For the third Oct/Nov period, three years in a row, once again it’s Fire Stick Crackdown Malware Armageddon Month in the UK.

The annual event begins with the usual publications finding inspiration to write about the most popular streaming device in the UK, with drama injected into the mix by any means available to ensure maximum engagement.

If only there was some way of measuring interest in these articles or related searches, it could potentially provide valuable information on the UK piracy landscape, or even help to achieve behavioral change .

The news surge coincides with the anniversary of the BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign, which launched around September 2023 and is still going strong. Published just this week, the campaign’s latest research is an important part of the puzzle that begins (but won’t end) with the new policy from Amazon.

Amazon and Sideloaded Apps

While we have yet to see any evidence that a campaign is actually underway at any scale, this recent statement from Amazon concerning Fire TV and sideloading is indeed genuine.

Amazon’s statement:

Piracy is illegal, and we’ve always worked to block it from our Appstore. Through an expanded program led by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition fighting digital piracy, we’ll now block apps identified as providing access to pirated content, including those downloaded from outside our Appstore.

Apps that somehow made it through Amazon’s vetting process or changed their behavior afterward, have been blocked on several occasions in the past. However, the new policy seems to go much further than that, by effectively signaling the beginning of the end for mass piracy via Amazon devices

How it will make its presence known at the consumer end, where loyal Amazon customers can often be found, is currently unknown. The manner in which the news has been released suggests that awareness is an accepted and important part of the equation, and preferred over a formal announcement alongside ACE, of which Amazon is already a member.

AFTVNews reports that the new approach will launch in Germany and France before rolling out globally to what is believed to be over 250 million devices. At least at this stage, there are no indications that the policy will apply retroactively, i.e by disabling apps already sideloaded to users’ devices.

Amazon could do that with the flick of a switch but probably won’t. Fire TV products also generate revenue for Amazon and partners including Netflix, so a gentle migration across to the piracy-restricted Vega OS-based Fire TV Stick 4K Select, seems the least disruptive option.

Unnamed Apps, Unclear Parameters

Apps deemed suitable for initial blocking haven’t been named and given the existing site blocking policy at the MPA (of which Amazon is also a member), it seems unlikely that apps will suddenly find themselves named in the media. That being said, “providing access to pirated content” is open for interpretation.

Self-contained apps that proactively present infringing content to the user, seem to be the most obvious candidates for blocking. Open apps, essentially video players that require users to provide their own playlists or login to a remote system, aren’t so easily defined.

They’re easy to identify and at the point of download, usually completely legal too. Whether Amazon sees itself splitting hairs over legality is unknown, but in a second statement, slightly different from the first, Amazon does seem to hint at a particular type of app being of particular interest.

“[Blocking piracy apps] builds on our ongoing efforts to support creators and protect customers, as piracy can also expose users to malware, viruses and fraud,” Amazon notes.

There’s no indication that piracy apps with or without any of these three features will be treated differently than any other. However, from the company’s perspective, blocking apps for being malicious would be much more straightforward than defending its position based on the semantics of copyright law.

Zero tolerance of malware and fraud is also widely accepted, even among consumer-level pirates. Yet in theory, this gives them no reason to stay in the Amazon ecosystem. As a result, they will have important decisions to make.

Buy a Brand New Fire TV 4K Select?

From today’s piracy perspective, Amazon’s latest device is an unattractive proposition and, at some point, older devices will be viewed that way too. That leads to a scenario where anti-piracy campaigns based on the threat of malware and fraud will likely become even more relevant.

While yet to appear on the official website, this week BeStreamWise has been circulating some basic information on what it says are the results of a new study. The premise is straightforward: Around 40% of people who stream content illegally suffer some kind of financial fraud as a result.

The research – among more than 2,000 Brits – found that, of those that have accessed illegally streamed content in the past 12 months, an alarming four in ten (39%) have suffered financial losses after being targeted by criminals. The average amount stolen was £1,680 – more than half of the average monthly gross salary in the UK – while one in 10 (11%) people lost more than £7,500.

Countering these claims seems pointless for two key reasons. Firstly, victims of this type of fraud typically have no idea who was responsible. They can try to narrow things down, but it rarely amounts to much. It’s self-reported guesswork at best; 65% of respondents said they had “near misses with hacking attempts whilst watching content illegally online” but what a near miss is supposed to look like depends on what the respondent believes they saw.

