several factors, the effectiveness of the fight against piracy, such as the transformation of uses in terms of consumption of works on the Internet, the acceleration of the availability of legal offers during the past years, even an increasing use of circumvention solution such as VPNs,” the regulator notes.

Of the 999 legal proceedings that were brought to the attention of Arcom in 2024, 45% resulted in financial penalties (fines or equivalent) compared to 28% in 2023. Arcom says that alternatives to financial penalties may have been preferred by the prosecutor, including “citizen contributions” paid to victim support groups, for example.

The full Arcom Annual Report 2024 is available here (pdf, French)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Sky’s war on TV piracy has raged for well over thirty years and despite the passing of time, the goal remains the same.

In broad terms, pirates retain their original goals too, but how that can be achieved is always subject to change, largely depending on who has taken the lead in an increasingly complex arms race.

News emerging from Ireland suggests that Sky’s use (or proposed use) of a valuable asset to boost its fight against piracy, has led to a powerful Irish authority “engaging” in the process for quite some time. Only very rarely are the stakes this high.

Data Protection Commission “Engaging With Sky”

The Data Protection Commission (DPC) is the national independent authority responsible for ensuring that Irish citizens have their personal data protected to the standards required under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In an RTE report published this week, the DPC is described as “engaging with Sky on the company’s efforts to clampdown on so-called TV ‘dodgy boxes’,” a catch-all term for pirate devices that enable unauthorized access to premium content.

RTE confirmed that DPC’s contact with Sky concerns the broadcaster’s use of personal data for the purpose of taking action against illegal streaming.

Fighting Fraud “In an Appropriate, Ethical Manner”

In comments to RTE, Commissioner for Data Protection Des Hogan said that companies may have legitimate reasons for taking action against fraud. The issue for DPC turns on whether the use of protected data meets the standards required.

“[T]he use of personal data would be the question for us, and whether that’s been done in an appropriate, ethical manner,” Hogan said.

“We have been engaging with Sky for some time, and we’re going to be meeting them in two weeks time, and I expect that we’ll be bringing things forward with them at that point in time.”

Nothing Solid Given Away, But Plenty of Fuel For Speculation

The finer details of the “engagement” will presumably appear at a later stage but until then, recent comments may put some extra meat on the bones.

In the Irish Independent (paywall) this week, Sky Ireland CEO JD Buckley warned of “consequences” for operators of pirate IPTV platforms, and those tempted to use them.

“We continuously evolve our investigative strategies to crack down on illegal streaming and protect consumers from risks including malware, fraud and identity theft. Further action will follow with consequences for those identified as operating illegal services and for those who watch them,” Buckley said.

700,000 Subscribers, 400,000 Dodgy Box Users

An unnamed spokesperson for Sky confirmed that the company was “exploring various options” including “ongoing engagement” with the DPC. While vague statements have a tendency to fuel the rumor mill, depending on what Sky has in mind, the potential for impact could be significant.

Towards the lower end, Sky may be considering a significant expansion of its existing investigation footprint. Targeting a large number of individuals would necessarily mean the collection of evidence, including personal data. Ensuring every last detail of that process had been ‘vetted’ by DPC in advance, would reduce risk of a successful challenge by an individual on data protection grounds, undermining a whole campaign.

At the higher end are less likely options. If Sky as an ISP, and Sky as a broadcaster, saw no benefit from barriers restricting the ability to act publicly, on intelligence obtained from a figurative commingling of the companies’ knowledge of pirate activity, that would be a game changer. Complex legal issues aside, ISP records are nevertheless a potential goldmine of information.

To what extent intelligence sharing already happens is unknown, but a number mentioned by the Irish Independent – 400,000 users of “dodgy boxes”- can’t be casually brushed under a carpet. Figures quoted in Irish media estimate that Sky Ireland has around 700,000 subscribers.

Partners in Crime (Fighting)

While there was no explicit reference to Sky, it seems unlikely that Hogan would mention the GDPR and a particular type of data sharing, if that wasn’t directly relevant to the matter in hand.

“Any sharing of personal data, or processing of that personal data outside a company has to be done in a lawful manner under the GDPR,” Hogan said.

With whom Sky may have shared, or intends to share, personal data for piracy-fighting purposes, receives no mention, much less the type and volume of personal data involved. If this is more about collection of personal data concerning investigations, the sky’s the limit; pirates are hardly in short supply.

Under Article 35 of the GDPR, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) must be carried out when a new activity “is likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons to other people’s personal information.”

Whatever the specifics of the engagement, the issue appears to be sufficiently important to place in the public eye. Sky’s privacy policy makes it quite clear that it reserves the right to take anti-piracy action.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Last year, Italy officially implemented the ‘Piracy Shield‘, a system that aims to deter and decrease live sports streaming piracy.

Since then, Piracy Shield has blocked access to thousands of IP-addresses and domain names associated with unauthorized broadcasts.

Despite overblocking concerns, the massive blocking operation is seen as a key success by the authorities and many participating rightsholders. The same is true for the updated copyright law in general, which introduced fines of up to €5,000 for pirate consumers.

Study Reveals Piracy-Shield Impact

While there is no shortage of opinions on these measures, hard data on the impact of the increased anti-piracy efforts is less common. Initial data indicated that the Piracy Shield had little impact on legal subscriptions, but thorough research is lacking.

This week, new data from IPSOS adds more context. The IPSOS survey and report have been published annually for several years in collaboration with local anti-piracy outfit FAPAV. The most recent version covers 2024, which is the first year Piracy Shield was active.

A quick glance at the headline numbers suggests a trend going in the right direction. In the span of a year, overall piracy rates decreased, especially among teens. The same is true for piracy volume, which dropped significantly.

Piracy Trends in Italy: 2023 vs 2024

Metric2023 Survey Data2024 Survey Data**Overall Piracy Rate (adults)**39%38%**Teen Piracy Rate (10-14 years)**45%40%Pirates Converting After Block45%47%**Piracy Volume (Total Acts)**319 Million295 Million

Data sourced from the FAPAV/Ipsos surveys.

As shown above, pirates are increasingly converting to legal services after encountering a block. Nearly half of all pirates who ran into a blocked site or service reportedly sought legal options, which is a notable success. However, since the piracy rate only dropped a single percentage point in a year, piracy remained prevalent.

This brings us to some of the seemingly disappointing outcomes of the survey, including the prevalence of live sports streaming piracy, which is the main target of the Piracy Shield program.

The report finds that in 2024, 15% of the population had used pirate live sports streaming services at some point, which is the same figure as a year before. In other words, sports piracy did not decrease after the Piracy Shield launched.

When compared to 2023, prevalence of most types of piracy remained relatively stable, with a few single percentage point drops here and there. Of the researched content categories, film piracy was the most common with 29% of the population admitting to have pirated something in 2024.

Comparison of Piracy rate by Type

Type of Piracy2023 Rate2024 Rate**Overall Piracy (any type)**39%38%Film Piracy30%29%Series Piracy22%23%Software Piracy21%22%Live Sports Piracy15%15%Illegal IPTV Use23%22%

Percentage of the adult population in Italy that engaged in each type of piracy at least once during the year.

These percentages mostly apply to online piracy, but also include physical piracy and indirect piracy. The latter refers to receiving pirated content from another person, such as via a USB drive or by watching someone else’s copy.

Volume Down, Damages Up

While there was no drastic decrease in the piracy rates, the positive note is that the overall piracy volume dropped more significantly. The reported 295 million piracy ‘acts’ in 2024 represent an 8% drop compared to the year before.

On the flip side, however, the reported financial damages increased. Across all sectors, the study estimates the loss in turnover at €2.2 billion, a substantial 10% increase year over year.

The most dramatic increase is reported in the live sports streaming category. These losses were estimated at €285 million in 2023 and €350 million last year, a 23% increase. That’s despite the Piracy Shield measures, which are aimed at sports piracy.

Awareness

Piracy Shield definitely didn’t go unnoticed by the public at large, as the survey reveals that 70% are aware of the new anti-piracy law, which also introduced financial penalties for individual pirates.

For now, the law’s looming punishments lack deterrence, as 42% of the population doubts its effectiveness. At the same time, only 56% of the self-proclaimed pirates believe they risk being punished.

The Piracy Shield fares much better on this metric as an impressive 79% (of those who are aware of it?) believe that the anti-piracy blocking system is effective.

All in all, the IPSOS study indicates that there is still plenty of work to be done before online piracy is seriously tackled. With extensive piracy blockades and serious fines already in place, it will be interesting to see what comes next.

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More details and information on the 2024 FAPAV/Ipsos study, released in Rome on Tuesday, is available here.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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The most obvious downward piracy trends have arrived in response to rightsholders addressing market demands.

But, when authorities feel something drastic needs to be done, legal crackdowns can also be the weapon of choice. The idea is that these actions will punish offenders while also sending a deterrent message to others who operate in the same business.

Climate of Change

A man recently sentenced in Greece for his role running private torrent site P2Planet, appeared in court at a time when Greek authorities insist piracy will not be tolerated. Right on cue, the criminal court in Piraeus handed down not just a harsh custodial sentence, but one effective immediately, apparently to the surprise of those who attended the hearing.

According to a local report, those present in court were shocked when three police officers handcuffed the 59-year-old local man and escorted him out of the court. He was taken directly to prison for a five-year sentence, with a €10,000 fine, and a €1,800 bill for costs to consider.

A criminal prosecution involving BitTorrent is certainly rare in Greece, with local media reporting the case as a first. The severity of the punishment seems to have come as a shock too. Yet, all things considered, the general outcome shouldn’t have surprised anyone.

A site operator received an identical sentence in 2019, although the judges in that matter declined to issue a fine. Citing “mitigating factors,” the judges concluded that fining someone already in prison would be “meaningless.”

P2Planet: 44,300 Users, 14,000 Torrents

Private torrent site P2Planet came online early 2011 and got off to a bumpy start.

At the time, it wasn’t unusual for sites to be held together with hopes and prayers; from the clues on its front page, P2Planet used PHP BitTorrent tracker and forum TorrentStrike which did have a couple of quite serious issues.

Targeted by DDoS attacks along with other Greek trackers of the day, the site was eventually hacked and later had its database posted online.

More than a decade later, these details are effectively relics of the past but when viewed as a whole, they highlight an interesting point. Multiple Greek news reports clearly identify the convicted man as the operator of P2Planet, while confirming the site’s full domain name, p2planet.net.

A brief statement posted on social media in June 2014 noted that P2Planet had “unfortunately shut down” and that was that. Gone forever.

In parallel, and with no reference to the name of the site, police revealed that a Cybercrime Prosecution Directorate investigation had identified an individual they believed was the operator of a pirate site. On or around June 16, 2014, an officer of the court observed as police raided a man’s home in Piraeus. After confirming his ability to administer the site named in the investigation, he was arrested and a hard drive was reportedly sent for forensic examination.

Since then, snapshots on the Wayback Machine have shown the P2Planet.net domain on a parking page and precious little else, for more than a decade.

10+ Years Between Arrest and Sentencing

P2Planet.net statistics reported in the media in connection with the recent sentencing, claim that the tracker had 44,342 registered members and tracked 14,000 torrents, mostly relating to movies, TV shows and music. It was reportedly shut down by the Hellenic Police’s Economic Police and Cyber Crime Unit, but no specific profit details are mentioned.

