In a period of less than nine months, Google received requests to remove over a billion links to pirate sites from its search engine. This is a significant increase compared to recent years, but not necessarily a new trend. More than a quarter of all reported links, relating to a single website, were sent by MindGeek, the parent company of PornHub. TorrentFreak reports: Google first started to keep track of these takedown notices at the beginning of the last decade. In the spring of 2012, Google launched its Transparency Report which publishes all DMCA requests the company receives, including the targeted links and their senders. This provided fuel for hundreds of news reports as well as academic research. A few days ago, Google reached a new milestone when it processed the seven billionth removal request. It's a mind-boggling number that comes less than a year after the six billionth takedown was recorded.

Looking more closely at the timeline, we see that a billion URLs were reported to Google search in less than nine months. For comparison, it took twice as long to go from five to six billion, suggesting that the takedown volume picked up again after a previously reported decline. There's no denying the recent surge in reported links but much of the increase was generated by a single rightsholder in an effort to remove a particular pirate operation from Google search.

Around the start of the year MG Premium began to increase its takedown efforts. The company is an intellectual property vehicle of the MindGeek conglomerate, known for popular adult sites such as PornHub. One of MG Premium's main goals is to shut down âunlicensed' sites or at least make when unfindable. [...] The surge is clearly visible in the graph above and at times the company was averaging more than two million takedown requests per day. More recently the volume has come down a bit, but it's been a major contributor to Google's takedown uptick.

Pirate eBook repository Z-Library has launched browser extensions that should make it easier for users to find the site if its current domains are seized in the future. While the site doesn't explicitly mention the U.S. Government crackdown, it likely plays a key role in the decision to make these extensions available. TorrentFreak reports: Since the shadow library is now well aware that its domain names could be taken away at any moment, numerous precautions are being taken to mitigate the risks. A few weeks ago, Z-Library released a dedicated desktop application that should make it easier to access the site. The software has the ability to redirect users to working domains and whenever necessary, connect over the Tor network, which also helps to evade blocking efforts. In an announcement this week, the operators of the shadow library unveiled new precautionary tools to redirect users to working domains, including any new ones, should they be needed.

The new browser extensions are available for both Chrome and Firefox and promise 'seamless access' to alternative domains in the event that existing ones run into trouble. "Say goodbye to searching for available domains, as this handy extension takes care of everything for you. Simplify your online library experience and enjoy seamless access to a world of knowledge, right at your fingertips. "After launching the extension, the process of searching for an available domain will begin. Within some seconds when the domain is found, you will be redirected to the library homepage," Z-Library explains.

While installing browser extensions should always happen with caution, in just a few hours thousands of Z-Library users have already installed the new software. According to the Chrome store, the Z-Library Finder currently has over 7,000 users. These extensions may indeed help to point users to new domain names, but the solution isn't bulletproof. The authorities may attempt to remove the listings from the Chrome and Firefox extension libraries, for example. Even if Z-Library decides to self-host these tools, they still rely on technical infrastructure that could be targeted in the future. That being said, the releases are still notable; it's rare to a service going full steam ahead in the face of an active criminal case.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Film companies lost another attempt to force Reddit to identify anonymous users who discussed piracy. A federal court on Saturday quashed a subpoena (PDF) demanding users' names and other identifying details, agreeing with Reddit's argument that the film companies' demands violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs are 20 producers of popular movies who are trying to prove that Internet service provider Grande is liable for its subscribers' copyright infringement because the ISP allegedly ignores piracy on its network. Reddit isn't directly involved in the copyright case. But the film companies filed a motion to compel Reddit to respond to a subpoena demanding "basic account information including IP address registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to present, name, email address and other account registration information" for six users who wrote comments on Reddit threads in 2011 and 2018.

