Cloudflare has become the first internet intermediary beyond local residential ISPs, to block access to pirate sites in the UK. Users attempting to access certain pirate sites are greeted with 'Error 451 - Unavailable for Legal Reasons'. In theory, ISP blocking should prevent UK users from even seeing this notice, but a combination of Cloudflare's blocking mechanism and choices made by some VPN users results in a piracy dead end.

Internet service providers BT, Virgin Media, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, and Plusnet account for the majority of the UK’s residential internet market and as a result, blocking injunctions previously obtained at the High Court often list these companies as respondents.

These so-called “no fault’ injunctions stopped being adversarial a long time ago; ISPs indicate in advance they won’t contest a blocking order against various pirate sites, and typically that’s good enough for the Court to issue an order with which they subsequently comply.

For more than 15 ...

Read entire story Yesterday at TorrentFreak

A coalition of nearly 50 record labels, including industry giants Warner and Sony, accuse Internet provider Altice of providing a safe haven for pirates. The companies request summary judgment in their ongoing lawsuit, arguing that Altice's repeat infringer policy is a "farce" and the "antithesis of reasonable." The ISP allegedly allowed piracy to flourish on its Optimum network, thus disqualifying it from safe harbor protection under the DMCA.

In late 2023, a group of nearly 50 music labels, including Warner Records and Sony Music, filed a ‘mass-infringement’ lawsuit against Altice.

These music companies, all members of the RIAA, alleged that the ISP failed to take action against repeat infringers on the “Optimum” network, making it potentially liable for copyright infringement.

“Despite Altice’s stated policies and despite receiving tens of thousands of infringement notices concerning Plaintiffs’ works […] Altice knowingly permitted repeat infringers to continue to use its services to infringe,” ...

Read entire story Yesterday at TorrentFreak

Arrested in 2019 following an investigation by the UK's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, the former owner of pirate IPTV service Helix Hosting has just been sentenced to three years in prison by a court in the UK. Stephen Woodward, 36, reportedly generated around £1 million in revenue from three services, with offending that reportedly continued after his initial arrest.

As the Kodi ‘addon’ boom scooped up millions of new recruits and Amazon’s ‘Fire TV Stick’ sold out as a result, in 2015, a new wave of casual ‘living room’ pirates were ready for the next big thing.

The leap from free but oftentimes unreliable web-based streaming, to cheap and much more reliable illegal IPTV services, was smaller than ever and suppliers were ready to make the transition go as smoothly as possible.

A Gap Appears in the Market

There’s no doubt that small fortunes were being made around 2016 to 2018. Some pirate IPTV suppliers were clearly mak...

Read entire story 7/14/2025 at TorrentFreak

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Thunderbolts' tops the chart, followed by 'Ballerina'. 'Karate Kid: Legends' completes the top three.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have three newcomers on the list. “Thunderbolts” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on July 14 are: Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer Most downloaded ...

Read entire story 7/14/2025 at TorrentFreak

Adult entertainment conglomerate Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, has filed a lawsuit against the as-yet-unidentified operators operators of PornXP. The company accuses the website of widespread copyright infringement. After obtaining an early discovery order to unveil the operators through various domain registrars, the case moves forward with site blocking as part of the requested remedies.

Adult entertainment is big business on the internet and several of the largest brands in this niche are owned by the Aylo conglomerate.

Formerly known as Mindgeek, Aylo is the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube. It also owns many adult brands, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.

Over the years, the company has built an impressive library of more than 40,000 registered copyright works. The company’s enforcement arm Aylo Premium protects this content by various means. It has sent many millions of t...

Read entire story 7/13/2025 at TorrentFreak

A lawsuit, filed by several publishers in 2024, accused Google of not doing enough to prevent piracy while simultaneously profiting from it. A recent success for Google led to the dismissal of the publishers' vicarious liability claim, leaving a claim for contributory infringement to be decided. In a letter to the court on Thursday, counsel for Google requested a stay, pending the Supreme Court's decision in Cox vs. Sony, and a “potentially dispositive” impact on the case.