Reports also state that users of the site downloaded content with Azureus, a torrent client that received its last update in 2017. Based on the assumption that the sentencing concerns offenses exclusively committed at P2Planet, the 59-year-old could’ve been as young as 44 or potentially 48 or 49 at the time.

Taking more than a decade to reach a conclusion makes the case stand out against any prosecution that doesn’t involve Kim Dotcom. When compared to similar site closures and prosecutions in Greece, involving one defendant in particular, much more can be done in just over half the time.

The identical five-year prison sentence mentioned earlier concerned the operator of greekstars.net and greekstars.co. Between 2009 and 2012 this individual was prosecuted four times, but each time continued to infringe.

In April 2014, a court in Thessaloniki sentenced the same person to five years in prison in connection with the domain greekstars.biz. The court decided to make that a suspended sentence. In November 2014, after relaunching under the domains greekstars.net and greekstars.co, a return to court led to a five-year prison sentence, starting immediately.

Sending someone almost sixty years old to prison for five years should in theory act as a deterrent. When people remember the site, recall the turmoil surrounding the arrest, and link both to this negative outcome, the deterrent effect is at its strongest.

When stretched out over a decade, there’s a chance that news of a stranger going to prison will mean almost nothing to many people. Others will be indifferent, others will move on without a second thought. As a deterrent, it could hardly get any worse than that

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

In a complaint filed at a Nashville federal court two years ago, Universal Music, Sony Music, EMI and others, accused X Corp of ‘breeding’ mass copyright infringement.

The social media company allegedly failed to respond adequately to takedown notices and lacked a proper termination policy.

The National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) claimed it had sent over 300,000 formal infringement notices, many of which didn’t lead to immediate removals.

“Twitter routinely ignores known repeat infringers and known infringements, refusing to take simple steps that are available to Twitter to stop these specific instances of infringement of which it is aware,” the music companies alleged.

Twitter/X Wins First Battle, Case Continues

Last year, X scored a partial win when the court dismissed the music publishers’ direct and vicarious copyright infringement claims, and partially dismissed claims of contributory infringement.

Judge Trauger concluded that X can’t be held liable for making it ‘very easy’ to upload infringing material or for monetizing pirated content. These characteristics are not exclusive to infringing material and apply to legitimate content too, she argued.

With elements of the contributory infringement claim still intact, the lawsuit was allowed to move forward on those grounds. They include claims that X’s repeat infringer policy was inadequate and that it willingly turned a blind eye to pirating users, especially those who have a blue checkmark.

“Particularly striking is the allegation that X Corp. enforces its copyright policies less stringently against individuals willing to pay for its ‘verified’ service,” Judge Trauger wrote in her order.

X Seeks Documents from NMPA CEO

Over the past several months, both parties have conducted discovery to gather further evidence. As part of this process, X sought information from the NMPA, including its President and CEO David Israelite.

The NMPA is not directly involved as a plaintiff in the case, but since its infringement notices are at the basis of this lawsuit, X believes that its information is relevant.

The NMPA was willing to share information but refused to hand over other relevant information, according to X. This includes documents from its President and CEO, with the NMPA describing Israelite as an “apex” figure who did not “operate” the notice program.

X was unhappy with the refusal and earlier this month filed a heavily redacted motion to compel the NMPA to hand over the requested documents, including those related to its top executive.

According to X, Mr. Israelite oversees all aspects of NMPA’s operations, including legal strategy and advocacy. He has also made extensive public statements about the lawsuit and the alleged copyright infringement by X, even calling Twitter his “top legal focus” shortly before the lawsuit was filed.

Mr. Israelite’s involvement?

X also noted that on several occasions, Mr. Israelite had commented on X’s actions in the media. In 2023, after the lawsuit was filed, he informed the Hollywood Reporter that X can’t “hide behind the DMCA.”

“Maximum Pain”

The motion to compel is heavily redacted, but it appears that X believes that the NMPA played a key role in the lawsuit, and that it wasn’t merely concerned about the removal of infringing content.

“It is not disputed that NMPA conceived of and controlled the process that led to this litigation,” X writes, adding that Mr. Israelite has been very vocal in the press, condemning its actions, and hinting at a lawsuit before it started.

According to X, the requested discovery is important to show that NMPA used its takedown notice campaign as a tool to inflict “maximum pain” on X, to motivate Elon Musk’s platform to sign music licensing agreements.

“NMPA’s motive for initiating its notice program against X was not to obtain the removal of allegedly infringing videos posted to the X platform, but to inflict maximum pain on X’s business so that X would be more inclined to enter into music licenses with NMPA’s member,” X writes.

“Maximum Pain”

These are explosive allegations that have yet to be proven; if indeed the case even makes it that far.

Suddenly… a Settlement is Looming

After a few days, X dismissed its motion to compel and around the same time, both parties informed the court that they were trying to “amicably resolve” the entire lawsuit, requesting a stay of 90 days.

There’s no evidence that there’s a causal link between X’s explosive allegations and the sudden agreement between the two parties. However, with less than a week between the two filings after nearly two years of battling it out in court, the timing is noteworthy.

Commenting on the change of course in the lawsuit, an NMPA spokesperson informed the Hollywood Reporter that the group hopes that the case will result in a licensing deal.

“The intent of the stay is to discuss with X the resolution of the suit and proper compensation to songwriters and publishers for past unlicensed uses, while providing an opportunity for go forward licensing.”

For now, Judge Trauger has granted the 90 days stay. If X and the music publishers can reach a settlement, with or without a licensing deal, the lawsuit will be over. That also means the finer details of the alleged ‘maximum pain’ strategy are unlikely to see the light of day.

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A copy of X Corp’s motion to compel is available here (pdf). The order to stay the related case can be found here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

In countries where site-blocking has been established for years, relatively small but always expanding measures happen mostly unannounced. It’s often too late to complain when the public are the last to know.

Enhanced blocking measures and tools, with an emphasis on speed and limited judicial oversight, already receive support under national law. Italy’s high profile Piracy Shield system is one such example; mandatory participation by local ISPs to rapidly block alleged pirate sites, no questions asked, has now expanded to other service providers and intermediaries in less than two years.

Operators of third party DNS resolvers, such as Cloudflare, Google, and Quad9, are now seen as anti-piracy enforcers with an obligation to comply. Internet users who find themselves blocked by their ISP, can use public DNS resolvers to circumvent blocking. Italy wants to close that loophole as quickly as possible and according to AGCOM, work with Google is already underway.

Court Instructs Google to Join Piracy Shield

Piracy Shield welcomed a new, but presumably reluctant addition to the site-blocking framework as part of a limited trial last month.

Google’s involvement is linked to a decision handed down by the Court of Milan last December. When football league Serie A complained that Cloudflare was refusing to comply with site-blocking orders, the Court said that a failure to block moving forward would incur fines of €10,000 per day.

A similar case against Google reached the same conclusion in March. AGCOM said that Serie A’s case was so strong, Google’s participation in the proceeding wasn’t required.

Google’s participation in Piracy Shield most certainly was, however.

Piracy Shield Relayed Blocking Orders to Google

The football clubs of Serie A played their last games of the season May 23-25. In line with established procedures, rightsholder monitoring during the days running up to those matches led to pirate site domain names and IP addresses being added to the non-public Piracy Shield database.

According to AGCOM commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio, once the final matches got underway, blocking instructions sent by rightsholders to Piracy Shield, were relayed by the latter to local ISPs, and also directly to Google.

“Through a process developed with the Mountain View company, the sites reported on the Piracy Shield platform during the last championship matches were promptly communicated to Google which, consequently, prevented access through its public DNS. A first but important sign of collaboration in this battle for legality,” Capitanio said.

When presented with a domain name, Google’s DNS ordinarily responds with the relevant IP address as determined by its records, thus facilitating access to the corresponding website. When a domain name is operated by pirates offering live football streams, for example, internet users who access the domain may reach a site where Serie A matches are made available for free.

Once Google blocks or otherwise tampers with the records that link a domain to an IP address, users of Google’s DNS won’t be directed to the pirate site in question. The extent of Google’s blocking in the trial last month is unknown but, in theory, it could’ve been significant.

Piracy Shield Transparency Remains Poor

Behind-the-scenes operations at Piracy Shield are not for public consumption. Since the domain names and IP addresses blocked via the platform aren’t made available officially, reliance on data made available unofficially is the only option available.

As illustrated in the image above, domains (FQDN) and IPv4 IP addresses are quite heavily redacted; most likely a necessary limitation to ensure that the valuable piracyshield.iperv.it resource stays online.

Fortunately, the redactions don’t hinder collection of data on the number of domains and IP addresses blocked, and the dates when those blocks were requested.

Data shows that blocking requests in the days leading up to May 23 and ending on May 25 when the championship games concluded, concerned 988 FQDN and 78 IPv4 IP addresses.

How many tickets were processed by Google, either in full, in part, or not, is unavailable to the public. Running totals of the number of domains and IP addresses requested for blocking overall is the extent of current transparency, with no sign of change anytime soon.

There are no obvious surprises in the tickets referenced above, but the presence of Amazon IP addresses had the potential to pique Google’s interest, if nothing else.

Google Will Still Need to Do More

Describing the tests last month as “experimental”, Commissioner Capitanio expects to see Google’s full participation in the very near future.

“The goal is for this experimental activity to be fully operational as soon as possible and for other entities involved in the accessibility of pirate sites, such as VPNs, to adopt automated measures to block pirate sites within 30 minutes of AGCOM’s report, in full compliance with national law,” he explains.

“At the same time, other actions must be taken to combat the phenomenon, such as prohibiting access to pirate APPs and continuing to sanction users who illegally use these services.”

In a world filled with uncertainty, “other actions must be taken” is an anti-piracy standard that hasn’t changed in decades; most likely, it never will.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

In the late ’90s, with P2P file-sharing yet to really take off, music industry insiders had already toyed with the idea of a ‘celestial jukebox’ that could access all music in the world.

While the idea sounded appealing, the economics were not straightforward, and it took an external intervention to spur record labels into action.

When Napster launched in 1999, it sparked a music revolution that changed the industry forever. The file-sharing software itself had a short lifespan and was shut down swiftly through legal action, but the seed had nevertheless been planted.

The P2P file-sharing piracy boom eventually forced the music industry to embrace digital music online, first through iTunes and other online stores, followed by streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Deezer.

Napster’s Streaming Service

Today, the original Napster is long gone, but the brand remains in use. After changing owners multiple times over the years, Napster is now a legal music streaming service after the rebranding of Rhapsody. In a way, Napster has come full circle.

The Napster streaming service currently operates in 33 countries, reportedly serving millions of customers, who pay to access a vast music library.

Napster.com today

While it’s wholesome to think that Napster paved the way for its own future, the company isn’t completely free of copyright challenges. On the contrary, this week Napster finds itself at the center of a copyright lawsuit filed by collective rights management organization SoundExchange.

