Last month Z-Library reported that users in China were experiencing difficulties accessing the site, with new domains being blocked very quickly. The site's official WeChat and Bilibili social media accounts seemed unaffected until a surprise announcement was made on the former. It detailed a "recent crackdown by Chinese judicial authorities" on the site, its finances, and social media volunteers. Then just like that, both accounts disappeared.
Any pirate site operating at scale risks negative attention from the authorities and once governments get involved, any movement in pressure is likely to be in an upwards direction.
Considering Z-Library’s well-publicized issues with the United States government, including a criminal indictment in New York, the seizure of hundreds of domains, and the site’s subsequent return online, things seem to be going remarkably well.
Indeed, the arrest of two of its alleged operators in Argentina back in 2022 doesn’t appear to have held the platform back in any noticea...
After re-writing the rules of anti-piracy enforcement, the P.CoK team at Kakao Entertainment have now torn up the rulebook, set it on fire, and thrown both its remains and conventional thinking out of a window. For a limited time only, pirate site owners can hand themselves in and receive a five-figure* reward. Anyone who knows a pirate site operator not seizing this opportunity can receive* the same amount* by becoming an informant. (*Terms & Conditions apply)
Anti-piracy outfits come in all shapes and sizes and due to the nature of the business, there has been no shortage of controversies over the years, some justified and others less so.
More recently, a strategy that has been seen only a handful of times before, has been playing out on social media. Protecting the interests of South Korean company Kakao Entertainment, the company’s ‘P.CoK’ anti-piracy unit has been engaging friend and foe alike, hoping to suppress piracy of local comics known as webtoons.
In Kakao’s latest report covering June to December...
After reporting that the site hasn't been financially viable for years, the operator of Subscene, one of the internet's most important subtitle sites, has pulled the plug. The plan had been known for some time and at least two, mostly complete backups, have been acquired by separate archiving teams. A 90GB torrent is currently being shared all over the world, but for international movie and TV show app users that rely on Subscene for subtitles, chaos may prevail for a while.
After two decades online and maybe even a few more under Divxstation branding right at the beginning, veteran subtitle download site Subscene.com has finally thrown in the towel.
In various guises, linked to specific geographic regions, perhaps as many as 50 domains can be linked to Subscene over the past twenty years. At a time when legal streaming services didn’t even exist, Subscene offered subtitles for large libraries of movies and TV shows in multiple languages.
Making content accessible to non-native speakers, in countries where legal streaming services wouldn...
In an effort to tackle online piracy, Lithuania has been issuing €140 fines to online pirates, catching several dozen people in the first few months. These early targets were mostly movie pirates on private trackers. However, a recent announcement revealed that audio copies of the classic self-help book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" are being watched too.
Last summer, Lithuania amended its Code of Administrative Offenses, allowing media watchdog LRTK to fine pirates, without going to court.
This legislative change is the latest attempt to deter piracy in the European country. The potential fines should make pirates reconsider their habits, the thinking was.
Tracking Torrent TrackersOver the past several months, dozens of fines were handed out. The targets were first-time offenders and all received the minimum fine of 140 euros. For repeat offenses, fines can potentially reach 600 euros.
The early fines were almost exclu...
As the Motion Picture Association's site-blocking drive lands back on home turf, countries that have already implemented their own site-blocking programs are evaluating their effectiveness. A new survey carried out by French anti-piracy agency Arcom reveals how internet users circumvent blocking and their preferred tools. More importantly from a piracy mitigation perspective, the survey reveals why users feel the need to circumvent blocking in the first place.
This year, major rightsholders are hoping that data from similar programs overseas will persuade Congress that site-blocking is a measured and reasonable response to surging worldwide piracy rates.
The usual entrenched positions on whether site blocking is, or indeed is not, a type of censorship in conflict with free speech, will be heard once again. Yet on more neutral territory lies a debate that receives relatively little attention.
