Anna’s Archive is a meta-search engine for shadow libraries that allows users to find pirated books and other related sources.

The site launched in the fall of 2022 , just days after Z-Library was targeted in a U.S. criminal crackdown, to ensure continued availability of ‘free’ books and articles to the broader public.

The site also actively provides assistance to AI researchers who want to use its library for model training. More recently, Anna’s Archive announced it had created a massive 300TB backup of Spotify, which it is slowly releasing to the public at large.

Since its launch, Anna’s Archive has also received pushback from rightsholders. The site has been blocked in various countries, and was sued in the U.S. after it scraped WorldCat.

Despite this legal pressure, the main annas-archive.org domain name remained operational, until it didn’t.

Anna’s .ORG Domain Suspended

A few hours ago, the site’s original domain name suddenly became unreachable globally. The annas-archive.org domain status was changed to “ serverHold ,” which is typically done by the domain registry. This status effectively means that the domain is suspended and under investigation. Similar action has previously been taken against other pirate sites.

It is rare to see a .org domain involved in domain name suspensions. The American non-profit Public Interest Registry ( PIR ), which oversees the .org domains, previously refused to suspend domain names voluntarily, including thepiratebay.org. The registry’s cautionary stance suggests that the actions against annas-archive.org are backed by a court order.

TorrentFreak asked PIR for a comment on their supposed involvement in the domain suspension, hoping to find out more about the legal grounds, but the organization did not immediately reply.

Update: PIR’s marketing director, Kendal Rowe, informs TorrentFreak that “unfortunately, PIR is unable to comment on the situation at this time.”

It is possible that, in response to the ‘DRM-circumventing’ Spotify backup , rightsholders requested an injunction targeting the domain name. However, we have seen no evidence of that. In the WorldCat lawsuit, OCLC requested an injunction to force action from intermediaries , including domain registries, but as far as we know, that hasn’t been granted yet.

Anna’s Archive Remains Resilient

This is not the first time Anna’s Archive has lost a domain name. The site previously moved from its .org domain to a .GS domain , anticipating a domain seizure in the WorldCat case.

Ironically, this move resulted in a swift suspension by the .GS registry , after which Anna’s Archive returned to its .org domain.

On Reddit, Anna’s Archive explains that the recent suspension is a mere hiccup too, pointing users to alternative domains.

“The .org domain apparently has been suspended. Our other domains work fine, and we’ve added some more. We recommend checking our Wikipedia page for the latest domains. This unfortunately happens to shadow libraries on a regular basis. ”

“We don’t believe this has to do with our Spotify backup,” AnnaArchivist adds.

At the time of writing, the site is indeed still operational from the older .li and .se domains, as well as the .in and .pm variants that were just added. However, with legal pressure mounting, there are no guarantees that these domains remain operational.

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

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

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 one newcomer on the list. “Zootopia 2” is the most shared title.

The most torrented movies for the week ending on January 5 are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrent sites
1	(1)	Zootopia 2	7.6 / trailer
2	(3)	The Running Man	6.0 / trailer
3	(2)	Predator: Badlands	7.5 / trailer
4	(4)	Now You See Me: Now You Don’t	6.5 / trailer
5	(5)	Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery	7.5 / trailer
6	(…)	Wicked: For Good	6.8 / trailer
7	(10)	Avatar: Fire and Ash	7.4 / trailer
8	(6)	Nuremberg	7.6 / trailer
9	(5)	One Battle After Another	8.1 / trailer
10	(9)	Tron: Ares	6.4 / trailer

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.

In the summer of 2015, the then 29-year-old Priyank Pardeshi was arrested by the police in Pune, a large city in western India.

The authorities and rightsholders saw Priyank as a kingpin in the local piracy scene, and these allegations were widely repeated by many news sites at the time.

Priyank was certainly not a typical pirate site operator. He worked at IBM in California. However, during a work-related visit to his home country, he was suddenly arrested, after investigators found pirated movies on his system while they were collecting evidence in an unrelated matter.

