The annual review doesn’t make any legal findings. Instead, it aims to encourage the listed services, and the countries they operate from, to take proper action against piracy and counterfeiting.

Last week, the RIAA responded with a submission that mostly mentions familiar targets. It lists torrent sites, stream-rippers and cyberlockers, many of which were flagged in previous years. There are some notable newcomers too, including Anna’s Archive.

Anna’s Archive and the Spotify Scrape

In December last year, the shadow library announced that it had downloaded 86 million music files from Spotify, plus metadata for 256 million tracks. This prompted an aggressive legal response.

A few days later, the RIAA coordinated an emergency court action on behalf of its members and Spotify, which resulted in a temporary restraining order against the site. Following this order, domain registry PIR suspended the site’s .org domain, and RIAA says Cloudflare also stopped providing services to the shadow library.

Following this crackdown, Anna’s Archive initially reported that its Spotify metadata torrent was “unavailable until further notice.” In February, however, the site quietly released roughly 3 million music files.

While the torrents for those releases were delisted shortly after, the lawsuit continued, with the labels and Spotify on the winning end.

“On April 14, 2026, RIAA and Spotify obtained a $322 million default judgment against the unknown operators of Anna’s Archive,” the RIAA writes in its USTR submission.

Despite the legal victory, the music group stresses that Anna’s Archive remains available through its .gl, .pk and .gd domains.

The RIAA isn’t the only rightsholder group that flagged the shadow library to the USTR. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) also lists Anna’s Archive as a “notorious” online site (pdf). According to the publishers, traffic to Anna’s Archive’s domains grew 28% despite their enforcement efforts, to an average of 41 million visitors a month.

The AAP also highlights that Anna’s Archive offers AI developers high-speed access to its collection, in exchange for what the site describes as an “enterprise-level donation.”

Voice Clones and Leaks

The AI angle also applies to newcomer Lalals, a service operated by a company based in the United Arab Emirates. This AI platform allows users to change a vocal recording to sound like popular artists such as Taylor Swift and Drake, without their permission.

According to the RIAA, that infringes the artists’ rights of publicity and likely also infringes its members’ rights in the sound recordings that were used to train the voice models.

“The sound recording artists whose voices are being exploited include Taylor Swift, Drake, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Chris Martin, and Rihanna, among many others,” RIAA writes.

In the cyberlocker category, meanwhile, Mega is a familiar target. The European Commission added the file-hosting service to its own piracy watch list in 2022, and the RIAA now lists it among the notorious markets it wants the USTR to include.

“While Mega removes content that is specifically reported by rights holders, it does not implement effective measures to prevent the re-upload of infringing material or deter repeat infringement,” the RIAA writes.

RIAA stresses that users of the platform continue to share pre-release music and AI-related content, such as vocal models and cloned recordings. On what grounds Mega is required to prevent reuploads is not mentioned by the music group.

Several new cyberlockers are flagged for their role in pre-release piracy as well. These include Gofile, Sendgb and Imgur.gg.

Links to these services are reportedly shared on music leak forums, and the RIAA mentions Leaked.cx by name in the entries for Sendgb, Imgur.gg and Pixeldrain, which was already included in last year’s submission.

This Imgur.gg hosting platform doesn’t appear to be affiliated with the popular image host Imgur. When we checked, the site didn’t list any company details, but it did promote a music streaming app “Built by the imgur.gg team.”

RIAA goes on to mention that Telegram and Discord remain the primary mechanisms through which pre-release music is distributed. That accusation isn’t new, as the passage is nearly identical to last year’s submission.

Familiar Names, Familiar Words

Many other entries are familiar as well. The Pirate Bay, 1337x and RuTracker are listed in the torrent category, Rapidgator and Krakenfiles are flagged as cyberlockers, and Y2mate and Savefrom remain in the stream-ripping section.

Krakenfiles is still listed, even though the RIAA notes that it removed its upload functionality this year.

Whether any of the newly nominated sites will make it onto the USTR’s final list has yet to be seen. Last year, the USTR included several of the RIAA’s picks, including Y2mate, Savefrom and Krakenfiles.

Before the USTR makes its decision, the sites and services mentioned in the submissions can respond with rebuttals of their own, which Mega plans to do.

Responding to our request for comment, the company says that it removes reported content and permanently closes the accounts of repeat infringers, as is required under U.S. law.

According to Mega, infringing activity represents a small fraction of the overall use of the service. Last year, it processed close to 3.9 million copyright takedown requests and removed links represented around 0.002% of the more than 208 billion files stored by its 338 million registered users.

In the same period, 5,627 accounts were suspended under its “three strikes in six months” repeat infringer policy.

“Mega respectfully disagrees with the RIAA’s characterization, which fundamentally mischaracterizes the nature of the service, and will be filing its own submission with USTR setting out why its inclusion on the Notorious Markets List would be unwarranted,” Mega’s Legal and Compliance Manager Csaba Szabó informs TorrentFreak.

—

The RIAA’s full 2026 list of “notorious” sites and services can be found below, and the full report is available here (pdf). The cursive listings marked (new) are newcomers and those that were removed are crossed out. The RIAA stresses that this list is a non-exhaustive overview.

Stream-Ripping Sites

– Y2mate.gs (formerly y2mate.nu)
– Savefrom.net
– Ssyoutube.com
– Notube.net
– Y2mate.is (new)
– Snaptube app and related domains

Music Download/Streaming Sites

– Mp3.pm (new)
– Tubidy.cool (previously listed as a stream-ripper)
– Scnlog.me
– newalbumreleases.net
– waploaded.com
– hiphopkit.com

BitTorrent Indexing Sites

– ThePirateBay.org
– 1337x.to
– Rutracker.org

Cyberlockers

– Rapidgator.net
– Krakenfiles.com
– Chomikuj.pl
– Pixeldrain.com
– Pillows.su
– Mega.nz (new)
– Gofile.io (new)
– Sendgb.com (new)
– Imgur.gg (new)
– Ddownload.com (new)

Additional Issues

– Anna’s Archive (annas-archive.gl, .pk, .gd) (new)
– Lalals.com (new)
– Other intermediaries: Telegram and Discord
– Bulletproof ISPs: PRQ, Frantech Solutions/BuyVM/PONYNET, DDoS Guard
– Domain Name Registrars: NameCheap, Tucows and others

Physical Markets

– Counterfeit CDs and vinyl from China and Russia, sold through Amazon, eBay, Vinted, Marktplaats, Leboncoin and Wallapop (new)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The site appeared to have mirrored most of Anna’s collection and used a fork of its codebase. Since WeLib wasn’t sharing new collections or code improvements in return, Anna’s Archive cautioned prospective users.

“We recommend not using them,” the team wrote at the time.

In June, major book publishers came to a similar conclusion, but for different reasons. They filed a lawsuit against WeLib in New York federal court, alleging that the site “was created after its operators copied the source code and most of the contents of” Anna’s Archive.

Despite these and other copyright infringement allegations, WeLib’s anonymous operators never responded to the lawsuit. This prompted the publishers to move forward and the court clerk entered a default in August, opening the door to a final judgment request.

$19.5 Million, Again

On Monday, the publishers, including Penguin Random House, Elsevier, and HarperCollins, asked U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero to issue a default judgment against WeLib and its unnamed operators.

“Defendant WeLib is a pirate site whose sole business is the distribution of protected content in violation of the rights of Plaintiffs and other copyright owners,” their brief reads.

The publishers request the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the 130 works listed in the complaint, ten per publisher. That adds up to $19.5 million, the same amount Judge Jed Rakoff awarded in the Anna’s Archive case.

The brief also puts a spotlight on WeLib’s revenue model. The site can be used for free, but it asks users for “donations” of up to $90 a month. According to the publishers, these are simply payments for faster downloads.

In addition to the damages, the publishers want a permanent injunction. This would require domain registries and registrars to disable welib.org, welib.st, and welib-public.org, and to block their transfer to anyone other than the publishers. Hosting providers would have to stop serving the sites.

The injunction would apply to all applicable intermediaries, but the proposed order names five specifically: Public Interest Registry, Cloudflare, Tucows, and two Njalla entities. That’s a much shorter list than the Anna’s Archive judgment, which named more than twenty.

Borrowed From Anna’s Archive

It is not unusual that arguments from a similar case are reused and that also applies here. Large parts of the WeLib brief mirror the one that law firm Oppenheim + Zebrak filed against Anna’s Archive in May, on behalf of the same publishers.

However, not everything fits. According to the brief, WeLib diverts revenue from the publishers “at a scale made worse by their use of the viral BitTorrent protocol.”

We haven’t seen any evidence that WeLib uses BitTorrent, and the WeLib complaint doesn’t mention it either. Instead, the cited paragraphs discuss various harms including lost sales and harm to the market for AI training data.

The same sentence appears, word for word, in the brief against Anna’s Archive. There, it was backed up by the complaint, which described how Anna’s Archive offers torrent files for bulk downloads on a dedicated “Torrents” page.

WeLib’s own complaint mentions another download mechanism. It describes how the site serves files directly from its servers, through “slow” and paid “fast” downloads.

The brief also mentions that WeLib’s infringement continued “despite this and several other cases against them.” That entire paragraph comes straight from the Anna’s Archive brief. While Anna’s Archive was sued before, we are not aware of any other lawsuits against WeLib’s operators.

Even a typo and a garbled sentence with a double negative were copied. Both briefs mention what happens if the court “is satified” that the default standards are met, and both argue that the defendants “cannot establish that they have not presented any meritorious defenses.”

A Paper Victory?

It’s now up to Judge Marrero to decide on the request. Whatever the outcome, the publishers are unlikely to collect much, if anything, as WeLib’s operators remain anonymous.

Anna’s Archive lost several domains to an earlier injunction obtained by music companies. However, it remains online through .gl, .pk, and .gd domains, which are tied to registries and registrars outside the United States.

If Anna’s Archive is any indication, the injunction may cost WeLib some of its domains. However, that is no guarantee that the site will shut down permanently.

—

We reached out to Oppenheim + Zebrak for comment on the BitTorrent claim, but they did not respond before publication.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

That changed in August, when the operators announced a surprise shutdown. The site was taken offline in stages over more than a week, with the last domains going dark in early September.

At first, the operators did not explain why they threw in the towel. In a final statement, however, they said that their two main video providers, which they named as the “Sflix group” and “1Movies group,” went down about three months earlier, and that the service never fully recovered.