A Genuine Crisis

The second point is more important: studies like this are easily criticized, but there is mounting evidence that large parts of the world are under attack from malware known as infostealers. There’s no substitute for reading about the issue directly but the headline figure today of 33,411,241 machines infected speaks for itself.

There clearly is a significant problem with some pirate streaming sites and that is not going away.

HudsonRock.com obtains data stolen from user devices that have been compromised by infostealers and through this data it can see what the hackers had access to. This includes logins and passwords for the sites users visit. The site’s search engine can therefore show how many users of a certain domain have been compromised.

This does not mean that the site in question was the infection vector or that visiting the site is now unsafe . It simply means that those credentials were likely obtained when the user was compromised. The data is terrifying.

People will shrug and declare it doesn’t affect them, but one look at the set-top device crisis Brazil faces right now really puts things into perspective. Read Microsoft’s reports and Google’s lawsuit , which attempt to shut down pirate set-top box botnets that are typically delivered from China with malware already installed .

So, when Fire TV bites the dust and pirates migrate away from what was a relatively safe option, what devices will they buy next? Perhaps more to the point, through what mechanism will pirates be discouraged from doing so?

Because it’s likely that, by then, nothing printed in the media will have any credibility among pirates, and it will be years before they even start listening again.

By then, it might already be too late.

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

Pirate site blocking is a common practice in dozens of countries around the world, and the Netherlands is no exception.

After a decade-long legal battle between anti-piracy group BREIN and three local Internet providers, the latter were ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay in 2020.

This was a pivotal moment, as it opened the door to more blocking requests targeting other torrent sites , streaming portals , and shadow libraries . A year later, the blocking process was further streamlined when all major ISPs signed a covenant where they agreed to block pirate sites when rightsholders obtain a blocking order against one of their fellow providers.

Blocking Music Pirate Sites

Today, BREIN obtained a fresh site-blocking injunction at the Rotterdam Court. The order requires Internet provider Ziggo to block access to music piracy platforms ‘newalbumreleases’ and ‘Israbox’ that reportedly had 100,000 monthly visits in the country.

Ziggo was one of the ISPs that previously pushed back against BREIN’s blocking requests in the Pirate Bay case. This time around, the ISP also objected, again without the desired result.

In court, Ziggo argued that the underlying Pirate Bay jurisprudence should not apply to this case, as the targeted music sites rely on cyberlocker links instead of torrents. The court firmly rejected this line of reasoning. It ruled that the technology doesn’t matter as long as a site “deliberately and with a profit motive” links to unauthorized content.

Ziggo also argued that BREIN failed the “subsidiarity” test by not doing enough to stop the sites before it requested the injunction. Again, the court disagreed and concluded that BREIN had “done more than was expected” based on the agreed covenant.

The legal paperwork reveals that BREIN reached out to the owners of both sites. The anti-piracy group also contacted their hosting providers, domain name registrars, several related cyberlockers, and the registrants and registrars of various proxies and mirror sites, among others.

Finally, Ziggo’s concerns over effectiveness and proportionality were also rejected. The court sees DNS blocking as a “clear and verifiable” measure with sufficient protections against overblocking. While blockades can be circumvented by subscribers, they are “sufficiently effective” to block casual pirates.

Blocklist Expands for All Major ISPs

The injunction requires Ziggo to block the ‘newalbumreleases’ and ‘Israbox’ domain names within five working days. This is a dynamic order, so any new (sub)domains, proxies, or mirrors that BREIN reports to the ISP will be added to the blocklist too.

Under the agreed covenant, these blockades will also apply to other Dutch Internet providers, including KPN, DELTA, and Odido. This means that, without workarounds, the two music piracy sites will soon be inaccessible in the Netherlands.

While Ziggo is likely disappointed with the outcome, in a comment to TorrentFreak a spokesperson for the company indicates that it will not fight the ruling.

“We have taken note of the verdict of Rotterdam Court regarding the blocking of several unauthorized music websites. We respect the ruling and will comply, in accordance with the agreements in the Website Blocking Covenant,” Ziggo informs us.

‘Site Blocking Is Essential’

BREIN director Bastiaan van Ramshorst is pleased with the outcome, and he frames these types of measures as a necessary last resort.

“When illegal services ignore takedown requests… and hide behind non-cooperative foreign hosts and domain registrars, there is no other option than to block these via Dutch access providers,” van Ramshorst says , adding that ISPs are the ‘best placed’ party to effectively counter these infringements.

Following this victory, BREIN will likely share the court order with Google, which has an unwritten policy of voluntarily removing court-ordered blocked domains from its Dutch search results. That further increases the scope of the injunction.