TellyTorrents and Camcording

In addition to Priyank, the authorities also accused two others of being involved in the scheme, which also involved the popular torrent tracker TellyTorrents. This site was a high-profile target, as it was one of the prime locations where the Bollywood blockbuster Bahubali had leaked online.

The case seemed fairly straightforward too. According to the police, the alleged piracy kingpin confessed to running TellyTorrents, earning huge sums in revenue, and storing 1,243 pirated movies. Not just that, he allegedly also revealed that they were involved in camcording films in local theaters for subsequent pirate releases.

These revelations were also shared publicly in the media, to give the case additional weight.

“Priyank revealed that Rahul Mehta of Delhi and Toni of Ghaziabad used to shoot films from cinemas and multiplexes and would prepare their pirated movies. They used to supply it to Jabalpur and many cities across the country and even in Australia and France.”

The Case Collapses (After 10 years…)

Priyank spent 311 days in custody before he was released on bail. While the prosecution seemed convinced that they had a case, it completely fell apart in court a few weeks ago, when a judicial magistrate in Jabalpur fully acquitted the lead defendant and two co-accused due to a lack of evidence.

In a detailed judgment, Magistrate Kishan Dev Singh Patel dismantled the prosecution’s case, revealing that the police investigation was almost entirely devoid of technical evidence.

Despite the serious charges under the Copyright Act and IT Act, the court noted that:

– No Forensics: The police seized computers, laptops, and hard drives but failed to send any items to a forensic lab for analysis. There was no independent verification that the files on the devices were actually pirated movies.

– No Money Trail: Despite claims that “huge profits” were made, the prosecution did not produce a single bank statement or transaction record linking Priyank to the website’s revenue.

– No Domain Link: The police failed to provide any documents to prove that Priyank purchased or owned the TellyTorrents domain name or that he paid for the servers in question.

“There are no documents on record to show that the illegal website TellyTorrents was created/operated by Priyank Pardeshi,” the judgment reads, leaving no other option than to dismiss the claims.

The prosecution relied heavily on testimony from representatives of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce in Hyderabad, who acted as expert witnesses. In court, however, these witnesses admitted that there is no hard evidence that Priyank pirated movies or that he operated TellyTorrents.

A Systemic Failure

According to Kartik Sharma, an analyst at the renowned law blog SpicyIP, this acquittal is not an outlier but part of a pattern where Indian law enforcement fails to meet the basic standards of digital evidence.

“The crux of why the acquittal happened is quite evident,” Sharma informs TorrentFreak. “The witnesses from the Telugu Film Chamber acknowledged that they had not seen the accused uploading the pirated movies to the website.”

“Also, there was no testing done by an authorized official agency or lab to establish that the alleged content was pirated.”

Sharma notes that similar lapses have led to acquittals in other high-profile piracy cases, such as State v. Bhushan Kumar in Delhi, where police failed to compare seized VCDs with original copyrighted material.

The weak evidence in these cases, including a lack of digital forensics, is ultimately what leads to a full acquittal of the defendants. However, by then, most of the personal damage is already done.

The Human Cost

While the “kingpin” narrative has been dismantled by the recent court verdict, the decade-long process has taken its toll. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Priyank highlights the human cost.

“I was unable to work for the last 10 years because after I came out of jail, people looked at me like a big criminal,” he says.

“No company would hire me because, during background verification, they could see that a criminal case was pending against me. Other people stopped seeing me as a good person. Even getting married was difficult.”

The other defendants will have similar stories that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. In this light, it is particularly confronting that one of the co-accused, Dilip Gulwani, passed away while the trial was still ongoing.

A Living Hell

Looking back, the now 40-year-old Priyank feels as if he has been framed, and he’s considering fighting back legally to recoup some of the damages.

Priyank was no stranger to TellyTorrents but notes that his involvement with pirate sites was limited to installing a forum and setting up a website. The earlier-mentioned ‘confession’ was coerced, he alleges.