No anti-piracy operation was mentioned and the usual enforcement groups, including the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), did not claim it either, until now.

The MPA Takes Credit

Last week, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) sent its annual overview of notorious foreign piracy markets to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Before listing the threats that remain, the Hollywood group highlights what it sees as positive developments since its previous submission.

The demise of Cineby is one of them, together with the linked embed service Videasy.

“On another positive note, 2025 submissions Cineby[.]app and Videasy[.]net have ceased operations following MPA and ACE actions,” the MPA writes.

Earlier in the new filing, the MPA links the takedown of Cineby-associated domains to an “extensive investigation and multi-region enforcement effort.”

Following this effort, the main cineby.at domain is “nonfunctional” and Videasy is offline, the MPA notes. Vidking, which is mentioned alongside them, is still accessible but “has no connected source servers.”

The submission doesn’t mention a court or a police force, so it appears to be a private enforcement effort. Further details are not shared.

The same filing does credit Vietnamese law enforcement with dismantling the HiAnime piracy network, which according to the MPA also included Sflix/MyFlixer and Megacloud/Vidcloud. Seven suspected operators were charged in July.

This is likely the same “Sflix group” Cineby referred to, suggesting that Cineby used services from the Vietnamese group that was shut down.

While the MPA lists Cineby as “no longer active,” the brand hasn’t disappeared entirely. There are several copycats that popped up, including cineby.vg, which the MPA mentions in its report.

AnimeFLV Too

Cineby isn’t the only unexplained shutdown that the MPA now counts as a victory. The submission also lists the Spanish-language anime portal AnimeFLV, which previously received more than a billion annual visits, according to the MPA.

“Additionally, the AnimeFLV family of sites included in last year’s submission has shut down following MPA and ACE actions. This shutdown represents a significant enforcement success,” the MPA writes.

In July, we reported that AnimeFLV had stopped serving video in mid-June. The operators stayed silent and no anti-piracy group took credit, until now.

Today, the AnimeFLV domain no longer loads anything. Instead, it returns an HTTP 502 error. Of course, this brand has also been taken over by copycats since.

The Hydra Keeps Growing

Aside from the successes, the MPA’s submission lists dozens of sites and services that remain a problem. The group stresses that its overview is not intended to be comprehensive, but it highlights several key threats.

Last year, Myflixerz/Sflix, Cuevana, and HiAnime were listed as priority linking and streaming sites. This year, Kisskh is the only priority entry, while Cuevana moved to the regular list.

Kisskh, which specializes in Asian dramas and Hollywood content, received more than 70 million visits on its kisskh.is domain in August, mostly from India.

The “hydra sites” category that the MPA introduced last year remains a key concern. These pirate portals often rely on third-party Piracy-as-a-Service (PaaS) platforms for their videos. This includes the live sports PaaS service Streamed.

According to the MPA, the roughly 30 sites that use the live sports PaaS Streamed had 463 million visits in July, up from 134 million a year earlier.

New hydra threats include 1Shows/1Flex, CineHD/VidBox, and StreamEX. On the PaaS side, Videasy and MegaCloud are shut down and no longer listed, but there are newcomers. VidFast, for example, is reportedly used by at least 158 pirate sites with roughly 629 million monthly visits combined.

In the cyberlockers and video hosting category, Telegram now tops the priority list, while DoodStream moved to the regular list. Among other things, the MPA notes that Telegram’s response to takedown notices ranges from swift processing to weeks of inaction.

“Telegram is a platform of immediate concern,” the MPA writes.

In the hosting category, the MPA shares new details on Netulu, which was already mentioned last year. The company was incorporated in Delaware in April and MPA says that, at that time, all piracy sites hosted by Private Layer were transferred to it. According to the MPA, U.S.-based investigators are “following leads.”

Pirate app MovieBox is back on the list as well. The MPA cites more than 243 million downloads from Palm Store alone, but as we reported last week, the store’s counter has already passed 300 million.

The USTR will review the MPA’s submission, together with input from other stakeholders, in the coming months. Its own notorious markets list is expected early next year.

—

– .CC Registry
– .IO Registry
– .RU Registry
– .SX Registry
– .TO Registry
– .TV Registry
– .SU Registry

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The resulting list of ‘notorious markets‘ traditionally features torrent sites, cyberlockers and streaming portals. In recent years, hosting companies and other intermediaries were added as well.

Last week, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which represents many of the major video game companies, submitted its latest recommendations. These include the usual suspects, but also a target that doesn’t have a website of its own.

A Game Cracker as a Piracy ‘Market’

ESA’s submission lists ‘voices38’ as one of its new threats. The game industry group describes the anonymous cracker as a persistent operation that specializes in beating Denuvo Anti-Tamper, the popular technical protection measure that’s used by at least nine of its members.

According to ESA, Reddit’s r/CrackWatch index attributes roughly two dozen cracked or bypassed games to ‘voices38’. The gaming group stresses that the cracker plays a key role in the piracy ecosystem as its releases are picked up by repackers, torrent sites, cyberlockers and piracy forums.

“Each crack therefore unlocks an entire downstream market for an unauthorized copy of that title. For a title that no other actor has made usable, but for Voices38’s crack there would be no functioning pirated copy for those markets to offer,” the submission notes.

“Treating only those downstream services as markets would overlook the upstream operation that determines whether protected games can be offered by them at all.”

The fact that the cracker has no public identity or “traditional homepage” shouldn’t stand in the way of a Notorious Markets listing either, ESA notes. In fact, it argues that a listing could help rightsholders crack down on the cracking operation.

“Designation would focus attention on identifying the operator, preserving evidence, disrupting distribution accounts and donation channels, and coordinating action across the forums, repositories, hosting services, peer-to-peer infrastructure, and other intermediaries used to seed each release,” ESA writes.

Ideally, ESA would like to identify the person or people behind the popular cracker handle and it’s not alone in this. Identifying the operator is also what Denuvo is trying to do through a U.S. federal court.

Lawsuit Doesn’t Stop the Cracks

Last month, Denuvo sued ‘voices38’ at a California federal court and it recently asked for permission to subpoena Discord, Valve and Reddit. ESA’s submission doesn’t mention this lawsuit.

So far, this hasn’t stopped the cracks from coming out. After a few quiet weeks, ‘voices38’ released cracks for Atomfall and The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales last week, as well as a crackfix for Dead Space Remake.

These releases swiftly spread over torrent sites and cyberlockers. Popular repacker FitGirl has already picked them up too, which brings us to ESA’s next target.

Billion Dollar FitGirl

After already being included in USTR’s 2024 and 2025 notorious markets lists, FitGirl gets a recommendation from ESA for the next installment.

FitGirl’s site is currently blocked in Germany, Italy, Spain and elsewhere, but ESA notes that these measures didn’t change much. The repack site received 41.77 million visits in August and continues to offer games published by ESA members.

“FitGirl’s scale and persistence demonstrate that prior blocking and designation have not induced meaningful remediation by its operator. ESA’s takedown notices to the site are ignored, with zero links removed between August 2025 and August 2026,” ESA writes.

The game companies also put a billion-dollar price tag on the losses, which they report down to the last cent.

“Between March and August 2026 alone, ESA detected 15,484,145 users in peer-to-peer swarms for games repacked by FitGirl, with an estimated lost value of $1,083,735,308.55,” the submission notes.

A footnote explains that this figure is based on a retail price of $69.99 for every user ESA spotted in a swarm.

Other targets are not very responsive either. DODI-Repacks removed 22% of the reported links and RuTracker, the Russian torrent site, complied with just 3% of ESA’s notices over the past year.

While these sites are not responding, ESA highlights that tracking their finances, including crypto transactions that go to KYC-vetted platforms such as Binance, could help to identify these targets.

Handheld Consoles as ‘Superfakes’

This year, the USTR’s review has a special focus on high-quality counterfeit goods, known as superfakes. ESA uses this opportunity to highlight handheld consoles that come preloaded with pirated games, which it sees as the video game equivalent of superfakes.

The group nominates Anbernic.com, the official store for a widely sold line of handheld emulation devices. ESA says these are routinely offered or shipped with memory cards that hold hundreds or thousands of unauthorized games, and notes that they are sold through Amazon and eBay as well.

The submission further lists G2A, FunPay and Eldorado.gg, where game accounts and in-game items are traded, as well as cheat sellers including Cronus Zen. ESA argues that cheats belong on a piracy list because they circumvent the technological protection measures of games.

It’s now up to the USTR to decide which of these recommendations make the final list. The previous edition was published in March, so we might have to wait a while before the final Notorious Markets list arrives.

—

A copy of ESA’s submission for the 2026 Notorious Markets review is available here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

This week we have five newcomers on the list.

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on October 12 are:

Note: We also publish an updating archive of all the list of weekly most torrented movies lists.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The site is built on links from its own DHT crawler and dozens of external torrent sites and aggregators. In just a few months, the site has grown into an index of more than six million torrents, including the latest Hollywood blockbusters and hit series.

The homepage looks more modern than traditional torrent sites and has some clear AI-design tells. That’s not a secret. On the contrary, AI plays a central role in the site’s development and marketing.

According to TorrentClaw’s developers, who all use the name Deivid Soto, the platform is largely built and run with the help of AI.

“Basically, the core framework is Claude Code combined with local LLMs for specific execution and ingestion tasks,” Soto tells us.

For example, AI is used to match torrents to film and TV titles, so these can be neatly organized. The AI-driven categorization process takes over tasks that would otherwise be manual work, and AI helped to build novel tools as well.

One of the features built this way is TrueSpec, which checks whether torrents actually contain what their names suggest. That helps to spot fake torrents and malware.

TrueSpec: Download and Verify

On most torrent sites, release names are the main source of information for torrent users. They list the resolution, codec, audio and release group, but there’s no guarantee that any of it is accurate.

Mislabeled torrents are often handled by moderators on well-run torrent sites, but most automated indexes have no active moderation. That’s where TrueSpec comes in.

TrueSpec joins the torrent swarm, reads the file listing, and downloads enough pieces to check the video with the analysis tool ffprobe. According to the site and its developers, that’s between 10 and 20 MB per torrent.

In addition to verifying the names, TrueSpec also checks suspicious files. It looks up their hashes on VirusTotal and, if the files are small enough, uploads these for a scan. TorrentClaw doesn’t run its own virus scanner, the malware verdicts come from VirusTotal.

