Premier League fans searching for an illegal stream of the Spurs v Arsenal match on Sunday may have received an unexpected intervention. As part of the BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign, would-be pirates on X and Reddit were reportedly gifted a link to a stream, but not of the match. The replacement featured a real stream made entirely of water, protecting the viewer from malware and potentially curing them of piracy forever. For those who missed out, there are other things to try.
In a couple of weeks the UK’s BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign will celebrate its one-year anniversary.
Launched last October, the campaign aims to deter citizens from consuming live sports from pirate IPTV services and other platforms offering illegal streams.
With the slogan “Illegal Streams Let Criminals In” companies including Sky, Premier League, FACT, and ITV, hope that consumers will weigh cheap prices against the risk of malware and fraud, before concluding that a legal subscription is the best option overall.
12 Months of SavingFor the last yea...
Earlier this year, a Hawaiian district court blocked movie companies' efforts to unmask alleged BitTorrent pirates using a DMCA subpoena 'shortcut'. The filmmakers requested the court to reconsider its position, but without success. Undeterred, the filmmakers are now petitioning the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to review the lower court's findings.
Tracking BitTorrent pirates isn’t all that hard since IP addresses are openly broadcasted. With help from Internet providers, these addresses can then be linked to account holders.
ISPs don’t hand over this data voluntarily; they typically require a subpoena or court order before taking action.
In the United States, subpoenas are typically obtained by filing a copyright complaint in federal court against a “John Doe” who’s known only by an IP address. Most of these cases are filed against a single person, which makes it a relatively expensive process.
DMCA Shortc...
British musician Eddy Grant has prevailed in his copyright infringement lawsuit against Donald Trump and his 2020 campaign team over their infringing use of the iconic track 'Electric Avenue'. After consuming four years of Grant's life, the case turned on a fair use defense; under scrutiny of the court, it effortlessly failed to convince on any of the four factors that combine to indicate a permitted, non-infringing use of a copyright work.
As Donald Trump used every available resource to ensure his tenancy at the most recognizable house in the United States was extended, some social media platforms had adopted an unorthodox approach to his accounts.
Despite receiving a number of takedown notices alleging copyright infringement in Trump’s tweets, and in some cases removing content in response to apparently valid claims, the president’s account wasn’t suspended or terminated as is often the case.
That allowed one of Trump’s team to post a tweet containing a short animation; a train sportin...
In recent years Brazil's telecoms agency has claimed significant success in its mission to prevent pirate set-top boxes from accessing premium content. Whether Anatel is feeling a little vulnerable, or would simply like some new blocking ideas, is up for debate. However, in roughly ten days' time, hackers will descend on São Paulo for a two-day hackathon. Cash prizes await those who manage to disable pirate IPTV devices to the extent they can no longer communicate with their owners.
Android-based set-top devices have saturated the market in recent years, and it’s not uncommon for households to have several; downstairs, upstairs, and probably at least one in a drawer.
These devices, including the ubiquitous Amazon Firestick, are mostly content agnostic and equally capable of streaming video from legal sources such as Netflix or BBC iPlayer, or from unlicensed IPTV platforms.
The problem for rightsholders and governments hoping to curtail consumption of pirated content, is that the devices themselves are overwhelmingly legal. It’s the presence ...
Initially reported as technical issues, in September 2023 file-hosting platform Uptobox watched as its servers went offline. In reality, they were being taken away due to a criminal complaint filed by Hollywood, Canal+, Apple, Amazon, and other rightsholders. Since then, the owners of Uptobox have turned to the legal system, hoping to salvage whatever they can. On Thursday, a Paris court informed the defendants that their servers will not be returned.
Next Thursday, September 19, 2024, will mark the one-year anniversary of the raids on French datacenters that brought down file-hosting platform Uptobox.
Founded in 2011, Uptobox was a very popular site with over 34 million visits per month, a third of which were generated by French users. After being blocked by ISPs in mid-2023, enforcement action became more likely than not.