All in all, the whole experience was traumatizing. While Priyank had no sympathy for the anti-piracy forces that ruined his life, he would caution pirates to reconsider their options. If caught, Bollywood can turn lives into a living hell.

Priyank hopes to continue his life now. He started a family and earns enough to pay the bills. However, he believes that his career would have been much more successful if the criminal piracy prosecution was never started.

iBomma: The New Piracy Kingpin

Interestingly, as the TellyTorrents case concluded, a new alleged Indian piracy ‘kingpin’ was caught. On November 15, the Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police arrested Immadi Ravi as the suspected mastermind behind the popular pirate streaming platform iBomma.

This high-profile takedown occurred shortly after the theatrical release of Baahubali: The Epic (a remastered combination of the film franchise). The original Baahubali film, meanwhile, was at the center of the TellyTorrents case exactly ten years prior.

Notably, the film’s director, S.S. Rajamouli, has also gotten actively involved in the iBomma case and openly thanks the police for their hard work.

As with TellyTorrents at the time, the piracy allegations against Ravi are widely echoed in the press, ranging from a lavish lifestyle financed by millions of dollars in piracy proceeds to forged identity papers . While these could all be true, the TellyTorrents case shows that caution is warranted.

That brings us to the final point of interest, or a lack thereof. While most Indian media is widely reporting on all new allegations in the iBomma case, the acquittal of the criminal defendants in the TellyTorrents case does not get a single mention.

—

A copy of the original TellyTorrents court order, issued by Magistrate Kishan Dev Singh Patel and acquitting all defendants, is available here (pdf) .

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

In Belgium, the Department for Combating Online Infringement is responsible for overseeing the local pirate site blocking efforts.

The department reviews injunctions from the Business Court in Brussels and translates these into concrete blockade implementation orders.

The first blockade of this kind was announced in April 2025 and predominantly targeted sports streaming websites. Notably, however, these blocking requirements were not limited to ISPs; they also compelled DNS resolvers to comply.

These DNS resolvers, including Google and Cloudflare, were not pleased, and Cisco’s OpenDNS even went as far as stopping its service in Belgium to avoid having to meddle with DNS. This backlash apparently struck a nerve, as OpenDNS has since resumed its activities in Belgium as the case is under appeal.

U.S. Movie Giants Behind New Blocking Push

Meanwhile, other rightsholders joined in, with various book publishers securing a blocking order against shadow libraries last August. In late November, this was followed by a new blocking order targeting various movie piracy sites , such as 1337x and Soap2day.

Interestingly, this order is rather limited in its scope. Instead of casting a wide net, it strictly targets Belgium’s five major Internet Service Providers: Proximus, Telenet, Orange Belgium, DIGI Communications Belgium, and Mobile Vikings.

While the targeted ISPs and the blocked sites were listed in the implementation order, the requesting rightsholders were not mentioned.

However, after the Belgian government responded to our transparency request just before Christmas, we can now reveal that familiar names are behind the latest site-blocking campaign.

The underlying order from the French-speaking Business Court in Brussels lists a coalition of major studios: Disney, Netflix, Sony, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros. These companies, all members of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), are joined by another video entertainment giant: Apple.

The MPA has been a driving force behind site-blocking efforts around the world, so it is no surprise to see this activity in Belgium too. However, that doesn’t make the order any less interesting.

Ten Pirate Brands

While we now have access to the underlying order, the formal list of URLs (Annex 1) will remain confidential. The same is true for Annex 2.b., the official list of the ten pirate names or brands.

“In addition to the list of ‘target sites’ provided in Annex 1 of their application, the applicants also submit an Annex 2.a., classified as confidential, in which the applicants explain the phenomenon of pirate brands, before providing, in Annex 2.b, a list of 10 names,” the translated order reads.

These brands are important because the court order mandates that any future sites using this name or branding are also eligible for a spot on the blocklist.

While this list remains confidential, Belgium’s piracy blocklist is transparently published online. This includes the recently blocked URLs, from which it is not difficult to compile the likely list of blocked pirate brands. These include 1337x , Fmovies , Soap2day , Sflix , FlixHQ , Papadustream , French-Strea m, Coflix and Wiflix .