—

TorrentFreak has seen the injunction, but a redacted copy of the court order has yet to be published online by the Rotterdam court. We will update this article accordingly when it is available.

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

Twenty years ago, the first post was published on TorrentFreak.

At the time, I was a young graduate student, eager to learn and research. My interest soon exceeded the academic world and was drawn to a vibrant digital playground: the Internet.

In the early 2000s, new technologies and communications channels were suddenly at everyone’s fingertips. There was a whole new world to explore. Being somewhat of a digital late bloomer, I was completely fascinated by it all.

When torrents first crossed my path, they felt like a genuine revolution. Earlier file-sharing technologies already shown what was technically possible, but the web-based nature of torrents spawned online communities everywhere. This was a time when “pirates” were still seen as digital revolutionaries, who freed information from physical shackles such as CDs and DVDs.

TorrentFreak Est. 2005

The rise of public torrent sites and private torrent trackers was fascinating to watch. In 2005, it eventually led to the launch of TorrentFreak. There wasn’t much in-depth coverage of the file-sharing space at the time, and the goal was to document the developments in this ecosystem with a strong focus on news.

In the mid-2000s, copyright industry groups were already quite vocal and their anti-piracy messaging was generally repeated in the media without question. TorrentFreak’s goal was to critically assess the information and add, in our view, more balance to the discourse.

In hindsight, the timing for TorrentFreak’s launch was perfect. The Internet had torn down the information barriers. Writing news and opinions was no longer exclusive to companies that had access to a printing machine or a TV channel; everyone could become their own news publisher.

This self-publishing power may seem obvious today, but, in 2005, it felt both empowering and liberating.

In the early years, TorrentFreak had a strong focus on the rapidly growing file-sharing landscape. We never endorsed piracy in any shape or form but did try to fill information gaps, offering a counterweight to polarized claims and unbalanced studies.

A Changing Landscape

TorrentFreak started as a solo journey, but after a year, Andy Maxwell joined. While many others have contributed to the site along the way, today the two of us work independently and are still the site’s backbone, writing all news stories for the site.

As the years passed, the file-sharing ecosystem itself changed. The name of the site still includes ‘torrent’ but most of our coverage today is on the broader piracy ecosystem and related copyright challenges, which are nothing like they were twenty years ago.

The ‘pirate’ hobbyists of the early days were increasingly replaced by individuals and groups trying to make a quick buck — or even millions. This introduced more criminal elements to the piracy scene, which continue to run rampant today, as is evidenced by the many lawsuits and criminal prosecutions we report on.

Rightsholders and anti-piracy groups have also become much more active, both on the enforcement and lobbying fronts. They point out various threats and concerns, demanding action. At the same time, their anti-piracy actions and enforcement efforts cause concerns for legitimate companies and the public at large.

As time passed, TorrentFreak has mostly adopted the role of a neutral, yet critical, observer. We don’t shy away from highlighting extremes on both ends of any issue. Because if I’ve learned anything over the past two decades, it’s that there are always multiple sides to a story, and the most extreme positions are usually the least effective.

TorrentFreak’s Next Chapter

If I look back at the past two decades, I realize how much luck played a role in getting TorrentFreak to survive. The key to building a lasting site is to keep writing, but that would not have been possible without the help and advice from the many people who crossed my path along the way. Not all would appreciate a public callout, but you know who you are.

I would like to thank all readers who followed us on our journey. The same is true for all sources, tipsters, and other friends we made along the way. You all served as a key motivator that helped TorrentFreak to get where it is today.

Today, the 20-something-year-old person who started TorrentFreak is a few years away from turning 50. That’s a scary thought, but a blessed one at the same time. The countless hours of work have taken their toll at times, but the writing spark is still there.

This brings me to the next chapter….

In a way, I feel that TorrentFreak has already accomplished its mission. That’s a reassuring thought, but I intend to keep the site online indefinitely. It’s a life’s work, not just for me but also for Andy.

Regular readers may have already noticed that our article output decreased over the past year. This helped us to cope with the regular writing pressure while focusing on the topics where we can add value. We were never fond of regurgitating press releases or rewriting mainstream news. Instead, we prefer to follow our interests and expertise.

TorrentFreak thrives in its own small niche, and we hope to keep our spot for the next few years, documenting whatever crosses our path at our own pace. We’re grateful for every reader who follows along, as you are ultimately what makes our work count. Thank you!