"The issue is whether that discovery is permissible despite the users' right to speak anonymously under the First Amendment," US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler wrote in her ruling against the film copyright holders. "The court denies the motion because the plaintiffs have not demonstrated a compelling need for the discovery that outweighs the users' First Amendment right to anonymous speech." The film companies seeking Reddit users' identities include After II Movie LLC, Bodyguard Productions, Hitman 2 Productions, Millennium Funding, Nikola Productions, Rambo V Productions, and Dallas Buyers Club LLC. As Beeler's ruling on Saturday noted, they sought the identities of two users who wrote about torrenting on Grande's network in 2018 [...]. The companies also sought identities of four users who commented in a 2011 thread. "I have grande. No issues with torrent or bandwidth caps," one user comment said. Another Reddit user wrote, "I have torrented like a motherfucker all over grande and have never seen anything." Reddit's filing (PDF) pointed out that the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is three years. The film companies said (PDF) the statute of limitations is irrelevant to whether the comments can provide evidence in the case against Grande.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Italy's brand new anti-piracy law has just received full approval from telecoms regulator AGCOM. In a statement issued Thursday, AGCOM noted its position "at the forefront of the European scene in combating online piracy." The new law comes into force on August 8 and authorizes nationwide ISP blocking of live events and enables the state to issue fines of up to 5,000 euros to users of pirate streams .

In a statement published Thursday, AGCOM welcomed the amendments to Online Copyright Enforcement regulation 680/13/CONS, which concern measures to counter the illegal distribution of live sports streams, as laid out in Resolution 189/23/CONS. The new provisions grant AGCOM the power to issue "dynamic injunctions" against online service providers of all kinds, a privilege usually reserved for judges in Europe's highest courts. The aim is to streamline blocking measures against unlicensed IPTV services, with the goal of rendering them inaccessible across all of Italy.

"With such measures, it will be possible to disable access to pirated content in the first 30 minutes of the event broadcast by blocking DNS resolution of domain names and blocking the routing of network traffic to IP addresses uniquely intended for illicit activities," AGCOM says. "With this amendment, in perfect synchrony with the changes introduced by Parliament, AGCOM is once again at the forefront of the European scene in combating online piracy activity," says AGCOM Commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio.

By 1983 there were a whopping 2,000 pieces of software for Apple's pre-Macintosh computer, the Apple II — more than for any other machine in the world. It turns out this left a trail for one historian to understand The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal.

The new book (by New York University academic Laine Nooney) argues that it was the first purchasers of that software who are the true overlooked pioneers during the seven years before the Macintosh. And (as this reviewer explains, with quotes from the book), collectively they form the most compelling story about the history of Apple: It's about all those brave and curious people, the users, who came "Not to hack, but to play... Not to program, but to print..." And you can trace their activities in perfect detail through the decades-old software programs they left behind. It's a fresh and original approach to the history of technology. Yes, the Apple II competed with Commodore's PET 2001 and Tandy's TRS-80... [But] this trove of programs uniquely offers "a glimpse of what users did with their personal computers, or perhaps more tellingly, what users hoped their computers might do."

Looking back in time, Nooney calls the period "one of unusually industrious and experimental software production, as mom-and-pop development houses cast about trying to create software that could satisfy the question, 'What is a computer even good for...?'" The book's jacket promises "a constellation of software creation stories," with each chapter revisiting an especially iconic program that also represents an entire category of software...

[T]he book ultimately focuses more heavily on the lessons that can be learned from what programmers envisioned for these strange new devices — and how the software-buying public did (or didn't) respond... The earliest emergence of personal computing in America was "a wondrous mangle," Nooney writes, saying it turned into an era where "overnight entrepreneurs hastily constructed a consumer computing supply chain where one had never previously existed."
Vice republished an excerpt in May which describes the "roiling debate" that took place over copy protection in 1981.