American DNS Questions

The underlying court order further confirms that these heavyweight movie studios did not include any third-party DNS providers (like Google or Cloudflare) in their list of intermediaries. Whether this is motivated by the ongoing appeal in other Belgian blocking cases or a strategic shift remains unknown.

It appears that, for now, the movie companies currently prefer a more targeted approach, focusing exclusively on major Internet Service Providers.

Depending on the motivation, this choice can have implications beyond Belgium. In the United States, rightsholders, including these same movie studios, continue to push for site-blocking legislation , which they hope to see implemented this year. Thus far, we have seen proposed site-blocking bills with and without DNS resolvers, so it can go either way.

—

A copy of the order (RR/25/00092) from the French-speaking Business Court of Brussels is available with minor redactions of personal information here (pdf) .

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

As the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States for several years in a row, Strike 3 Holdings has a name to keep up.

The porn producer is known for filing lawsuits against alleged pirates who download their ‘Milfy,’ ‘Tushy,’ and ‘Vixen’ videos via BitTorrent sites.

Strike 3 monitors pirate sites, and, when their videos are shared in public, it takes decisive action. After tracking down the pirating IP-addresses, it typically files a federal lawsuit, requesting a subpoena to obtain the subscriber’s details.

Once the target is identified, the case can then move forward. While these cases can technically go to trial, they typically result in out-of-court settlements of a few thousand dollars. It’s unknown how profitable these cases are, but the fact that Strike 3 files thousands a year suggests that the business model remains lucrative.

Record: 4,088 Lawsuits in 2025

Strike 3 kept its “settlement machine” going over the past 12 months. In 2025, the company filed 4,088 ^(*) new piracy lawsuits in U.S. federal courts, barely surpassing the previous record of 3,932 set just last year.

Almost all these cases were filed against John Does who are initially only identified by their IP-address. Historically, the lawsuits are settled swiftly after the defendant is identified, and that appears to hold true this year as well. Of all cases filed this year, 2,775 (67.9%) are already closed.

Most of these closed cases disappear from the docket within months, typically following a confidential settlement where defendants pay several thousand dollars to resolve the porn piracy lawsuit without further exposure.

The Cumulative 20,000-Case Milestone

Beyond the annual numbers, 2025 saw Strike 3 cross a historic threshold. Since filing its first case in 2017, the company has now initiated over 20,000 federal copyright lawsuits.

The graph below shows that the number of complaints filed per year has risen steadily since 2020, breaking record after record.

To put these numbers in perspective, Strike 3’s cases alone account for more than half of all copyright lawsuits in the United States in recent years.

While critics and judges have occasionally characterized the business model as a “high-tech shakedown” or an “ATM for the courts,” the company shows no signs of slowing down. On the contrary, it appears to expand to a new class of targets.

$359m Lawsuit Against Meta

While the thousands of “John Doe” cases against individuals have likely brought in millions for Strike 3 over the years, the company’s most ambitious move of 2025 was its lawsuit against tech giant Meta .

In July, Strike 3 accused the tech company of using adult films to assist its AI model training. This follows a broader trend of copyright litigation against AI developers, including several high-profile claims brought by book authors.

Strike 3’s cases specifically focus on Meta’s BitTorrent activity, with the porn producer seeking astronomical damages of up to $359 million. The lawsuit alleges that Meta willfully pirated and redistributed 2,396 adult films to train its AI models, including LLaMA and Movie Gen.

Responding to the lawsuit, Meta dismissed all claims of a coordinated download action. Instead of an AI training effort, Meta suggested that the alleged downloads were “personal use” by its own employees, contractors, or visitors using its corporate networks and servers.

Whether the Meta lawsuit ends in a landmark ruling or a quiet settlement, Strike 3’s litigation engine shows no signs of cooling down. Whatever happens on the AI front in 2026, the company’s “John Doe” settlement machine will likely continue to churn out new complaints in the background.