SoundExchange Sues Napster and Sonos

In a complaint filed at a California federal court, SoundExchange is seeking over $3.4 million in alleged underpaid statutory copyright royalties from Sonos and Napster. The lawsuit centers on the “Sonos Radio” service that was initially powered by Napster’s extensive music catalog.

Sonos Radio launched in April 2020 with Napster as the authorized agent, submitting the required royalty reports and royalties to SoundExchange. While all went well initially, payments stopped around May 2022.

At the time, Napster had been acquired by venture capital firms Hivemind and Algorand, with a focus on “web3” technologies, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain. According to the complaint, the takeover resulted in a “complete breakdown of reporting and payment for the Sonos Radio service.”

The alleged payment problems eventually came to light during an audit initiated by SoundExchange in 2023, which concluded that Sonos and Napster owed millions in unpaid royalties.

SoundExchange Seeks Millions in Damages

Sonos and Napster are no longer partners in the radio service, as the audio equipment manufacturer switched to Deezer around April 2023. That appears to have solved the royalty issues, but SoundExchange still believes it is owed more than $3 million.

“In total, Sonos, and its agent Napster, have failed to pay at least $3,423,844.41 comprising royalties owed for the period October 2022 to April 2023, interest, late fees, and auditor fee-shifting costs, and subtracting Sonos and Napster’s payments made to date.

“Late fees and interest continue to grow,” SoundExchange adds, while requesting compensation in full.

…at least $3,423,844.41

The complaint lists one count of “underpayment” of statutory royalties, and one count of “non-payment” of royalties, as determined by the audit. For both Copyright Act violations, SoundExchange requests damages of at least $3.4 million.

Neither Sonos nor Napster has publicly responded to the lawsuit. In March of this year, Napster was sold, once again, to Infinite Reality, which plans to use the brand to pave “a path to a brighter future for artists, fans, and the music industry at large.”

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A copy of the complaint filed on June 16 in the United States District Court, Central District of California, is available here (pdf)

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Incorporated in Georgia, YuppTV USA Inc. markets itself as one of the world’s largest internet-based TV and on-demand platforms for South Asian content. Most of the company’s subscribers are described as “non-resident individuals.”

Filed at a federal court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania, YuppTV’s copyright complaint begins by naming Canada-based Harpreet Singh Randhawa as the operator of one or more IPTV services, sold under multiple brand names. Those services allegedly infringed YuppTV’s rights in the United States and beyond.

Specifically, YuppTV claims that content for which it holds (or held) United States and Canadian licenses, has for years been illegally broadcast into homes in both countries by Randhawa’s platforms.

The complaint bundles the services together under the heading ‘Boss IPTV Platforms’ with the wider operation labeled the ‘Boss IPTV Cartel’.

The complaint says the services use common ‘pirate tactics’ including rebranding, renaming, closures and expansion “to evade detection and legal enforcement.” None of the nine domains appear functional at the time of writing.

An Expensive and Lengthy Investigation

YuppTV says that its expensive investigation of Randhawa and his “illicit business activities” pre-dates 2020.

“Throughout the course of this investigation, YuppTV observed Mr. Randhawa wielding his vast enterprise to infringe repeatedly upon YuppTV’s licensed rights,” the plaintiff writes.

In March 2021, YuppTV filed a complaint with police cyber-crime investigators in Faridabad, India. The company informed police that Randhawa used a company called Rhysley Pvt. Ltd to perpetuate infringement of YuppTV’s content, leading to a headline-making police raid.

Six people were arrested including Sumit Sharma, an alleged director of Rhysley Pvt, and Harminder Sandhu, an alleged key employee of Calgary, Canada-based company, Server Center Ltd. Allegedly owned and operated by Randhawa, Server Center is described as an “integral part” and the “ostensible parent company” of “Randhawa’s criminal enterprise.”

What became of the raids four years ago is unclear, but Randhawa’s name wasn’t among those mentioned when the six individuals were arrested back in 2021. YuppTV’s lawsuit positions Randhawa as the lead defendant along with Rhysley Pvt. Ltd, Server Center Ltd, and 2144644 Alberta Ltd, a company linked to Server Center due to Randhawa sitting on the boards of both.

Datacamp (CDN77) Named as Defendant

News reports covering the 2021 raids had already linked Datacamp to Randhawa’s piracy operation. The company was described as a vendor but beyond that, evidence of infringement, if indeed any existed at all, was not made public.

Four years later, Datacamp and several other companies reportedly used by Randhawa’s IPTV services, appear as defendants in YuppTV’s complaint.

Under the heading “Datacamp Knowingly Provides Boss IPTV Platforms with the Means to Continue Pirating” the complaint provides a detailed overview of Datacamp’s services, highlighting the “high efficiency and peak performance” provided by Datacamp’s geographically distributed network of datacenters.

“Boss IPTV Platforms, as unauthorized IPTV streaming services, depend on third-party CDNs to deliver Pirated Content to their subscribers. Boss IPTV Platforms could not operate without these CDNs,” the complaint reads.

The details span several pages, with numerous features available to any Datacamp customer framed as mechanisms through which the Boss Platforms were able to infringe the plaintiff’s rights more efficiently, with optimizations that “materially increase the quality” of the pirate streaming product.

Failure to Terminate Repeat Infringers

Many years of so-called ‘repeat infringer’ lawsuits in US courts means the general parameters are broadly understood. When copyright holders repeatedly send DMCA takedown notices for infringing content, but that content isn’t removed and action isn’t taken against repeat infringers, webhosts and ISPs face potential lawsuits that attempt to hold them liable.

YuppTV’s complaint follows broadly the same framework. After highlighting CDN features that prevent or inhibit the ability to send DMCA notices directly to Boss IPTV’s ‘origin’ servers, YuppTV says that correspondence sent to Datacamp starting in 2020 nevertheless requested the removal of infringing content.

“Although DataCamp undertook some steps to address YuppTV’s complaints regarding the Pirated Content, it has failed to enact measures sufficient to curtail Boss IPTV’s infringement,” the complaint explains.

“As a result of DataCamp’s refusal to take appropriate measures to stop copyright infringement, Boss IPTV Platforms continue unhindered as DataCamp customers. Boss IPTV Platforms continue to purchase increasing amounts of bandwidth from DataCamp.”

DMCA Notices Allegedly Ignored

Copies of the DMCA notices sent to Datacamp appear alongside the complaint, with a suggestion they represent the full set. A representative sample notice is shown here, and the remainder are linked below. Assuming these are indeed the originals, and haven’t been altered for any reason, issues are immediately apparent.

XXXXX XXXXX XXX XXXXX

The presence of the letter ‘X’ multiple times in every URL may be a sign that complete URLs weren’t known to YuppTV. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the infringing content could be identified by different means, but whether this alternative format was considered sufficient by the recipients isn’t made clear.

If the infringing content couldn’t be identified, that might raise questions of whether the notices were valid. In the complaint, YuppTV insists that it sent “proper notices” under the DMCA.

The URLs listed in the notices concern channels which presumably delivered a succession of copyrighted works (TV shows) for which YuppTV held or holds appropriate licenses. There’s no strict requirement for notices to identify each and every work allegedly infringed but identifying at least one should be sufficient to meet the base requirement of “identify the work infringed”. The provided DMCA notices mention channels but no specific copyright works.

The notices state that YuppTV has the right to “take anti-piracy actions” on behalf of other named companies, presumably the exclusive rightsholders. YuppTV claims to hold a non-exclusive license under Indian copyright law, to transmit, distribute, and publicly perform the content in the United States. Registration with the United States Copyright Office “is not a prerequisite to filing a copyright infringement action” the company adds. There could be implications for not doing so, however.

“DataCamp did nothing to stop the infringement. The Boss IPTV Platforms continue to use the DataCamp CDN to commit copyright infringement as of March 2025 with DataCamp’s affirmative knowledge of the infringement,” the allegations conclude.

Note:Similar URLs found online appear in this format: http://ip/ address/port number/email address/unknown string/123456?token=[value]

Allstream Business Inc. (Canada)

Similar allegations are made against other intermediaries/service providers.

Based in Ontario, Canada, Allstream Business, Inc. reportedly offers dedicated servers “that host most of the domain websites for the Boss IPTV Platforms.” The primary data center for the Boss IPTV Platforms reportedly use Allstream’s dedicated servers for channel encoding and video-on-demand (VOD) creation.

Further claims include Allstream servers hosting Boss IPTV’s customer management platform and a chat system used for customer service. A team in India reportedly use Allstream servers for tasks including backups. DMCA notices were reportedly sent in 2018-2019 but Allstream “failed to remove or block the Protected Channels.”

As a result, YuppTV concludes that just like Datacamp, Allstream cannot rely on safe harbor protection.

Infomir and Infomir LLC (Ukraine, United States)

The basis for YuppTV’s claim against Infomir is far from clear. Even with an especially broad view of what type of conduct may amount to contributory infringement, nothing really stands out based on the information provided.

The complaint alleges that the Boss IPTV platforms purchased Infomir’s ‘MAG’set-top boxes and sold them to subscribers of the pirate services. The Ministra Pro middleware is mentioned several times in the complaint in a manner that suggests importance, but little of substance beyond that.

The following statement suggests that the basis for the claim against Infomir is the supply of regular set-top boxes and a failure to terminate that business.

“Infomir and Infomir LLC had the capability of cancelling its contractual relationship with the Boss IPTV Platforms and the Boss IPTV Cartel, and thus refusing to manufacture the ‘MAG set-top boxes’ with the preinstalled ‘Ministra Pro’ middleware.”

Nothing in the complaint indicates that Infomir received any notifications from YuppTV, much less that its actions were “willful, malicious, intentional, purposeful, and in disregard of and with indifference to the rights of YuppTV.”

Claims Against Each Defendant

Count I: Direct Copyright Infringement 17 U.S.C. SS 106(1),(4) Count II: Violation of the Digital Millennium Protection* Act (DMCA), 17 U.S.C. S 1201

Harpreet Singh Randhawa, the Boss IPTV platforms, 2144644 Alberta Ltd., Server Center Ltd, Rhysley Pvt. Ltd, Vois Inc.

Count III: Contributory Copyright Infringement, 17 U.S.C. § 501

DataCamp, Allstream, Allstream USA, Infomir.eu and Infomir, LLC

Count IV: Vicarious Copyright Infringement, 17 U.S.C. § 501

DataCamp, Allstream, Allstream USA, Infomir.eu and Infomir, LLC

* Count II contains a naming error present in the original complaint

YuppTV requests a permanent injunction against all defendants, maximum statutory damages or defendants’ profits attributable to the alleged infringement, attorney’s fees, and a statement signed under oath “detailing the manner in which they have complied with the judgment of the court.”

The complaint and copies of the DMCA notices are available here (1, 2, pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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

Indian courts have issued pirate site blocking orders for over a decade and at least initially, they were relatively basic. To get a site blocked by local ISPs, rightsholders had to request an injunction for specific domain names, providing detailed evidence for each.

From Regular to Dynamic Injunctions

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

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

This was a major victory for rightsholders, who soon sought additional measures to further streamline the blocking process through dynamic+ injunctions.

Dynamic+ Injunctions

Dynamic+ injunctions not only apply to domain names that don’t yet exist, they can also be used for content that has yet to be created. This helps copyright holders to apply blocking orders to copyrighted works that are still in the pipeline.