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

Every day, millions of clips from movies and TV shows are shared on social media and other online platforms.

These short clips may qualify as fair use when used as part of memes or parodies, for example. Depending on context, they can also trigger a criminal investigation, as happened in Denmark.

In 2023, police started looking into a dedicated subreddit called ‘SeDetForPlottet’ (WatchItForthePlot) that shared sexually explicit scenes of actresses taken from movies and TV series. This community was highlighted by the local radio program “Kulturen,” where over a dozen actresses complained about it.

While the actresses were fine with the original sex or nude scenes, they never intended for them to be displayed online, without context. Some reported feeling molested or abused after seeing the curated clips that were clearly intended to be consumed in a sexualized way.

Criminal Conviction for Nude Clips and Superbits Uploads

The controversy motivated anti-piracy group Rights Alliance to report the issue to the police on behalf of the Danish Actors’ Association, broadcasters DR and TV2 , and other rightsholders. The group noted that copyright protection extends beyond financial considerations to encompass moral rights – including the right to respect and integrity.

Danish police launched a criminal investigation and apprehended a now 40-year-old man from Valby. Known as “KlammereFyr” on Reddit, he was the moderator of ‘SeDetForPlottet’ where at least 347 clips featuring over 100 actresses were shared and viewed millions of times.

The man, who uploaded the clips to redgifs.com , eventually confessed to the charges last month, including the moral rights violations. This week the Court of Frederiksberg handed down a 7-month conditional prison sentence, as well as 120 hours of community service.

The criminal conviction wasn’t just for the nude clips shared on Reddit. The man was also found guilty of sharing over 25 terabytes of pirated content via the private torrent tracker Superbits.org.

Landmark Moral Rights Copyright Conviction

The verdict is unique in Denmark as it goes beyond typical piracy charges. It’s the first criminal conviction based on the copyright law’s “right of respect” (respektret), which protects an artist’s integrity.

The prosecution successfully argued that by taking scenes out of their original artistic context and sexualizing them, the defendant violated the integrity of the actors and directors. This includes edits such as cropping the clips and changing the lighting to accentuate certain features.

Commenting on the verdict, special prosecutor Jan Østergaard says that he is pleased with the outcome, as it confirms that the court takes these types of offenses seriously.

Maria Ventegodt, director of the Danish Actors’ Association, is also happy with the outcome, as it confirms that the moral rights of their members were violated by these clips.

“The decision is also important for the art of film and the opportunity to make good stories on film, because the actors can now have confidence that the authorities will crack down hard on the screening of nude scenes out of context,” Ventegodt notes.

Future Consequences

It’s not immediately clear how this sentencing will translate to other countries, such as the United States. While Hollywood’s sex scenes are generally less explicit, there are entire subreddits and other communities dedicated to sharing nude clips from American productions too.

Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund notes that the Danish verdict clearly signals that the integrity of actors can be protected. This will also be important in the future, where deepfakes and other manipulated content will become increasingly common.

“Respect for artists’ rights is a fundamental prerequisite for a well-functioning digital society, and in a future where we expect far more AI-generated and manipulated content, it is crucial that the legal system, as clearly as is the case here, marks where the line is drawn,” Fredenslund commented.

The case isn’t completely over. On behalf of the rightsholders, Rights Alliance also sought 15,000 to 30,000 Danish kroner ($2,300 – $4,600 USD) in damages per nude clip. That request will be handled in a separate civil lawsuit.

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

The Supreme Court case between several major record labels and Internet provider Cox Communications is one of the landmark copyright battles of this decade.

The outcome will determine how Internet providers should deal with pirating subscribers on their networks.

Should alleged pirates be disconnected from the Internet after repeated third-party allegations of copyright infringement? Or does that go too far?

In its opening brief , Cox argued that the company should not be held liable for contributory copyright infringement because it failed to terminate subscribers after multiple warnings. The U.S. Government, various tech companies, and other interested parties , supported Cox’s position.

Last month, the major record labels, including Sony and Universal Music, countered these arguments in their response brief . Describing Cox as a company that willingly prioritized profits over piracy, they argued that the $1 billion verdict against the ISP should be upheld. They also received broad support , including from lawmakers and legal experts.

Cox: Labels Must Defend Two-Strike Rule

Before the Supreme Court Justices hear the case, Cox took the opportunity to have the final word. The Internet provider submitted a reply brief where it doubled down on its earlier arguments while accusing the labels of distancing themselves from the “two-notices-and-terminate” rule that won them the $1 billion verdict at trial.