The New York Times points out that so-called "shadow libraries," like Library Genesis, Z-Library or Bibliotik, "are obscure repositories storing millions of titles, in many cases without permission — and are often used as A.I. training data." A.I. companies have acknowledged in research papers that they rely on shadow libraries. OpenAI's GPT-1 was trained on BookCorpus, which has over 7,000 unpublished titles scraped from the self-publishing platform Smashwords. To train GPT-3, OpenAI said that about 16 percent of the data it used came from two "internet-based books corpora" that it called "Books1" and "Books2." According to a lawsuit by the comedian Sarah Silverman and two other authors against OpenAI, Books2 is most likely a "flagrantly illegal" shadow library.

These sites have been under scrutiny for some time. The Authors Guild, which organized the authors' open letter to tech executives, cited studies in 2016 and 2017 that suggested text piracy depressed legitimate book sales by as much as 14 percent.

Efforts to shut down these sites have floundered. Last year, the F.B.I., with help from the Authors Guild, charged two people accused of running Z-Library with copyright infringement, fraud and money laundering. But afterward, some of these sites were moved to the dark web and torrent sites, making it harder to trace them. And because many of these sites are run outside the United States and anonymously, actually punishing the operators is a tall task.

Tech companies are becoming more tight-lipped about the data used to train their systems.

Leaving a Ubisoft account inactive for too long "apparently puts it at risk of permanent deletion," writes PC Gamer, calling the policy "a customer-unfriendly practice." A piracy and anti-DRM focused Twitter account, PC_enjoyer, recently shared a screenshot of a Ubisoft support email telling the user that their Ubisoft account had been suspended for "inactivity," and would be "permanently closed" after 30 days. The email provided a link to cancel the move. Now, that sounds like a phishing scam, right? I and many commenters wondered that, looking at the original post, but less than a day later, Ubisoft's verified support account responded to the tweet, seemingly confirming the screenshotted email's legitimacy.

"You can avoid the account closure by logging into your account within the 30 days (since receiving the email pictured) and selecting the Cancel Account Closure link contained in the email," Ubisoft Support wrote. "We certainly do not want you to lose access to your games or account so if you have any difficulties logging in then please create a support case with us."

I was unable to find anything regarding account closure for inactivity in Ubisoft's US terms of use or its end user licence agreement, but the company does reserve the right to suspend or end services at any time. Ubisoft has a support page titled "Closure of inactive Ubisoft accounts." The page first describes instances where the service clashes with local data privacy laws, then reads: "We may also close long-term inactive accounts to maintain our database. You will be notified by email if we begin the process of closing your inactive account."

This page links to another dedicated to voluntarily closing one's Ubisoft account, and seems to operate by the same rules: a 30-day suspension before permanent deletion. "As we will be unable to recover the account once it has been closed, we strongly recommend only putting in the request if you are absolutely sure you would like to close your account."
"If you have a good spam filter or just reasonably assume it's a phishing attempt, then you might one day try your old games and find they're just gone," worries long-time Slashdot reader Baron_Yam. "If you're someone who still plays games from decades ago every so often, this is a scenario you might want to think about."

The site Eurogamer reports that when a Twitter user complained that "I lost my Ubisoft account, and all the Ubisoft Steam game[s] I've bought are now useless", Ubisoft Support "responded to say that players can raise a ticket if they would like to recover their account."

The original tweet now includes this "reader-added context" supplied by other Twitter users — along with three informative links: For added context, Ubisoft can be required under certain data protection laws, such as the GDPR, to close inactive accounts if they deem the data no longer necessary for collection.

Ubisoft has claimed they don't close accounts that are inactive for less than 4 years.

According to a new study from online game development platform School XYZ, the exodus of major international video game publishers from Russia led to a sharp rise in the number of video gamers playing pirates games. TorrentFreak reports: Almost seven out of ten video gamers (69%) said they'd played at least one pirated copy in 2022, and more than half (51%) said that they're now pirating more than they did in 2021. As first reported by the Russian news outlet Vedomosti (paywall), the study was conducted across all regions of Russia and took into account all unlicensed game formats, in most cases downloaded from torrent sites. While over a quarter of respondents (27%) said they'd pirated three PC games in 2022, and 20% confessed to pirating more than 10, other figures from the study are more positive. Of the 31% of gamers who reported pirating nothing in 2022, all said that they were opposed to piracy. Just 7% of gamers admitted to buying no games at all in 2022, meaning that 93% bought at least one piece of legitimate content.

