The Tribler torrent client is fully decentralized, offering a potential safe haven for torrent sites that's impossible to shut down. | Continue reading
Screening Room obtained a new patent this week which will help to securely distribute films, with help from a P2P pollution system. | Continue reading
Pirate sites have started to 'disappear' from Google. This goes beyond normal takedown notices and is not without collateral damage. | Continue reading
Microsoft has hit Ninjutsu with a DMCA notice. The company argues that tweaking and disabling of Windows 10 features violates its license. | Continue reading
Major publishers have sued the Internet Archive over its Open Library. "It Is an Unlicensed Aggregator and Pirate Site," the lawsuit reads. | Continue reading
A row over whether a judge should allow the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society to obtain the identity of someone who uploaded 'pirated' Jehovah's Witness videos to YouTube is effectively over. Concluding possibly one of the most foul-mouthed cases on record, the judge dismissed … | Continue reading
Chrome and Firefox block download pages of torrent site YTS over 'phishing.' Visitors are reportedly tricked into sharing personal info or downloading software. | Continue reading
Picking the best VPN can be a tricky endeavor. There are hundreds of VPN services out there, all promising to keep you private. Some are more anonymous than others, however. To help you pick the best one for your needs, we asked dozens of VPNs what their logging policies are, how … | Continue reading
Previously, an MPA takedown notice pulled Popcorn Time's GitHub repository offline. Popcorn Time filed a counternotice, with success. | Continue reading
A hobbyist hacker who modified an old calculator to enable Internet access has been hit with a DMCA copyright infringement complaint by CASIO | Continue reading
Open and public torrent trackers play a key role in the torrent ecosystem. While they don't host or link to any content, they coordinate the downloads of millions of torrents per day. This is also true for Opentrackr, which manages to pull this off using a ten-year-old Dell serve … | Continue reading
Last weekend a fan-made PC port of Nintendo 64 classic Super Mario 64 appeared online, wowing fans with its 4K resolution and ultra widescreen support. Somewhat inevitably, however, Nintendo's lawyers and representatives have now started to take action, filing copyright complaint … | Continue reading
The MPA, MPA-Canada, and Amazon have filed a request with Github requesting that a Kodi add-on developer's account be deleted from the platform. Citing a copyright case and a permanent injunction handed down by Canada's Federal Court, the content companies claim that the account … | Continue reading
The Motion Picture Association is pressing on with its mission to restrict the availability of infamous streaming app Popcorn Time. In a copyright complaint filed with Github, the Hollywood group cites the Grokster decision, suggesting that the code platform could be held liable … | Continue reading
The Academy announced this week that DVD and Blu-Ray screeners will be banned after the next Oscars ceremony. This marks the end of a long-standing tradition. Not just in the movie business, but also on pirate sites where the DVDscr tag is closely watched. Although Oscar DVD Scre … | Continue reading
Keeping children occupied during the global coronavirus pandemic is a daily struggle for millions of parents around the world. Services like Netflix and Disney+ are obvious entertainment choices but there are other, less legal options too. A popular fork of the famous Popcorn Tim … | Continue reading
Last night the Twitter account of Netflix in the MENA region suddenly had its 'N' logo replaced with a pirate-themed graphic. Then, in a series of bizarre tweets declaring a hack, followers were asked for recommendations on movie torrents. This morning Netflix apparently regained … | Continue reading
Researchers from Northwestern University and Brave Software have taken an in-depth look at possible security issues with third-party Kodi addons. They find that most addons are safe. Only a very small number of addons are linked to malicious content, but these tend to be relative … | Continue reading
With help from some top torrent sites, Placeholder Gameworks has released a free copy of its new game Death and Taxes. The developer torrent has the same features as the $12.99 Steam release. While there's no significant effect on sales, developer Oak, who once was a hardcore pir … | Continue reading
In December 2019 a web-series dedicated to debunking copyright and copying myths was hit with four copyright complaints over the alleged illegal use of tracks from Robin Thicke, Marvin Gate, Bee Gees and Michael Jackson. However, the makers of The Creativity Delusion: Geniuses St … | Continue reading
A new copyright-focused initiative has got underway in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. Its goal is to evaluate the 22-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act with a view to modernizing the legislation to better deal with today's Internet following th … | Continue reading
In 2018, the owner of Two-Bit History, a site dedicated to computer history, wrote a successful article about mathematician Ada Lovelace, who some credit as being the first computer programmer. Sadly, if you search Google for that article today you won't find it. Some idiotic ant … | Continue reading
Facebook-owned Instagram has taken down an independently developed API claiming that it violates the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. The complaint claims that the tool 'Instagram-API' allows unauthorized access to Instagram users' posts, which the company says are copy … | Continue reading
YouTube allows copyright holders to remove videos they deem to be copyright-infringing. However, it turns out that these takedown powers go even further. As it turns out, rightsholders can also remove content before it even exists. That's what happened to a reporter who had his p … | Continue reading
The Danish Supreme Court has upheld a conditional prison sentence against the operator of a website that provided information on the piracy app Popcorn Time. The site itself didn't host the infringing software, but the detailed instructions it provided were enough to warrant crim … | Continue reading
Researchers at Delft University of Technology have secured another €3.3 million in funding for academic research into the ‘Internet-of-Trust’. The money will in large part be used to continue development on the Tribler BitTorrent client. Professor Johan Pouwelse, who leads the Tr … | Continue reading