Another major breakthrough means that injunctions don’t just compel ISPs to block domain names, they also require domain registrars to comply. American companies such as Namecheap have taken domains offline globally as a result.

For example, Namecheap previously suspended the then popular pirate streaming portals Zorox.to, Upmovies and Flixwave.to following a dynamic+ order issued by the New Delhi High Court. Other domain registrars including Porkbun appeared to comply with this and similar dynamic+ injunctions.

New: The Superlative Injunction

In recent years these injunctions have transformed into a powerful legal tool, allowing rightsholders to protect existing and future works with relative ease. However, rightsholders still requested additional relief.

In February, Star India obtained an injunction targeting various streaming sites and services including starshare.live, xtv.ooo and smart4k.cc. The injunction also required third-parties to disclose personal info related to the mobile apps operating through iptvsmarters.com, iptvsmarterpro.app, and others.

February order

These measures were taken to protect content from Hotstar and Disney+, but Star India recently returned to court to request additional measures. To protect its rights, the media company sought to expand the blocking injunction to apps, as well as the ability to add additional targets without having to file new applications.

Two weeks ago, the New Delhi High Court addressed these concerns by issuing a new injunction: The Superlative Injunction. As the name suggests, this order goes a step further than its predecessors.

Added: Mobile Apps

The Superlative Injunction adds ‘rogue’ mobile applications as blocking targets, going beyond the traditional pirate websites that were typically subject to Dynamic+ orders.

According to the Court, it doesn’t matter how sites or services operate; any copyright infringing service is eligible for real-time blocking to stop works from being pirated.

“At the end of the day, this Court is dealing with the intellectual property rights of the copyright owner, the plaintiff herein, and the mode of use/ dissemination/ activity is/ can hardly be of any concern,” the Court writes.

Superlative

Paused Oversight During Summer Break

The recently-ordered Superlative Injunction effectively expands the list of blocking targets. However, this specific order comes with another novelty, as it allows Star India to add additional blocking targets without court oversight for a limited period.

The High Court goes on a summer break this month, but sports broadcasts don’t stop during this period. Star India was particularly concerned about the ongoing England Tour of India cricket games, which are widely pirated.

Since the Court is on a break, it issued a temporary ‘pre-emptive’ blocking authority. Specifically, Star was granted the option (until July 3) to add new targets without going to court first.

“In the aforesaid circumstances, it is felt appropriate by this Court to […] grant real-time relief qua rogue websites and rogue mobile applications which may be discovered during the course of the present proceedings.”

These blocking requests can be made to ISPs as well as domain name registrars, which will be required to take action in response.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

The Court’s solution is pragmatic, but it’s not without concerns. Blocking websites and suspending domain names with reduced judicial oversight means that potential errors might not be corrected for weeks.

Previously, Vimeo, GitHub and the Internet Archive were blocked in India as the result of ‘errors’ so this isn’t merely a hypothetical concern.

As noted by Arnav Kaman on the Indian copyright blog SpicyIP, the order effectively turns Star India into the protector of its own content, giving it free rein to block anything while the court is on vacation. That can be a problem.

“The court cannot remain willfully ignorant of the blocking that may occur over the vacation; thus, they have a responsibility to maintain a full record of all the websites, domains and apps that the rightsholder seek to block,” Kaman writes.

“Furthermore, in the instance, there is an overbroad application of these injunction to bona fide websites and apps being caught in the crossfire, they will have no remedies in the lack of any official record by the court.”

All in all, it is understandable that the current blocking powers have been expanded to mobile apps and other pirate tools. However, it’s up for debate whether giving rightsholders carte blanche to pick their targets is the right thing to do.

Then again, dealing with real-time blocking is a complicated problem that is difficult to solve as long as manual labor is involved. Eventually, this will only increase calls for automated blocking solutions, ideally ones with proper oversight and fail-safes.

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A copy of the Superlative Injunction issued by the New Delhi High Court is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

In 2023, sports rightsholders and their broadcasting partners had their collective patience tested to the limit.

Coordinated industry-wide action late 2022 placed rising IPTV piracy rates under the spotlight, aiming to put the European Commission under pressure to take immediate action.

Rightsholders wanted new legislation, to compel intermediaries to cooperate with faster takedowns, or even cooperate at all. What they received mid-2023 was a detailed recommendation penned by the European Commission, which urged voluntary collaboration, without the need for new law.

Rightsholders Still Disappointed

On April 30, 2025, the Commission issued a call for evidence to assess the effects of the recommendation after its introduction two years earlier. Rightsholders’ assessments filed over the last couple of weeks vary in tone, but the conclusions are broadly the same. Without a legal ‘incentive’ that leaves intermediaries with no other option, there’s almost no motivation to cooperate voluntarily.

Interestingly, however, LaLiga’s experience bucked the trend. Part of a coalition that felt a potential two-year wait for action was far too long, LaLiga’s submission dated June 4, reports a “positive impact” from enforcement measures it says were “implemented in line with the Commissioner’s Recommendations.”

No names are mentioned in the submission but platforms including Twitch, Vercel, Scaleway, and CDN77, were previously reported as voluntarily cooperating after their IP addresses kept getting blocked as LaLiga aggressively pursued action against pirate sites. As a result of this voluntary cooperation, disruption to their businesses due to site blocking measures seemed to reduce quite quickly.

Unfortunately, those intermediaries processed just 1.33% of LaLiga takedown notices, a fraction of the 138,000 notices sent by LaLiga overall.

’10 Minutes or Less’ Takedown Protocols

LaLiga’s submission cites a report from March 2025 which found that of 10.8 million takedown notices targeting piracy of live events sent in 2024, just 2.7% were actioned inside 30 mins, at least according to the industry-supplied data used as a source.

With the league bemoaning a lack of cooperation from a “significant portion” of intermediaries, many were criticized by LaLiga for the absence of “established protocols for addressing illegal live streaming” or for “[failing] to respond to takedown requests in less than 10 minutes.”

The 30-minute takedown deadline of Italy’s Piracy Shield is a source of real pride for regulator AGCOM, yet the standard cited by LaLiga demands takedowns actioned two-thirds quicker.

No Obvious Sign of Urgency

A submission from Telefonica, which as an ISP partnered with LaLiga to obtain the dynamic injunction that authorized their recent piracy blocking activities, provides interesting context for ’10 mins or less’ takedown demands.

Indeed, the three injunctions signed off by the same Barcelona court appear to envision a much less demanding regime, at least for those making the blocking requests.

While there may be a general perception of extreme urgency verging on panic, batches of IP addresses, sent by way of a list on a particular day of the week, are far from unusual in court-authorized orders. Furiously blocking IP addresses in a live blocking environment may appeal to those who thrive on urgency, but since IP addresses are likely to turn up time and again, more considered approaches are available too.

Need Instant Action Today? Ask Yesterday

While ‘pirate’ IP addresses observed during match time are prime candidates for blocking, preparatory work in the days or weeks before the referee blows his whistle, plays an important role too. Such work can inform intelligent, more effective blocking, while minimizing overblocking by eliminating avoidable blunders.

Since matches are relatively short, anti-piracy specialists monitor pirate IPTV services and related infrastructure when matches aren’t underway, to build actionable intelligence for when it really matters.

Outside the all-important live match/game windows, broadcasts observed during a ‘pre-monitoring’ period are not protected live matches. Yet, courts seem satisfied that, when those broadcasts show sufficient links to the main content that blocking orders aim to protect, there’s a decent chance those same IP addresses, services, and infrastructure, will also appear during the ‘match window’. Once that happens, IP addresses tend to find themselves blocked, accurately.

The scenario above was presented and then tested independently to satisfy a court that blocking could be conducted safely. At no point was there a safety demonstration involving 10 minute blocking or removal of streams. When blocking is based on weekly lists compiled in advance, but blocking is required immediately, why wait until the very last minute to request it?

Perhaps there are concerns that some intermediaries could share that information in the wrong direction. Since not much can be done in less than 10 minutes, a last minute heads-up might be the logical conclusion, since it also paves the way for removing people from the equation altogether.

‘Immediate’ Blocking Universally Requested

Demands for 10 minute blocking appear in numerous submissions, most centered around a call to define “expeditiously” as “immediately” in respect of takedown notices.

A submission from DAZN agrees with the definition but insists that “immediately” shouldn’t mean 10 minutes, it should mean less than five minutes. beIN agrees with the definition, but makes no suggestion on timing.

The Premier League notes that “expeditiously” is so vague timing wise, that sport rightsholders have found it “almost impossible” to enforce their rights.

That raises the not insignificant challenge of complying with takedown notices in less than 5 minutes up to no more than 10. It’s a completely unrealistic timeframe that rules out even the most cursory investigation by design. It may end up carrying more weight than any other issue companies may be facing at the same time.

Of course, should notices begin to disrupt business operations, an automated solution would probably be offered at some point, to lighten the load. How many companies would look forward to rightsholders making complex business decisions on their behalf is unknown, but given the voluntary cooperation now enjoyed by LaLiga, the impossible can never be ruled out, especially given the right “incentive”.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

After a Virginia jury ordered internet provider Cox to pay $1 billion in damages for failing to take appropriate actions against pirating subscribers, shockwaves rippled through the ISP industry.

The verdict, in favor of major record labels including Sony and Universal, was a catalyst for many other ‘repeat infringer’ lawsuits. This resulted in yet more multi-million dollar claims and awards, with more still in the pipeline today.

Meanwhile, Cox did all it could to fight the verdict. This resulted in some small wins, including a recent ruling that the billion-dollar damages calculation needs a re-evaluation. However, the liability ruling stands.

In a final attempt to find the law on its side, Cox petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court last year. In essence, it argued that an ISP shouldn’t be held liable simply because it knew that subscribers were pirating, while challenging the assertion that merely knowing about subscriber piracy constitutes ‘willful’ copyright infringement.

U.S. Government Backs Cox

The Supreme Court signaled interest but before a decision to take the case on, the Court asked for the Government’s position on the matter. The request was honored two weeks ago.

The Solicitor General’s amicus curiae brief sides with Cox and urges the Supreme Court to grant the ISP’s position. This isn’t just in the interest of Cox, but also other ISPs and the public at large.

According to the U.S. Government’s view, an ISP is not automatically liable for copyright infringement if it fails to terminate subscribers after receiving copyright infringement notices. The brief states that the verdict of the Court of Appeals could have broad negative implications for ISPs and their subscribers.

The U.S. further argues that Cox’s actions were not willful, as “willfulness” generally requires knowledge or reckless disregard that the defendant’s own conduct was unlawful. Simply knowing about third-party infringements should not be sufficient.

Aside from fully backing Cox, the Solicitor General also urged the Supreme court to deny the record labels’ petition. The labels argued that Cox should be held liable for vicarious copyright infringement because it profited from piracy that it could have prevented.

Record Labels are “Bewildered”, Fire Back at U.S.

The U.S. position gave Cox and other ISPs reason to feel more positive about an eventual turnaround. Grande Communications, for example, wasted no time citing the Government’s position in its final remarks for its own, separate, Supreme Court petition.