According to Alexander Kuzmenko, the former editor of Russian videogame magazine and gaming website Igromania (Game Mania), it's not just the departure of publishers including Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo causing problem for gamers. When platforms like Steam and GOG, known for their ease of access, stopped supporting Russian bank cards, barriers appeared in a previously frictionless system. Yegor Tomsky, CEO at Watt Studio, agrees that buying content has become much more difficult. "Players are used to buying games on Steam in one click, and now, to buy a game, you need to perform the same actions as when downloading a pirated version, so everyone chooses to save money," Tomsky says.

As the Russian economy faces huge difficulties directly linked to the invasion of Ukraine, some fear that game piracy rates are heading towards the 90%+ mark last seen around two decades ago. People everywhere are trying to save money and according to Konstantin Sakhnov, co-founder of Vengeance Games, overseas game publishers may see lost profits reach $200-$300 million. A report from Kommersant published today indicates that local companies are also feeling the pain. According to data published by job search platform HH.ru, during the first half of 2023 the number of vacancies for video game developers in Russia plummeted 38%.

The Video Game History Foundation: The Video Game History Foundation, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, has conducted the first ever study on the commercial availability of classic video games, and the results are bleak. 87% of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered. Imagine if the only way to watch Titanic was to find a used VHS tape, and maintain your own vintage equipment so that you could still watch it. And what if no library, not even the Library of Congress, could do any better -- they could keep and digitize that VHS of Titanic, but you'd have to go all the way there to watch it. It sounds crazy, but that's the reality we live in with video games, a $180 billion industry, while the games and their history disappear.

For accessing nearly 9 in 10 classic games, there are few options: seek out and maintain vintage collectible games and hardware, travel across the country to visit a library, or... piracy. None of those options are desirable, which means that most video games are inaccessible to all but the most diehard and dedicated fans. That's pretty grim! This is where libraries and archives should come in. Anyone should be able to easily explore, research and play classic video games, in the same way that they can read classic novels, listen to classic albums, and watch classic movies. But outdated copyright laws are preventing institutions like ours from doing our jobs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Simply mentioning the name "Denuvo" among some gamers is pretty much guaranteed to get you an instant, strong reaction. Just look at the comment threads underneath any Ars article covering Denuvo and you'll see plenty of complaints about the DRM-enhancing anti-piracy technology. Irdeto, the company that acquired Denuvo in a 2018 purchase, doesn't generally make a habit of commenting at length on this reputation (or its secretive DRM schemes) in the public press. So when Irdeto Chief Operating Officer of Video Games Steeve Huin agreed to defend his company publicly in an exclusive interview with Ars Technica, I jumped at the chance to talk to him.

Huin stressed to Ars that he sees Denuvo as a positive force for the gaming community as a whole. "Anti-piracy technologies is to the benefit of the game publishers, [but also] is of benefit to the players in that it protects the [publisher's] investment and it means the publishers can then invest in the next game," he said. "But people typically don't think enough of that." "Whether people want to believe it or not, we are all gamers, we love gaming, we love being part of it," he continued. "We develop technologies with the intent to make the industry better and stronger."

[...] While the Denuvo name has become practically synonymous with its "anti-tamper" DRM technology, the company now hopes it can be just as well-known for its recent anti-cheating efforts. Denuvo's anti-cheat technology works on "some of the same principles" as its anti-tamper DRM, Huin said, but is aimed at maintaining code integrity at runtime rather than just when a game is loaded. "The core is the same, but the function of what they do is different," he said. Because of this difference, Huin allowed that, unlike Denuvo's anti-tamper DRM, the anti-cheat product could have "a very low impact" on a game's performance. "Less than one percent is the metric we use for validating," he said.

