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Relative quiet over the past few months may have given the impression that Australia has lost interest in site-blocking injunctions. But just like waiting for a bus, suddenly two come along at once. The first aims to block Australians' view of more than 30 pirate sites, a disproportionate number serving the pirate anime market. A brand-new application sees Apple in a surprise partnership with Hollywood and Netflix, because everyone has exclusives to protect these days.

Unless they already have links to existing platforms or can somehow benefit from traffic previously destined for a popular preexisting domain, most new pirate sites aren’t overnight success stories.

In a saturated market where most innovation takes place behind the scenes, if it happens at all, the next big thing may struggle to make any kind of serious impression. When dozens, even hundreds of similar platforms are already offering the same content, presented in a broadly similar way, potentially via the same interface, evidence of success may take months or even years to appe...

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A copyright lawsuit filed by several major publishers puts the future of the Internet Archive's scan-and-lend library at risk. In a recent appeal, the non-profit organization argued that its solution is protected by fair use and critical to preserving digital books. The publishers, however, frame it as a radical and unlawful threat to their exclusive right to publish ebooks.

In 2020, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley and Penguin Random House sued the Internet Archive (IA) for copyright infringement, equating its ‘Open Library’ to a pirate site.

IA’s library operates as a non-profit organization that scans physical books, which can then be loaned out in an ebook format. Patrons can also borrow books that are scanned and digitized in-house, with technical restrictions that prevent copying.

Staying true to the centuries-old library concept, only one patron at a time can rent a digital copy of a physical book. These restrictions...

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A piracy-related court order obtained by Spanish football league LaLiga should've been relatively easy to explain. Instead, it now sits at the heart of a controversy that began with misinformation and is now being fueled by mischaracterization and misinterpretation. Today we'll shine new light on the case and show why it has implications for every internet user in the country. That leads to the role of ISPs and whether internet users can rely on them to defend whatever privacy they have left.

Orders handed down by courts presiding over novel intellectual property cases routinely convey clear instructions, regardless of underlying complexity. With no room for misinterpretation, everyone knows where they stand and what the court expects of them.

Such clarity can also be a plus outside court too, at least when orders are made available to the public. When originating applications or complaints are also made available for scrutiny, that allows most interested parties to take in the facts and draw reasonable conclusions.

When it first emerged last week that a court in B...

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Italian telco watchdog AGCOM has taken on the task of rolling out one of the largest piracy-blocking schemes the Internet has ever witnessed. The organization fiercely defends its IP-address blocking efforts and has full confidence in its technical expertise. Curiously, however, AGCOM's domain name is only partly functioning, as it explicitly requires a www subdomain.

In recent months, we have reported on the rollout of Italy’s blocking regime and the Piracy Shield system which operates under the auspices of telecoms regulator AGCOM.

AGCOM issues the relevant site IP address blocking orders and, from the get-go, it countered critics by stating that the system was “working perfectly”.

High marks aside, Internet providers and network specialists painted a different picture. They noticed several overblocking examples and not just small ones either. In response to one order, ISPs were required to block an IP address belonging to Inte...

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BitTorrent is no longer the 'King' of upstream traffic. New data published by Canadian broadband management company Sandvine reveals that cloud storage, YouTube, and other apps have taken over. This marks the end of a period of declining dominance that started two decades ago when BitTorrent reportedly accounted for a third of all web traffic.

In the past two decades, Internet traffic has exploded with more bytes being transferred in each successive year.

While this stable trend continues, the types of traffic that pass through the pipes have changed radically.

Back in 2004, in the pre-Web 2.0 era, research indicated that BitTorrent was responsible for an impressive 35% of all Internet traffic. At the time, file-sharing via peer-to-peer networks was the main traffic driver as no other services consumed large amounts of bandwidth.

Video Streaming Killed the Torrent Star

Fast-forward two decades and these st...