An interesting torrent site has just debuted which has the honor of being almost shutdown-proof. 'Play' has just appeared on Zeronet, a server-less P2P network that utilizes Bitcoin cryptography and BitTorrent technology. As a result Play might well be the first torrent site that … | Continue reading
The operator of YTS recently 'settled' a lawsuit that was filed by the US. movie company Wicked Nevada. Soon after, the same movie company joined other filmmakers to sue several users of the notorious torrent site. According to the complaint, the rightsholders know the email addr … | Continue reading
During 2019, TorrentFreak has regularly reported on the controversial DMCA-related takedown efforts of entertainment companies and their anti-piracy partners. This year several were targeted at our own site, having been filed against us with Google. We can proudly (but sadly) rep … | Continue reading
Two defendants have pleaded guilty for their role in the operation of two streaming services that offered access to pirated movies and TV-shows. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, ]iStreamItAll and Jetflicks were among the biggest illegal streaming services in the US. T … | Continue reading
A sub-Reddit dedicated to jailbreaking iOS devices put itself into lockdown yesterday after several DMCA notices were filed against the discussion forum. Various sources reported that the notices were filed by Apple, in an attempt to hinder distribution of jailbreaking-related to … | Continue reading
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has released a new study which suggests that piracy is dropping in Europe. While the research is limited to site-based piracy, it has some interesting findings. Countries with a lower average income per person visit pirate s … | Continue reading
Popular VPN provider Private Internet Access (PIA) is set to be acquired by Kape Technologies. This will transform the company into a major player in the VPN industry. The deal has sparked a lively debate about Kape’s intentions and PIA’s future, but the company stresses that it … | Continue reading
Popular Android torrent client LibreTorrent has been removed from Google Play, who informed its developer that the open-source "Free Software" tool violated the platform's "spam policy". The developer believes this may be due to a flood of abusive cloned copies of LibreTorrent bu … | Continue reading
YouTube sensation and founder of 'pirate' IPTV Gears Reloaded 'OMI IN A HELLCAT' says that he's been raided by the FBI who "took everything", including his huge car collection. With a rumored net worth of around $50m, OMI was recently seen on YouTube apparently buying $300K of di … | Continue reading
A YouTuber who used a royalty-free track supplied by YouTube itself has had all of his videos copyright claimed by companies including SonyATV and Warner Chappell. According to the music outfits, Matt Lownes' use the use of the track 'Dreams' by Joakim Karud means that they are n … | Continue reading
Major tech companies including Google, Facebook and Twitter are concerned about harmful copyright legislation being created around the world. Industry groups warn that these developments, including the EU Copyright Directive, harm the interests of US companies, while conflicting … | Continue reading
For those involved in the online piracy supply chain, keeping your head down has almost always been part of the strategy. So why are there suddenly dozens of IPTV suppliers promoting their businesses on YouTube, holding personal question and answer sessions, bragging about the mo … | Continue reading
Openload, one of the largest file-hosting sites on the Internet, has agreed to shut down its service. Openload.co and several related domains, including Streamango, now show a banner confirming that they have been taken over by global anti-piracy coalition ACE. According to ACE, … | Continue reading
PopcornTime.sh, considered by many to be the 'official' successor to the original Popcorn Time application, has serious domain issues. According to public records, its domain registrar has issued an order to its registry to deactivate its DNS access. Separately, an as-yet unconfi … | Continue reading
The new Demonoid website, launched by staffers of the original community earlier this year, has moved to a new domain name. The site moved away from the .to domain name to avoid confusion with an obvious scam site. In addition, the operators believe that the Tonic registry isn't … | Continue reading
According to a new study published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, 51% of 15 to 24-year-olds haven't pirated any digital content during the past 12 months. While around a third admit to consuming content from illegal sources, the EU says it is rare for young p … | Continue reading
A New Jersey district court has issued a devastating order against Strike 3 Holdings, the most active filer of piracy lawsuits in the US. In four separate cases, the court denied a request to obtain identities of alleged BitTorrent pirates. The court argues that the underlying co … | Continue reading
Following what began as a controversial political dispute in Denmark, publicly-funded talk radio station Radio24syv will shut down on October 31. Fearing that years of online archives could be lost forever, three IT experts created a project to download every show for posterity. … | Continue reading
After years of news reporting on copyright issues, we have learned that piracy is not without risk. However, writing about it also has its challenges. A few days ago, our newsletter provider MailChimp kicked us out because our content is too risky for its business. Apparently, ov … | Continue reading
RapidVideo, a popular file-hosting service with millions of users, has thrown in the towel. The site faces legal pressure from lawyers representing the MPA and ACE, including a lawsuit from Warner Bros. and Netflix. Paired with dwindling revenues and a worsening legal climate, ma … | Continue reading
Share-Online.biz, Germany's largest file-hosting site, has been shut down following raids in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The platform reportedly had hundreds of servers serving between six and ten million users per month. Currently, three suspects in their forties and f … | Continue reading
Today is International Day Against DRM, an annual protest against technology that restricts what we can do with purchased digital products and tools. The focus this year is on the right to read, with pressure placed on publishers to stop restricting access to education. It's a no … | Continue reading