When TrueSpec finds malware, the torrent remains listed on the site, but with a “Malware detected” label and the download button disabled. At the time of writing, one fake Jujutsu Kaisen episode with this label still had 34 seeders while it remained available on some external sites.

Not Perfect

The TrueSpec system isn’t perfect. In July, an earlier dataset counted 6,450 malware cases, but many were false positives. These included the harmless RARBG_DO_NOT_MIRROR.exe file, fansub scripts that switch audio languages, and scripts that simply open a website.

The TrueSpec data from late September paints a different picture. TorrentClaw now only counts malware when VirusTotal confirms it, which leaves 34 torrents. We checked some of these against the evidence in the data, which links to a VirusTotal report for every confirmed case.

Detected malware is rare, but the count is likely too low. TrueSpec doesn’t download large executables, it prioritizes well-seeded torrents, and dead swarms can’t be checked at all. TorrentClaw also focuses on films and TV shows, so pirated software and games are largely left out.

Malware is only part of what TrueSpec flags. In total, 1,265 of the 687,057 probed torrents were flagged as deceptive, including programs disguised as videos and fake resolutions. That’s less than 0.2% of all checked torrents.

The most common type of ‘mislabeling’ is actually quite harmless. More than half of all probed torrents, 55%, include subtitle tracks that their release names don’t mention. TorrentClaw flags this as a missing label, but subtitles are typically not added to titles unless they are hardcoded. Scene rules don’t require this either.

VLC Player Malware

Most of the confirmed malware torrents follow the same pattern. In 31 of the 34 cases, the torrent includes an executable named after a new episode or film, a file called libvlc.dll, and a playable video in a subfolder.

The application is a renamed copy of the genuine VLC media player. According to TorrentClaw, it’s identical to VideoLAN’s official release and carries its code signature. The malicious part is the DLL, which VLC loads when it starts, and which VirusTotal engines flag as a trojan.

The torrents are named after popular new releases, including episodes of The Boys, Jujutsu Kaisen and Frieren, and films such as Dune: Part Three and Zootopia 2. Many also carry the names of known release or distribution groups, including SubsPlease, ETHEL and YTS.

This type of malware vector is not new. Earlier this year, a security researcher documented a campaign that used fake SubsPlease releases on Nyaa to spread the Vidar infostealer. These were reportedly uploaded from a stolen account.

TorrentClaw sourced its 31 torrents between February and August. Most of them, 22, came in through its own DHT crawler, while the rest were found via Nyaa, The Pirate Bay and TorrentDownload. All had seeders when indexed, and 15 were still active in early October, according to Soto.

Built For AI, By AI

TrueSpec isn’t the only thing that sets TorrentClaw apart. The torrent site also offers an MCP server, which allows AI assistants such as Claude and Cursor to search the index and fetch .torrent files directly.

Technically, this means that users can ask an AI assistant to find a release and load the torrent file, without ever visiting the site. According to Soto, some accounts make around 10,000 API requests a day, which might be external sites or services that use it.

Running TrueSpec doesn’t cost much either. In July, Soto said the system ran on three nodes costing well under $50 a month combined.

“The implicit point: if verification is this cheap, any indexer could be doing it, and none are,” Soto explained.

That said, partially downloading content from hundreds of thousands of torrents can also come with a legal cost. TorrentClaw’s DMCA page states that the site doesn’t host, store, upload or distribute files, but rightsholders may see things differently.

When asked about this, Soto describes TrueSpec as a read-only client that doesn’t upload or seed. It only fetches the first part of a video file, enough to read the container headers.

“[It] deletes everything once the analysis is done. We don’t store or serve any content, and we process every valid takedown notice we receive,” Soto says.

TorrentClaw also uses AI to handle these notices. It introduced an AI-managed system in late September that has handled 23 takedowns so far. Before that, the site received just over 300 notices, mostly duplicates.

TorrentClaw also charges for its premium features. PRO costs $3.99 a month, while PRO+ adds a VPN for $6.99. Whether that business model will hold up has yet to be seen, but commercial torrent services typically draw more attention from rightsholders than free ones.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In 2021, the domain was bought at auction by a new team, which says it isn’t part of the original one.

The new Series.ly, which requires a login to access, became pretty popular on its own, with nearly two million monthly visits, and nearly 90% of its traffic coming from Spain.

That popularity didn’t go unnoticed by rightsholders, which haven’t given up on shutting it down yet. In May, film and TV producers’ group EGEDA filed a complaint with the Second Section of Spain’s Intellectual Property Commission, which falls under the Ministry of Culture, aiming to shut the site down.

The Commission’s investigator checked a sample of 42 of the 110 titles that were listed in the complaint. Of these, 35 could be streamed or downloaded from Series.ly at the time. The Commission also ordered the site to remove the infringing content in July, but it says Series.ly never responded.

From Google to a Libyan Registrar

At the end of July, the Commission sanctioned a series of anti-piracy measures against the site, targeting third-party intermediaries. For example, the resolution requires Google and Bing to remove the site from their search results, while ISPs with a market share of more than 1% must block the domain name.

The ISPs are also urged to redirect visitors to a government page. This informs users that the Commission blocked the domain “for having illegally facilitated access to content protected by intellectual property rights” (translated).

The order also lists Cloudflare and Ukrainian hosting company Virtual Systems, whose Kyiv data centers were hit by Russian missile strikes last month, as well as Series.ly’s domain registrar, Libyan Spider Network. These measures apply to the current domain name, as well as new ones that the operator may use for the same purpose.

The Commission’s resolution needs court approval before it can be enforced. This came on September 28, when a judge at the Central Court of First Instance in Madrid concluded that the measures were proportionate, approving them as requested.

The Libyan Registrar Acts

Little more than a week later, at least one intermediary appears to have taken action. Earlier this week, Series.ly unexpectedly lost its domain name after the domain registrar, Libyan Spider, stepped in.

WHOIS records show that series.ly was placed on ‘clientHold’, a status set by the registrar to take a domain offline. This pulls the domain from the .ly zone, which means that Series.ly no longer resolves.

Libyan Spider hasn’t commented publicly, but the Series.ly operator says the notice cited the Spanish order. It reached them through the auction house that sold them the domain, which acts as a reseller for the registrar.

“The reason they gave us was a Spanish copyright resolution and a court order authorizing suspension measures against the domain,” the operator tells TorrentFreak (translated).

It is not clear whether the other intermediaries have taken action yet, but the court order remains valid.

Interestingly, soon after the Series.ly domain was suspended, a similar site with the Cinubo brand appeared online. The Series.ly Telegram and Discord were also renamed to Cinubo.

No Plans to Appeal

Regarding the suspension, the operator says it didn’t see the warnings before the domain was suspended. An EGEDA email it later found was sent to support@series.ly, while the address listed on the site is soporte@series.ly.

According to the operator, Series.ly is a non-profit that hasn’t generated any revenue since it launched. The site doesn’t host any video files, and the links to other services are added by the community, he explains.

“Our position is that complaints about those video files should be directed at the services that host or distribute them,” the operator says (translated).

“We think it’s disproportionate that a complaint about content hosted by third parties ends up getting our entire domain suspended, including email and the personal library features.”

For now, the operator doesn’t plan to appeal the Spanish order. The company behind the project is based in Nevis, which raises questions about the reach of the Spanish order, the operator argues.

“We question whether a procedure handled in Spain justifies suspending our domain worldwide, which also affects email and services that have nothing to do with the works in question,” the operator notes (translated).

This may not be the end of it though. The Spanish order also covers new domain names that are used for the same purpose, which could include the new Cinubo one. In addition, other intermediaries may take action as well.

—

Update October 9, 2026: A few days after it was suspended, the series.ly domain appears to be back under the control of its owner. The operator informs us that the registrar lifted the suspension, but stressed that the domain can no longer be used to link to copyright-infringing content.

Update 2: Series.ly now shows a page documenting the history of the domain. It no longer links to a streaming portal.

—

A copy of the Commission’s resolution is available here (pdf). The court’s authorization can be found here (pdf). The Series.ly operator’s answers were provided in Spanish. The quotes in this article were translated by TorrentFreak.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In addition to regular ISPs, the orders now target public DNS resolvers, VPN services, search engines and CDN providers, all of which can help people bypass existing blockades.

Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has received several of these orders. In April, the Paris Judicial Court ordered the company to block 21 domains linked to pirate Formula 1 streams and 16 linked to MotoGP.

The orders covered Cloudflare’s DNS resolver as well as its CDN. However, they didn’t prescribe how the sites should be blocked, only that access from France had to be prevented “by any effective means.”

French pay-TV provider Canal+, which requested the blockades, concluded that Cloudflare’s efforts fell short. The broadcaster went back to court and, as first reported by L’Informé, it didn’t get what it wanted.

Canal+ Requested €50,000 a Day

In May, Canal+ asked the Paris court to add daily penalties to the April orders. It requested €50,000 per day for every site that remained accessible, and the same amount for every new site that media regulator Arcom reports to Cloudflare.

According to Canal+, Cloudflare had deliberately failed to comply with the site blocking orders.

“[Cloudflare] allegedly circumvented the measures by only implementing the decision through its CDN service, which meant that only three of the 21 domain names listed by the court were blocked,” Canal+ argued, according to the court’s summary (translated).

In the MotoGP case, Canal+ counted three blocked domains out of 16. In both cases, it added that two of the three blocked sites were back online a week later; one switched to a different CDN, while the other used a mirror site.

Court Sides With Cloudflare

On September 17, a panel of three judges ruled on both penalty requests. Cloudflare had pointed to technical constraints that only allowed it to comply through its CDN. It also stressed that the court had expressly left it free to choose which of its services to use, as long as it contributed meaningfully to the fight against sports piracy.

The court first noted that the way Cloudflare implements the blocking orders is not in dispute.

“It is undisputed that Cloudflare only implements the ordered measures by blocking through its CDN service, when the site uses that service,” the court writes (translated).

Cloudflare told the court that this is incomparably more effective than DNS blocking. It added that the architecture of its public DNS resolver doesn’t allow for blocking, making such measures unreasonable.

Canal+ had argued that Cloudflare only blocked 72.6% of the domain names the court ordered it to block. The court, however, saw the figure as evidence of a genuine willingness to help stop the infringements.

The ruling doesn’t explain how this percentage relates to the three out of 21 blocked domains that Canal+ cited earlier.