The labels wrote in their response brief that they are not pushing for a “two-notices-and-terminate theory,” nor are they asking for mass terminations of subscribers. Instead, they characterized Cox as a hypocritical bad actor that should take responsibility.

Cox suggests that, with this positioning, the labels are effectively trying to reframe the judicial history. The ISP argues that Sony’s brief confirms this, noting that the labels sued over subscribers with “at least three notices,” which legally means Cox is being held liable for failing to act after the second piracy notice.

This relatively low threshold would lead to mass suspensions, according to Cox, and the labels should effectively defend this position at the Supreme Court.

“For years, Plaintiffs have deluged the nation’s ISPs with automated notices, then sued those ISPs on the same flawed theory: Once an ISP receives two notices for any internet account, it must terminate the account—or become a willful contributory infringer
for all future infringement,” Cox informs the Court.

“They cannot deny that the courts below applied this two-notice threshold uniformly across 57,000 homes and businesses. The record unquestionably shows that included ‘hospitals’ and ‘senior citizens,’ dorms and barracks, and even regional ISPs.”

Cox forces the labels to own the most extreme version of their argument. If they do so, the ISP can point out that this will lead to many disconnections of innocent users. Alternatively, if the labels abandon the “two-notices-and-terminate” rule, Cox can argue that the $1 billion verdict should be invalidated.

Knowledge vs. Culpable Purpose

At the core of the Supreme Court battle is the question of whether ISPs can be held liable for having “passive knowledge” about infringements or if liability requires “culpable intent” to facilitate those infringements. Cox argues the latter.

The reply brief reiterates many of these arguments, and as a sign of strength, Cox explicitly mentions that it has the U.S. government on its side.

“Cox and the Government have laid out a simple culpable-conduct rule derived from this Court’s copyright and aiding-and-abetting cases: Contributory liability depends on proof of an affirmative act demonstrating a culpable intent to further infringement,” the reply brief reads.

Not a Bad Actor

The brief also addresses the record labels’ bad actor arguments. This includes an email in which a manager responsible for the company’s DMCA compliance told his team, “F the dmca!!!”. Cox notes that these frustrated, private emails do not suggest that the company actively encouraged or fostered copyright infringement.

Similarly, Cox also dismissed the profit-related bad actor argument, including the accusation that it failed to disconnect pirates to retain revenue. The ISP points out that the Fourth Circuit already rejected the profit argument when it threw out the separate vicarious liability verdict.

Finally, the ISP points out that it did have a graduated response system in place where subscribers suspected of piracy were issued with warnings. This had a 98% deterrence rate, Cox argues, which directly contradicts the ‘bad actor’ narrative.

“Cox’s anti-infringement program suspended over 67,000 accounts during the claim period alone, and deterred 98% of infringers,” the reply brief reads.

“If Plaintiffs can now vilify that program as a failure to ‘tak[e] any serious effort to stop these infringers from infringing,’ no ISP is safe.”

Government Agrees It’s Not “Willful”

In addition to the liability question, the Supreme Court will also review whether Cox’s actions were willful. This is relevant to the damages calculations, which ultimately resulted in the $1 billion verdict. Here, Cox again uses the government’s position as a key argument.

Cox argues it cannot be found “willful” just for knowing its customers were infringing if it did not believe that its failure to act was unlawful. That was a reasonable belief, Cox argues, especially since the U.S. Government now agrees with it.

“Plaintiffs are also wrong in repeatedly conflating an ISP’s knowledge that a specified user is infringing with knowledge that the ISP is itself illegally ‘facilitating’ the misuse unless it cuts the cord. If the United States Government rejects that equation, then surely
an ISP can reasonably reject it.”

With the final reply brief filed, all the key written arguments are now on the record. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments from Cox, the record labels, and the U.S. Government, in a few weeks. A final decision in this landmark case is expected next year.

—

A copy of Cox’s reply brief, filed with the Supreme Court, is available here (pdf)

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

Investigations, prosecutions and substantial prison sentences are an important part of the anti-piracy arsenal. The public downfall of a prolific pirate provides the kind of deterrent messaging that can put people off before they even get started.

At least, that’s a possibility, if everything goes according to plan.

Sky Investigates TikTok Star

UK man Simon Hannigan is a popular food and cooking star on social media. Active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, his ‘DadtheDish’ account on the latter has over 523,000 followers and 6.4 million likes.

