With an industrial-scale Piracy Shield blocking program not quite the panacea some had predicted, Italian authorities and rightsholders have recently upgraded their deterrent messaging capabilities.

After a database of 2,200 individuals who subscribed to a pirate IPTV service was obtained by police during the course of a raid, authorities made good on their promise to issue fines to those exposed.

For some of those who accepted responsibility and settled their debt to society, a hard lesson had been learned. In a letter delivered to their homes recently, the head of DAZN explained the details of a new lesson to the same people. Previously fined recipients were provided an opportunity to pay DAZN an additional €500 , this time to head off a possible claim for damages.

Lesson 3: Shame and Suffering, Respectfully

At the recent Sky Up The Edit event, part of a project championing digital inclusion, respect, and sports values, Minister for Sport and Youth, Andrea Abodi, spoke about the importance of respect.

“We must practice it, it’s an idea that can’t just fade away,” he said. “The more we respect ourselves and others, the better our quality of life.”

Sports content creator Lisa Offside spoke a little about social media, where respect can be in short supply.

“I’m realizing that negative comments define the person making them more than the person receiving them,” she said.

The minister wholeheartedly agreed. “You don’t have to respond to disrespect with disrespect: it’s a demonstration of strength and inner peace. We must continue to set a good example.”

IPTV Piracy is Disrespectful to Sport and the Economy

With the state and DAZN currently setting a different kind of example in respect of a couple of thousand luckless IPTV subscribers, Minister Abodi explained that buying pirate subscriptions isn’t simply being disrespectful to sport.

“We must be aware that buying an illegal ticket, piracy, means helping criminal economies. We must understand that we all become accomplices to this crime,” he warned.

Unlikely to do much to foster inner peace among those targeted, a new deterrent measure revealed by Minister Abodi suggests that setting an example doesn’t have to take place in private.

“I believe the names of those who buy illegal tickets may soon be published. It’s beyond privacy concerns, it’s a crime. I hope people understand that perhaps it’s better to spend a few euros more and avoid running into problems,” he added.

Pay Now or Pay More Later

While the ‘name-and-shame’ component is new, the advice from the minister is not dissimilar from that outlined in DAZN’s letter. In general terms, people are free to make their own choices; however, should they choose to pirate rather than buy a legal product (or settle a claim in DAZN’s case), it only gets more expensive when people get caught later on.

“It might seem, in some cases, like bravado,” Abodi explained. “My son also tried it, and I explained to him that it’s not just about taking money away from football.”

Italy’s Minister for Sport presented the new Sports Decree during the summer, which aims to pump money into the sport, in part by revisiting policies that have reportedly hurt the clubs financially.

In a move designed to suppress problem gambling, in 2018 Italy passed the Dignity Decree which imposed a blanket ban on gambling advertising and sports sponsorships. According to almost everyone, the decree hit revenues very hard indeed, so gambling operators are now being invited back after six years.

During that period, infamous betting operator 1xBet was the Presenting Partner of Serie A, Italy’s top football league.

1xBet logos were displayed on virtual advertising boards during matches but were only seen by overseas viewers due to the decree addressing problem gambling at home.

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

In a legal dispute now at the U.S. Supreme Court, the world’s leading record labels and Cox Communications disagree on many things, including how to respond to online piracy.

The labels’ preferred solution is to sever subscribers’ access to the internet. Cox believes that denying internet access is excessive. The case is much more complex than that as the venue suggests, but one aspect seems clearer when viewed in its own light.

When a person gets caught pirating music online, should everyone in their household be denied access to banking, health care, education, and everything else people need to simply exist? Is collective punishment the right way to satisfy a commercial dispute, between a record company and an ISP, over alleged activity of which the family likely had zero knowledge, and were never in a position to control or prevent?

Collective Punishment, Every Single Week

The proposition above sounds fundamentally unfair, because punishing innocent people is always unfair. Billions of people understand and respect the principle of individual responsibility and violations are quite rightly viewed with contempt.

Yet, some will argue that life is full of unfairness. Inconvenience for a few people is inevitable when solving important copyright disputes involving a lot more money than most people have ever seen.

In Spain, an important copyright dispute and accompanying site-blocking order certainly don’t authorize collective punishment on an unprecedented level. Yet, for several hours, several times each week, local ISPs now block hundreds of Cloudflare IP addresses to prevent access to unidentified pirate streaming services run by unidentified people.

