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

During the 6th meeting of the Policy Subcommittee of the Copyright Subcommittee of the Cultural Affairs Council in Japan last month, representatives from Google and ByteDance were invited to give presentations on the topic of appropriate compensation. As the meeting progressed, the topic sparked discussion on connected matters, sometimes with legal implications. Neither company had lawyers present but, with plenty of scope to challenge the video platforms on piracy issues, including how some manage to benefit more than others, there was no shortage of conversation. Google/YouTube Takeya Kito ..read more

Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related sources. The site launched in the fall of 2022, just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, to ensure continued availability of ‘free’ books and articles to the broader public. Late last year, Anna’s Archive expanded its offering by making information from OCLC’s proprietary WorldCat database available online. The site’s operators took more than a year to scrape several terabytes of data and published roughly 700 million unique records online, for free ..read more

If the vision for the creation of the web included a day one feature that could restrict access to content, people working on their own specialist topics, catering to their own niche audiences, would’ve happily pressed the button. A hundred or a thousand thriving communities, small utopias in their own right, with no connection to each other, would’ve been seen as a feature, not the failure of the internet we otherwise see today. The openness of the early days of today’s web, the ability to see most other sites and communities while being exposed to creativity and information like never before ..read more

Over the past year-and-a-half, artificial intelligence has been enjoying its mainstream breakthrough. The instant success of ChatGPT and other AI-based tools and services kick-started what many believe is a new revolution. By now it is clear that AI offers endless possibilities. While there’s no shortage of new avenues to pursue, most applications rely on input or work from users. That’s fine for the tech-savvy, but some prefer instant results. For example, we have experimented with various AI-powered image-generation tools to create stock images to complement our news articles. While these al ..read more

In his 1962 book, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke noted that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” At the dawn of the 80s, when computers thrived on a single kilobyte of RAM, any enthusiast with access to Clarke’s book would’ve read his words, gazed at the 1,024 bytes of available RAM, and envisioned a galaxy of opportunity. As expectations have grown year-on-year, mainstream users of technology today are much less easily impressed, and fewer still experience magic. Yet, there are soli ..read more

For a long time, pirate site blocking was regarded as a topic most U.S. politicians would rather avoid. This remnant of the SOPA defeat drove copyright holders to focus on blocking efforts in other countries instead. Those challenging times are now more than a decade old, and momentum is shifting. After more than forty countries around the world instituted site-blocking measures, U.S. lawmakers may be more receptive to revisiting the topic. This week, MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin announced that the movie industry group is going to work with Members of Congress to enact judicial site-blo ..read more