At what point Sky’s investigation linked Hannigan to piracy is unclear but at his sentencing last week, his Facebook groups – including one with 4,775 members – were described as “shop windows” for his sales of pirate IPTV subscriptions. Reportedly using streams sourced from an operation in Europe, Hannigan’s Android app provided 3,500 channels (including those belonging to Sky) for £28 for six months or just £50 per year. Payments for subscriptions were recorded as “paid adverts.”

According to local news outlet MEN , business was good.

“The court heard how Hannigan had previously gloated about his success in text messages, claiming that ‘business was booming’ and ‘phones were blowing up’.”

Sky Investigates, Police Step in to Make the Arrest

On March 23, 2022, what’s described as a Sky-led investigation culminated in Hannigan’s arrest. He reportedly confessed to providing ‘links’ but denied breaching copyright laws, “arguing he wasn’t in control of the system,” MEN reports.

“One of the ‘mother systems’ used to facilitate the operation was based in Europe, serving 50 million people globally,” the publication continues.

The investigation eventually traced 2,644 payments made directly into Hannigan’s bank account, together worth around £152,000.

His arrest in March 2022 apparently came as a relief; the now 35-year-old said being a ‘downstream middle man’ was ‘very difficult’ and took its toll. He was reportedly glad to see an end to the stress it had caused him but with a potential prison sentence looming at his sentencing last Thursday, would the stress return?

Sentencing

At Preston Crown Court, Hannigan received a two-year sentence suspended for 24 months, and was told to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work. So perhaps some stress, but nothing compared to the stress of a Manchester prison. For a legal system that currently hands down years in prison for offensive tweets, Hannigan might consider himself lucky.

He pleaded guilty to offenses that began in 2019 and only ended upon his arrest three years later; participating in a fraudulent business, concealing and transferring criminal property, and providing a service contrary to copyright law.

Local news reports published Friday following Hannigan’s sentencing are notable for something else; the complete absence of official commentary.

No statement from Sky is unusual, something that also raises questions about the nature of the prosecution. In common with the Premier League, Sky often carries out private prosecutions and the mention of a Sky-led investigation does seem to point in that general direction. If that’s indeed the case, balancing the prospect of future prosecutions against community service may be a difficult exercise.

The absence of any commentary from regional police is unusual too, even when considering the lack of a custodial sentence. The absence of both Sky and police is even more unusual but whether the suspended sentence dampened enthusiasm is unknown.

Whether Hannigan’s mitigation tipped the scales is unclear, but a closer look at his portrayal in the media is certainly interesting.

Get Knocked Down, and Keep Getting Back Up Again

Even before his arrest in 2022, Hannigan had appeared in national media. In April 2021, an interview with prominent broadcaster ITV revealed how 11 years earlier, Hannigan found himself homeless and living in a second hand £250 car.

A 2023 interview with national newspaper The Sun revealed that those days were long gone.

“A chef who makes thousands from sharing recipes online used to be homeless and living out of his car,” the interview begins.

“Simon makes between £2,500 – £5,000 per post, collaborating with some of the UK‘s biggest supermarket and homeware brands for sponsored content. His creative endeavor began as a bit of fun two years ago when he set up an Instagram teaching people how to cook during lockdown.”

The article also mentions how Hannigan made the leap from sleeping in a car to selling lots of them. Hannigan told The Sun he sold the car after being motivated by a kind stranger and then immediately launched a new business.

“I turned that one car into eighty cars with six months, buying and selling them, for £2,000 each,” he said, adding that landed him a job at Ford and at just 24, he became “head of business” at Ford UK on a salary of £150,000. Then he started his own recruitment company, a a post on LinkedIn reveals.

A Changed, Copyright-Aware Man

During mitigation, the Court heard that prior to the pirate IPTV business, Hannigan had been hospitalized with a burst appendix. When he returned home, he discovered that his partner had left him for his friend, and once again found himself in ‘dire financial straits’. Looking for work, he reportedly posted on Facebook and stumbled into IPTV sales, initially catering to family and friends.

MEN reports that Hannigan is now proposing to “assist Sky News and the British Copyright Council” to help deter others so that they don’t end up in a similar predicament. Yet as deterrent messaging goes, his case may not be the best example.

Instead of news that Hannigan will be sampling prison food for the next few months, any hope of sending a deterrent message on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, lies in shreds. Even Hannigan’s entrepreneurial spirit and never say die attitude may not be especially motivational, at least according to the paperwork.

From a car retail business, recruitment company, clothing and vodka businesses, to Dad the Dish Limited and his latest venture, Munch Box, the overwhelming majority were incorporated and then dissolved by the government for failing to file even their first set of accounts.

