Popular torrent site uploader Will1869, known for releases tagged as 'COLLECTiVE', has been arrested by police in the UK. He specialized in distributing recent movies that were typically sourced elsewhere. COLLECTiVE torrents were shared on public portals including 1337x and also appeared on the home site, Laidbackmanor, which was also shut down by police.

Torrent site uploaders come in various shapes and sizes. Only a few become so popular that their ‘brand’ is widely recognized by online pirates.

COLLECTiVE falls into the latter category. The uploader operating under this tag, Will1869, shared many high-profile titles, mostly films. He purportedly operated as a one-man team.

These releases appeared on major torrent sites including 1337x and the recently defunct TorrentGalaxy. COLLECTiVE reportedly ran a small torrent portal, Laidbackmanor, where these releases often appeared first.

Unlike regular release ...

Read entire story Yesterday at TorrentFreak

At a recent Senate subcommittee hearing, the Motion Picture Association reiterated the need for a pirate site blocking regime in the United States. Behind the scenes, lawmakers and stakeholders appear to be progressing towards an agreed-upon position. One of the main roadblocks, according to Senator Coons, is that Internet providers are seeking retroactive immunity as part of a 'deal'.

After a decade of focusing on efforts overseas, the push for website blocking has landed back on American shores.

Domestic site blocking initiatives were shelved for over a decade in the U.S. following the SOPA backlash, but that hesitation appears to have evaporated.

With Representative Zoe Lofgren’s introduction of the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) in February, the controversial mechanism of court-ordered blocking against foreign ‘pirate’ sites is no longer just a foreign issue. On the contrary, with more than one bill in the making, lawmakers a...

Read entire story Yesterday at TorrentFreak

Cumbersome IP address blocking to fight piracy of LaLiga matches has also punished the innocent; an estimated 2.7 million innocent sites blocked during a single weekend according to recent data. Sounding the alarm over a potential threat to democracy, cybersecurity collective RootedCON has appealed to Spain's Constitutional Court to bring blocking to an end. Meanwhile, letters sent by LaLiga to journalists are being perceived as threats.

Rampant piracy of live sporting events has been a hot topic in Europe for several years. Anti-piracy measures against relatively static targets have their place but preventing access to pirated live streams is much more difficult.

After calling for assistance from the European Commission, many rightsholders are hoping for new legislation to hold intermediaries more accountable. Until then, most sport-linked rightsholders continue to rely on site blocking measures.

After years of fine-tuning, courts all over Europe understand the process well and most appreciate the difficultie...

Read entire story 5/19/2025 at TorrentFreak

Responding to an inquiry from the U.S. Copyright Office, a coalition of watchdog groups has flagged various problems with the Copyright Claims Board. They label the three-year-old small claims tribunal as "ineffective" and a poor use of taxpayer money. The groups highlight a high volume of dismissed claims, concerns over the opt-out procedure, and an alarming 60% default rate in cases that do reach a final determination.

The US Copyright Claims Board launched in 2022. Through this Copyright Office-hosted venue, rightsholders can claim damages outside the federal court system.

The board, instituted through the CASE Act, aims to make it cheaper for creators to resolve disputes. There’s no attorney required and the filing fee is limited to $100 per claim. The potential damages are capped at $30,000 and those who prefer traditional lawsuits can choose to opt-out.

Many rightsholders and related groups backed the creation of a small claims board, noting that this would help resolve copyright...

Read entire story 5/18/2025 at TorrentFreak

Sharing information on social media is common for many people nowadays, but it's not always without consequence. In some cases, simple 'likes' can be used as evidence in court, as a Florida man recently discovered. His Star Wars and Minion 'likes' were presented as evidence to support allegations he may be a prolific BitTorrent pirate.

Strike 3 Holdings is a familiar name in U.S. federal courts. As the most prolific copyright litigant, the adult entertainment company has filed over 15,000 lawsuits in federal courts.

These lawsuits typically target people whose Internet connections were allegedly used to download and share copyright-infringing content via BitTorrent.