In a supplemental filing at the Supreme Court, the record labels characterize the Solicitor General’s recommendation as ‘bewildering’, given the evidence on record. In a direct, point-by-point rebuttal to the U.S. brief, the labels attempt to set the record straight.

Rebuttal

The brief argues that Cox’s contributory liability for copyright infringement is ‘straightforward’ and does not warrant Supreme Court review because Cox would face liability ‘In Any Jurisdiction’.

“Cox was held liable not because it failed to do enough to police infringement, but because it took no meaningful steps to stop infringement and continued serving specific, identifiable subscribers even after receiving explicit notice of their repeat (and often rampant) infringement,” they write.

The record labels focus more on the broader context that, in their view, shows that Cox ‘willfully’ decided to let repeat infringements slide because subscribers earn them revenue.

The ISP did not meaningfully implement a policy ‘for the termination in appropriate circumstances of repeat infringers’ and lost its safe harbor as a result.

“F the dmca!!!”

“This rebuttal is amplified by evidence of Cox’s alleged culpability and disdain for the law, including an expletive quote from an internal communication,” the rebuttal reads.

“Cox kept supplying the means of infringement because it said ‘F the dmca!!!’ and adopted an express policy of prioritizing profits from subscription fees over compliance with the Copyright Act or the DMCA.”

“F the dmca!!!”

The labels note that lower courts have been clear on liability cases like this, and argue that the recent Supreme Court Twitter v. Taamneh ruling , which the U.S. cited, is not relevant in this context.

There is overwhelming evidence for Cox’s willfulness, they say, adding that Cox didn’t contest this finding during its appeal. Therefore, the petition should be denied, contrary to the U.S. Solicitor General’s recommendation.

Grant Our Petition (or both…)

The record labels also disagree with the U.S. when it comes to their own Supreme Court petition, which argues that Cox should also be held liable for vicarious copyright infringement. The brief reiterates that there is a real split in the lower courts on this matter.

Cox can be held vicariously liable if it has the right and ability to control the infringing activities and a direct financial interest in those activities. According to the Solicitor General, the lower court correctly concluded that this is not the case here.

The labels, however, argue that Cox did profit directly from pirating subscribers, by declining to terminate repeat infringers, which kept the subscription fees coming in.

The labels’ brief ends by asking the Court to deny Cox’s petition while granting theirs, the direct opposite of the U.S. recommendation. However, the labels offer a fallback. If the Court is inclined to accept the Cox case, it should also accept theirs.

“The Court should grant Sony’s petition and deny Cox’s. If the Court disagrees, it should grant both,” the record labels conclude.

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A copy of the supplemental brief, submitted to the Supreme Court this week by Sony et al. is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Traditional site-blocking measures that require local ISPs to block subscriber access to popular pirate sites, have been utilized by rightsholders in France for years. The aim is to deter piracy by making sites more difficult to find, but these measures are only partially effective.

More recently, site blocking requests have targeted other intermediaries. DNS providers including Google and Cloudflare, plus several of the largest VPN providers, were all ordered to make pirate websites unavailable through their services.

While several of these orders are still under appeal, rightsholders and lawmakers are pressing ahead. They believe that more can and should be done to tackle online piracy; sports streaming piracy in particular.

New Bill Enables Automated Real-Time Blocking

A new bill amending Article L. 333-10 of the French Sports Code passed the Senate this week. The ‘Lafon’ bill allows rightsholders to use a fully automated system to block piracy targets, without having to go through the French telecoms regulator Arcom for updates to the blacklisted sites.

Targeted intermediaries are required to implement these blockades ‘without delay’. That speeds up the blocking process, which is particularly important when dealing with constantly updating livestreams of pirated sports. Similar blocking regimes are already active in Italy, Spain, and the UK.

The proposed bill doesn’t specify any concrete blocking methods, but by allowing judges to target server IP addresses it logically paves the way for IP-address blocking.

Blocking IP-addresses

Speaking with the French news publication L’Informé, Xavier Spender of the Association for the Protection of Sports Programs (APPS), which represents beIN Sports, Canal+, Eurosport and others, says the aim is to reinforce existing blocking measures.

“We want to bring ourselves up to the level of the English, Spanish, and Italians, by implementing IP blocking adapted to the French context. Our goal is to block servers at the head of the network, that is, at the highest possible level of the pirate architecture.”

Other stakeholders also view automated and real-time IP address blocking as a must to tackle the country’s pirate streaming epidemic. An estimated 37% of Ligue 1 viewers currently watch football matches illegally.

“The adoption of this new system is vital to effectively protect our competitions and our economic model, especially as the LFP is about to launch its own channel,” the Professional Football League (LFP) commented.

Brice Daumin, general manager of Ligue 1 broadcaster DAZN notes that “Arcom doesn’t work weekends,” so something had to be done to more effectively tackle the problem. “In England, we can block 10,000 links in two days; in Italy, it’s 18,000. And with Arcom, it’s 5,000 per year.”

A ‘Secret’ Blocking Agreement

While the bill has yet to pass into law, stakeholders are already preparing a complementary agreement. According to a report from L’Informé’s Marc Rees, sports rightsholder group APPS has reached a private agreement in principle with Internet providers Orange, SFR, Bouygues Télécom, and Free.

Reportedly in the works since 2023, the agreement covers the finer details of a new blocking system, including the technical implementation and who will pay for the costs.

Thus far, specific details of the blocking system, including any plans for independent oversight, remain unclear. However, a source said that overblocking risks are being taken into account, adding that rightsholders remain responsible for their mistakes.

Overblocking and the Mafia

Calls for extended blocking powers arrive at a sensitive time, as recent expansions in Spain and Italy have resulted in several overblocking incidents.

However, according to APPS general delegate Xavier Spender, there is little to worry about as “everything will be put in place to ensure that there is no risk of over-blocking.”

Time will tell whether France will be able to prevent collateral damage, but it’s clear that APPS and its rightsholders are eager to implement broader blocking powers to deal with the piracy ‘mafia’.

“Today, we are facing mafia groups at the head of a piracy economy, with a model that resembles drug trafficking. To deal in particular with illicit IPTV offers, sold on every street corner, we need to adapt to enable real-time blocking,” Spender says.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

The extraordinary online popularity of Japanese manga comics shows no sign of retreat, with pirate site-based consumption at unprecedented levels fueled by billions of visits.

Japanese publishers are pursuing pirate site operators all around the world but no matter where they’re physically located, the majority have some kind of infrastructure directly behind a reverse proxy at Cloudflare. All rightsholders have to do is obtain a DMCA subpoena, serve Cloudflare, and sift through the resulting mountain of logs for clues and, in an ideal world, signs of an operator security blunder.

Shueisha Targets ~25 Domains

Shueisha’s appearance at a U.S. court this week adds to a growing list of actions in the United States by Japanese publishers including Shogakukan, Kadokawa and Kodansha.

Shueisha’s subpoena target is Cloudflare and having already served DMCA takedown notices as required, Shueisha should receive data for around two dozen pirate domains.

All listed domains are accused of infringing Shueisha’s rights in ONE PIECE, a manga series featuring a search for mythical treasure and a chance to become the next King of the Pirates.

The domains of interest to Shueisha look broadly familiar; most feature the word ‘manga’ and the term ‘raw’ (a reference to unmodified comics in their original language) is quite common too. Beyond that, the list represents a typical example of domains that probably won’t be in use for very long. At some point they’re likely to be replaced by others that in many cases will look confusingly similar to their predecessors.

It’s Manga Time

For those outside the manga piracy community, keeping track of these changes can become a real chore. A site with a new domain, assisted by various means, may appear out of what seems like thin air, before becoming one of the world’s most popular pirate sites in a matter of weeks. Others may disappear into obscurity in what seems like an instant.

The screenshot above shows the site at the top of Shueisha’s list. Mangajikan, or ‘cartoon time’ in English, was registered in May 2024 and for the first couple of months of 2025, attracted very little interest from rightsholders.

In early March, everything changed.

DMCA takedown notices for Google search initially tripled, and then around two weeks later, doubled in volume. Traffic of ‘just’ a few million in January kept increasing; in March, Mangajikan received over 104 million visits, then in April a surprise reduction to ‘just’ 90 million.

Then, in May, Mangajikan more than doubled its existing traffic; in just four weeks, 90 million visits became 185 million.

This surge made Mangajikan the most popular site in SimilarWeb’s ‘Animation and Comics’ category for the whole of Japan, and the 17th most popular site in the country overall.

In such a short period of time, that type of growth could be mistaken for magic. Sleight of hand probably shouldn’t be ruled out, or indeed, a few extra domains up a sleeve donating unwanted traffic.

Whatever the technique, Mangajikan was more popular than Facebook, and more visited than ChatGPT. Lagging behind in 24th position, Pornhub didn’t even make the chart.

Bye. Website Closed

After taking the internet by storm in the blink of an eye, Mangajikan.com’s apparent retreat into the ether was even more swift. The site’s goodbye note is functional, even bilingual, but fairly brief by most standards. The same message appears on mangajikan.to

So did the site really shut down or did it just change shape?

Organized Instability

If we refer back to Shueisha’s list, traffic to most of the domains has either fallen dramatically in the last three months, or increased in much the same way.

One of the Mangaraw-branded domains in the list had 27.5 million visits in March but just 7 million in May. Another with the same branding saw visitor numbers fall from 28.4 million to 19.4 million in the same period. A third Mangaraw domain had 20.4 million visits in March, 8.4 million in April, and 3.8 million in May. Visits seem unlikely to have simply dried up.

Overall, Vietnam-focused domains may be the biggest movers in the DMCA subpoena application, two in particular. Both had zero traffic in March but during May, one had 27.5m visits which made it the 24th most popular site in the whole of Vietnam.

SimilarWeb data shows that the second grew even more quickly – zero visits in March to 77.2 million in May, allowing the domain to take the #9 slot in Vietnam’s most-visited website list with relative ease.

A Disappointing Ending For Some

There are clear signs that visits to Mangajikan found their way to other domains, one with identical branding and another with a more generic name. According to Semrush data, the latter had a significant visitor boost in May after receiving close to 40% of Mangajikan’s outbound traffic.

While that domain also makes an appearance in the DMCA subpoena application, Semrush data reveals that around 20% of outbound traffic went directly to a more suspicious looking domain. For obvious reasons we’re not naming it here.

URLQuery reports that Quad9 flagged the domain as ‘malicious’ and then sinkholed it, protecting users of its DNS from what appears to be a Chaturbate-linked or Chaturbate-branded popunder affair, followed by whatever surprises came next.

We have no information about the outcome but on the balance of probabilities, it’s unlikely to have involved free Japanese comics. And if there’s no new manga involved, in practical terms that translates to zero interest shown by those eager to consume it.

That’s a problem for all current major anti-piracy campaigns globally, regardless of the content they aim to protect.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

Earlier this month, dozens of rightsholders and copyright groups urged the European Commission to pave the way for more robust measures to tackle live-streaming piracy.

Two main themes in many of these submissions were broad pirate site blocking powers and effective Know-Your-Business-Customer (KYBC) requirements for online service providers.

Ideally, this would enable rightsholders to swiftly block pirate sites while allowing them to track down the identities of those responsible. According to the MPA, IFPI, beIN, Eurocinema, FEVIP, Premier League and others, blocking and/or KYBC are essential to combat piracy.