In a lawsuit filed at a New York court in June 2024, publishers including Cengage Learning, Macmillan Learning, Elsevier, and McGraw Hill, bemoaned Google’s ‘systemic and pervasive advertising’ of infringing copies of their copyrighted textbooks.

The complaint alleged that Google Shopping ads placed by third parties used unauthorized images of the publishers’ genuine textbooks to promote sales of pirated copies; a ‘bait-and-switch’ by Google, the publishers said.

Further allegations of infringement concerned Google search results that allegedly returned pi...

Read entire story 7/12/2025 at TorrentFreak

Some rightsholders in the EU are now demanding blocking of pirated live streams, no later than 10 minutes after notification. In Australia, extreme 'live' blocking doesn't yet exist, but even dynamic blocking delays can be measured in days rather than minutes. A blocking order handed down this week took 90 days to navigate through a system designed to respect everyone's rights. Is that too slow? Or simply how long it takes to get things right.

Unlike the speed of light in a vacuum or the infinite journey into Pi, measures to enforce copyright are subject to constant change and perpetual expansion.

As the site-blocking debate revs up in anticipation of a green light in the United States, fifteen years of global site blocking experience is poised to hit the ground running. After that, calls for further improvement and expansion are only a question of time.

Australia: A Decade of Site Blocking

Last month marked the ten-year anniversary of amendments to Australia’s Copyright Act. The Copyright Amendment (Online In...

Read entire story 7/11/2025 at TorrentFreak

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized domain names of several gaming-related pirate sites, including NSW2U.com, which has been Nintendo's nemesis for years. The operation was carried out in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, including the Dutch fiscal police. It is not immediately clear whether the action is linked to any arrests or indictments.

Nintendo and other gaming companies are doing everything in their power to stop the public from playing pirated games.

This includes sending a steady stream of cease-and-desist notices, as well as filing lawsuits. And in some rare cases, law enforcement agencies are stepping up to help.

Feds Seize Gaming Piracy Domains

Today, the FBI has seized several domain names linked to well-known game piracy websites, including NSW2U.com, Game-2u.com, Bigngame.com, and ps4pkg.com. Instead of an overview of pirated games, visitors are now greeted with a domain seizure banner.

&#...

Read entire story 7/10/2025 at TorrentFreak

Sci-Hub has launched its own SCI token through which it hopes to unlock more paywalled research. The controversial shadow library, which is used by millions of researchers around the globe, sees this as the next step to decentralize science and reward knowledge sharing. Whether this pirate 'tokenomics' works in practice has yet to be seen.

By offering free access to millions of ‘paywalled’ research papers, Sci-Hub is an unauthorized bastion of knowledge.

The site is used by researchers from all over the world to access papers they otherwise have a hard time accessing. For some, the site is essential to their work.

Major academic publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, view the site quite differently. They have taken it to court on several occasions, resulting in clear legal victories. However, Sci-Hub is still around today, and millions continue to rely on it.

Legal trouble...

Read entire story 7/10/2025 at TorrentFreak

A recent forum event held in Washington promised to discuss how pirate site-blocking orders can be safely implemented in the United States. With speakers Rep. Darrell Issa and Rep. Zoe Lofgren both openly admitting that SOPA was a disaster, Issa said that he believes that this time around, the errors of SOPA have all been fixed. That's clearly the case, or at least it was until a lone voice offered insight on the very topic those in attendance were there to discuss.

Unveiled earlier this year by Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Rep. Darrell Issa respectively, the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) and the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA) have underlying differences but much in common.

Both bills would enable copyright holders to request site blocking orders against foreign pirate sites, with ISPs and DNS resolvers required to prevent U.S. internet users from accessing them.

Different Bills, Same Claimed Benefits

The claimed benefits of FADPA / ACPA are simple and 100% interchangeable, likewise the stated downsides of using foreign servi...

Read entire story 7/9/2025 at TorrentFreak