Reddit is fighting another attempt by film companies to unmask anonymous Reddit users who discussed piracy. From a report: The same companies lost a previous, similar motion to identify Reddit users who wrote comments in piracy-related threads. Reddit avoided revealing the identities of eight users by arguing that the First Amendment protected their right to anonymous speech. Reddit is seeking a similar outcome in the new case, in which the film companies' subpoena to Reddit sought "Basic account information including IP address registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to present, name, email address and other account registration information" for six users who wrote comments on Reddit threads in 2011 and 2018.

Tessa Kaur, writing at The Gamer: This week, Disney removed a film called Crater from Disney Plus, which had been released on May 12, 2023. This means it was on the streaming platform for just 48 days, or about seven weeks. Disney hasn't said why, but it seems most likely that it didn't perform well enough and the company decided to remove it to write down the value of its "content assets," therefore lowering their taxes. It's all about the money, and always has been, and there are unfortunate consequences that come with this.

Disney isn't the only streamer that's guilty of this -- every streaming service, including Netflix and HBO Max (now just Max), has taken shows and movies off their platforms without warning. Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney, as was the well-loved Single Drunk Female from Hulu. HBO pulled Westworld and Snowpiercer. Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies was cancelled and pulled from Paramount Plus just last month. It seems like anything could be pulled at any time, and that sucks.

It's bad enough that streaming services are cancelling shows left and right because they don't meet arbitrary sales targets, but when they are pulled from these platforms, many of them disappear forever. A lot of these shows are made for streaming, never aired on cable, and were never physically released. Bigger prestige shows like Westworld and Snowpiercer appeared on cable originally and are more likely to have Blu-ray releases, but those Disney shows are gone. There is no legal way to watch them anymore, and these companies are not interested in even selling you access.

Online piracy, now being linked with malware, identity theft, and banking fraud, has prompted a coordinated concerning campaign for tougher legislation beyond copyright laws. The French government, news website TorrentFreak reports, is considering an ambitious approach: integrating state-operated domain blacklists into web browsers. This step is well-intentioned, indicating an evolving strategy in battling piracy.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: With tens of millions of regular monthly visitors, South Korean piracy site Noonoo TV made powerful enemies. The stand-off reached the boiling point in March when broadcasters formed a new anti-piracy coalition and warned of punishing legal action. Noonoo TV responded by throwing in the towel but after clone site 'Noonoo TV Season 2' appeared online, the government says it will develop an AI anti-piracy system that will stop any 'Season 3' variants in their tracks.

Alongside a promise to work closely with the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Korea Communications Commission, and the National Security Agency to protect 'K' content from unlawful distribution, the Ministry of Science says the time is right to enhance manual work carried out by humans with automated systems better suited to the job. "Since the detection and response to illegal sites is currently centered on manual work based on human resources, to overcome this limitation, we plan to develop technology that can automatically detect and verify new versions and substitute sites," the Ministry said. "Online video service (OTT) content is a precious asset created with the blood and sweat of many people. It's a growth engine that will be responsible for the future of our country, so it is very important for mature citizens to refrain from using these illegal sites."

Piracy release group CAKES has shut down, dealing yet another hit for the piracy ecosystem. TorrentFreak reports: For several decades, The Scene has been the main source of all pirated content made available on the Internet. Technically, release groups operate in a closed ecosystem, but the reality is different. The vast majority of the files published on private Scene servers eventually find their way to public pirate sites. The secretive nature of The Scene has been a major challenge for law enforcement but in the summer of 2020, the US Department of Justice made a major breakthrough. Following a thorough investigation, three members of the illustrious SPARKS group were indicted. The raids and the criminal investigation sent shockwaves around The Scene. Some groups stopped releasing entirely and others significantly slowed down their output, which was felt in many parts of the public piracy ecosystem too.