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

In May 2024, the Paris Judicial Court ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to block access to several pirate sports streaming sites.

The move was a major enforcement escalation by French rightsholders, but in hindsight it was only the beginning.

In the months that followed, additional rightsholders such as DAZN and beIN joined in on the action with similar requests, while more DNS providers were added as targets, including Quad9 and Vercel . This pitted notably smaller players against these billion-dollar companies in court.

An Existential Threat

Quad9 was no stranger to site blocking requests, having previously dealt with a similar legal battle in Germany. That said, for the small Swiss non-profit organization, these proceedings are more than a legal disagreement. They present an existential threat.

For billion-dollar tech companies Google and Cloudflare, dealing with these legal challenges is a nuisance, but they have the means to fight back. In a recent blog post , Quad9 explains that its foundation doesn’t have this luxury.

“For large commercial players such as Google, Cloudflare, or Cisco, these costs — legal, lobbying, or engineering — are absorbed as part of their business overhead.

“For small, mission-driven nonprofits like Quad9, they represent an existential threat,” the DNS provider adds.

Ideally Quad9 would like to defend itself in these blocking cases, as Google and Cloudflare have done. However, since it doesn’t have the financial resources to do so, it chose not to make an appearance in one of the recent site-blocking cases.

Breaking the Internet’s Plumbing

Quad9 argues that copyright holders are increasingly trying to hold neutral intermediaries liable for piracy. Instead of going after the infringers directly, ISPs, VPNs, and DNS providers have to take on the enforcement burden.

This is particularly problematic for smaller operations that, according to Quad9, simply don’t have the means to do so indefinitely. Not only that, by going after DNS providers, these orders also directly affect key internet infrastructure providers.

“Instead of targeting the platforms that profit from infringement, IP owners are increasingly going after the neutral infrastructure providers that simply make the internet work,” Quad9 writes.

In response to the French blocking efforts, Cisco decided to leave France, so the effects of these measures are already being felt.

Other companies, such as Google and Cloudflare, have the technical means to restrict the blockades to France, but not all providers can do so easily. That includes Quad9, which had no other choice than to apply the French blocking request worldwide.

Big Questions

In France, the courts have clearly decided that these blocking orders are warranted, and while some are under appeal, there’s no indication that they will be reversed anytime soon. That said, Quad9 believes that a broader discussion is warranted, and it poses several questions that go to the heart of how the internet should function.

In its blog post, the foundation asks, among other things:

“Should neutral, technical infrastructure be held responsible for the actions of others?”

“How far should courts reach across jurisdictions to impose national laws on global networks?”

“Can small nonprofits survive under legal obligations designed for global corporations?”

“What happens to privacy and resiliency when only a handful of corporations can afford to comply?”

“At what point does legal compliance become de facto censorship?”

These are not just rhetorical questions for the Swiss non-profit. After fighting and winning a multi-year, costly legal battle against Sony in Germany , Quad9’s “existential threat” has reemerged in France.

Ultimately, Quad9 warns that these blocking battles may lead to a less open, less private, and more centralized internet, leaving the “plumbing” in the hands of a few corporate giants who can afford to pay the legal bills.

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

At the start of the year, TorrentGalaxy was one of the most-visited torrent sites, welcoming millions of users every day.

Launched by former members of ExtraTorrent which had shut down in 2018, TorrentGalaxy soon established itself as one of the most stable torrent sites.

TorrentGalaxy’s Mystery Shutdown

In the summer of 2014, things changed when the original founders sold the site to a new, undisclosed party. The handover was immediately noticeable to outsiders, as the typically stable site suddenly began experiencing repeated stretches of downtime.

The site’s troubles escalated in January 2025, when the new operators posted a message claiming they were in “ financial difficulties “, asking users to chip in for server costs. In late February, the site became unreachable , and by March, the site’s popular upload bots also stopped working .

The reason for the sudden shutdown was a mystery and couldn’t be explained by financial issues. The site’s staffers were also left in the dark, and there was no farewell message of any kind to officially mark the site’s ending.

In March, the staffers still had hope for a miracle comeback, but the chances of that were not seen as very high and dramatically shrank in the passing months. Meanwhile, what truly happened behind the scenes was still unknown.

A Memecoin Promo

Today, the TorrentGalaxy saga gets an unexpected new chapter. The main torrentgalaxy.to domain is suddenly operational again. However, it does not list any torrents.