ISPs are Deeply Concerned

These calls for broader enforcement are neither new nor unexpected. At the same time, they are not without opposition either. Among the many rightsholder requests, EuroISPA, the world’s largest association of Internet Service Providers, urges caution.

“We are deeply concerned by the approach taken by some European rightsholders and certain Member States, who have implemented disproportionate network blocking measures,” the association writes.

EuroISPA represents over 3,300 ISPs, including several of the largest European providers. The group is particularly concerned about regimes where over-blocking and collateral damage have damaged many innocent parties.

Despite previous overblocking incidents, the rollout of increasingly broader blocking regimes continues. Where the initial orders were targeted at local ISPs, more recent blocking requests have included DNS resolvers, which operate globally. This introduces fallout well beyond EU borders.

“Despite numerous over-blocking incidents, certain Member States continue to escalate their efforts and have therefore taken increasingly aggressive measures to expand blocking orders beyond local ISPs,” EuroISPA writes.

Problematic Blocking Efforts

The ISP association lists several concrete examples of collateral damage caused by overblocking. This includes an intervention in Italy, where a Cloudflare IP-address was blocked, rendering tens of thousands of websites inaccessible for Italian users.

Italy’s blocking regime, known as “Piracy Shield“, also added the drive.usercontent.google.com domain, which made Google Drive unavailable in the country for more than half a day. This error was the result of reports from “trusted flaggers”, EuroISPA notes.

Case study: Italy

In Spain, there were similar overblocking issues related to third party service providers, including Cloudflare. One blocking order targeting CDN infrastructure, requested by the football league LaLiga, was approved in court while the owners of the servers were not informed, leading to collateral damage.

This led to many outages for legitimate websites without any advance warning for those affected, EuroISPA says.

“LaLiga secured the blocking order without notifying cloud providers, while knowingly concealing from the court the predictable harm to the general public. This blunt approach not only demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet works, it also violates the principle of net neutrality.”

The ISPs worry that ‘expeditious’ blocking requirements, including an often mentioned 30-minute timeframe to take action, will lead to more errors. There are concerns that smaller service providers are simply not equipped to properly analyze the accuracy of blocking requests in such a short timeframe.

When done properly, EuroISPA believes that blocking remains an option. In this light, EuroISPA mentions an order in Belgium under the Copyright Directive framework, that offered “clear guidance” and “legal certainty” for ISPs, enabling them to take prompt and appropriate action.

Guidelines and Cooperation

EuroISPA isn’t ruling out all blocking efforts, it’s concerned that the current blocking push is disproportionate and a threat to the open Internet. Instead, of expanding the European Digital Services Act, which has yet to be implemented in many member states, the EU should foster cooperation.

“EuroISPA believes that collaborative approaches between rightsholders and intermediaries are more effective than relying on court orders and invites rightsholders to engage directly with ISPs rather than pursue legal action against them.

“The ultimate goal should be to bring together stakeholders – despite their potentially conflicting business interests – to collaborate on finding practical and sustainable solutions to piracy online.”

The call for voluntary cooperation is not new and, in some countries, this is a reality today. However, this also requires both sides to reach common ground, which can be easier said than done.

KYBC, DNS and VPN Expansions

While EuroISPA opens the door to future agreements, it’s also clear that the European Commission should not burden internet service providers with further anti-piracy obligations.

The association notes that expanding the current KYBC provision will introduce extra risks for the ISPs, which could potentially undermine the Internet as a whole.

The same is true for the suggested addition of DNS and VPN providers as site blocking partners. While EuroISPA doesn’t rule that out, it notes that the legal and technical aspects of these measures should be carefully analyzed before any action is taken.

All in all, the ISPs urge the European Commission to tread with caution and keep the interests of all stakeholders in mind when deciding what steps to take next.

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A copy of EuroISPA’s submission in response to the European Commission’s assessment of the May 2023 Commission Recommendation to combating online piracy of sports and other live events is available here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed

In countries where protection is granted automatically, it’s possible for ordinary people to become copyright owners in a matter of minutes.

For the lucky few with a sudden viral video on their hands, a general understanding of the ‘rules’ governing what can, can’t, or should be done next, could be of benefit.

What those ‘rules’ cannot do is prevent 500, 1000, or 5,000 unauthorized copies appearing in a matter of minutes. The best on offer in that respect is a potential means to remove them.

Mass Takedowns Every Day

Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA represents the world’s leading manga publishers.

The company’s comprehensive knowledge of ‘the rules’ extends from Japan, to China and the United States, through South America and across Europe. But, preventing content from appearing on all pirate sites is effectively impossible.

And once there, pirated copies are consumed in enormous quantities.

Along with its animated cousin anime, manga content is pirated to the tune of billions of times every year. When not working on prevention, CODA’s job includes taking pirated content down. In its annual business report published this week, CODA provides relatively rare insight into how three dozen platforms responded after receiving a takedown notice.

Covering known pirate sites hosting platforms operating in less clearly defined waters, and household names like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok, CODA’s report contains some interesting surprises.

The Big Picture

The data relates to the period April 2024 and March 2025. Takedown requests are reported by the number of URLs requested for removal (URL notifications) and how many were removed in response, for notices mostly based on human-based monitoring.

For the 37 platforms mentioned in the report, CODA filed a total of 677,269 requests of which 652,071 were human-generated. Of the 677,269 in total, the targeted platforms responded with 545,870 deletions, for an overall compliance rate of 80.6%.

The platforms that received the highest number of URL notifications during the year were:

#1 Facebook (social media) 176,610 notifications #2 MP4upload (video hosting) 116,563 notifications #3 Streamtape (video hosting) 75,789 notifications #4 Okru (social media) 38,173 notifications (also known as Ok.ru) #5 Bilibili (manga/anime community) 35,849 notifications. Data source: CODA

The platforms that received the lowest number were Internet Archive (111), Iqiyi (54), followed by Instagram, Himado, and Weibo, all with less than 47 notifications each.

Takedown Compliance

A number of notice recipients achieved a perfect 100% compliance rate. Internet Archive and the others at the bottom of the list responded by taking everything down, albeit after receiving relatively few notices.

Perfect scores were also achieved on bigger numbers.

Mixdrop, a hosting platform regularly branded a pirate service and blocked by ISPs in some regions, received 6,944 URL notifications and took every piece of related content down. File hosting platform Mega acted similarly, removing 11,066 URLs in response to a request to remove an identical number.

When moving on to the bigger numbers, we see the highest compliance rates:

#1 MP4upload: 116,563 notifications, 100.00% compliance #2 Streamtape: 75,789 notifications, 100.00% compliance #3 Bilibilitv: 28,485 notifications, 99.99% compliance Data source: CODA

Like its counterpart Mixdrop, Streamtape is also considered a ‘pirate’ site by several rightsholders and blocked by ISPs in some jurisdictions.

For comparison, Facebook’s compliance rate was 93.97% (from 176,610 URLs), YouTube achieved 97.84% (20,453), while TikTok fell just short of a perfect score with 99.87% (14,328).

Why compliance rates are so high at sites with a reputation for piracy is unclear. The likelihood of getting blocked in another region may be a factor, or perhaps by taking content down, there’s a belief that might make them less of a target for enforcement action.

The unwelcome prospect of takedown notices being sent to hosting companies can’t be ruled out, since in theory they would have no choice but to take some kind of action, or else face action themselves.

For some hosts, however, these rules don’t amount to much; the same applies to some pirate sites.

Total Non-Compliance

When looking at platforms with low compliance rates there are several that also received a considerable number of notifications. Based on the data, three entities scored 0% compliance, despite receiving a minimum of 11,000 notices.

#1 Dramacool: 35,214 notifications, zero deleted (0% compliance) #2 Videokvid: 12,583 notifications zero deleted (0% compliance) #3 9anime: 11,625 notifications zero deleted (0% compliance)

Other non-responding platforms include gogoanime, voiranime, anitubebiz, and gogoanime_tv, all with zero deletions and 0% compliance.

Compliance Weighed Against Perceived Intent

While some of these pirate sites have huge numbers of visitors, they’re no competition for the likes of Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. So while some achieved the perfect 100%, their overall traffic is lower and the amount of infringing content on their platforms outweighs the volume of licensed/legal content.

That’s the all-important ratio that will keep them in the anti-piracy spotlight for many years to come, regardless of compliance, which admittedly may buy some time. How much is impossible to say.

CODA’s full 2024 Business Report is available here (PDF, Japanese) with the data featured above starting at page 11 and spanning the next few pages.

The single table below shows the same data, with text translated from Japanese.

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Despite the widespread availability of legal options, online piracy remains rampant. Every day, pirate sites are visited hundreds of millions of times.

Website visits are only part of the full piracy picture, as IPTV streaming is popular too. Nonetheless, traffic trends can provide valuable insight, especially when there are clear divergences across content categories.

216 Billion & America First

Fresh data released by piracy tracking outfit MUSO shows that pirate sites remain popular. In a report released today, MUSO reveals that there were 216 billion pirate site visits globally in 2024, a slight decrease compared to the 229 billion visits recorded a year earlier.

TV piracy remains by far the most popular category, representing over 44.6% of all website visits. This is followed by the publishing category with 30.7%, with film, software and music all at a respectable distance.

Piracy by Category

Pirate site visitors originate from all over the world, but one country stands tall above all the rest: America. The United States remains the top driver of pirate site traffic accounting for more than 12% of all traffic globally, good for 26.7 billion visits in 2024.

India has been steadily climbing the ranks for years and currently sits in second place with 17.6 billion annual visits, with Russia, Indonesia, and Vietnam completing the top five.

Visits per country

As a country with one of the largest populations worldwide, it’s not a complete surprise that the U.S. tops the list. If we counted visits per internet user, Canada and Ukraine would top the list.

Manga Piracy Booms

While pirate site visits dipped by more than 5% in 2024, one category saw substantial growth. Visits to publishing-related pirate sites increased 4.3% from 63.6 to 66.4 billion.

The increase is largely driven by the popularity of manga, which accounts for more than 70% of all publishing piracy. Traditional book piracy, meanwhile, is stuck at 5%.

The publishing piracy boom is relatively new. Over the past five years, the category grew by more than 100% while the overall number of global pirate site visits remained relatively flat.

Publishing piracy growth

Looking at the global demand, we see that the U.S. also leads the charge here, followed by Indonesia and Russia. Notably, Japan, the home of manga, ranks fifth in the publishing category. This stands out because Japan is not listed in the global top 15 in terms of total pirate site visits.

Music & Film Piracy Tank

In the other content categories, MUSO’s data shows a dip in pirate site visits. The changes are relatively modest for TV (-6.8%) and software (-2.1%) but the same isn’t true for the music and film categories.

In 2024, there were 18% fewer visits for pirated movies compared to a year earlier. MUSO notes that this is due to a “lighter blockbuster calendar” which reduced piracy peaks. “The drop in demand is as much about what wasn’t released as it is about access,” the report explains.

The music category saw a 19% decline in piracy visits year over year, with a more uplifting explanation for rightsholders. According to MUSO, the drop can be partly attributed to “secure app ecosystems” and the “wide adoption of licensed platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.”

