The Association of Electronic Communications Operators has provided a very gloomy assessment of progress in the fight against piracy in Portugal. While that may not sound especially unusual, this summer will mark 10 years since the launch of an industry-led, voluntary site-blocking regime, which reportedly reduced visits to pirate sites by 60%+ in a matter of months. Apritel now says that swift financial sanctions are required to being persistent pirate consumers back into line.

In 2015, Portugal’s General Inspectorate of Cultural Activities (IGAC) finalized an agreement hailed as a groundbreaking development in the fight against online piracy.

A multi-industry memorandum of understanding saw rightsholders, anti-piracy group MAPINET, ISP group Apritel, and DNS.pt, the organization responsible for .PT domains, team up with advertising companies and consumer groups to fight piracy – together.

Based on reports from rightsholders, MAPINET filed monthly complaints to IGAC and within 15 days, ISPs voluntarily blocked pirate sites and advertiser...

Read entire story Yesterday at TorrentFreak

Spotify has come a long way since it openly appealed to music pirates in its early days. This week, the streaming giant targeted "SpotifyDL," a browser extension enabling users to download tracks, playlists and albums, by bypassing its protections. Following a DMCA notice filed with GitHub, Spotify successfully forced the developer to strip the tool's core functionality.

Spotify has certainly come a long way since it allowed us to hand out free invite codes to its beta launch 16 years ago.

With over 600 million monthly active users, across over 180 markets, it is now the world’s most popular music streaming service by a significant margin.

The streaming giant has always positioned itself as a competitor to pirate services, but its success also relied on pirates. In the early days, Spotify allegedly used MP3s from The Pirate Bay to populate its beta service. The notorious Swedish torrent site was instrumental in other ways too.

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Read entire story 4/29/2025 at TorrentFreak

Used by major video platforms including Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu to name just a few, Google content protection system Widevine can be found in leading browsers, games consoles, and most mobile devices. Circumvention has been ongoing for years, but after OnlyFans sent a complaint to GitHub, a Widevine decryption project has been ejected from GitHub.

For streaming services such as Netflix, Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems provide a level of control over the company’s most valuable assets, including movies, TV shows, and other content for consumer consumption.

DRM not only restricts access to customers authorized to consume content, it can determine when and how it’s consumed too. When all goes to plan, DRM should also prevent end users from casually copying movies and TV shows, which should result in a positive contribution towards minimizing the spread of pirated content online; at least in theory.

Widevin...

Read entire story 4/28/2025 at TorrentFreak

A pending settlement between movie companies and ISP Frontier has significantly altered the scope of an upcoming copyright trial. The movie studios are expected to withdraw their claims, including their demand for pirate site blocking, leaving Frontier to face only major record labels in court. With the music companies seeking potentially over a billion dollars in damages for subscribers' piracy activities, the stakes remain exceptionally high.

In recent years, music and movie companies have filed several lawsuits against U.S. Internet providers, for failing to take action against pirating subscribers.

One of the main allegations is that ISPs fail to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in “appropriate circumstances”, as the DMCA requires.

These lawsuits resulted in multi-million dollar judgments against Cox and Grande. Meanwhile, more companies are at risk too, including Frontier Communications, which emerged from bankruptcy four years ago.

Frontier vs. Movie and Music Companies

Frontier ...

Read entire story 4/28/2025 at TorrentFreak

What began this week as research into an abuse of the DMCA to silence this publication, led to an unsettling world where bogus copyright complaints are just the tip of the iceberg. Waves of takedown notices, many filed by members of the public and various businesses, shine an unflattering light on the human condition. Whether hiding the truth, gagging rivals and critics, or simply telling tales; takedown notices sent by the public put us all at risk.

Even after years of trawling the invaluable Lumen Database, the scale of online copyright infringement today still manages to surprise week after week. And with more time spent searching, the greater the chances of the archive surfacing curiosities from years ago, or unusual items from the more recent past.

Take the bait and time has a tendency to get eaten away in journeys down various rabbit holes, and that’s a good thing. Without Lumen, censorship would undoubtedly thrive in a darker place; it already needs little encouragement.

Free* Speech (*Terms and conditions apply...