Many of these cases result in private settlements and are never heard from again. Occasionally, however, a defendant decides to push back, arguing their innocence before the court. This includes defendant John R., who was sued in a Florida court ...

Read entire story 5/17/2025 at TorrentFreak

The world's leading VPN providers have been ordered to block around 200 pirate site domains following legal action in France by Canal+ Group. The broadcaster argued that users of NordVPN, CyberGhost, Surfshark, ExpressVPN and ProtonVPN, use those services to access illegal football and rugby matches to which it also owns the rights. The VPN companies resisted on various grounds, but to no avail.

Article L. 333-10 of the French Sport Code enables rightsholders to request blocking measures against named pirate sites if they can demonstrate “serious and repeated infringement” of their exploitation rights.

To prevent pirate sites from being accessed on French soil, rightsholders may request that “all proportionate measures” are implemented by any online entity in a position to help. The scope of Article L. 333-10 was always meant to be broad.

The first logical targets were local ISPs which easily fell within scope. Then, when inevitable circumven...

Read entire story 5/16/2025 at TorrentFreak

Italy has intensified its fight against IPTV piracy by issuing fines direct to subscribers whose details were linked to a criminal investigation. This week, 2,282 users across the country received fines, typically starting at €154. This marks a significant step in holding end-users accountable, which is widely praised by the country's top football bosses.

A few months ago, Italy paved the way to issue fines against subscribers of pirate IPTV services.

A memorandum of understanding between the Prosecutor’s Office, Guardia di Finanza, and AGCOM, established a “collaboration protocol” where information on IPTV users would be shared between agencies.

The source of this information wasn’t made immediately clear, but it’s likely that it applies to subscriber details obtained in IPTV raids that regularly take place in the country. These databases likely hold emails and other potentially identifiable information...

Read entire story 5/16/2025 at TorrentFreak

French courts continue to expand the scope of sports piracy related DNS blocking, as requested by rightsholders. While perceived as too broad by the targeted DNS resolvers, the orders are not signed blindly. A new court order issued this month rejects blocking requests for several sports streaming domains, noting that sports network beIN failed to supply sufficient proof that 'their' streams were pirated.

In May last year, the Paris Judicial Court ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to block access to several pirate websites by effectively poisoning their DNS.

The order, requested by Canal+, compelled the tech giants to modify their resolvers or take measures that had that effect, to prevent users from accessing unauthorized sports streams.

In the months that followed, additional rightsholders such as DAZN and beIN joined in on the action with similar requests, while more DNS providers were added as targets, including Quad9 and Vercel. Transparency is limited, however, so it ...

Read entire story 5/15/2025 at TorrentFreak

Legal frameworks put in place to protect the audiovisual industries were never likely to exist in a vacuum forever. A coalition of publishers, whose news content was quickly digested, rewritten, and republished on an automated AI-powered news platform, now have a similar ISP blocking order in hand. To have any noticeable effect on this type of piracy, they'll need more than just that.

On February 11, 2025, a coalition of forty media outlets took legal action in France hoping to slam the brakes on mass piracy of thousands of articles published each day.

Under the umbrella groups La Dépêche du Midi, La Montagne, Sud Ouest, Le Télégramme, Publihebdos, and La Nouvelle République du Centre, and together the “Alliance”, the publishers hoped to derail “parasitic” news platform, news.dayfr.com.

In operation since 2021, the apparently automated platform allegedly harvests the media companies’ articles. With assistance from AI, it ...

Read entire story 5/14/2025 at TorrentFreak

Major music companies have fired back at Grande Communications' Supreme Court plea, arguing that the ISP's questions about copyright liability are "utterly divorced from reality". They note that the ISP's liability is not the result of shortcomings in copyright law, but from Grande's own "egregious" policy of never terminating even the most rampant infringers.

Late 2022, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.

The record labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

A Texas federal jury found Grande guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement, and the ISP was ordered to pay $47 million in damages.

The copyright infringement verdict was confirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court ...

Read entire story 5/13/2025 at TorrentFreak