The court also concluded that Cloudflare can’t be blamed for the sites that switched to another CDN or moved to a mirror.

“Cloudflare cannot be held responsible when the owners of the sites in question switch to another CDN or set up a redirect to a mirror site,” the court writes (translated).

Instead, it is up to Canal+ to ask the new intermediary to block these sites and to report mirror sites to Arcom, the court notes.

Canal+ also argued that, under the EU Court of Justice’s UPC Telekabel Wien ruling, intermediaries must block effectively. The Paris court disagreed. In its view of the same ruling, intermediaries only have to take reasonable measures, which Cloudflare did with its CDN blocks.

The court therefore rejected the requested penalties as neither necessary nor proportionate. In addition, Canal+’s request for €20,000 in legal costs was also denied.

1.1.1.1 Stays Block-Free

As a result, Cloudflare will not be penalized under these orders, even though its public DNS resolver is not blocking the sites in question. That is in line with the company’s long-standing claim that it doesn’t interfere with its DNS.

In its recent transparency reports, Cloudflare repeatedly stated that it hasn’t blocked any content through 1.1.1.1, despite orders from French and Italian courts.

“To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver,” the company’s latest report reads.

Blocking through the CDN is another matter. According to the same report, Cloudflare geoblocked 1,238 domains in France in the second half of 2025, all under a single court order. In the first half of the year, it geoblocked 662 domains under seven orders.

Cloudflare recently explained its position to the European Commission, in a submission to its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, stressing that global public DNS resolvers should not be used to block or restrict access.

Instead, it highlights its real-time pirate stream blocking program, which allows vetted rightsholders to flag pirate streams that run through its network. These streams are disrupted “within seconds,” Cloudflare says, without any DNS or IP address blocking.

“For live content, where speed is crucial, Cloudflare has built real-time mitigation mechanisms that allow vetted rightsholder partners to flag infringing streams. When those streams are running through our network, we act on them in seconds,” Cloudflare informed the Commission.

For now, Cloudflare can continue to block pirate sites through its CDN only, while its 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver remains untouched. Canal+ can still appeal the rulings, so it may not be the last we hear of it.

Non-profit DNS resolver Quad9 faces a similar, potentially bankrupting penalty request from beIN Sports for not blocking pirate content on its DNS resolver. How the Paris court will view this will become apparent later this month.

—

Copies of the Paris Judicial Court’s rulings in the Formula 1 (RG 26/08243) and MotoGP (RG 26/08228) cases are available here (pdf) and here (pdf). Cloudflare’s submission to the EU Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation can be found here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The site swiftly moved to a new domain, as we reported at the time, and its Android app remained widely available.

However, the app is now drawing attention in Brussels. In submissions for the European Commission’s 2027 Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List, both the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and French TV company Canal+ report MovieBox as a large piracy operation.

From 243 to 305 Million

Both rightsholders highlight the same app distribution channel. In its overview of piracy apps, the MPA notes that MovieBox was downloaded more than 243 million times from Palm Store alone.

Palm Store is the app store that comes preinstalled on Tecno, Infinix and itel phones. These brands all belong to Chinese phone maker Transsion, which sold 61.5% of all mobile phones in Africa in 2024, according to its own filings.

Canal+ adds more detail. It notes that MovieBox switched to moviebox.ph after enforcement action against its .ng domain in 2025.

According to Canal+, the app continued to grow after this switch. The site remains online today and the same is true for the app, which more than doubled its number of downloads in less than a year.

“As of 16 June 2026, PalmStore reported approximately 243.3 million MovieBox application downloads, representing growth of approximately 108% since August 2025, with MovieBox continuing to rank as the number one application in the Entertainment category on the PalmStore platform,” Canal+ writes.

The reported June count is already outdated. At the time of writing, Palm Store lists 305.6 million downloads for the app, an increase of more than 60 million in less than four months.

MovieBox’s store listing explicitly promotes movies, TV series and live sports. “Enjoy free access to sports live streams right in our app,” the description reads, with a specific mention of Europe’s five biggest leagues. Its promotional artwork features copyrighted shows and categories such as Marvel and Disney.

Transsion’s Own App Store

Palm Store is not an independent app marketplace. In a draft prospectus for its planned Hong Kong listing, Transsion describes it as its own app distribution platform, which had more than 180 million monthly active users on average last year.

This prospectus also explains how the app store makes money. Transsion states that it typically charges third-party developers based on the number of installs that go through its distribution platform. Whether this also applies to MovieBox is unknown.

‘Closely Linked’

Hosting an app in a store doesn’t mean that the store’s owner has anything to do with it. However, Canal+ suggests that the ties run deeper.

“MovieBox has been closely linked to the Transsion / Transsnet ecosystem. Historical domain registration records identified Transsion-linked registration details for moviebox.ng, while technical analysis of the Android application revealed certificates signed under the Transsion name and references to Transsion-owned infrastructure and services,” Canal+ writes.

The submission doesn’t explain what these registration details and certificates revealed. It also doesn’t state that Transsion owns or operates MovieBox.

Canal+ further mentions Excellent Innovation Limited, a Hong Kong company it connects to MovieBox through domain registrations, SSL certificates, developer attributions and trademark filings. Palm Store indeed lists this company as the app’s developer.

The MPA’s submission doesn’t mention Transsion at all. The Hollywood group merely notes that MovieBox is believed to be operated out of China.

Canal+ also has a more direct commercial interest in the matter. The French group owns MultiChoice, the pay-TV company behind DStv, which operates in the same African markets.

Neither of the submissions mentions whether anyone has asked Palm Store or Transsion to remove the app.

Before the Commission decides, the services that are reported will be offered a chance to respond.

“The Commission will also make reasonable efforts to contact the service providers reported in the submissions and invite them to respond in writing to the allegations made against them,” the consultation document reads.

The new list is expected to be released in the spring of next year. The Commission notes that a mention wouldn’t be a finding of wrongdoing or a confirmation of legal violations. It is simply meant to encourage operators and governments to take action against infringement.

—

A copy of Canal+’s submission is available here (pdf) and the MPA’s submission can be found here (pdf).

We reached out to MovieBox and Transsion for a comment on the submissions, but we did not receive a response at the time of writing.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The Irdeto-owned company accuses the cracker of bypassing its Anti-Tamper protection on 26 games, including Hogwarts Legacy and Black Myth: Wukong.

For now, Denuvo does not know who it is suing. The complaint listed voices38’s Discord user ID, a Reddit account, and seven Steam profiles, but no name. As the lawsuit unfolds, Denuvo hopes to change that, with the court’s help.

In a recent filing, the company asked the court for permission to subpoena the platforms for information that could identify the cracker, ahead of the regular discovery phase.

Subpoenas for Discord, Valve and Reddit

In its ex parte motion, Denuvo explains that it reached out to the three companies directly, without success. Valve and Reddit replied that their privacy policies prevent them from sharing user data without legal backing and Discord didn’t respond at all. A subpoena is the next step.

“Denuvo seeks leave of the Court to serve limited discovery on Discord, Inc., Valve Corporation, and Reddit, Inc. solely to determine Defendant’s true identity,” the motion reads.

The proposed subpoenas show what type of information Denuvo is after. Valve, for example, is asked to hand over the registration data, names and billing addresses for seven identified Steam user accounts.

One of the Steam profiles listed in the filing uses the name Enzo Favara, the main character of Mafia: The Old Country. That is one of the games Denuvo alleges voices38 cracked.

Denuvo’s proposed subpoena also requests the payment methods and transaction histories of these accounts, as well as IP addresses with timestamps, device identifiers, and any linked accounts.

The seven Steam profiles don’t show much activity, but Denuvo likely linked them to cracking activity associated with ‘voices38’.

The proposed subpoenas for Discord and Reddit request detailed account data as well. Discord should list the servers the account is a member of and the roles assigned there. Reddit, meanwhile, is asked to produce all posts and comments by ‘voices38’, as well as the account’s subreddit memberships.

Crypto Transactions on FixedFloat

The motion also reveals new details. For example, it shows that Denuvo’s own investigation did not stop at these three platforms.

In a declaration filed alongside the motion, attorney Ryan Morris writes that Denuvo uncovered cryptocurrency transactions by the cracker on the exchange FixedFloat. These crypto transactions involve Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

The declaration doesn’t explain how Denuvo linked these transactions to ‘voices38.’ It also doesn’t say whether the transactions reveal anything about the person behind the handle.

FixedFloat is an instant crypto exchange that promotes its service as hassle free, with “no registration and unnecessary details.” Despite mentioning it explicitly, Denuvo doesn’t ask the court for permission to subpoena the crypto platform, and the filing doesn’t say why.

What’s Next

It’s now up to Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. to decide whether Denuvo can send its subpoenas to Discord, Valve and Reddit.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit already appears to have caused some broader damage. Late last month, Tom’s Hardware reported that DenuvOwO, a group that released hypervisor bypasses for dozens of Denuvo games, had disbanded. A member reportedly said the lawsuit was a concern, while the CS.Rin forum removed links to the group’s releases.

The person or group targeted in the lawsuit didn’t seem impressed when the complaint was filed. “All is fine. Everything will continue as normal,” voices38 wrote on Reddit, shortly after the news broke.

Since then, however, no new ‘voices38’ releases have been posted. Whether that’s related to the lawsuit is unknown.

—

Update: Irdeto was recently taken over by Canal+.

—

A copy of Denuvo’s ex parte motion for expedited discovery is available here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Not every provider accepted this. For example, OpenDNS suspended its service in France in response to the first blocking order.

Quad9 stayed in France. The Swiss non-profit foundation said that it had to block the targeted sites for all users worldwide to remain in compliance, and announced that it would appeal. Meanwhile, the blocking orders kept coming.

In May, the Paris Judicial Court required Google, DNS4EU operator Whalebone and Quad9 to block pirate streams of WTA tennis matches for users in France. This order was requested by beIN Sports and initially listed six domains. According to Quad9, 52 more were added in two later updates, bringing the total to 58.

Now, Quad9 is not blocking any of the domains. In fact, the foundation informed TorrentFreak that it never has. That is a conscious decision, and one that may come at a price.

beIN Returns for Penalties

beIN wanted financial penalties from the start. When it requested the blocking order, the broadcaster asked the court to add a penalty of €2,000 per day for every domain Quad9 failed to block. Quad9 was singled out specifically and the other DNS resolvers didn’t face the same request.