Amid this turmoil, a new TV release group going by the name of CAKES emerged. The group published its first release "The 100 S07E16" on October 1, 2020, and many more would follow. During the next few years, CAKES built its reputation as a steady release group, one that eventually covered 7,000 titles. That's an impressive average of more than 50 new releases per week. Aside from the massive output, CAKES was also known for including four lines from Drake's track "Pound Cake" in its release notes. These same lines are also at the start of its farewell message.

The message explains that when CAKES started out, the team made an internal promise to pull the plug when "the love" is gone. Without going into further details, that time has apparently arrived. While some people may be disappointed with this decision, CAKES has clearly made up its mind. The group prefers to highlight the achievements and experiences instead, referring to the past few years as a "crazy journey." "If you had told us how the last few years would go, we wouldn't have believed you. The skills learnt, the massive lows, the euphoric highs, it couldn't have happened with a better group of people." "I couldn't be prouder of our team, not just for what was achieved but knowing the right moment to call time. As sad as this is, goodbye from team CAKES," the group adds. GLHF, another piracy group, is mentioned in the farewell message. While no official shut down has been announced, TorrentFreak notes that "GLHF stopped releasing new titles over a week ago, which is highly atypical."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: A Virginia jury held Cox liable for pirating subscribers because it failed to terminate accounts after repeated accusations, ordering the company to pay $1 billion in damages to the labels. This landmark ruling is currently under appeal. As part of the appeal, Cox informed the court of a supplemental authority that could support its position. The case in question is Twitter vs. Taamneh, in which the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that the social media platform isn't liable for ISIS terrorists, who used Twitter to recruit and raise funds. The Supreme Court rejected (PDF) the claim that Twitter aided-and-abetted terrorist activity, because it didn't "consciously and culpably" participate in the illegal activity. According to Cox, the same logic applies in its case, where the ISP was held liable for the piracy activities of subscribers.

"These same aiding-and-abetting principles animate copyright law's contributory liability doctrine, and they likewise foreclose liability here," an attorney for Cox informed the court. Cox argues that the Supreme Court ruling confirms that aiding-and-abetting liability only applies when parties knowingly took part in the activity. That runs contrary to the finding in its own dispute with the record labels, where "culpable expression and conduct" or "intent" were not required. "Though Twitter arises in a different context, its reasoning applies with full force and supports reversal of the contributory infringement verdict," Cox added. The two cases are indeed quite different, but ultimately they are about imposing liability on third-party services.

According to Cox, the Twitter terrorist ruling clearly shows that it isn't liable for pirating subscribers, but the music companies see things differently. Earlier this week, the music labels responded in court (PDF), countering Cox's arguments. They argue that the Twitter ruling doesn't apply to their piracy dispute with Cox, as the cases are grounded in different laws. While the music industry certainly isn't happy with pirates, the Cox case is a copyright matter while the Twitter lawsuit fell under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. And for now, pirates are not categorized as terrorists. After establishing the difference between pirates and terrorists, the music companies point out that Twitter wasn't directly connected to the misconduct. The platform's role was more passive and its connection to ISIS was more distant than Cox's connection to its subscribers. Cox took a more active role and materially contributed to the pirating activities, which stands no comparison to the Twitter case, plaintiffs argue.

The European Commission has published its biannual list of foreign countries with problematic copyright policies. One of the highlighted issues is a lack of pirate site blocking, which is seen as an effective enforcement measure, writes TorrentFreak, a news website that tracks piracy news. Interestingly, the EU doesn't mention the United States, which is arguably the most significant country yet to implement an effective site-blocking regime.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: When the French government formed a new anti-piracy agency called Hadopi, the mission was to significantly disrupt BitTorrent and similar peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. Hadopi was a pioneer of the so-called "graduated response" scheme which consists of monitoring a file-sharer's internet activities and following up with a warning notice to deter their behavior. Any future incidents attract escalating responses including fines and internet disconnections. Between 2010 and 2020, Hadopi issued 12.7 million warning notices at a cost to French taxpayers of 82 million euros. The program's effect on overall piracy rates remains up for debate but according to French internet rights groups, Hadopi doesn't just take citizens' money. When it monitors citizens' internet activities, retains huge amounts of data, and then links identities to IP addresses to prevent behavior that isn't a "serious crime," Hadopi violates fundamental rights.

