In recent years, copyright holders have paid close attention to a growing number of large piracy services with connections to Vietnam. Popular brands including Fmovies, AniWave, 123movies, BestBuyIPTV, 2embed, and Y2mate are all linked to the Asian country, which was recently branded a ‘piracy haven’. BestBuyIPTV Conviction To curb this trend, western rightsholders have been working with local authorities to bring local investigations and enforcement efforts up to par. While this process takes time, there was a breakthrough last week. The People’s Court of Hanoi handed BestBuyIPTV operator Le ..read more

Spain found itself at the center of a worldwide controversy last month when it was revealed that various rightsholders had somehow managed to convince a local judge to block Telegram in its entirety. Under intense pressure, the judge quickly rolled back the decision after an advisor concluded that the planned measure was massively disproportionate. Just weeks later, a row over an app that’s no longer available from any official app store, seems to be heading towards another controversy and yet more debate on what constitutes a proportionate response to online piracy. This time top-tier footbal ..read more

England is widely regarded as the ‘home of football’ and the Premier League is its top competition, drawing hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world. Aside from the sportive stakes, the Premier League also has a vested interest in selling broadcast rights. These rights generate billions of pounds in revenue per year; a staggering amount unmatched by any other football league. Broadcasters who secure these rights typically recoup their investment through the public, often in the form of subscriptions. However, not all football fans are willing to play this game and some seek out ..read more

In a world where users can have their own ChatGPT-like AI instances up and running on their own PCs, in just a handful of minutes, for zero spend and completely legally, the app experience on smart TVs rarely fails to disappoint. Yet when smart TV users somehow manage to clunk their way through, say, LG’s menus, and then avoid the avalanche of distractions that exist purely to break their will, only disappointment lies ahead for the IPTV-curious. If, against all odds, they find an app that resembles the thing they actually searched for, the high probability of being presented with the app “Sma ..read more

Under U.S. copyright law, Internet providers must terminate the accounts of repeat infringers “in appropriate circumstances.” Many ISPs have been reluctant to take such drastic measures, which triggered a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits in recent years with WideOpenWest (WOW!) as one of the targets. The Colorado-based Internet provider was sued by a group of movie companies including Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures. The filmmakers accuse the ISP of failing to disconnect the accounts of subscribers who were repeatedly flagged for sharing copyrighted material via BitTorrent. The mo ..read more

At the start of the 2010s, Movie2K was one of the most visited sites on the web. The site was an early adopter of pirate streaming and at its peak, secured a spot among the twenty most-visited websites in Germany, beating Twitter and Amazon. Movie2K’s success generated a healthy revenue stream which its operators converted to a new and exciting ‘currency’ called Bitcoin. It’s assumed that the goal was to keep the haul hidden from prying eyes, but more on that later. The site’s reign ended with a surprise shut down in the spring of 2013. Many believed that legal troubles had plagued the site, a ..read more

From a standing start in 2016, manga piracy site Mangamura (Manga Village) took just two years to become the largest site of its type and the single largest online piracy threat Japanese publishers had ever encountered. Publishers including Shogakukan, Kadokawa, and Shueisha, and their anti-piracy partner CODA, estimated that in its relatively brief time online, Mangamura had caused a staggering $2.91 billion in losses. In April 2018, in the wake of a government announcement that detailed emergency website blocking against sites including Mangamura, the site suddenly disappeared and was never ..read more

Founded back in 2011, Uptobox rapidly gained popularity by making it easy for users to upload, store, and share files with others online. In April 2023, Uptobox received 34 million visits from users all over the world, around a third of those from France. At several points in its dozen or so years online, Uptobox faced adversity, mostly due to copyright issues. Last May, the site was blocked by French ISPs but determined to stay online, Uptobox provided its users with advice on how blocking could be circumvented. On September 20, 2023, not even the most sophisticated techniques allowed users t ..read more

After almost two decades reporting on the piracy landscape, speaking with hundreds of people involved in all aspects of piracy on the way, those who dodge cinema security to camcord the latest movies are still the most puzzling. As a deterrent, the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence seems to mean almost nothing. The prospect of sitting quietly for two to three hours, knowing that they’re already being monitored along with the rest of the audience, is just part of the experience, not the nerve-shredding ordeal of those simply imagining it. Yet, unless ‘cammers’ stop for personal reasons ..read more

Without doubt, Reddit is one of the most popular user-generated content sites that exists on the Internet today. Last month, the community-driven news and discussion platform went public and, with a market cap of more than $6 billion, immediately became one of the larger tech players. While publicly traded companies operate under a different ruleset than private ones, Reddit remains committed to its transparency efforts. A few hours ago, the company released its latest transparency report detailing the actions it took in the second half of 2023. 779,628 ‘Infringing’ Items Flagged At TorrentFre ..read more