The court declined beIN’s penalty request, explaining that nothing indicated at that point that the foundation intends to resist (“entende résister”) the order. If problems arose later, the parties could return, the court wrote.

That is what beIN has done indeed. Quad9 informed TorrentFreak that the broadcaster went back to the Paris court to request penalties. According to Quad9, beIN now seeks €10,000 per domain, per day, which adds up to €580,000 per day for the 58 domains on the list.

The case was heard before the Paris court last Thursday and a decision is expected to follow in three weeks. The potential penalties would apply from the moment the order comes in and run in the millions of euros per week.

There are no public notes of the hearing that we know of, but Quad9 explained in detail why it is not blocking any of the domain names, despite facing the potentially bankrupting fines.

The DNS Blocking Problem

Technically Quad9 can block the domain names and avoid further pressure. However, the foundation says that it can’t limit the pirate site blocks to users in France, which is what the court order requires.

The DNS resolver doesn’t collect user data. This means that it would have to rely on third-party databases that link IP addresses to locations to pinpoint users. That’s a problem, Quad9 argues, because these databases are incomplete or inaccurate.

“There is no legally useful way for us to define a French user,” Quad9 tells us.

The foundation has learned this the hard way. In Germany, where Sony Music took the DNS resolver to court and, according to Quad9, judges found that its attempt to limit a block to German users was not good enough. Quad9 eventually won the case on appeal, but that finding was never overturned.

Convincing the Paris court will not be straightforward either. In the May order, the court noted that the defendants failed to show that limiting the blocks to French territory would be costly or technically impossible.

Alternatively, Quad9 can block the domain names globally, as it said it would in 2024. It also did so in Germany in 2023, under the threat of penalties. When asked why it isn’t doing the same now, the foundation explained that the German block was a temporary measure while the case played out. It added that conditions in Germany were different, and that it approaches each case on its own terms.

“We remain entirely confident in our core argument: DNS recursive resolvers are the wrong place to counter the problem of online piracy, and will result in significantly worse outcomes for the citizens of France,” Quad9 says.

Quad9 is not the only party that raises these concerns. Earlier this year, a report published by the Internet Society warned that smaller DNS operators pay the highest price for blocking orders.

“Large, well-resourced operators may be able to absorb the compliance costs, but smaller and non-profit operators risk being excluded from the market if they cannot afford the staffing and compliance infrastructure demanded by jurisdiction-specific blocking orders,” the report reads.

Leaving France?

If the court grants beIN’s request, Quad9 will have to take action to avoid millions of euros in fines per week. The foundation told us that it essentially has three options left then.

Quad9 can implement a block for French users only, which it says would be inaccurate and still leave it open to fines. Alternatively, it can block the domains globally which, according to Quad9, would essentially extend French jurisdiction across the world.

The final option is to stop serving users it believes are in France altogether, as OpenDNS did in 2024. How accurate that measure is remains to be seen as well.

Quad9 says it has yet to discuss these options with its Foundation Council, noting that it must remain law-abiding without putting its own existence at risk.

“Additionally, we are required by Swiss law to abide by our founding principles of privacy, security, and stability of the internet and how those principles are applied to our user community in a consistent and predictable manner in all areas,” Quad9 notes.

‘Recklessly Dangerous’

The decision isn’t getting any easier now that France prepares to expand its blocking measures. In July, the French Parliament adopted a law that allows new domains to be added automatically during live broadcasts, with regulator ARCOM reviewing them after the fact.

Quad9 sees this as a dangerous development, on top of an already quite concerning blocking requirement.

“An unfettered, unencumbered and delegated power given to an unspecified list of commercial parties to block any content they desire seems to us recklessly dangerous, un-necessary, and counter-productive,” it tells us.

The foundation believes that this will drive people to use less secure systems in unknown jurisdictions. At the same time, the costs associated with continued real-time updates would likely rule out any meaningful vetting, Quad9 adds.

“Dynamic injection of false answers weaponizes the DNS against end users,” the foundation says. “This blocking method will be proven to be ineffective, wasteful, and will not achieve the goal of removing the content which remains as reachable as ever.”

For now, the next step in this blocking saga is up to the Paris court. A decision on the penalties is expected to come in later this month and Quad9 will likely announce its response shortly after.

—

A copy of the May 13 order (RG 26/02207) is available here (pdf). We reached out to beIN Sports for a comment, but the company informed us that it will not comment on the ongoing procedure.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

That changed last month, when two site blocking bills were introduced in Congress within ten days of each other.

The first, introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa, is the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA) which would allow courts to order ISPs, DNS resolvers, and VPNs to block foreign pirate sites.

The second is the DEFEND IP Act, introduced by Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Ben Cline in the House, with Senators Thom Tillis, Chris Coons, Marsha Blackburn, and Adam Schiff leading in the Senate. It merges Lofgren’s FADPA and the Senate’s Block BEARD proposal into the unified bill TorrentFreak reported on in April.

At first glance, both bills look fairly similar. They use federal courts to target foreign pirate sites only, and both leave the technical blocking measures up to the providers. The differences are in the details, however, starting with which intermediaries can be ordered to block.

Who Has to Block?

Under the ACPA, any broadband provider, DNS resolver, or VPN with 100,000 or more monthly users or subscribers in the United States can be named in a blocking order. Smaller services are exempt, as well as root nameservers and top-level domain registries.

The DEFEND IP Act takes a different approach. It covers broadband providers with at least 50,000 subscribers, which effectively means that more smaller ISPs are covered. DNS resolvers, however, only qualify if they are public and have more than $100 million in annual revenue.

VPNs are left out altogether. The DEFEND IP Act explicitly excludes services that exclusively provide VPN connections or similar encrypted routing, as well as DNS services that only work through encrypted protocols, such as DoH.

That makes VPNs the clearest difference between the two U.S. blocking bills. A VPN provider with 100,000 American users could be ordered to block pirate sites under Issa’s bill, while it would not be targeted by Lofgren’s version.

The ACPA wasn’t always this broad in scope. The discussion draft that we covered last year exempted any ISP with 1% or less of the U.S. broadband market. That excluded pretty much every provider with fewer than 1.2 million customers. The introduced bill dropped that exemption, adding smaller ISPs and VPNs as blocking intermediaries.

What is a Pirate Site?

Both bills rely on a three factor test to decide if a foreign site can be blocked. A site qualifies if it is primarily designed for infringement, if it is marketed to promote infringement, or if it has little legitimate use. The bills describe that requirement differently.

The DEFEND IP Act requires that a site has “no commercially significant purpose or use” beyond copyright infringement. The ACPA, on the other hand, settles for a site that has only limited commercially significant purpose beyond providing access to infringing material. That is a lower bar.

There is a second difference that’s more subtle. The ACPA targets sites that provide access to pirated material, which covers linking and indexing sites as well as hosts. The DEFEND IP Act refers to sites designed for the purpose of infringing, which is less explicit about sites that only link to content hosted elsewhere.

Both bills also let rightsholders act before any infringement takes place. The ACPA covers operators who will violate a right, not only those already doing so. DEFEND IP does something similar for live events, allowing a site to be targeted when a transmission will likely infringe, and it lets courts issue designations ex parte, without hearing the site operator first.

The Liability Shield

The largest difference between the two bills has little to do with blocking itself. It relates to what happens to the piracy liability of ISPs and other providers after a site has been declared a pirate site.

The ACPA includes a broad liability shield, which covers every service provider the bill applies to, whether it was ordered to block anything or not.

“A service provider, whether or not named in an order issued under section 1604(d), shall not be liable for monetary relief for any claim of direct or secondary infringement of copyright arising from the service provider having provided or enabled, or continuing to provide or enable, access to a foreign piracy site, unless the service provider acted or is acting in active concert with the foreign piracy site to infringe the exclusive rights of any copyright owner,” the bill reads.

This means that, once a court has declared a site a pirate site, no copyright holder can win damages from a provider for carrying traffic to it, unless that provider is actively working with the site. This provision takes effect on the day the bill is signed, which is six months before the rest of the law.

The shield has expanded quite a bit since last year. Issa’s early discussion draft only protected providers that were named in an order, only against the rightsholder that obtained the order, and only for activity after the order was issued. The introduced bill dropped these limits.

The DEFEND IP Act takes a different approach. It protects providers that implement an order in good faith, and it shields them from claims by the blocked site. There’s no piracy liability shield. In fact, the text specifies that nothing in the bill affects the DMCA’s safe harbors or the principles of secondary liability.

Liability was a key point of contention in site-blocking discussions last year. In May 2025, Senator Chris Coons told a Senate hearing that progress was finally being made, but that Internet providers wanted something in return.

“It finally feels like we’re making some real progress here on site blocking after years. One of the key roadblocks to getting a final deal is whether ISPs should benefit from immunity, both prospectively and retrospectively,” Senator Coons said.

The MPA’s Karyn Temple responded that site blocking laws elsewhere had not led to lawsuits against ISPs, so there was little to protect them from.

“ISPs have not routinely been sued for enforcing site blocking regimes. So, you know, I think in our experience, we don’t think that this is a provision that is necessary at all,” Temple replied.

Sixteen months later, the bill Coons co-sponsors has no piracy-damages shield, while Issa’s has a broad one.

Who Pays?

Site blocking costs money, and both bills allow providers to recover some expenses from rightsholders. How much differs between the two proposals.

Under the DEFEND IP Act, reimbursement is at the court’s discretion and only direct compliance costs can be claimed. Capital expenditures, infrastructure, overhead, and attorneys’ fees are excluded.

“Upon motion by a service provider subject to an order issued under this subsection, the court may order the petitioner that sought the order to pay reasonable costs directly incurred by the service provider to comply with the order,” the bill reads.

The ACPA is more generous. If a provider documents its costs, the court must order reimbursement. It can’t deny it, but the amount can be reduced. These costs can also include overhead that’s linked directly to the order, such as the salary costs of specialized staff for the time they spend on it.

The ACPA requires rightsholders to post a bond for each site blocking order, to cover any provider that is wrongfully enjoined. DEFEND IP doesn’t have this requirement.

Overblocking is treated differently too. Under the ACPA, the operator of a legitimate site that gets blocked by mistake can claim up to $250,000 in compensation, provided the rightsholder caused the error. DEFEND IP allows site operators to ask the court to fix an order, without offering compensation.

A Public Blocklist?