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A gamer who impersonated a Bungie anti-piracy partner as part of a bogus copyright takedown campaign on YouTube, has been found liable for violations of the DMCA. 'Lord Nazos' sent bogus complaints to YouTube claiming to represent Bungie, to take down Destiny content creators' videos, to "raise awareness" of shortcomings in the takedown system. A remarkable investigation followed as Bungie tracked down the perpetrator.

One of the most frustrating aspects of DMCA notices outside the usual complaints aired by rightsholders, is their ability to trigger policies that assume notices are accurate and in some cases, should be blindly obeyed.

Certainly, if the sender of a bogus notice puts in enough effort, the end result can be the removal of whatever material appears in the notice, even when sent to the largest platforms most familiar with fraudulent claims.

In March 2022, someone began sending DMCA notices to YouTube, claiming that the content listed in the notices infringed the rights of videog...

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Cox Communications has requested a rehearing en banc of the piracy liability lawsuit filed by several major record labels. While the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the $1 billion damages award, it kept the contributory copyright infringement ruling intact. This precedent results in a "draconian regime" that threatens the Internet connectivity of millions of people, Cox warns.

Internet provider Cox Communications has been on the sharp end of several piracy lawsuits in recent years.

The biggest hit came four years ago when the Internet provider lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels, including Sony and Universal.

A Virginia jury held Cox liable for pirating subscribers because it failed to terminate accounts after repeated accusations, and ordered the company to pay $1 billion in damages to the labels. This landmark ruling was appealed, leading to a mixed outcome last month.

Appeals Court Issues Mixed Order

After taking a...

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In the wake of its one-week lawsuit targeting the Yuzu Switch emulator, Nintendo is back to clean up the house. The company has just shut down around 30 GitHub repos offering circumvention tools with attempts to evade liability given short shrift. One Nintendo takedown notice makes it clear that, even when people link to a third-party site that hosts tools available via different links, it still amounts to trafficking in circumvention devices under the DMCA.

It took less than a week for Nintendo’s lawsuit against the company behind the Yuzu Switch emulator to have the desired effect.

After agreeing to hand over $2.4m to Nintendo while complying with the terms of a broad injunction, Tropic Haze LLC evaporated in all but name and its developers drifted away into the night, apologetic and presumably penniless. At least, that’s what the paperwork and subsequent announcement implied, give or take.

Nintendo: We’re Back

With plenty of time in the interim to clone the Yuzu repo, many people did, purely for old times̵...

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Oppenheimer was one of the most-watched movies in theaters last year, grossing nearly a billion dollars in box office revenues. For several months, the movie has been widely available on pirate sites too. While one might think that all demand would be satisfied, winning the Oscar for 'Best Picture' more than doubled the interest on pirate sites this week. The same Oscar boost affects other titles as well.

The Oscars is the most prestigious movie awards show of the year, one that’s closely followed by hundreds of millions of movie fans around the world.

This year’s awards ceremony was no exception. In the U.S. alone, close to 20 million people tuned in to the ABC show on Sunday evening; a four-year record.

In today’s connected world, news spreads quickly across other entertainment channels. As always, most interest goes out to the big winners. This weekend, Oppenheimer emerged as the clear victor with five Oscars, including the most prestigious “Best Picture...

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The head of Italy's telecoms regulator says fines of up to 5,000 euros for watching pirate IPTV streams are coming soon. Massimiliano Capitanio says users of apps downloaded from Google, Apple, and Amazon, will receive the same treatment, while confirming that investigators won't have to obtain per-person permission from a court anymore. Italians are assured, however, that warning them of the risk of 5,000 euro fines is definitely not "psychological terrorism."

The head of Italian telecoms regulator AGCOM has confirmed that long-promised fines targeting end users of illegal streaming services will be arriving “soon.”

Massimiliano Capitanio has long insisted that citizens with an illegal streaming habit are legitimate targets for enforcement, but for those still unaware of that message, another reminder was published today.

Communications, Regulated

“Perhaps it is not yet clear that penalties of 150 to 5,000 euros will be coming soon, and this, as with all fines, is a step that one would like to avoid but has become ...

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