Despite its authorization under the new law, the official launch of the Hadopi agency in 2009 met with significant opposition. File-sharers had issues with the program for obvious reasons but for digital rights group La Quadrature du Net, massive internet surveillance to protect copying rights had arrived at the expense of citizens' fundamental right to privacy. La Quadrature's opposition to the Hadopi anti-piracy program focuses on the law crafted to support it. One of the implementing decrees authorizes the creation of files containing internet users' IP addresses plus personal identification data obtained from their internet service providers. According to the digital rights group's interpretation of EU law, that is unlawful.

With support from the Federation of Associative Internet Service Providers, French Data Network, and Franciliens.net, in 2019 La Quadrature filed an appeal before the Council of State (Conseil d'Etat), requesting a repeal of the decree that authorizes the processing of personal information. The Council of State referred the matter to the Constitutional Council and its subsequent decision gave La Quadrature the impression that Hadopi's position was untenable. For their part, Hadopi and the government reached the opposite conclusion. The Council of State heard La Quadrature's appeal and then referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for interpretation under EU law. In CJEU Advocate General Szpunar's non-binding opinion issued last October, friction between privacy rights and the ability to enforce copyrights were on full display. [...] Faced with an opinion that recognizes difficulties faced by rightsholders but runs up against case-law, AG Szpunar proposed "readjustment of the case-law of the Court." This would ensure that rightsholders retain the ability to enforce their rights, when an IP address is the only means by which an infringer can be identified (CJEU, pdf). The first court hearing occurred on Tuesday, and a further legal opinion is expected in late September 2023. The ruling from the CJEU is expected before the end of the year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: ACE, the world's leading anti-piracy coalition, is facing an unexpected setback after Google removed a page that advises 'pirates' where they can watch content legally. The removal is the result of an erroneous takedown notice from a competing anti-piracy organization and was likely triggered by an ACE domain name seizure. [...] After the "Watch Legally" page was removed from Google search, visitors see the following note [here] at the bottom of the results.

In response to a recent takedown notice, Google removed ACE's "Watch Legally" page for alleged copyright infringement. This action was taken at the behest of Indian anti-piracy outfit AiPlex. The ACE page was repeatedly flagged by AiPlex in recent weeks. In this notice, for example, it's accused of distributing a pirated copy of the film 'Virgin Bhanupriya,' together with sites such as foumovies.pw, afilmyhit.cafe, and yomovies.bid. Why AiPlex flagged a page that's designed to drive traffic to legal services is unclear.

International online sports broadcasting company DAZN has joined a global task force that aims to shut down pirated and unauthorized sports streaming operations worldwide. The new group is operated by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which counts giants like Amazon, Apple, NBC Universal, Netflix, Disney, Sony, and Warner Bros. among its members. From a report: Unauthorized streaming sources can often be the only available option for people to watch certain teams and matches subject to complicated broadcasting deals, locked into high-priced bundles, and blackouts. With more tech and entertainment companies using sports as a sweetener for their services (NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube, MLS / MLB for Apple TV Plus, and Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime are a few examples), they have more reasons to collectively take issue with anyone popping up a free stream.

ACE as a whole had previously taken down IPTV-based service NitroTV, which allegedly charged users $20 per month in the US for a collection of unlicensed streaming content. ACE was first formed in 2017 as the anti-piracy arm of the Motion Picture Association (formerly known as the MPAA until it dropped the second A in 2019). Now with DAZN, it consists of 53 big media companies.