Transparency is a key element to inform the public on site-blocking, but it is often lacking. In most countries, the public has no official way to find out what is blocked. The U.S. bills do offer transparency, at least on paper.

The ACPA requires the Copyright Office to keep a public registry of all active blocking orders. In addition, rightsholders must also file a notice of each case at the Copyright Office, which is then published in the Federal Register.

The DEFEND IP Act requires courts to notify the Register of Copyrights whenever an order is issued, amended, or rescinded, and those notifications are published on the Copyright Office website. Since courts can amend orders when a site moves to a new domain, those updates should be added to the public record as well.

How useful either registry will be depends on what the orders contain. The bills don’t require domain names and IP addresses to appear in the published version. As TorrentFreak noted last year, publishing orders without those details creates a transparency illusion. The public sees that something is blocked but without further detail, which makes it hard to check for overblocking.

The two bills also differ on who handles the blocking requests. The ACPA sends everything to a roster of district judges picked by the Judicial Conference. DEFEND IP leaves cases with any appropriate district court.

Finally, it’s worth noting that two of the sponsors have limited time. Issa retires at the end of the year and Tillis’s term ends in January, so their bills have to move before the session closes. Whether the two will be merged, or one will simply overtake the other, has yet to be seen.

—

The full text of the ACPA (H.R. 10364) is available on Congress.gov, as is the DEFEND IP Act (H.R. 10575).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

When none of the defendants responded in court, DISH asked for a $28.65 million default judgment in March. At the time, it appeared that the case would be over soon.

That changed in September when one of the defendants, Ammar Towir, asked the court to set aside the default. DISH argued that the defendant owns and operates the Kemo and Lemo domains, as well as the financial accounts behind them. However, Towir argues that he was never properly served, saying that he lived in Dubai and not at the Malaysian address where the complaint was sent.

Court Denies $28.65m Default

This week, U.S. District Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell denied DISH’s request without prejudice. According to the judge, DISH’s motion simply stated that the defendants were properly served, without explaining why.

“DISH fails to set forth any facts or Malaysian legal authority in its motion establishing the propriety of service on Defendants,” the order reads.

DISH can refile its $28.65 million request. First, however, the court has to decide whether the defendant was indeed properly served. That question is now before the magistrate judge.

This is the second setback for DISH’s campaign against Kemo and Lemo this year. In March, a California court dismissed its lawsuit against UK hosting provider Innetra for lack of jurisdiction. However, the Florida case also revealed that Towir faces criminal allegations in Dubai, where a separate enforcement action unfolded.

Criminal Probe in Dubai

In his declaration, Towir explains that he stayed out of the Florida case because he is the subject of a criminal complaint in Dubai. He initially believed DISH was behind it, but later learned that it was filed by Apple, Warner Bros., Paramount, Columbia Pictures, Disney, Netflix, and Amazon.

These companies are all members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and, when we asked, the anti-piracy coalition confirmed its involvement.

“We can confirm that ACE is behind the complaint filed in Dubai in late July 2025 against the alleged operator of the Kemo Lemo IPTV service, Mr. Ammar Towir. The matter was subsequently referred to a specialized law enforcement unit,” ACE informed TorrentFreak.

The July 2025 date means that ACE filed its complaint nearly three months before DISH filed its lawsuit in Florida, and more than three months after DISH’s initial Lemo/Kemo case in Texas, which likely helped to identify the alleged operator.

The Dubai prosecution is ongoing and ACE says that the Public Prosecutor referred the case to the Dubai Criminal Court last month, where it is currently pending. Given the ongoing proceedings, ACE can’t comment further but Towir’s declaration in the DISH case adds additional color.

Travel Ban

The alleged Lemo/Kemo IPTV operator said he was interviewed by the Dubai Police several times and handed over his computers and smartphone. He is also not allowed to leave the country.

“Interestingly enough, as the travel ban that is automatically instituted when a criminal complaint is filed in Dubai was about to expire, another criminal complaint was filed against me further prohibiting me from traveling,” he writes.

Towir notes that, on advice he received in Dubai, he chose to await the outcome before responding in the U.S. case. DISH, however, describes his wait for the Dubai report as a “pretext for delay.” The two sides also discussed a settlement, but no deal was reached.

Evidence and Next Moves

In his declaration, the defendant also admits that he buys from a wholesaler and resells to customers outside the U.S. However, he says these sales had nothing to do with Kemo IPTV or Lemo TV.

DISH doesn’t buy it. In an opposition brief, the company points to PayPal records listing Towir as the owner of accounts named ‘KEMO IPTV’ and ‘KEMO E MARKETING SDN. BHD.’, and to credit card payments in his name for the Namecheap account that renewed Kemoiptv.com and Lemotv.com.

This and other evidence could become relevant again in the DISH case after the court decides whether the default against Towir stands. The criminal case in Dubai, meanwhile, remains pending.

For now, at least one Kemo IPTV storefront is still selling subscriptions at Kemoiptv.io, which is one of the domains DISH wanted taken over. Whether the defendant indeed controls this domain name is not confirmed.

—

We reached out to Towir’s lawyers but they did not respond before publication.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

These submissions traditionally focus on torrent sites, cyberlockers and pirate IPTV services. In recent editions, however, intermediaries such as hosting companies and Cloudflare have been added to the mix.

LaLiga takes this expanding reach a step further. In its submission for the 2027 edition, the Spanish football league asks for NordVPN, ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark to be listed.

The 14-page submission targets a wide range of sites and services, including traditional piracy threats, but the VPN section is new. The league notes that it doesn’t take offense with the technology itself, but with how these providers are marketed by others through their affiliate programs.

“The conduct that takes these services beyond neutral technical provision is the deliberate marketing of circumvention, conducted at arm’s length through affiliate programmes,” LaLiga writes.

Geo-Unblocking Free Football Broadcasts

LaLiga explains that publishers and influencers with affiliate deals publish guides, updated for the 2026/27 season, on how to watch its football matches for free using these VPNs. Those pages rank the providers and link to discounted subscriptions, while earning a commission on resulting sales.

Some of these guides point out that football fans can use the VPNs to circumvent geoblocking, allowing them to watch free or cheap broadcasts in other countries. This isn’t linked to pirate streams, but LaLiga notes that it harms the territorial exclusivity of its licensing deals.

Guides of this type are not hard to find. We came across several Spanish-language pages, updated for the new season, that recommend connecting to a foreign VPN server to watch matches on free broadcasts abroad.

These recommendations are published by affiliates, not by the VPN providers themselves. LaLiga’s submission doesn’t claim that the providers write the guides themselves, but it argues that the providers profit from them.

Circumventing Pirate Site Blockades

In addition to bypassing geo-blocking, the submission also flags guides that it sees as a more serious concern. These are affiliate pages that name pirate streaming sites and services, explaining that a VPN can bypass court-ordered site blocking measures.

LaLiga says that anyone can verify this affiliate marketing activity, but the submission doesn’t name or link to a single guide or influencer that’s crossing a line.

According to LaLiga, the publishers behind the guides are not always independent, linking the vpnMentor review site to Kape Technologies, which owns several VPN services.

“Publishers of the guidance are in some cases not independent. Within one of the corporate groups identified above, VPN review and ranking publications are under the same ownership as the products they rank, a relationship those publications disclose,” the submission reads.

Which of these publications include the guides LaLiga describes isn’t mentioned.

The submission also argues that some VPN providers have released marketing material timed around its match calendar. This is not backed up with examples, but in February a Spanish court in Córdoba reached a similar conclusion when it issued an ex parte site blocking order against ProtonVPN and NordVPN.

Without hearing the VPN providers, the court reportedly concluded that both NordVPN and ProtonVPN actively advertise their ability to bypass geo-restrictions, citing match schedules in their marketing materials, while describing the VPNs as active participants in the piracy chain.

The matter is not settled yet. In May, the same court refused to fine NordVPN for not complying, accepting that the targeted IP addresses of pirate streams changed frequently. The main proceedings are still ongoing.

VPN Technology is Fine

LaLiga asks the Commission to list the four providers because they allegedly facilitate access to blocked pirate sites and services. The league stresses that it’s not targeting the technology itself.

“This request is based not on the provision of VPN services as such, but on the commercial exploitation and active promotion of their ability to circumvent court-ordered blocking measures,” LaLiga writes.

The submission also opens with a disclaimer. “This submission does not assert any finding of legal liability against the entities named,” it reads.

The main allegation hinges on the affiliate promotion angle, without naming any specific guides. Whether that will be sufficient for the European Commission has yet to be seen, especially since it is still contested in courts and among lawmakers whether VPN providers should be required to implement blocking orders.

AFTVnews Downloader Short Codes

VPNs are not the only general-purpose tools in LaLiga’s submission. The league also targets Downloader by AFTVnews, a popular app for Fire TV and Android TV devices that lets users download files by entering a URL or a numeric short code.

LaLiga says it catalogued 341 of these codes, 262 of which lead to pirate apps. The league describes the codes as a curated catalogue, under the operator’s “exclusive editorial control.”

“The ease and simplicity with which applications can be discovered and installed through this catalogue is itself demonstrative of its nature as an editorially-curated platform, distinct from the underlying distribution infrastructure,” LaLiga writes.

AFTVnews, which boasts more than 100 million users, describes the codes as being “generated by the AFTVnews URL Shortener,” which suggests that they are created from links submitted by users.

Downloader has been targeted before. In 2023, Google removed the app from its Play Store following complaints from Israeli TV companies, and again after a DMCA notice from Markscan. The app was later reinstated.

Whether the Commission will mention Downloader or any of the four VPN providers in its 2027 piracy watchlist has yet to be seen. The latest Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List, released in 2025, did not include any VPN services, but did mention various hosting providers, IPFS, and domain name privacy service Njalla.

—

Update: Elias Saba of AFTVnews shared the following response with us after publication.

“LaLiga’s description of the AFTVnews URL Shortener as a ‘curated catalogue’ is incorrect. My Downloader app is a general-purpose web browser and file downloader; short codes simply save users from typing full URLs. Anyone can submit a URL, and the service automatically generates an active short code and short URL without editorial review or approval. Neither Downloader nor the URL Shortener offers code directories, code recommendations, or a way to search or browse codes.”

“I do not condone copyright infringement and have never promoted it through my news site, apps, or URL shortener. I accept copyright takedown requests for shortened URLs, promptly disable codes and shortened URLs in response to valid notices, and block the reported destination URLs from being shortened again. I have not seen LaLiga’s referenced notice or the codes it identifies. I will contact LaLiga to request both so I can address the reported links promptly. I will also submit a response to the European Commission correcting the description of my app and services.”