Piracy Leads The Way

MUSO’s business model is to market these piracy data to rightsholders so they can use piracy as a market signal. Piracy is not necessarily triggered by unavailability; legal channels, pricing, and fragmentation are also key drivers.

“Piracy continues to reveal unmet demand: where audiences want content, but legal channels are too slow, too fragmented, or too expensive,” the company explains in a blog post.

There’s also a more practical application for the piracy data. Since MUSO tracks which pirate sites are most popular, rightsholders can use the data for their site blocking efforts.

“With monthly updated insights at the country and category level, alongside access to site-level intelligence, our data empowers rightsholders, regulators, and ISPs to prioritize action where it has the most impact,” MUSO writes.

Whether blocking access will stop people from trying to find piracy alternatives is up for debate. Perhaps pirate site blocking plans in the U.S. will provide more insight, if they come to fruition.

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A copy of MUSO’s 2024 Piracy Trends and Insights report can be requested through the official website.

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In 2006 alone, Russia-based AllOfMP3 reportedly banked $30 million from sales of an unauthorized music product for which the major labels received no payment.

The unlikely stage for the industry’s response to global sales of cheap, unlicensed DRM-free music, was Denmark. Under pressure from industry group IFPI, ISP Tele2 blocked AllofMP3’s domain, an event that will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary.

While never likely to threaten the site’s overall traffic, the Danish block was at once symbolic and historic. Nineteen years later, Denmark has almost 2,800 domains on its current blocklist, a figure that’s easily eclipsed by the tens of thousands of domains and subdomains blocked globally every month, largely without report or fanfare.

ICANN Publishes DNS Blocking Report

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the non-profit organization whose management of the internet’s name and number spaces (domains and DNS / IP addresses) helps to provide a stable internet. In a recently published report, ICANN provides a comprehensive view of the Domain Name System (DNS) and the effects of its antithesis: DNS blocking.

Published by ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC), ‘DNS Blocking Revisited’ aims to raise awareness among all internet users, but especially those whose decisions can make a real difference. For those considering DNS blocking as a potential solution, to the authorities with the power to permit or deny its use, ICANN’s message is clear. Full comprehension of the potential repercussions of DNS blocking is a prerequisite to limiting harm.

“The aim of this report is to advise the Internet community, and especially policymakers and government officials, of the implications and consequences of using DNS blocking to control access to resources on the Internet,” the report begins.

“DNS blocking can have serious side effects. A block may affect users outside the jurisdiction of the party doing the blocking. Users may not know that a block is in place, and can interpret it as a site outage or other error, encouraging potentially insecure behavior to ‘fix’ it. A block may affect domains that provide services for other domains, causing collateral damage beyond the intended scope of the block.”

Motivation and Expectation

ICANN takes no position on whether DNS blocking is good or bad, or whether specific motivations to block tip the scales one way or another. Whether supported by local law, justified on morality grounds, or mandated by governments purely for the purpose of censorship, the report focuses on the technical aspects of DNS blocking, the consequences, and advice to limit harm.

The report defines DNS blocking as an approach to regulating or restricting access to information on the internet by interfering with the normal process of responding to DNS queries about domain names or IP addresses.

This is usually achieved by “denying that a name or address exists or by providing false information about it.”

While easy to implement, DNS blocking is only effective against users of the DNS where blocking is implemented, and has no effect on the existence of the targeted content, which remains accessible by alternative means.

These limitations should be well understood since they help to determine whether DNS blocking can fulfil the stated objectives. Having weighed the benefits and considered the implications, DNS blocking may not be needed at all.

“It is important that any entity mandating or implementing DNS blocking understands the implications of the technology. For example, DNS blocking in one jurisdiction can affect the accessibility of content in another jurisdiction. Legal authorities should form technically informed views about DNS blocking, and understand if, or the extent to which, DNS blocking may accomplish their goals and how it may affect parties outside their jurisdictions,” the report adds.

Bad DNS Blocking is Bad

DNS blocking often amounts to the protection of business interests, yet blocking for security reasons is encountered by millions of internet users every day. They include shielding minors from harmful or adult content, use of domain blocklists by major web browsers to warn users about unsafe sites, and DNS filtering to prevent exposure to malicious domains. An example cited by ICANN suggests that DNS blocking may even be a less restrictive alternative to avoid the global consequences of suspending an entire domain name.

Yet, regardless of motivation, DNS blocking measures of any kind should have clearly defined scope.

“While one jurisdiction may find that it is allowable and desirable to block a domain name, another jurisdiction may consider blocking that domain to be a violation of human or civil rights,” ICANN says.

The report highlights legal action by rightsholders against Quad9 and Cloudflare. Where DNS blocking by ISPs targets a specific, clearly defined local ‘audience’, DNS blocking at public resolvers used by a global audience risks overblocking on a much bigger scale.

In a case involving Quad9, a court order to block specific sites on copyright grounds offered no guidance on key technical issues, leaving Quad9 to block the sites globally, to avoid being held in contempt.

DNS Blocking Weakens The Battle Against Security Threats

ICANN’s report highlights issues involving internet security that are either caused or exacerbated by DNS blocking measures. For example, redirects due to DNS blocking can cause browser TLS errors that ordinarily signal a potential security threat. ICANN suggests that over exposure effectively ‘trains’ users to ignore certificate mismatches.

In the wider fight against global threat actors, DNS block circumvention reduces visibility of both traffic patterns and security threats.

“DNS data gives Internet Service Providers (ISPs) an important and accurate picture of both traffic patterns and security threats on their networks,” ICANN reports, adding that DNS data can help ISPs diagnose denial-of-service attacks, identify infected hosts, compromised domains, and vulnerable customers.

“When users turn to alternative DNS servers, some network operators, ISPs, and enterprises may experience decreased ability to manage security threats and manage certain network operations. For example, if a user accesses the third party recursive resolver via an encrypted connection using DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or DNS over TLS (DoT) and is infected with malware, the user’s ISP may not be able to detect that and notify the infected user, since DNS telemetry is being diverted away from the ISP.”

Disclosure, Transparency, Blocking Infrastructure

While reduced visibility of threats is cited as a concern, the view of DNS blocking itself is often obscured by a lack of disclosure and limited transparency.

“[DNS] blocking policies and actions are often not disclosed to affected parties, including to end users. This can make it difficult for end-users to understand when they are being blocked, or why,” ICANN warns.

“Absent some level of transparency, DNS blocking can be difficult to recognize for what it is. It can be misdiagnosed as a hosting outage, a misconfiguration, or a malicious attack.”

Before concluding with ICANN’s recommendations, an issue touched on briefly in the report but worth highlighting again, concerns the construction and embedding of online infrastructure to facilitate blocking of piracy, fraud, ransomware, and botnets.

Citing a 2023 open letter written by TCP/IP co-developer Vinton Cerf, “Concerns Over DNS Blocking” warns that the same infrastructure could be easily adapted “to suppress internal dissent, censor outside information, and surveil dissidents and journalists.”

ICANN Recommendations

Listed here verbatim are three rock-solid recommendations from ICANN’s Security and Stability Advisory Committee.

Recommendation 1: SSAC recommends that any entity implementing or mandating DNS blocking understand the implications of the technology.

Recommendation 2: SSAC recommends that DNS blocking implemented by any entity — by a government or any organization that has policy, legal, or operational control over a network or service—follow these guidelines:

A. The entity should determine whether DNS blocking will fulfill its objectives. B. The entity should have a clear policy about what and how it will block, with well-defined review and decision-making processes that minimize risk. C. The entity should implement the policy using a technique that minimizes overblocking or collateral damage that could affect its users. D. The entity should not affect networks or users outside its administrative control.

Recommendation 3: SSAC recommends that operators of recursive servers use DNS Extended Error codes (see section 6.6 Extended DNS Error) to indicate to end users and troubleshooters that DNS blocking is taking place

The report DNS Blocking Revisited is available here (pdf)

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In late 2022, music industry giants including Warner Bros. and Sony Music secured a victory in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.

The record labels had accused the Astound-owned ISP of failing to adequately address its subscribers’ copyright infringement, specifically by not terminating repeat offenders.

This resulted in a Texas federal jury finding Grande liable for willful contributory copyright infringement and $47 million in damages.

While the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the infringement verdict, the lower court’s decision on how damages should be calculated was overturned, meaning a new trial is needed to determine the final amount. Meanwhile, Grande continues to contest the core liability ruling.

Grande Petitions Supreme Court

In March 2025, Grande took its fight to the Supreme Court. The ISP petitioned for intervention, arguing that existing law offers no clear guidance for providers on how to handle copyright infringement notices or when to terminate subscriber accounts. Grande’s petition specifically asked the Supreme Court to address two key questions:

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

Grande’s petition is similar to one filed by Cox Communications last year, but it’s more tightly focused on the termination threshold. Specifically, it requests clarity on how ISPs are to respond when they receive more than one third-party allegation of copyright infringement.

Record Labels Highlight “Egregious” Infringement

Where Grande is distilling the matter to its basics, the music companies responded by pointing out that the ISP has a “never terminate” policy. The question of how ISPs should respond to two third-party copyright infringement notices is a mere “hypothetical,” they countered.

“Grande refused to terminate service under any circumstance, even after receiving thousands (or tens of thousands) of credible infringement notices about a single customer,” the music companies responded at the Supreme Court.

The rightsholders stress that Grande was well aware of the fact that many of its subscribers were engaged in “egregious” copyright infringement. Instead of taking action to stop this activity, the ISP allegedly did nothing. Therefore, the music companies asked the Supreme Court to deny the petition.

Grande: What Does Egregious Even Mean?

Before the Supreme Court decides whether to take on the case, Grande took the opportunity to have the last word. The ISP vehemently disagrees with the record labels, arguing that they’re trying to dodge a Supreme Court review by mischaracterizing the central legal question and the factual record.

Grande argued that the core issue is, and always has been, whether an ISP can be held liable for contributory copyright infringement simply for providing internet access to subscribers who are merely known (i.e., received two or more infringement notices), rather than proven “egregious,” infringers.

They accuse the music companies of inventing the “egregious infringement” standard that was never part of the case, to make their victory seem less controversial. According to Grande, the judgment against it was based on the broader, lower threshold of two or more notices.

“Respondents have no basis for contesting the obvious certworthiness of this question. So they instead try to dodge review by blatantly rewriting the record,” Grande notes, adding that the appeal court “did not say anything about ‘egregious’ infringement because respondents’ case was not limited to egregious infringement.”

Maybe 10 notices? 20? 50? 500?

The Internet provider stresses that current copyright law isn’t clear on the threshold for repeat infringement. This was simply not defined by Congress in the DMCA and, after being a non-issue for years, has now resulted in multiple lawsuits with billions of dollars on the line.

The music companies’ argument citing “egregious” infringement is not what this case boils down to, the ISP notes, as providers have been held liable for subscribers that allegedly infringed twice. Grande adds that it isn’t even clear what “egregious” means.

“Aside from being divorced from reality, respondents’ new theory is also half-baked. What exactly is ‘egregious’ infringement? Respondents never say. If not two notices, where is the threshold? Maybe 10 notices? 20? 50? 500?” Grande writes.