—

(*) Note: the data presented here are based on a PACER search for cases filed between January 1 and December 31, 2025, where ‘Strike 3’ is listed as a party. All known non-copyright cases have been filtered out.

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

For writers and readers, news often comes and goes, with major headlines swiftly fading into the background.

Therefore, it can be a good idea to stop and reflect now and then. After covering piracy news and copyright challenges for more than two decades, we look back at some of the most memorable moments.

This certainly isn’t an exhaustive list, but it surely shows that times have changed. And they continue to do so.

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

As England’s top football competition, the Premier League draws hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world.

Aside from the sportive stakes, the Premier League also has a vested interest in selling broadcast rights. These rights generate billions of pounds in revenue per year; a staggering amount unmatched by any other football league.

Yet, other leagues are not the main threat to these broadcast revenues. Instead, piracy has emerged as the Premier League’s main nemesis, with many football fans turn to cheaper pirate streaming services to watch ‘the people’s game’.

In recent years, the Premier League has tried several legal avenues to tackle the piracy problem . In addition to obtaining blocking orders in multiple countries, the organization has been a driving force behind several lawsuits , some of which resulted in prison sentences.

Cloudflare & Pirate Sites

While the football league typically finds the law on its side, identifying its ‘opponents’ isn’t always easy. Operators of streaming sites and services are typically aware of the legal risks and do their best to remain anonymous. Presumably as part of this strategy, they use services made available by Cloudflare.

Cloudflare doesn’t make the operators of piracy sites ‘anonymous’ but it does shield their hosting locations from public view. Rightsholders can overcome this barrier through formal complaints, after which Cloudflare identifies the hosting services. To obtain additional information, however, rightsholders have to go to court.

Earlier this month the Premier League took this follow-up step by asking a California federal court to issue a DMCA subpoena. The request, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, identifies dozens of target pirate streaming sites and “Access Points”. Through the court, the Premier League hopes to identify the persons connected to these domains.

Premier League Requests Action

Before going to court, the Premier League’s American law firm, Hagan Noll & Boyle , sent a formal notification to Cloudflare.

“Cloudflare is asked to remove or disable access to Premier League’s copyrighted works, which, based on the infringement that has occurred to date through the websites and domain names identified above, will continue to be infringed in this same manner throughout the Premier League season,” attorney Timothy M. Frank wrote.

The letter identifies specific streaming site domains and includes screenshots of the websites where these are shown.

In addition to public-facing sites, the Premier League pointed to various “backend links” where the pirated football streams are actually being sourced. The legal paperwork shows unauthorized broadcasts of various matches including Brentford v. Leeds United, Crystal Palace v. Manchester City, and Nottingham Forest v. Tottenham Hotspur.

Several of the targeted sites utilize sophisticated redirection chains to reach their audience. For example, dooball345.com was found to redirect through dooball345s.com before landing on dooball345x.com. Similarly, pelotalibrevivo.net redirects users to pirlotvenvivo.club.

The court records also highlight how these sites often use unique CDN links and m3u8 playlists, sometimes involving tokens and session IDs—to serve live content to millions of global viewers.

Cloudflare Must Identify Operators?

The Premier League’s letter to Cloudflare didn’t result in the immediate termination of the accounts, but it is used to request the DMCA subpoena at the the California federal court.

The proposed subpoena, which has yet to be signed off on, would require Cloudflare to hand over information sufficient to identify the alleged infringers, including any names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information, account updates, and account histories.

Whether the Premier League will find any of the information usable is another matter. Many pirate site owners use inaccurate data, but the explicit request for payment information and account history aims to provide a clearer financial trail than standard subscriber data.