Proponents of site blocking insist that it’s an essential front line response to piracy and data shows that it really does work. The oth...
After Nintendo filed a full-blown lawsuit against the developers of the Yuzu emulator in February, a rapid settlement effectively ended that phase of the project a little over a week later. In March, Nintendo targeted various related tools, taking down dozens of repos at a time. This week, a single DMCA notice filed at GitHub effortlessly took out 8,535 Yuzu repos; elsewhere, new target Mig Switch also receives attention.
Over the last quarter-century the piracy landscape has regularly received major blows from which many believed it could never recover.
While in most cases the doomsday scenario never materialized, not all niches are created equally. Those that require a very specific set of skills usually face more complex challenges.
When Nintendo sued the company and ultimately the developers of the Yuzu emulator in February, that was a significant event. When the team settled the lawsuit just a week later, that was not just unexpected.
The speed of the settlement seemed to suggest ...
Acting on a notice from Sky, Google has removed the websites of several pirate IPTV services from its UK search results. The domain names in question were previously blocked by local Internet providers in response to a High Court order. The recent action shows that Google's cooperation with rightsholders goes beyond targeting traditional pirate sites that host or link to pirated content directly.
The United Kingdom is no stranger to website blocking.
The High Court granted permission for a blockade against Newzbin2 in 2011; The Pirate Bay and numerous other targets were blocked soon after.
A rough inventory carried out by TorrentFreak recently revealed that blocked domains, including subdomains, now exceed 10,000 separate targets. That’s a conservative estimate.
While people can still access pirate sites in the UK, it’s not as easy as it once was. The blocking efforts mainly make it harder for casual pirates to find content. To keep things this way,...
Passed by Congress late December 2020, the Protecting Lawful Streaming Act (PLSA) was crafted to urgently close a loophole in copyright law that treated unlicensed reproduction and distribution as a felony, but unlicensed streaming as a misdemeanor. This week, well over three years later, a 40-year-old former operator of an illicit IPTV service became the first person to be convicted under the PLSA. While a win is a win, the case wasn't entirely straightforward.
Copyright law crafted decades ago to prevent infringement in an analog world has in many cases held up remarkably well in the digital age. Copying or reproduction remains relevant, as does the concept of distribution.
In the United States, the existence of a loophole in copyright law had been an open secret for some time. One way or another, file-hosting and BitTorrent sites could be linked to the unlicensed reproduction and distribution of copyright works, both of which carry felony charges.
However, a newer breed of streaming sites were seen as engaging in unlicensed public...
Microsoft and OpenAI face yet another lawsuit for alleged copyright infringement. Eight newspapers, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune and the Denver Post, accuse the companies of training ChatGPT models on their content without permission or compensation. In addition, ChatGPT allegedly harms the plaintiffs' reputations by linking them to fake news.
Starting last year, various rightsholders have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.
The list of complainants includes record labels, book authors, visual artists, a chip maker, and news publications. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work without proper compensation.
Keeping pace with the constant stream of legal paperwork is a challenge, but a complaint filed at a New York federal court yesterday deserves to be highlighted. In this case, eight major news publications are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.
U...
In a judgment published today, Europe's top court concludes that suspected file-sharers can be subjected to mass surveillance and retention of their data as long as certain standards are upheld. Digital rights groups hoped to end the French 'Hadopi' anti-piracy scheme, claiming that it violates the fundamental right to privacy. The CJEU's judgment leaves no stone unturned explaining why that isn't so, leaving case law to deal with the turbulence.
As part of anti-piracy scheme featuring warning letters, fines, and ISP disconnections, France has monitored and stored data on millions of internet users since 2010.
Digital rights groups insist that as a general surveillance and data retention scheme, the ‘Hadopi’ program violates fundamental rights.
Any program that monitors citizens’ internet activities, retains huge amounts of data, and then links identities to IP addresses, must comply with EU rules. Activists said that under EU law, only “serious crime” qualifies and since petty file-sharing f...