Instead, it now promotes a memecoin project for a token named $1 on the Solana network. Whether TorrentGalaxy’s new owners are connected to this or if the site changed hands is unknown.

Needless to say, this has nothing to do with the original TorrentGalaxy site. We can’t guarantee that the site is free of trouble, aside from the inherent crypto risks, so potential visitors should tread with caution .

A look at the site’s source code reveals it is powered by a standard configuration script that’s used for memecoin projects. For now, most links on the page are not functional either. They simply point to a “#” placeholder, suggesting that it is still work in progress.

We see no point in scrutinizing this memecoin in detail, as there are better outlets for that. However, the sudden TorrentGalaxy comeback does strongly suggest that the torrent site has been abandoned completely, marking the end of an era.

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

There’s a common belief that people pirate content to save money, whether on another streaming subscription or a pricey box office ticket.

That said, movie theaters still draw millions of visitors, many of whom may also turn to pirate sites occasionally.

Since piracy isn’t going away, understanding what drives a person to choose the theater over a ‘free’ pirate option, and vice versa, is crucial for the industry.

A new paper aims to take on this task. Through a structural econometric model that relies on real-world data from 2014 to 2019, it tries to quantify the choice between the movie theater and piracy. It considers the quality of piracy releases, but also the price and quality of the movie theater experience.

The study was conducted by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California, Davis, and Boston University. The paper will be published in the Manufacturing & Service Operations Management journal, but an early copy was already published through SSRN, which allows us to take a look at the results.

Instead of conducting surveys to model consumer behavior, the researchers use official box office figures, demographic data, and piracy data, covering both volume and quality, differentiating between low-quality (e.g. CAM) and high-quality (e.g. HDRip) releases.

Through a series of simulations, the researchers looked at what types of movie industry interventions could help to address the piracy challenge and which ones proved futile.

HDRips Are a Bigger Threat than CAMs

The study largely confirms the intuitive notion that quality matters. If high-quality pirated copies are available within a week of a movie’s theatrical release, it leads to an average 7.9% reduction in box office revenue over the first 8 weeks, compared to a scenario where only low-quality “cam” rips are available.

This finding isn’t all that surprising. After all, high-quality releases are much more popular among pirates, resulting in many more downloads and streams. This logically draws more people away from the box office.

Interestingly, the paper shows that the revenue decrease caused by high-quality piracy is most problematic for “smaller-grossing” movies. Films that earn between $100M-$200M face a 9.4% revenue loss, which is more than double the 4.3% loss for blockbusters.

“This result implies that high-quality unauthorized content may hurt creativity in film production in the motion picture industry, as it does greater harm to smaller-budget movies and independent movies,” the paper reads.

Box Office Discounts Are Not the Answer

Pirates often cite high costs as a reason to pirate, so it would seem to make sense that lower prices reduce piracy rates. Indeed, that is what the researchers found. However, lower prices eventually reduce overall revenue, so that’s not the answer.

The researchers found that cutting box office prices by 10% reduces overall revenue by 4.6%, as the increase in sales doesn’t cover the per-ticket loss. Similarly, efforts to reduce travel costs by increasing the number of screens had no meaningful effect either.

“Based on our results, we argue that theaters and/or studios can not effectively compete against “free” by reducing the costs of consuming legal content in the theatrical channel,” the researchers note.

Competing on Quality Works

Instead of competing on price, it appears movie theaters are better off competing on quality; investing in better seating, improved audio-visual technology, or other theater features, for example.

The study’s simulations show that a “modest improvement” in the quality of the movie theater experience can completely evaporate the negative effects of early high-quality piracy releases.

Specifically, the researchers found that a 3.7% increase in the consumer’s preference (utility) for the theater experience is enough to fully offset the 7.9% revenue loss.

“We therefore recommend that theater chains and studios prioritize investments in upgrading equipment and in-theater technologies to create a more immersive, comfortable, and engaging environment,” the paper concludes.

The study’s findings offer a clear opportunity for the movie industry. While theaters can’t compete with ‘free’, they can win by offering a premium experience that pirates can’t replicate.

A copy of the forthcoming paper, which discusses several additional findings and methodological limitations, is on SSRN .

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Zeng, Helen and Huang, Yan and Burtch, Gordon and Smith, Michael D., Operational Decision-making Around Movie Piracy & Theatrical Release A Structural Model of Movie Piracy vs. Legal (in-Theater) Consumption (October 08, 2025). Accepted at Manufacturing & Service Operations Management .

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