—

A copy of the requested DMCA subpoena is available here (pdf) and the Premier League’s declaration can be found here (pdf) . Below is a list of the targeted “Access Point” domain names identified in the legal filing:

– 247sport.org
– 4k-yalla-shoot.info (redirects to yallashootspro.com and 3arabsports.net)
– antenasport.org
– bingsport.site
– deporte-libre.click
– dooball345.com (redirects to dooball345s.com and dooball345x.com)
– goaldaddyth.com
– hesgoal.watch
– librefutboltv.su
– livesports088.com (redirects to keelalive52.com)
– ovogoaal.com
– pelotalibrevivo.net (redirects to pirlotvenvivo.club)
– rbtvplus17.help (redirects to fctv33.work and nplb6earneyhtycourage.sbs)
– ronaldo7.me (redirects to streameasthd.com)
– t4tv.click
– vachvoi.link
– wearechecking.online (redirects to wac.rip)
– yallalshoot.com
– yalla4shoot.com
– yallla-shoot.com (redirects to yallashoot-4k.com, yallashootlivehd.com, wuyh.online )
– sportshd.app

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

As one of the leading Internet infrastructure companies, Cloudflare finds itself at the center of various copyright disputes.

The American company says it powers nearly 20% of the web. This includes several Fortune 500 companies, but also many pirate sites and services.

For years, rightsholders have urged Cloudflare to do something about these pirate sites. However, the company typically doesn’t take action against customers that use its CDN services. Instead, it simply forwarded takedown notices to their respective hosting services.

If customers do use hosting-related Cloudflare services, they will have their content removed. These types of customers have increased significantly over time, and this year, Cloudflare reports a significant spike in takedown activity.

3,800% Increase in Takedowns

Cloudflare’s latest Transparency Report , published last week, shows that the company received 124,872 hosting-related copyright complaints in the first half of 2025. Of these reports, 54,357 resulted in Cloudflare taking action, presumably by disabling or removing the content in question.

These figures represent a dramatic year-over-year increase, as Cloudflare reported ‘only’ 1,394 copyright-related takedown actions in the six months prior. That’s an impressive 3,800% increase.

If we zoom out further, we see that the hosting-related reports and takedowns have grown steadily over the years.

#333;text-align:left;">

Period	Reports Received	Reports Actioned
#eee;"> 2023 H1	#eee;text-align:right;"> 376	#eee;text-align:right;"> 252
#eee;"> 2023 H2	#eee;text-align:right;"> 1,111	#eee;text-align:right;"> 1,078
#eee;"> 2024 H1	#eee;text-align:right;"> 10,892	#eee;text-align:right;"> 1,046
#eee;"> 2024 H2	#eee;text-align:right;"> 11,508	#eee;text-align:right;"> 1,394
#0056b3;"> 2025 H1	#0056b3;text-align:right;"> 124,872	#0056b3;text-align:right;"> 54,357

Source: Cloudflare Transparency Report Data / TorrentFreak

The most recent spike is not merely the result of increased hosting activity, however. Cloudflare notes that it started to actively engage with rightsholders in the first half of the year to tackle unlicensed sports streaming.

Rightsholders Get API Access

Justin Paine, Cloudflare’s Vice President of Trust & Safety, notes that this increase is partly the result of a shift toward more automated processes. Specifically, the company offered rightsholders access to a dedicated API, designed to streamline the submission of copyright complaints.

Through the API, rightsholders were able to automate takedown requests. This resulted in a higher takedown volume and a lower median reaction time, which is key when dealing with time-sensitive content such as live sports streams.

“This engagement resulted in a significant increase in both reports of streaming and corresponding DMCA takedown actions on hosted content, which jumped from 1,394 to 54,357,” Cloudflare’s transparency report reads.

This collaboration and the newly gained insights further boosted the enforcement efforts and resulted in actions against thousands of Cloudflare R2 storage accounts . In the first half of 2025, Cloudflare terminated 21,218 accounts, of which 19,817 were processed automatically.

Increased Blocking & DNS at Risk

Site blocking also remained a hot topic. In response to various court orders or regulatory authorities, Cloudflare has also geo-blocked access to several domains that use its CDN pass-through services. It is clear that the blocking pressure is mounting, with most requests coming from France.

Cloudflare typically does not meddle with its DNS resolver. Instead, it geo-blocks requests for these domains. The transparency report doesn’t mention any data regarding DNS blocking orders and notes that DNS-based blocking will be avoided at all costs.

