In one of the AI lawsuits faced by Meta, the company stands accused of distributing pirated books. The authors who filed the class-action lawsuit allege that Meta shared books from the shadow library LibGen with third parties via BitTorrent. Meta, however, says that it took precautions to prevent 'seeding' content. In addition, the company clarifies that there is nothing 'independently illegal' about torrenting.
Over the past two years, rightsholders of all ilks have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.
Most of these cases allege that AI developers used copyrighted works to train LLMs without first obtaining authorization.
Using copyrighted content without permission can be problematic, but many AI companies cite fair use as a defense. Whether that is valid will vary from case to case. Just last week, a Delaware federal court denied a motion for summary judgment based on fair use in a case between Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence, reversing an earlier decisio...
Altice, parent company of Internet provider Optimum, must disclose the personal details of a hundred alleged music pirates. The request comes from a group of prominent record labels and is part of an ongoing copyright infringement liability lawsuit. Altice, meanwhile, will receive anti-piracy information, including that related to a letter the RIAA previously sent to BitTorrent Inc., the owner of popular torrent client uTorrent.
Piracy liability lawsuits have targeted large and small Internet providers across the United States.
American telco Altice was sued by various parties in recent years, both directly and indirectly as the owner of ISP Optimum.
Last summer, Optimum chose to settle its lawsuit with some music industry giants, including BMG, UMG, and Capitol Records, under undisclosed terms. But that didn’t mean its legal woes were over.
In a similar yet separate lawsuit, the company is pitted against a group of almost 50 music labels, that also accused Altice of ‘mass-infringement...
After admitting it deliberately blocked Cloudflare to prevent a pirate IPTV service reaching users in Spain, LaLiga warned it would continue for as long as necessary to prevent live sports piracy. With thousands of innocent website owners and internet users suffering as collateral damage, a new LaLiga announcement reveals that two additional pirate IPTV providers with 400,000 local users have also been blocked, again by blocking Cloudflare. Charts and graphs produced by internet users leave little to the imagination.
When pirate site-blocking measures have hit Cloudflare in the past, those responsible responded in various ways when news of collateral damage began to spread.
A swift and relatively silent ‘CTRL-Z response’ seemed most effective at subduing criticism, mostly because it solved the problem.
When blunders were to blame, a quick-fix while pretending to know nothing was reasonably effective too. Flat-out public denials, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, has rarely shown to be effective. Bald-faced denial isn’t without its merits, however.
Den...
The Hanoi People's Procuracy in Vietnam has issued an indictment against two men said to be the operators of the massive Fmovies piracy empire shut down last year. The indictment offers detail on when the men first met, when their plans for Fmovies began to take shape, and how the site generated revenue. Last year the MPA described the shutdown as a "stunning victory." New revelations are indeed stunning, but extremely puzzling too.
Decade after decade, Hollywood studios have produced many of the greatest movies ever committed to celluloid, together telling some of the most inspiring, terrifying, beautiful, outrageous, spectacular, and funny stories ever told.
Movies make the impossible, possible, and when the Fmovies piracy empire was shuttered in 2024, the MPA showed that with enough time, effort, resources, and persistence, impossible achievements aren’t necessarily confined to the silver screen.
The MPA described the event as a “a stunning victory for casts, crews, writers, directors, stu...
Trouble continues for popular torrent site TorrentGalaxy. The site, which is seen as a notorious piracy market by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, has been unreachable for days. While some believe that the end has come for the site, technical troubles certainly can't be ruled out.
Founded in 2018, TorrentGalaxy has grown to become a leading player in the torrent ecosystem.
However, the past few months have been far from smooth sailing and last Thursday, TorrentGalaxy become entirely unreachable once again.
Attempts to access the popular torrent site stopped short of their intended destination. With one exception (torrentgalaxy.mx which points to 127.0.0.1) the site’s domain names are working just fine, but the route to the site’s servers clearly isn’t.
This site can’t be reached
As usual, there is no word from T...