—

We reached out to ProtonVPN, the VPN Trust Initiative for comment, but they did not respond before publication.

Disclosure: TorrentFreak uses VPN affiliate links, but not in a circumvention context.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The RIAA argued that the software circumvented YouTube’s rolling cipher technology. A few weeks later, GitHub reinstated the repository and set up a $1 million defense fund for developers facing similar claims.

The music industry had more success in Germany, where labels won a lawsuit against Uberspace, the hosting provider of youtube-dl’s official website. In November 2024, the Hamburg Court of Appeal rejected the host’s appeal.

While youtube-dl was never formally shut down, active development has been largely taken over by the open source fork yt-dlp. In fact, people who visit the original .org domain of youtube-dl’s former website are redirected to yt-dlp.

The yt-dlp project launched in 2021 and has more than 16,000 forks and more than 190,000 stars on GitHub, making it the 32nd most-starred project on the site.

IFPI Flags yt-dlp as “Major Problem”

The music business is well aware of these developments and continues to see this type of software as a problem. In a new policy submission, music industry group IFPI highlights yt-dlp as a major problem, naming four developers by their online handles.

The callout is part of IFPI’s submission to the consultation for the 2027 EU Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List. Among other things, it asks for yt-dlp to be added to the list of stream ripping services, alongside Savefrom.net and two Y2mate sites.

“YT-DLP is a major problem for the music industry as it provides freely available open-source software that enables users to download and permanently store music and audiovisual content from licensed streaming platforms, including YouTube, without authorisation,” IFPI writes.

IFPI’s overview describes the project’s history, its stream ripping capabilities, and the copyright-critical Unlicense it’s released under. The group also explains why the software is hard to stop.

“Its open-source nature, extensive developer community and its widespread distribution results in the tool being difficult to contain and/or remove, while continuing to facilitate stream ripping at scale and depriving right holders, artists and licensed services from legitimate streaming and downloads.”

Four GitHub Handles

The submission identifies the project’s founder as GitHub user pukkandan, who it says was lead maintainer from 2021 to 2024. It also lists three current core maintainers: coletdjnz, bashonly and Grub4K. These handles are publicly listed on GitHub.

This is the first time we’ve seen yt-dlp, or the original youtube-dl, named as a target in a Watch List or Notorious Markets submission.

Besides the listing, the yt-dlp callout doesn’t ask for anything concrete. There is no takedown request, call for blocking measures, or any action against the developers. The submission also doesn’t mention that the software can be used for lawful purposes.

Circumvention?

The yt-dlp description does not mention the word ‘circumvention’ either, but the general stream-ripper intro does. IFPI argues that YouTube uses technical protection measures to prevent downloads.

“Stream ripping sites are circumventing these measures that enjoy legal protections under the international treaties and EU law,” the submission reads.

The music group also cites the German youtube-dl ruling, where the court held the website’s host liable for aiding and abetting the circumvention of these measures.

However, the submission itself describes the tool as “parsing webpage and player data, and interacting with platform-specific playback endpoints.” How circumvention potentially fits in there is not mentioned.

Officially Hosted in the United States

The European Commission’s Watch List highlights marketplaces and services outside the EU that reportedly engage in or facilitate piracy and counterfeiting. While the location of the developers isn’t discussed, GitHub is called out as the hosting platform.

“Github is YT-DLP’s official source; it serves as the main platform for accessing the scripts latest updates, source code, pre-compiled binaries and installation instructions,” IFPI writes, while adding that forks and copies are also available elsewhere.

GitHub is a Microsoft-owned company, based in the United States, which would make the yt-dlp repository US-hosted.

AI ‘Ripping’ Threats

IFPI’s submission is not limited to traditional threats. It also flags a newer type of ripping tool. AI music apps Rythmix and MusiQ AI allow users to paste a YouTube link and turn the recording into an AI cover song with a cloned artist voice.

Both these tools are available in Apple’s App Store, and Rythmix is also on Google Play, where it was already downloaded more than five million times.

In the months to come, the European Commission will go over all submissions and decide which of the proposed targets make it into the 2027 edition of the list. Whether that includes yt-dlp or the AI apps has yet to be seen.

—

We reached out to the yt-dlp maintainers and GitHub for a comment on IFPI’s submission, but they did not respond before publication.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

This wasn’t the only bill in the works. As expected, there’s now competition from a unified bill, officially introduced by Senator Thom Tillis and Rep. Zoe Lofgren: the DEFEND IP Act.

Both lawmakers had already been working on similar legislation and the DEFEND IP Act merges Lofgren’s Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) and Tillis’s Block BEARD draft into a single bicameral bill.

While the bill’s title works on its own, it’s actually an acronym for “Deterring Extraterritorial Foreign Exploitation of Networks Damaging Intellectual Property.” Senators Chris Coons, Marsha Blackburn, and Adam Schiff are co-sponsors of the Senate bill, while Rep. Ben Cline co-leads the House effort.

“I am proud to work across the aisle on this smart, targeted approach to crack down on foreign piracy while protecting Americans’ free speech and access to a free and open internet,” Rep. Lofgren says in her announcement.

The Senate version of the bill, S. 5529, is now with the Judiciary Committee. Congress.gov has yet to publish the text, but Lofgren’s office has posted a copy of the House version of the bill, which allows us to take a closer look.

VPNs Are Exempt

Like Issa’s ACPA, the DEFEND IP Act allows copyright holders to obtain court orders that require intermediaries to block foreign pirate sites. The key difference is which intermediaries can be targeted.

The DEFEND IP Act covers broadband providers with at least 50,000 subscribers, as well as public DNS resolvers with more than $100 million in annual revenue. The latter would likely include Google and Cloudflare.

VPN services are not on the list, however. The bill’s definition of a service provider explicitly excludes “an entity that exclusively provides virtual private network services or similar service that encrypt and route user traffic through intermediary servers.”

This is different from the ACPA bill, where VPNs are included. The word “exclusively” leaves some room for interpretation, however. The bill doesn’t explain how the exemption applies to companies that offer a VPN alongside other services.

DNS resolvers get a similar exemption, but only if they provide their services “exclusively through encrypted DNS protocols,” such as DNS over HTTPS. This is a high bar and it likely means that major public DNS resolvers including Cloudflare and Google, which also handle unencrypted queries, would have to block on their encrypted services as well.

Designate First, Block Later

The blocking process itself follows the same two-step approach as Issa’s ACPA bill. The first step is for a federal court to classify a website as a “foreign digital piracy site.”

To qualify, the site must be primarily designed for piracy, have no commercially significant purpose other than piracy, or be intentionally marketed as a piracy destination. Operators have 20 days to respond, but the court doesn’t have to wait for them and can issue an ex-parte order when the requirements are met.

With the designation in hand, the rightsholder can return to the same judge and request a blocking order. The court then has to decide whether blocking is “technically feasible and effective” or whether there are less burdensome options available.

Blocking orders remain valid for a year and can be renewed. When a pirate site moves to a new domain or IP address, rightsholders can ask the court to update the order.

As with ACPA, the DEFEND IP Act also covers live streaming events, including sports. Rightsholders can request a court order when a live transmission “will likely violate” their rights, which means that a site can be flagged before the match starts.

Hollywood Applauds, Public Knowledge Objects

As with earlier proposals, service providers get several safeguards. Blocking orders can’t prescribe specific blocking techniques, providers are immune from liability when they comply in good faith, and they can ask rightsholders to cover part of the costs.

Websites that are blocked by mistake can ask the court to modify the order. However, unlike Issa’s bill, which offers up to $250,000 in compensation, the DEFEND IP Act has no payout for collateral damage.

The unified bill has broad industry support from the start, with more than a dozen organizations backing it, including the MPA, RIAA, Copyright Alliance, SAG-AFTRA, and the Directors Guild.

“By enacting this legislation, our country can deploy a highly effective tool to protect creators and consumers from overseas digital piracy, all while safeguarding free speech and preserving the open internet,” MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin says.

Public Knowledge, which also opposes Issa’s bill, sees it differently. The group views both site blocking proposals as part of the same push.

“For the second time in as many weeks, rightsholders have convinced Congress to build out an expansive infrastructure for censorship rather than go after the root of the problem: operators of overseas piracy websites,” Public Knowledge writes.

“Let us repeat: Applying blocking orders to global DNS resolvers causes global blocks,” the group adds.

More than fourteen years after SOPA was shelved, two site blocking bills are now competing for support in Congress.

Time is limited, however. Both bills expire when the current Congress ends in January. Rep. Issa is retiring and Senator Tillis is not seeking reelection, so neither will be around to reintroduce their proposals next year.

Whether either proposal will get further than SOPA did remains to be seen.

—

A copy of the DEFEND IP Act, as published by Rep. Lofgren’s office, is available here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

This involves sending a steady stream of cease and desist letters and takedown notices. If those don’t work, the company is prepared to take action in court.

In June 2024, it filed a lawsuit at a Washington federal court against Arizona resident James C. Williams, known online as ‘Archbox’. Nintendo accused him of operating several ‘pirate shops’ that offered large libraries of pirated Switch games to the public.

According to Nintendo, Williams promoted these shops on the SwitchPirates subreddit, where he was a leading moderator. He also allegedly helped users install circumvention software and asked for eShop gift card “donations” to buy games that were then decrypted and added to the shops.

Williams never responded to the complaint. This prompted Nintendo to request a default judgment last October, asking for $4.5 million in statutory damages as well as a permanent injunction.

Judge Grants Default Judgment

This week, U.S. District Judge Lauren King granted Nintendo’s motion in full. She stressed that the defendant was aware of the case, as he hired a lawyer to object to a Google subpoena, but he failed to answer the complaint.

Williams’ activity on Reddit didn’t help his case and is cited in the court order. These posts suggest that the defendant knew that the games were copyrighted and that he distributed them anyway.

In one post cited in the order, Williams calls himself a “pirate” who “[is]n’t going to give Nintendo $50 for a game.”

$4.5 Million Damages Award

Nintendo requested the statutory maximum of $150,000 per title for 30 games, including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

The judge agreed. At roughly $50 per game, lost sales could easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, making the maximum damages request “not an unrealistic estimate” of Nintendo’s actual damages, the order reads.