“Respondents never even try to define where their line exists. And the reason for that failure is obvious: any number above two is inherently arbitrary. If the point is that ISPs are aware of specific users engaged in specific infringement, then any notice should suffice.”

10 notices? 20? 50? 500?

In addition to disputing the number of infringements that qualify for liability, the ISP also highlights the Supreme Court’s recent analysis of secondary liability in Twitter v. Taamneh, suggesting that providers may not be secondarily liable for subscribers at all.

Cox and the U.S. Amicus Brief

Grande has made many of these arguments before, but it now sees itself strengthened by an amicus brief the U.S. Solicitor General sent to the Supreme Court, encouraging it to take on the related Cox petition. That case also revolves around liability, with music companies taking on the ISP.

The U.S. opinion referenced the aforementioned Taamneh ruling, questioned ISP liability, and warned that the current precedent may lead to disconnections for many innocent subscribers. While Grande’s petition has different nuances, the company says that it would serve as an “ideal companion” case.

“The government has confirmed that Cox should be granted — as it plainly should. This case remains an ideal companion to Cox. It presents the purest form of the question on the cleanest record,” the ISP writes.

With all arguments now on the table, the decision rests with the Supreme Court. The Justices will decide whether to grant Grande’s petition, a move that could have profound implications for the entire ISP industry and its role in battling online piracy.

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A copy of Grande’s reply brief, which was submitted to the Supreme Court a few days ago, is available here (pdf).

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In common with many services provided by Google, its search engine is wide open and free of charge at the point of delivery.

The quid pro quo is the user’s consumption of Google ads, placed by millions of advertisers for all kinds of products.

Given the scale, it’s no surprise that some offer products of dubious origin. The question is who can be held liable beyond the seller, and under what specific circumstances.

Textbook Pirates

In June 2024, some of the world’s largest publishers came together in a joint lawsuit targeting Google. In a complaint filed at a New York federal court, companies including Cengage Learning, Macmillan Learning, Elsevier, and McGraw Hill bemoaned Google’s ‘systemic and pervasive advertising’ of infringing copies of their copyrighted textbooks.

The publishers’ allegations concerning Google Shopping describe ads that use unauthorized images of the publishers’ genuine textbooks, some with visible trademarks, to promote sales of pirated copies. A ‘bait-and-switch’ by Google, the publishers allege. More generally, the publishers claim that Google searches for their textbook titles return piracy-heavy results, making their original products more difficult to find.

The publishers claim ‘pirate’ ad takedown notices were sent repeatedly to Google, but to little effect. Notifications identifying specific ‘pirate sellers’ as repeat infringers didn’t lead to Google terminating their accounts “within a reasonable time, if at all.”

Google’s Motion to Dismiss

In a recent motion to dismiss, Google sought to thin out the publishers’ claims, which include vicarious copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and violation of New York’s deceptive business practices law.

In an opinion and order handed down this week, United States District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon analyzes the publishers’ claims and relevant legal precedents. Google believes the publishers’ vicarious copyright infringement claim should be dismissed; the Judge put that to the test.

A vicarious copyright infringement claim must contain two elements:

• The right and ability to supervise the infringing conduct and • Direct financial interest in the infringing activity

Google moved to dismiss based on the publishers’ alleged failure to plead both elements. The Court had no need to go further than the first.

Ability to Supervise or Control

A finding of vicarious liability in this case turns on Google’s relationship to the pirate textbook sellers (direct infringers), not just the infringement itself. The first element must show that Google had the ability to supervise or control the third parties’ infringing activity yet failed to do so.

Google says that because the alleged direct infringement (sales of pirated textbooks) took place on the pirate sellers’ third-party websites, it’s clear that its ability to supervise or control doesn’t extend that far.

Citing precedents such as Perfect 10 v. Amazon and Perfect 10 v. Visa, Judge Rochon agrees with Google.

In these cases, the ability to terminate an advertising or payment processing relationship, which might indirectly reduce infringement on third-party websites, was not considered to be the ‘direct control’ over infringing activity required for a claim of vicarious liability.

In cases including Napster, the opposite was true due to the infringement taking place on a system under Napster’s control, where it had the right to terminate access.

Indirect Effect is Insufficient

The Court accepts that the removal of infringing ads and the termination of accounts may have an indirect effect by reducing traffic to the pirate sellers’ websites. However, that doesn’t mean that Google has any control over the websites where the infringement takes place, or that any measures applied to search would change that.

“The fact that ‘search engines [can] effectively cause a website to disappear by removing it from their search results’ is not enough to give rise to vicarious liability,” the order reads.

“Plaintiffs have not adequately pleaded that Google has sufficient ability to control or supervise the Pirate Sellers’ infringement, and therefore, Plaintiffs’ vicarious copyright infringement claim fails to state a claim.”

Court Denies Request to Dismiss Trademark Claim

Google’s request to dismiss the publishers’ trademark claim was rejected.

The publishers’ claim under 15 U.S.C. § 1114(1)(b) relates to “advertisements intended to be used in commerce upon or in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of goods or services” when such use is likely to “cause confusion or deceive.”

The plaintiffs claim that Google included unauthorized reproductions of their trademarks in the pirate sellers’ ads, having acquired the images containing the marks from the sellers themselves. Google denied that, insisting that it only displayed images where the marks were already applied.

The Court found that the publishers had sufficiently pleaded their direct trademark infringement claim, so this element of Google’s motion to dismiss was denied.

The case will continue with the trademark claim intact, alongside a contributory copyright infringement claim that was not included in Google’s motion to dismiss.

Judge Rochon’s opinion and order is available here (pdf)

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Two years ago, the European Commission published a non-binding recommendation to tackle the problem of live-streaming piracy, sports in particular.

For instance, the EU encouraged member states to introduce measures to facilitate prompt takedowns of live streams, while service providers and rightsholders were encouraged to tackle challenges through collaboration.

To the disappointment of many rightsholders, the recommendation required no mandatory action by EU member states. So, when the Commission recently launched an evaluation asking stakeholders to share their views on the recommendation, many asked for more robust legislation.

Advanced piracy blocking systems are high on the agenda. Semi-automated mechanisms capable of blocking sources quickly are preferred. These should be implemented by ISPs, but rightsholders see a role for DNS services and VPNs too.

Variations on this type of mechanism are currently active in Italy, Spain and France. Rightsholders, including the MPA and DAZN, mentioned this in their responses to the Commission, calling for expansion in the EU. However, not everyone agrees that broader and more automated blocking efforts are the right path forward.

Cloudflare Issues Stark ‘Blocking’ Warning

American tech giant Cloudflare, which provides CDN, proxy and DNS services, is fiercely against automated blockades. The company has been at the center of various blocking actions in recent months, as its infrastructure was targeted in Italy, Spain, and France.

In some instances, this has led to overblocking where legitimate Cloudflare customers (and their users) were hit as collateral damage.

“Over the past two years, we have witnessed disproportionate and damaging efforts by rightsholders to use blocking measures to tackle piracy online, particularly in relation to unauthorized live streaming of sports,” Cloudflare writes.

From Cloudflare’s submission

Cloudflare notes that pressure from rightsholders has led some European national governments to implement “problematic and imprecise” blocking mechanisms. It says that these blocking tools “often lack due process” and result in “significant collateral damage” for legitimate internet users and businesses across the EU.

As an intermediary, Cloudflare’s infrastructure and IP-addresses are used by pirate sites and services. However, since these are shared with innocent sites, blocking renders those inaccessible too.

“Blocking one IP address, thus can render thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of domains unreachable,” Cloudflare warns.

Italy, Spain, and France

Cloudflare specifically highlights Italy, Spain, and France as countries where problems have emerged. The Italian “Piracy Shield” law has resulted in “overblocking on a massive scale,” the company says, adding that it violates the Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU law.

In Spain, blocking orders also caused substantial collateral damage. Cloudflare explains that, due to a broad court order that included Cloudflare IP-addresses, millions of Spanish users were blocked from accessing thousands of non-targeted websites.

“This blunt approach not only demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet works, it also raises significant questions about compliance with the European Union’s Open Internet Regulation,” Cloudflare writes.

In France, meanwhile, courts have ordered VPN providers and DNS resolvers to block pirate sites. At the same time, there are plans to update the law to enable blockades of pirated live sports broadcasts in real-time, which also raises overblocking concerns.

No VPN and DNS Blocking

Cloudflare urges the EU to tread with caution going forward. Instead of updating the law to enable broader blocking powers, it calls for limiting the blocking efforts.

For example, it argues that blocking orders should never extend to core, global Internet technologies such as global DNS resolvers and VPNs. These services operate globally and can’t easily restrict blocking measures geographically, the company notes.

“Blocking applied to an ISP-owned DNS resolver will have a geographically restricted effect, since an ISP typically only serves users in one country. In contrast, public DNS resolvers or VPN providers operate globally.”

Aside from the technical challenges, Cloudflare notes that VPNs and proxies are widely used to protect free expression. Interfering with these services through onerous regulation could amount to a violation of privacy and freedom of expression.

Transparency, Safeguards and Compensation

Cloudflare recognizes that piracy is a real problem that needs to be addressed. However, it believes that more extensive blocking is not necessarily the answer. Instead, it calls for more transparency, proper safeguards, and cooperation between all stakeholders.

Cloudflare’s suggestions include the following (abbreviated and summarized).

– Last Resort Only: Blocking should only be used as a final option to reduce local access to pirated content.

– Protect Core Internet Technologies: Blocking orders must not apply to essential global internet technologies like global DNS resolvers and VPNs.

– Prioritize Notice-and-Takedown: Rightsholders must first attempt notice-and-takedown procedures with hosting providers before requesting blocking.

– Independent Verification: All blocking requests need formal justification and independent verification by a designated governmental or independent regulatory body.

– Transparency: Transparency reports should detail the blocked domains, implementation times, and the identities of requesting parties.

– Rapid Rectification: Publicly available rapid response systems should be in place to quickly correct any incorrect or overly broad blocking measures.

– Independent Dispute Resolution: An independent body should hear appeals from any affected parties, ensuring legal review and procedural fairness.

– Liability for Overblocking: Rightsholders should be held liable for any economic or reputational harm caused to non-targeted third parties due to overblocking.

EU Urged to Resist One-Sided Blocking Calls

More drastic blocking demands are not the way to tackle piracy, according to Cloudflare. Instead of drafting new legislation, the EU is encouraged to facilitate healthy cooperation where all stakeholders are heard.

“The European Commission should resist excessive requests to expand network level blocking as a means to tackle piracy,” Cloudflare writes.

“Effectively dealing with piracy of live events will depend on multiple solutions being deployed simultaneously, combining sharing of data, law enforcement measures, industry cooperation, and measures for distribution of legal content that better satisfy the demand.”

This can all be done without new legislation, Cloudflare says. While that may be true in theory, previous calls for increased collaboration haven’t led to concrete progress. And with tensions rising to the point where disagreements are fought out in public, cooperation between some parties might be a challenge.

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A copy of Cloudflare’s submission in response to the European Commission’s assessment of the May 2023 Commission Recommendation to combating online piracy of sports and other live events is available here (pdf)

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