Pearson's anti-piracy vendor inadvertently used a DMCA notice to take down the official GitHub code repository of Pearson's own best-selling author, Paul Deitel. The prominent computer science educator pushed back, noting that the sender has "no idea of the damage they're doing" by taking down critical educational materials, requesting GitHub to restore access.
Paul Deitel is a best-selling programming textbook author whose books, published by Pearson Education, are used by students and developers worldwide.
The author’s personal GitHub account includes a widely referenced repository that hosts the official example code for titles including Java SE 8 for Programmers, C++ How to Program, and Python for Programmers.
These code examples are a key reference, but for a few weeks they have been unavailable due to a DMCA takedown notice. The notice in question was sent in April by Pearson’s anti-piracy vendor Link-Busters, whic...
Bulgaria's highest court has ruled that civil site blocking is legally impossible under current national law. Bulgaria failed to properly transpose the EU directives that authorize blocking injunctions. The decision is a major setback for rightsholders, including the association of music producers, which has asked the European Commission to intervene.
Bulgaria was one of the first countries in the world to consider pirate site blocking nearly two decades ago.
As part of a crackdown on local torrent trackers, the government ordered ISPs to block access to the ArenaBG tracker in 2007.
The blocking actions resulted in public outrage and street protests. Some Internet providers pushed back as well, questioning the legality of the requested measures, and the blocking instructions were eventually withdrawn.
Today, nearly twenty years have passed and Bulgaria continues to struggle with site blocking. This, despite being p...
For years, Tonga's .to domain names have been a popular choice for pirate sites, but that may very well change. Following a restructuring of the domain name operation, the Government of the Kingdom of Tonga appears to have suspended several domains, including the popular German streaming portals S.to and BS.to. The action was taken in response to an Indian High Court order that was originally issued last December.
Last December, the High Court in New Delhi, India, granted a broad pirate site blocking order in favor of American movie industry giants, including Apple, Warner, Netflix, Disney and Crunchyroll.
In addition to targeting residential ISPs, the order also lists global domain name registrars and registries as defendants, compelling them to suspend domains.
By January, several registrars had indeed taken action. Domains linked to the American registrar Porkbun, the UK-based WHG Hosting services, and the Lithuanian registrar Hostinger were all fully suspended, suggesting that thes...
Supported by U.S. intelligence, Vietnamese authorities have dismantled a massive network of over 100 pirate sites. Seven suspects have been charged with running a mass copyright infringement operation that included the now-defunct piracy giant HiAnime.to, allegedly earning $12.8 million in advertising revenue. The crackdown follows shortly after the U.S. called out Vietnam over its lacking anti-piracy enforcement.
With more than 150 million monthly visits, HiAnime was one of the most popular piracy portals to ever exist.
The site, which was a prime destination for many anime pirates, surprisingly shut down in March without offering an explanation for the sudden move.
HiAnime has been a major target for rightsholders for years. The operators were believed to reside in Vietnam, which was highlighted in the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) Notorious Markets report just days before HiAnime said its goodbyes.
American rightsholders and the U.S. Government urged the Vietnamese...
Researchers from Delft University of Technology have spent more than two decades building their decentralized BitTorrent client Tribler. The software is designed to be impossible to shut down and the project itself is also going strong, as it recently secured funding up until 2032. New research focuses on decentralized digital democracy, with a self-replicating BitTorrent seedbox as an illustrative use case.
Most torrent sites that were active in 2005 are long gone and the same applies to the software project from that era.
The academic torrent client Tribler is a notable exception and if it’s up to the people running it, it will go on indefinitely.
Tribler is part of a research project at Delft University of Technology, headed by associate professor Johan Pouwelse. Over the years, Tribler found itself to be a safe haven for pirate site channels, a decentralized music streaming platform, and an AI-powered search engine, among other things.
The core idea always revol...
France's Gendarmerie nationale announced that it dismantled the organization behind YggTorrent, France's largest torrent site. Twelve people have been arrested on charges including money laundering. The site itself, however, was already destroyed months ago by a hacker who leaked its data and drained its crypto wallets. Meanwhile, the arrests are sending shockwaves through the wider French piracy scene.
YggTorrent was France’s largest torrent community, with more than 10 million registered members when it shut down in March following a major hack.
The hacker, known as Gr0lum, breached the site’s infrastructure, exfiltrated 19 GB of data, drained its crypto wallets, and wiped its servers.
That proved to be too much to come back from and YggTorrent decided to throw in the towel instead. In many cases, that would be the end of the story. However, the French Gendarmerie nationale had other plans in the works.
Twelve YggTorrent ArrestsThis week, the police anno...
Sports broadcaster beIN and the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance propose to expand the European blocking efforts with a blacklist of rogue hosting companies. These companies can then be banned by their ASN, covering a series of IP-address blocks. By implementing the blocking measures across various network companies, including transit providers and internet exchanges, they aim to protect rights across the 'European Internet'.
The European Commission is reviewing the Copyright Directive, with a legislative proposal for a ‘better copyright environment’ to follow next year.
As part of this process, the Commission launched a public consultation, inviting rightsholders, intermediaries, and other stakeholders to weigh in.
We previously reported that the submission of European ISPs argued that rightsholders should be held accountable when site-blocking orders result in avoidable overblocking. The same submission also warned against IP-address blocking, as that could more easily affect legitima...
After more than fourteen years of legal battles, Kim Dotcom has lost his latest attempt to avoid extradition to the United States. New Zealand's Court of Appeal dismissed the Megaupload founder's challenge to the Justice Minister's surrender order, concluding that a likely U.S. prison sentence of at least 30 years does not amount to shockingly severe punishment.
More than fourteen years have passed since Megaupload became the prime target in a high-profile law enforcement operation, which led to the collapse of Kim Dotcom’s file-storage empire.
The U.S. accused Dotcom of being the leader of a criminal “Mega Conspiracy,” which it claims earned many millions of dollars by profiting from copyright infringement.
With the stakes this high, no legal resources are being spared. Many millions of dollars have been poured into this legal battle since 2012, with Dotcom doing everything in his power to avoid being extradited to...
For years, rightsholders have pushed for broader site blocking orders, with no direct liability if these result in overblocking. EuroISPA, which represents over 3,300 European internet service providers, is now asking the EU Commission to change that. The association points to a series of overblocking incidents in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere, where rightsholders were not held accountable.
Last year, EuroISPA warned the European Commission that site blocking was becoming disproportionate.
Fast-forward a year, and the providers’ concerns have only grown.
In a new filing to the Commission’s ongoing assessment of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive, EuroISPA once again sounds the alarm, pointing out that the piracy blocking climate in some countries is getting more extreme.
EuroISPA starts by explicitly referencing the Commission’s own conclusions. Its evaluation of the 2023 Recommendation on combating piracy of live eve...
The U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of nearly 400 pirate streaming domain names that offered access to FIFA World Cup matches. This enforcement action, dubbed "Operation Offsides", targets popular brands including "rojadirecta", "koora", and "futbollibre". TorrentFreak tracked down several dozen domain names, which reveal that some of the largest streaming sites were not directly hit.
With the FIFA World Cup being partially hosted by the United States, the chance of a U.S.-led pirate domain seizure round was significant.
In 2022, the U.S. government already carried out a similar World Cup-themed enforcement action, which was repeated yesterday at roughly five times the scale.
The Department of Justice announced that it had seized nearly 400 domains that were used to illegally stream the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The action, branded “Operation Offsides 2026”, was led by the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center with HSI Washingto...