The latest episode of Game of Thrones has leaked online several hours before its official premiere. The leak comes from the German version of Amazon Prime, where it was put online early. Since then it's been widely shared on various pirate sites.

Several hours before its official premiere, the second episode of the latest Game of Thrones season is already widely available on torrent and streaming sites.

According to reports from several viewers, the German version of Amazon Prime accidentally made the episode available on the platform a few hours ago.

Apparently, the second episode of the season simply started playing after the first one finished.

After this mistake, it didn’t take long before someone ripped the show, and soon after many links to pirated copies started to appear on the usual torrent and s...

Read entire story Yesterday at TorrentFreak

Twitter has informed TorrentFreak that another tweet from us has been removed. Apparently, a link to a news article was somehow making pirated software available. Strange, since the request was sent on behalf of movie studio Warner Bros. Apparently, there's still room to improve the accuracy of these takedown notices

Last week there was quite an uproar when Starz deleted one of our tweets, which linked to a news article about several prominent TV-show leaks.

As reasons for the takedown, the DMCA notice mentioned “images of the unreleased episodes” and “information about their illegal availability,” something that’s generally seen as fair use.

Making matters worse, Starz also sent takedown requests to several people who tweeted links to the article where we complained about the first takedown. This then generated a lot of criticism from journalists, legal scholars, and the pub...

Read entire story Yesterday at TorrentFreak

When a new Game of Thrones season is about to land, major news publications everywhere tend to come up with something exciting. But what if there's no obvious angle? Easy! Come up with a sensational headline claiming that Game of Thrones downloaders are going to jail but don't offer a single shred of evidence to back it up. Then sit back, and wait for the clicks.

In case anyone hadn’t noticed, a new series of Game of Thrones started last week. That meant hundreds of articles about the show, especially since this is probably its last hurrah.

We too did our bit, writing earlier this week how the first episode in the series had resulted in a flood of downloads via torrent sites. We’ve been writing about the show in this context for years, so the latest installment probably didn’t come as a surprise.

What will have come as a surprise, to the people who had the misfortune to read it, was an article published on t...

Read entire story Yesterday at TorrentFreak

Streaming TV provider Omniverse believes that any comparisons to 'pirate' streaming box vendor Dragon Box are scandalous. The company is asking the court to strike these from the copyright infringement complaint anti-piracy outfit ACE filed earlier this year. In addition, it wants ACE to clarify what the problem is exactly.

In February, several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix filed a lawsuit against Omniverse One World Television.

Under the flag of anti-piracy group ACE, the companies accused Omniverse and its owner Jason DeMeo of supplying pirate streaming channels to various IPTV services.

Omniverse doesn’t offer any streaming boxes but sells live-streaming services to third-party distributors, such as HDHomerun, Flixon TV, and SkyStream TV, which in turn offer live TV streaming packages to customers.

According to ACE, these channels are offered with...

Read entire story 4/20/2019 at TorrentFreak

Ten years ago this week, four men were found guilty and sentenced to prison for running The Pirate Bay. At the time, Peter Sunde said that the site would continue, no matter what. A decade on he has been proven absolutely right and that in itself is utterly remarkable.

On the morning of March 3, 2009, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, were all waiting for the final day in the now-infamous trial featuring The Pirate Bay.

The night before the original ‘notorious site’ had gone offline, worrying the masses. But as it had done countless times before, the site reappeared once again after Fredrik (TiAMO) worked his magic – from inside the halls of justice.

“I fixed the Pirate Bay from inside the courtroom just minutes ago. The site is back online,” he said.

This ty...

Read entire story 4/20/2019 at TorrentFreak

Digital rights group EFF has filed a brief in support of the stream-ripping sites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com. The sites are involved in a legal battle with several record labels and appealed a district court decision to dismiss the case over a lack of jurisdiction. EFF sides with the stream ripper operator, while highlighting that these sites have plenty of legal uses.

Last year, a group of prominent record labels filed a piracy lawsuit against the Russian operator of YouTube-ripping sites FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com.

The labels hoped to shut the sites down, but this effort backfired.

In January, US District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed the case due to a lack of personal jurisdiction. The Court carefully reviewed how the sites operate and found no evidence that they purposefully targeted either Virginia or the United States.

The sites are not seen as highly interactive and their interaction with users could n...

Read entire story 4/19/2019 at TorrentFreak

Openload, one of the world's most-visited sites, particular by those looking for movies and TV shows, has ended its uploader affiliate program. The announcement is tied to falling advertising revenues and related economic stresses. Last year it was reported that Openload generated more traffic than Hulu or HBO Go.

Earlier this month we reported on the plight of Rapidvideo, a popular file-hosting site that specializes in hosting videos.

The site previously allowed visitors to view content uploaded by other users for free, with the system funded by advertising. However, interesting market conditions forced the platform into a surprise announcement.

“We can’t finance ourselves from internet ads any longer,” the company said while revealing plans for a $5 per month subscription plan.

One of the main problems, it transpired, was the massive influx of Kodi users,...

Read entire story 4/19/2019 at TorrentFreak

There's some uproar in Canada about a supposed 'novel' tactic that's being used to sue alleged BitTorrent pirates. In reality, however, these lawsuits have been ongoing for years. They are typically known as "copyright trolling" efforts and have targeted thousands of Canadians already. For the record, this has nothing to do with Game of Thrones.

This week Canadian news outlets are reporting about a supposed new legal campaign against people who pirate movies and TV-shows via BitTorrent. 

This includes an article from CBC, which featured a still from Game of Thrones, suggesting that downloaders of the popular HBO series are at risk too. 

The coverage comes a bit as a surprise, because there is nothing new to these lawsuits. “Reverse class-action” suits have been ongoing for a few years in Canada now. Also, HBO or ‘Game of Thrones’ are not part of it. 

The lawsuits in questi...

Read entire story 4/18/2019 at TorrentFreak

This summer the UK government will attempt to ban underage access to sites that have a third or more of their content dedicated to porn. Everyone will be required to verify their age and sites that don't comply with the regime will be blocked by ISPs. However, citizens who seek to circumvent the rules with VPNs, for example, will also find pirate sites wide open again.

Before the dawn of the mainstream Internet, underage access to pornographic content meant trying to sneak a glance over someone’s shoulder at a well-thumbed adult magazine.

Or, if you were ‘lucky’, finding a VHS cassette in a friend’s dad’s cupboard, behind the coats and shoes, in a box, inside another box, in an envelope marked “holiday video”. Such things apparently happened.

With the dawn of the Internet, things have certainly changed. With just a few clicks, one can find pornographic material, with ‘graphic’ o...

Read entire story 4/18/2019 at TorrentFreak

In many countries it can still be a challenge to access some films through legal channels. If that's the case people can pirate them instead, legendary German film director Werner Herzog says. According to the movie industry veteran, piracy has been the most successful form of distribution worldwide.

The vast majority of filmmakers are not happy with online piracy. They would rather see people using paid platforms or services.

This is also true for German Director Werner Herzog, who has won many prestigious awards during his more than 50-year career.

A few days ago, the director received a lifetime achievement award at the Visions du Réel Film Festival in Nyon. During a masterclass, the topic of piracy came up, which prompted Herzog to share some interesting thoughts.

When Herzog released his first film in 1962, movie piracy wasn’t an issue. However, that cle...

Read entire story 4/18/2019 at TorrentFreak