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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. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-05-02 03:23:48 READMORE

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. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-05-01 19:26:26 READMORE

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. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-05-01 04:13:47 READMORE

The U.S. Department of Commerce has proposed new customer verification requirements for Infrastructure as a Service providers. The goal of the 'Know Your Customer' regime is to prevent fraud and abuse, including piracy. In response to this plan, prominent rightsholders want the department to expand the proposal's scope to include domain name registrars and registries. Ideally, they argue, domain companies should also be required to take down pirate domains. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-30 21:12:08 READMORE

Most civil lawsuits against alleged IPTV pirates end badly for the defendants, something easily predicted after a single read of the initial complaint. Two separate lawsuits filed by DISH against two IPTV resellers in recent months were classic examples, at least until they weren't. One reseller has just been ordered to pay damages of $30m. The second, a reseller in the astrology business, just had his case suddenly dismissed. Nobody could've predicted that. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-30 04:47:06 READMORE

Earlier this year, a Hawaiian District Court blocked movie companies' efforts to unmask alleged BitTorrent pirates using a DMCA subpoena 'shortcut'. The filmmakers asked the court to reconsider its position but without success; the 'DMCA shortcut' will remain closed. The rightsholders will appeal the order but won't be able to use evidence previously obtained through settlements with pirating subscribers. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-29 20:53:14 READMORE

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Dune: Part Two' tops the chart, followed by 'Monkey Man'. ‘'Love Lies Bleeding' completes the top three. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-29 08:09:40 READMORE

Brazil's Ministry of Justice and Public Security has announced a second phase of Operation Anime, an initiative to disrupt piracy of Japanese anime and Korean webtoon content. This second wave follows the first which took place close to a year ago. In coordination with Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA and COA based in South Korea, authorities conducted 11 search and seizure warrants in five regions. No sites have been named but domains appeared to have been seized. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-28 17:35:30 READMORE

BREIN CEO Tim Kuik has retired, shutting down an impressive career that pre-dates the world wide web. Kuik started working at a home video distributor in the 1980s and became director anti-piracy at the Motion Picture Association a decade later. He eventually reached his pinnacle at BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group where Kuik took the lead for a quarter century. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-27 22:16:24 READMORE

The Office of the United States Trade Representative has released its annual Special 301 Report, calling out countries that fall short on anti-piracy enforcement and other forms of intellectual property protection. Countries such as Argentina and China are listed as priority threats, while Vietnam is labeled a leading source of online piracy. The USTR urges the Asian country to tackle the problem and take criminal prosecutions seriously. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-27 05:33:53 READMORE

Facepunch Studios has confirmed that years of Nintendo-related uploads are being deleted from Steam Workshop in response to takedown notices linked to Garry's Mod. What began as rumors of a Nintendo DMCA takedown campaign, suddenly shifted towards a 'fake notice' campaign, run from a suspicious domain. Frustrations then targeted Garry himself for "falling for a scam." "You didn't even look at the domain!" yelled one fan. Let's do that. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-26 18:47:13 READMORE

Late January, the U.S. Department of Commerce published a notice of proposed rulemaking for establishing new requirements for Infrastructure as a Service providers (IaaS) . The proposal boils down to a 'Know Your Customer' regime for companies operating cloud services, with the goal of countering the activities of "foreign malicious actors." Yet, despite an overseas focus, Americans won't be able to avoid the proposal's requirements, which covers CDNs, virtual private servers, proxies, and domain name resolution services, among others. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-26 01:38:30 READMORE

Researchers from Delft University of Technology plan to amplify their BitTorrent client "Tribler" with decentralized AI-powered search. A new demo shows that generative AI models make it possible to search for content in novel ways, without restriction. The ultimate goal of the research project is to shift the Internet's power balance from governments and large corporations back to consumers. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-25 18:49:54 READMORE

In a joint press release on Monday, the Premier League and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment revealed the first-ever online piracy conviction in Vietnam. The news came as a surprise, as did comment published in local media attributed to a government official. It may seem like a small step, but admitting that Vietnam has a manga piracy problem, one that causes "hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to copyright owners," is a big step forward. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-25 04:09:18 READMORE

A new survey confirms that the high cost of online streaming services keeps piracy relevant. The findings suggest that one in three Americans have pirated a movie or TV series over the past year. Costs are a key motivator for these self-proclaimed pirates, with the number of legal subscription services and their price tags a key trigger. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-24 18:26:13 READMORE

The Internet Archive is doubling down on its position that its digital lending library service operates under the bounds of fair use. Major publishers assert that digitizing books without appropriate licensing amounts to infringement but IA counters that the practice is in the public interest. It also fits copyright's ultimate purpose; to promote the broad public availability of literature and other arts. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-24 02:23:48 READMORE

Long before the launch of Italy's Piracy Shield blocking system, ISP association ASSOProvider warned that trouble lay ahead and innocent parties were likely to get caught up in the crossfire. After failing to stop the launch of the platform with a legal bid in 2023, ASSOProvider has mounted a new legal challenge at the Council of State, the body that ensures public administration is carried out legally in Italy. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-23 21:43:23 READMORE

An operator of the widely popular piracy service 'BestBuyIPTV' has received a 30-month suspended prison sentence in Vietnam. The prosecution followed criminal referrals from the Premier League and ACE, who note that this is the country's first-ever piracy conviction. While this is significant, the BestBuyIPTV brand isn't gone. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-22 23:24:38 READMORE

Spanish football league LaLiga has asked a local court to charge the directors of Google, Apple, and Huawei in a row over an IPTV player app. The companies removed the Newplay app from their stores in 2022 to comply with a court order but LaLiga says that apps already installed on users' phones must be remotely deactivated. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Posted On:2024-04-22 18:38:28 READMORE