At least on paper, Real-Debrid's November 2024 announcement detailing new anti-piracy measures, suggested a tough time ahead for the popular platform. Under pressure from dozens of powerful rightsholders, Real-Debrid's position looked precarious to put it mildly; not precarious enough for the service to throw in the towel, however. Three months later, a 16% drop in traffic is painful but non-fatal.
If the dismantling of Megaupload in 2012 hadn’t turned into a legal quagmire, Real-Debrid’s statement concerning new anti-piracy measures may have arrived somewhat sooner.
Ostensibly legal file-hosting services don’t exist in a legal gray area, but when platforms are mindful of conduct that could strip away eligibility for safe harbor-style protection, allegations of infringing conduct can always be countered. Not always successfully, of course, but a solid judgment and punitive sentence in the Megaupload matter could’ve meant fewer people willing to try.
...
Google has completed the busiest twelve months ever on the DMCA takedown front. The popular search engine processed a record-breaking 3.5 billion takedown requests during the year. Ironically, this milestone is in part a byproduct of ongoing anti-piracy measures, including site blocking and search engine removals, with no end in sight.
Fifteen years ago, Google processed 250,000 takedown notices in an entire year. Today, it only needs 36 minutes to reach the same number.
Despite several attempts to make piracy less visible in its search engine, the problem isn’t going away. On the contrary, takedown notices continue to increase at a rapid pace.
From 250k to 3.5bnLast February, we reported that Google had processed its 8 billionth DMCA takedown. A year later, the number of notices processed surpassed 11.5 billion. That translates to nearly 10 million takedown notices per day, every day.
The gr...
In France, rightsholders have taken legal action to get large VPN providers on board with their pirate site blocking program. The aim is to prevent circumvention of existing blocking measures in place to reduce widespread copyright infringement. From the VPN provider's perspective, site blocking threatens online freedom. Swiss provider ProtonVPN describes blocking as 'a dangerous attack on Internet freedom on the altar of corporate greed'.
Copyright holders see pirate site blocking as an effective and proportional anti-piracy measure.
Over the years, courts and lawmakers in dozens of countries have agreed, resulting in a patchwork of blocking regimes around the globe.
Initially, these efforts focused on residential ISPs as the key intermediaries. While these companies were not blamed directly, they were the go-to parties to implement blocking. But as time went on, that wasn’t enough.
More recently, DNS resolvers have been targeted with blocking orders. Since services such as Cloudflare, Google and...
Predictions of a looming music industry apocalypse, fueled by users of LimeWire and similar peer-to-peer apps, have long-since been replaced by all-you-can-eat music services. In Japan, most formats are celebrating double-digit growth, and even the CD market is holding its own. Meanwhile, the major record labels have targeted 20 ISPs to obtain the personal details of BitTorrent pirates, seeking damages for infringements dating back over two years.
The Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) has around 65 members including Sony, Universal, and Warner. For good reason it’s seen as the local equivalent of America’s RIAA.
The global music industry is currently in good health and Japan is no exception. In a recent report, RIAJ Chairman and Sony Music Entertainment CEO Shunsuke Muramatsu said that 2024 marked the 11th consecutive year of growth in the domestic market. In common with Western markets, streaming is the driving force. Somehow, Japan’s love affair with the CD is still producing steady sales too....
French football clubs held emergency talks after broadcaster DAZN withheld millions of euros in TV rights payments due this month. The dispute concerns DAZN's claims that Ligue 1 football league body LFP failed to suppress piracy and fell short in other areas too. Hopes of an amicable solution faded when DAZN paid 50% of the sum owed for February and put the other €35 million into an escrow account. LFP responded by launching legal action in Paris.
Exclusive rightsholders and broadcasters have always complained about piracy and probably always will. Complaints are often directed towards a common target; a legitimate platform perceived as uniquely positioned to have a significant impact, for example.
A dispute over piracy involving two rightsholders in France is on a different trajectory. Neither are uniquely positioned to do much about piracy beyond work underway already but, in a break from the norm, have turned on each other instead.
DAZN Unhappy With French Football LeagueIn common with all football leagues around t...