Read entire story 4/27/2025 at TorrentFreak

Technically speaking, any modern web browser can stream pirated movies and TV shows, but some make it easier than others. The Seekee app, available on iOS and indirectly on Android, markets itself as a browser with AI capabilities and fast video streaming. The latter stands out, as pirated content is surprisingly easy to find and is organized for optimal viewing pleasure. But at what cost?

The internet has made video entertainment more accessible than ever before. With plenty of legal streaming services releasing new content every week, there’s no shortage of options.

While this is good news, choice brings its own difficulties. Because there are a myriad of legal options available today, paying several monthly subscription fees can become a costly endeavor. As a result, pirate streaming sites and services are thriving.

Hollywood and other copyright holders are trying to tackle this problem through enforcement. This has resulted in both large crackdowns a...

Read entire story 4/26/2025 at TorrentFreak

A new report offers a rare glimpse into the world of pirate CDNs. The report suggests that the largest players in Russia together service around 1,400 third party pirate sites, whose operators draw on massive libraries of pirated content offered by the CDNs. A single CDN reportedly controls around 60% of the Russian market, using CDN infrastructure in the Netherlands, the United States, Ukraine, Germany, and France.

Back in 2019, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, alongside the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and Hollywood’s MPA, had reason to celebrate following a successful enforcement operation.

Their target was a CDN (Content Delivery Network) known as Moonwalk, which offered vast quantities of movies and TV shows for pirate site operators to embed in their own sites.

Services like these aren’t necessarily the cheapest option, but if time is money, having a one-stop-shop video supplier take care of pretty much everything, ads included, could certainly lighten the lo...

Read entire story 4/25/2025 at TorrentFreak

Twenty years ago, the statement "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" launched one of the most iconic anti-piracy campaigns. Through a memorable commercial, the movie industry forcefully equated digital piracy with physical theft. While the PSA became instantly recognizable, spawning countless parodies, it also attracted its own controversy. New revelations suggest that the campaign's distinctive font may have itself been copied, or dare we say 'stolen'.

First released in 2004 as part of the broader “Piracy: It’s a Crime” campaign, the “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” PSA quickly became iconic.

Its dramatic equation of online piracy with stealing handbags, televisions, and cars, also made it a fertile breeding ground for memes, satire, and ridicule.

While the main commercial is well-remembered, a lesser-known ‘street sales‘ equivalent has largely been forgotten. Even the official piracyitsacrime.com campaign website eventually vanished, only for the domain name to be later acquired and cleverly redirected t...

Read entire story 4/24/2025 at TorrentFreak

Since October 2023, relentless high-profile media reports have warned that UK-based users of pirate streaming services run a serious risk of arrest. Those claims sit in contrast to comments made by the head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) in a recent interview. Detective Chief Inspector Emma Warbey concedes that people who use pirate devices are largely able to do so "without risk of arrest." That doesn't mean entirely without risk, however.

For those not directly involved, assessing the effectiveness of an anti-piracy campaign meets significant challenges.

The results of campaigns are often measured by those behind them, in some cases after receiving significant financial assistance from friendly governments. Whether by coincidence or otherwise, subsequent reports suggesting that everyone wasted their money are impossible to find.

Reports of successful campaigns are less scarce but since supporting evidence now amounts to commercially-sensitive corporate information, details showing why the investment paid off t...

Read entire story 4/23/2025 at TorrentFreak

The MPA and RIAA want to have their say in a crucial third-party Ninth Circuit appeal about the use of DMCA subpoenas against alleged online pirates. Fearing a ruling that could limit their enforcement options, the groups requested speaking time at an upcoming hearing. This intervention, as well as previous commentary from the EFF, which is backed by a new party, underscores the high-stakes nature of the case.

Tackling online piracy is a complicated endeavor that often begins with efforts to identify the operators of infringing sites and services. This is also where the first hurdles show up.

Many pirates keep their identities concealed. This applies to the operators of sites and services as well as their users.

This relative anonymity is a nuisance to anti-piracy groups, including the RIAA and MPA. While most online services refuse to voluntarily hand over user details, legal tools can help rightsholders move forward.

In recent years, DMCA subpoenas have established themselv...

Read entire story 4/22/2025 at TorrentFreak