Musi is one of the most popular music apps in Apple's App Store. The free iOS music streaming tool has millions of happy users, but is branded a parasitic threat by the music industry. Behind the scenes, music industry group IFPI has been working hard to get it removed from the App Store. Apple hasn't taken action thus far but further escalation involving the major labels, YouTube, and a potential lawsuit, were proposed earlier this year. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more ..read more

If a new security report is correct, millions of people hoping to access Z-Library may have been lured to a phishing campaign instead. As we take a closer look at the report, which suggests that the personal details of millions could be at risk, the irony is unavoidable. Information on how to spot this scam is readily available, yet the scam itself relies on a steady stream of people eager to research on Z-Library, having done no research at all on the potential pitfalls. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more ..read more

Following a complaint from a local anti-piracy group, Italian telecoms watchdog AGCOM has given the green light to blocking measures against several popular stream-ripping platforms. The sites received millions of monthly visitors in Italy, where stream-ripping from sites such as YouTube has grown to become the most popular method for obtaining pirated music. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more ..read more

After dragging on for years due to the complexity of the case, which was further complicated by a global pandemic, last month a Las Vegas jury convicted five men behind pirate streaming service Jetflicks. Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber, generated millions of dollars in revenue through Jetflicks, a subscription platform that reportedly offered more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime. All five men were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann was further convicted of two counts of money laund ..read more

Founded in 2010, Hikari-no-Akari (HnA) positioned itself as the go-to site for fans of Japanese music. With anime booming across the globe, HnA’s audience didn’t stop at the border. And with over a million visits per month, rightsholders started to take notice. HnA Targeted in Subpoena Hoping to stop the infringing activities, the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) and IFPI repeatedly reached out to HnA’s operator, without result. Similar inquiries, sent to the cyberlocker where the pirated music was stored, didn’t help either. Faced with the status quo, the music industry groups ..read more

The positions of Apple and Google are very clear when it comes to piracy app availability in their respective stores. Whether created for iOS or Android, they are not allowed. Period. With the theory neatly wrapped up, reality tends to take over and at that point, the bright lines become a little blurred. Right now there are apps on the App Store and Google Play which offer TV schedule/EPG-type functionality out of the box, exactly as advertised. However, a tap here and an adjustment there reveals new functionality mentioned nowhere in official product descriptions. Stealth Piracy A report lat ..read more

Offering pirate streaming services is a serious offense in the UK, where several people have received multi-year prison sentences in recent history. These sentences haven’t deterred others from following in their footsteps. Illegal access to paid sports and TV content remains readily available, with vendors and operators profiting from these unauthorized subscriptions. There has been no shortage of news reports covering IPTV piracy enforcement actions in the UK. These interventions range from remote warnings to house visits, and arrests are no rarity either. Today, anti-piracy group FACT annou ..read more

It’s Tuesday, April 24, 2007, and other than Beyoncé & Shakira singing Beautiful Liar on the radio, nothing much is happening. For someone called haroldlky, whose real identity is currently unknown, at least part of that day was spent opening a channel on YouTube, a video site that was yet to celebrate its second birthday. On that day more than 17 years ago, the fledgling YouTuber uploaded three videos that appear to have an engineering theme. The total running time for the trio, a modest 42 seconds. Whether ‘haroldlky’ was content with less than 400 views in total over the next 17 years ..read more

Pirate sites tend to come and go but in recent months it’s been challenging to keep up with all the changes. Earlier this year, several popular pirate sites including Zorox, Upmovies, Animeflix, and Vegamovies lost their domains due to legal action. These sites relaunched under new domains, but more confusion lay ahead. In June, Fmovies switched to a new domain name, Fmovies24.to, after trading Fmovies.to for Fmoviesz.to a few months earlier. These mystery changes have never been explained, but domain-related issues related to site blocking and search engine demotion measures may have played a ..read more

After much legal wrangling, in May 2015 the Stockholm District Court ordered the Pirate Bay’s .SE domains to be handed over to the Swedish state. While the loss of thepiratebay.se and the lesser known piratebay.se had important symbolic value, the Punkt SE registry – which defeated rightsholders’ attempts to hold it liable for Pirate Bay’s infringements – warned that domain seizures would prove ineffective in the fight against piracy. The Pirate Bay’s response was to spawn a domain name ‘hydra’, with each head of the mythical beast representing a new domain with a lesser known extension. Varia ..read more