Around 20 police officers participated in the raids on cloud service providers Scaleway, OpCore, and OVH. Members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, including Columbia, Paramount, StudioCa...
A court in Paris, France, has ordered major Internet providers to block 98 domain names used by popular book download portal Z-Library. The order comes in response to a complaint from the National Publishers Union (SNE), but the victory may be bittersweet. Many of the listed domain names were previously seized by U.S. authorities, and expanding the current order could prove time-consuming.
A few weeks before the U.S. Department of Justice announced the criminal prosecution of two alleged Z-Library operators in 2022, the French Publishers Union (SNE) had already targeted the site indirectly.
In August that year, SNE obtained an order at a Paris Court, requiring French ISPs to block more than 200 domain names.
By November 2022, the order was largely moot. U.S. authorities didn’t just call for the arrest of two people connected to the site in Argentina, the feds also seized the majority of the shadow library’s domain names.
In theory, this cha...
Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo's dramatic take on Italian football's piracy problems isn't new, likewise his insistence that only coercive action will produce results. "Football is being killed," he said in a recent interview. "However, at the end of this battle we will win. Because it's either them or us." How this will be achieved isn't clear. Pirates keep jumping to new servers and if promises are kept, fans are getting sued next.
Supported by almost constant life-or-death messaging, one has to wonder whether Serie A’s seemingly endless financial problems really are insurmountable.
Yet for reasons that aren’t easily understood, let alone explained, every week matches go ahead as planned. With decaying stadiums at some clubs and billions of euros in persistent overall debt, companies in other industries would’ve stopped spending beyond their means long ago, or at least succumbed to financial pressure while refusing to do so.
Serie A clubs have done neither, nor has the position changed...
Anti-piracy coalition ACE reports that Egyptian law enforcement authorities have shut down Laroza, the 'largest' pirate site in the Middle East and North Africa. Two of the alleged operators were arrested. The piracy ring operated dozens of domains and generated millions of pageviews per month.
In recent years, rightsholders have repeatedly teamed up with Egyptian law enforcement to tackle several large pirate sites and services.
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) booked several successes, shutting down domains related to popular piracy rings, streaming portals such as Egybest, MyCima, Movizland, and, more recently, Cimaclub and Cima4U.
Laroza Shuts DownThis week, anti-piracy alliance ACE reports that it helped to dismantle Laroza, which it describes as, the largest piracy site in the Middle East and North Africa. This movie and TV streaming piracy...
Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has submitted its recommendations for the EU's Counterfeiting and Piracy Watchlist. The group notes that its court-ordered site blocking efforts appear to be paying off but several intermediaries could be more cooperative. This includes domain registrar Namecheap, which refuses to block customers' sites without a U.S. court order.
Supported by Hollywood and other content industries, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has a long and well-established track record.
The group celebrated its 25th anniversary on Monday, with now-retired director Tim Kuik receiving a royal decoration as Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau for his achievements.
While Kuik undeniably proved to be a major player in the anti-piracy field in recent decades, BREIN’s work continues without him. BREIN’s recommendations for the EU’s upcoming Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List were made public a few days ago and include se...
UK broadcaster Sky has submitted its report to the European Commission providing its overview of the latest piracy threats. These submissions guide the EC as it updates its 'Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List' and this time around some rightsholders want intermediaries to receive special attention. Sky's submission dedicates more space to Cloudflare than even the most egregious pirate IPTV hosting providers, and Facebook doesn't get off lightly either.
In an article published yesterday, we featured the Motion Picture Association’s submission to the European Commission (EC) for its next Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List.
While still calling out familiar targets, such as torrent sites, streaming portals, and piracy apps, the MPA clearly wants to draw attention to the role of third-party intermediaries in the piracy ecosystem. UK broadcaster Sky’s submission to the EC adopts an identical strategy.
Sky starts from the now-familiar position that large-scale commercial piracy isn’t just a problem for rightsholder...