“Cloudflare has pursued legal remedies before complying with requests to block access to domains or content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver or identified alternate mechanisms to comply with relevant court orders.”

“To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver,” the transparency report adds.

Clunky Blocks & UK Cooperation

In addition to being subject to direct orders, Cloudflare services are also blocked by third parties. For example, ISPs in Spain and Italy were required to block Cloudflare infrastructure to comply with IP-address blocking actions targeted at illegal sports streams.

Commenting on these efforts, Justin Paine specifically calls out the Spanish football league LaLiga for its “clunky” blocking approach and its “unapologetic” stance .

“The disproportionate effect of IP address blocking is well known. LaLiga has nonetheless been unapologetic about causing the blocking of countless unrelated websites, suggesting that their commercial interests should trump the rights of Spanish Internet users to access the broader Internet during match times,” Paine notes.

While Cloudflare remains vehemently against aggressive blocking demands, it is slowly but steadily increasing its cooperation with rightsholders. In addition to the earlier mentioned streaming takedown efforts, Cloudflare also started to voluntarily block pirate sites in the UK.

As previously unveiled here , Cloudflare started blocking domain names based on older site-blocking orders where it wasn’t a party. This is similar to the approach Google takes in various countries.

According to Paine, this blocking action in the UK is part of a voluntary agreement with rightsholders, affecting Cloudflare’s pass-through CDN and security services.

“When we take action on domains pursuant to these orders, we post an interstitial page that returns a 451 status code that directs the visitor to the specific order, which includes a process for affected parties to contest the blocking action.”

According to Paine, Cloudflare’s voluntary blocking gesture shows that the company is willing to take action as long as the requests are reasonable.

“Our efforts in the UK to block content based on a finding of infringement in an order directed to a third party reflect our desire to experiment with more targeted approaches than the overblocking we have seen in other countries in Europe,” Paine notes.

Combined with the increased automated reporting and API-driven takedowns, it seems likely that the copyright enforcement volume will continue to increase in the years to come.

At the same time, however, Cloudflare will continue to resist egregious piracy-blocking efforts that break the foundations of the Internet, including DNS-based blocking.

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

In October, several Reddit posts appeared online that supposedly linked to a leaked copy of the Minions 3 audio.

These postings were swiftly removed by Reddit , presumably after they were targeted by DMCA takedown notices, but the user kept submitting new posts.

The leaker, known as DrChoclateBob on Reddit, also relied on YouTube to share the audio using the “CHOCOLATE BOB” and “ChoclateBob” handles. These uploads were also spotted by rightsholders and were eventually removed.

Despite multiple warnings and strikes, the leaker continued sharing copies on YouTube, Google Drive, and elsewhere.

Eventually, this resulted in account terminations on Reddit and YouTube , after which the calm returned.

NBCUniversal Goes After DrChoclateBob

The leaked audio was reportedly recorded during a test screening. With more than half a year to go before the official premiere, it’s understandable that distributor Universal Pictures would like to know who leaked it.

To find out more, NBCUniversal requested two DMCA subpoenas at a California federal court this week, targeting Reddit and Google.

The subpoenas, which were swiftly signed off on by a court clerk, require both companies to share all identifying information that’s linked to the leaker’s accounts, including names, physical addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses.

Plugging Leaks

It’s worth noting legal paperwork also mentions a potentially unrelated YouTube user, mightyvortex5973, who allegedly uploaded a pirated copy of The Lorax. That said, the primary focus of the subpoenas is clearly on protecting the “pre-release film content”.

Whether this DrChoclateBob recorded the audio or if they received it from someone else is something Universal would like to know.

While requesting the subpoena, NBCUniversal said that it would use the requested information to protect its rights. Whether this means that it will take follow-up legal action is unknown, but it is certainly determined to stop future leaks.

—

A copy of the declaration for the DMCA subpoena request targeted at Reddit is available here (pdf) , and the Google equivalent can be found here (pdf) .

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