This and other posts made clear to the judge that the infringing activity was willful. She therefore found the $4.5 million award appropriate, partly as punishment.

“Williams’ egregious infringement activities merit substantial punishment here,” Judge King concludes.

As a “gesture of reasonableness,” Nintendo didn’t request DMCA damages or attorneys’ fees. This did not go unnoticed by the judge, who notes that this worked in favor of granting the maximum copyright infringement damages.

Shops and Reddit Account Already Gone

In addition to the damages, Judge King also issued a permanent injunction. This prohibits Williams from distributing any pirated Nintendo game, not just the 30 listed titles, as well as any software that circumvents the protections on Nintendo’s games and consoles.

He is also barred from encouraging others to download pirated games or circumvention tools. To enforce the ban, the order requires Williams to disable his pirate shops and the accounts he used to distribute or promote them.

The order covers his Reddit account, as well as accounts on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord and Telegram that were used for the infringing activity.

It appears that, in practice, there is little left to disable. The ‘archbox’ Reddit account is already self-deleted, and the shops named in the complaint were shut down long ago, most of them after Nintendo’s cease and desist letter in March 2024.

By filing the lawsuit, Nintendo said it wanted to “put a stop to” Williams’ activities, and presumably send a deterrent message to others. Recouping the $4.5 million will likely be hard, particularly since the defendant is unresponsive.

Although the judgment goes in Nintendo’s favor, none of the legal claims were tested. Because Williams failed to respond, the court took the allegations in the complaint as true, resulting in an uncontested win.

This outcome differs from Nintendo’s parallel lawsuit against Modded Hardware, which was filed on the same day. That case ended last year when its operator agreed to a $2 million judgment to settle.

—

A copy of Judge King’s order granting default judgment and a permanent injunction is available here (pdf). The judgment can be found here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

This also applies to Olevod. The site, which operates from a .com and .tv domain, has appeared in a batch of DMCA subpoenas obtained by ACE, as well as an Australian blocking order. However, it never showed up in the annual USTR lists of key foreign piracy threats.

In recent years the site continued to serve a stable audience, specifically targeting Chinese-speaking people outside of China, including many U.S. residents.

Tencent Sues ‘Chinese’ Pirate Site in Florida

In an effort to stop the site, Tencent filed a copyright complaint against Olevod at a federal court in Florida last October. Tencent Video is one of China’s streaming giants, and the complaint lists more than 150 of its shows, including hits that have reportedly been streamed as many as 30 billion times.

According to the complaint, Olevod.com and Olevod.tv offer full-length copies of Tencent’s films and series. Visitors can watch these for free with ads, or pay for a VIP membership that removes them.

“Olevod’s websites include full-length copies of Tencent content, including the Tencent Exclusive Shows. This content includes newly released movies, archived movies, and television show episodes—all available at the click of a button and often made available immediately after the original premiere,” the complaint read.

Tencent points out that Olevod advertises itself in Google search results as an “online video media platform for overseas Chinese.” In fact, it blocks visitors from mainland China to avoid issues with local rightsholders, Tencent argues.

$100 Million in Potential Damages

In addition to accusing it of direct copyright infringement, Tencent also alleged trademark infringement, while noting that ads for gambling, pornography and counterfeit diplomas appeared next to its name and logos.

The complaint lists 670 registered episodes, with Tencent seeking up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each, putting the theoretical maximum in damages at more than $100 million.

Since pirate site operators typically don’t pay damages in full, Tencent also requested a broad injunction, asking the court to order ISPs, hosting companies, DNS resolvers, VPN providers, banks and payment processors to cut the site off within seven days.

Olevod Fights Back

Where many alleged pirate sites choose not to appear in court, Olevod lawyered up, hiring Florida lawyers. In January, they asked the court to throw the case out, arguing that a U.S. court has no jurisdiction over it.

The company behind the site identified itself as Jiayi Network Technology SL, which is a Spanish company without a U.S. connection.

The site’s servers are in Germany and France, the defense said, adding that its prices are in yuan and euros, with most payments running through Alipay and WeChat Pay. The site has no employees, offices or contracts in the United States.

Tencent countered with evidence that the site accepts U.S. dollars through PayPal, sells advertising space, and uses IP addresses managed from a mail drop in Destin, Florida.

In June, Magistrate Judge Panayotta Augustin-Birch issued a report and recommendation, siding with Olevod. While Tencent had shown that Floridians could reach the site, it failed to show that a single one had actually watched a Tencent show there, she concluded.

If access to a website would be sufficient to invoke jurisdiction, that would “subject every company or individual that has a website anywhere in the world, and whose website can be accessed in Florida, to suit in Florida,” she wrote, citing an earlier ruling.

Judge: Olevod Can’t Escape Florida Lawsuit

Last week, District Judge David Leibowitz rejected the magistrate’s recommendation, denying the motion to dismiss, keeping the case alive.

The ruling comes after Tencent shared fresh traffic data from Semrush, showing that Olevod.com attracted 123,400 visits from Florida in June alone, making the state its fourth-largest source of U.S. visitors.

These numbers may have helped Tencent’s case, but the advertisements and premium subscriptions it offered turned out to be crucial. These show it does business with Floridians. For the judge, that was enough to compare the site to an online seller of counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags, who previously lost a similar jurisdiction battle.

“The core of Tencent’s claims is that Jiayi traffics in pirated Tencent content. And the record shows Jiayi has built a business doing just that in Florida—both by selling ad space visible to Florida residents and by selling premium subscriptions to U.S. consumers, including Florida residents,” Judge Leibowitz wrote.

That pirate streams are digital and designer bags physical does not matter, he added. Olevod is not a hobbyist running a one-man business from home, but “a sophisticated company running interactive websites.”

Roadmap for Chinese Rightsholders?

Tencent is not the only Chinese platform to try its luck in Florida. Last year, rival streaming service iQIYI sued the pirate site Aiyifan TV at the same court, using the same legal team.

The anonymous operators of Aiyifan TV never showed up and a default was entered within months, but when iQIYI asked for $196.55 million in damages and a broad injunction, the judge slammed on the brakes.

The court granted a liability judgment but requested additional evidence for both the damages and the domain-transfer request, criticizing the rightsholders for seemingly pulling the per-work damages figures “out of thin air.” This damages request remains pending.

Unlike Aiyifan TV, Olevod chose to fight in court where it just lost the first round. However, the ruling says nothing about the copyright claims themselves. The court only found that it has the authority to hear the case; whether Olevod actually infringed Tencent’s rights, and what that should cost, remains to be decided.

Olevod has until October 2 to file its answer to the complaint. Whether it will continue to defend itself or follow Aiyifan into default is unknown. At the time of writing, both Olevod domains remain online.

For Chinese rightsholders, the order confirms that a foreign pirate site with ad-supported streams and paid subscriptions can be sued in Florida, even without a U.S. plaintiff, U.S. servers or a U.S. office. Whether more cases against Chinese-language pirate platforms will follow has yet to be seen.

—

A copy of Judge Leibowitz’s order, issued at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, is available here (pdf).

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Responding to the pirate stigma and pressure from rightsholders, last year Amazon stepped in and disabled several popular pirate apps that were sideloaded onto users’ devices.

Amazon’s targets included LiveNetTV, a popular TV streaming app that had been around for a decade. This ad-supported app offered access to hundreds of channels in dozens of countries and was one of the most popular of its kind.

The block didn’t stop the app though. The developers released new versions that slipped by Amazon’s countermeasures and LiveNetTV was still working as usual at the start of the year.

Then, in late February, LiveNetTV’s channels went dark for another reason. The app still opened and the thumbnails were still there, but the streams were dead. The operators never offered an explanation but many people simply assumed that the developers had quit, possibly under legal pressure.

With the developers remaining silent for months, the shutdown of the popular app remained a mystery, until now.

LiveNetTV Shutdown and Settlement

In a press release shared with TorrentFreak, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) takes partial credit for the app’s demise. The anti-piracy coalition identified and tracked down the two operators in Istanbul, Turkey, and reached a settlement that shut it down for good.

The two operators are identified only as A.B. and R.B., and the release notes that the settlement followed “legal proceedings,” without going into detail. It does highlight a mea culpa from the two, which they agreed to share after signing the settlement.

“What started as a way to make money online quickly got out of hand. We didn’t fully appreciate the legal consequences or the impact our actions would have.”

“Looking back, the financial gains were simply not worth everything we’ve lost,” they conclude.

Police Raid in February

The public statement reads as a cautionary tale. What it doesn’t say is what prompted it, and the press release doesn’t either, besides thanking the authorities in Türkiye and mentioning “legal proceedings.” However, ACE filled in the blanks when we asked.

“A search & seizure was executed in February by the local police and a court appointed expert,” an ACE spokesperson informed us. The shutdown that followed “was the operators’ decision after the search & seizure was executed and before settlement discussions.”

The raid was the result of a criminal complaint that MPA member companies filed at the prosecutor’s office in Istanbul, ACE says. The eventual settlement was signed in late June, four months after the operators were raided.

This means that the app wasn’t shut down by the police or ACE directly. Instead, the operators pulled the plug back in February, after the police came knocking on their doors.

Domain Name Takeovers

The LivenetTV Domain records fill in the rest of the timeline. Most of the transferred domains were originally registered in 2016, when the app first entered the scene. Ten years later they were signed over to the Motion Picture Association, which manages the ACE coalition.

The domains no longer point to an APK but instead they refer visitors to ACE’s Watch Legally page. The first domains were signed over late June, some others followed in August, and livenettv.xyz eventually switched earlier this month.

The press release notes that the domains had 2.4 million annual visits at the height of their popularity. That’s a small number compared to streaming sites, but ACE confirmed that this only counts website traffic, not the app’s actual usage, which was likely much higher.

ACE could not say whether the settlement involved financial compensation. That said, for a coalition whose press releases often include a million-dollar damages figure, the mea culpa from two pirate operators may be worth more than the money.

—

– livenettv.net (June 29, 2026)
– livenettv.info (June 29, 2026)
– livenettv.pro (June 29, 2026)
– livenettv.cc (June 29, 2026)
– livenettv.co (June 30, 2026)
– livenettv.org (August 12, 2026)
– livenettv.me (August 13, 2026)
– livenettv.us (August 24, 2026)
– livenettv.tv (August 24, 2026)
– livenettv.xyz (September 8, 2026)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.