There’s no discrimination; ISP’s deploy blocking measures that affect their own customers, denying access to websites using Cloudflare’s services and any others that also happen to be blocked.

There appears to be no warning and little transparency. ISPs never inform customers of incoming blocking, and it’s not uncommon for questions about suspected blocking to be brushed aside or simply ignored. Fingers invariably point to an unspecified court order, obtained by an unspecified entity, on unspecified grounds. As a solution to their current access problems, the information is totally useless to any customer.

The Blocking of NO-IP’s Dynamic DNS

For well over a week, users in Spain have been reporting problems with ddns.net, a dynamic DNS service offered for free by NOIP.com . DDNS.net and similar services offer a solution to an issue affecting anyone with an IP address that periodically changes.

When not at home, for example, gaining access to CCTV cameras might suddenly prove impossible when an ISP allocates a new IP address. Using a service like DDNS.net allows users to associate their IP address with a DDNS.NET subdomain (examplemyaddress@ddns.net) with future IP address updates handled automatically.

Not only are services like these useful, some routers have them built in, so people may be using and benefiting from them without even knowing.

Some users recognized the problem immediately, and with records showing almost 350,000 URLs associated with the ddns.net domain, there’s plenty of scope for disruption.

The above post on X is a fairly typical report with some useful additional detail. It mentions an ISP called Digi, which, instead of returning the correct IP address associated with the user’s DDNS.net subdomain, points it to the 127.0.0.1 loopback address that refers to the user’s current device.

A follow-up post by the same user a day later reveals that blocking actually began on October 8, and despite requesting information from Digi, no explanation had been forthcoming. Another user affected by the issue eventually received a response earlier this week.

While a court order was confirmed as the root issue, refusal to elaborate any further isn’t just common; it’s the standard across all ISPs in Spain. To our knowledge, blocking orders to date haven’t carried any non-disclosure conditions, so in most cases, there’s no legal reason underpinning the lack of transparency.

DDNS.net is Definitely Subject to Blocking

Confirmation that Digi continues to block at the time of writing is available via the unofficial third-party blocking transparency portal hayahora.futbol .

Current information shows that Digi continues to block the service, but details reported elsewhere show that this wasn’t a lone action.

Local reports state that Movistar displayed Error 451 (Unavailable for Legal Reasons), MásOrange displayed the message “Content blocked at the request of the Competent Authority, communicated to this Operator,” while Vodafone said it could do nothing about the outage: “For reasons beyond Vodafone’s control, this website is unavailable.”

Alone in the Dark

The lack of transparency is pervasive, and the indifference to the problems experienced by subscribers all over Spain is evident every week. People with zero connection to any of the parties involved in blocking disputes continually pay the price, wasting hours finding workarounds to bypass deliberate network blockages that, for no good reason, are shrouded in secrecy.

A user who could no longer access his server using Wireguard reported the problems to his ISP, Digi, on October 13. He was informed that, having looked into it, no issues could be found. That led to an entire thread of potential solutions, including replacing the ISP’s DNS with another service and replacing DDNS.net with a similar service operated by DuckDuckGo.

Consolation: Could’ve Been Significantly Worse

Tests suggest that the blocking efforts target the DDNS.net domain, but how far the damage goes in respect of subdomains is difficult to determine by users of non-blocking ISPs.

Digi operates at least two public DNS servers, but remote tests yielded no useful information. Fortunately, domain blocking doesn’t appear to be accompanied by IP address blocking, at least in this case. DDNS.net has thousands of subdomains, but if its IP address had been targeted too, the exponential scale of the fallout could’ve been extraordinary.

The situation in Spain has no parallel in Europe. Blocking is expanding elsewhere, including in the UK, most recently to protect a company behind several well-known weight loss drugs. However, avoidable collateral damage on this scale has never happened.

That it takes place in a member state of the increasingly heavily regulated European Union remains completely unfathomable.

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

To combat online piracy, copyright holders frequently use DMCA subpoenas to compel service providers to unmask alleged infringers.

Because these requests don’t require a judge’s approval and are typically signed off by a court clerk, they offer a swift and powerful tool to identify pirates.

In recent years, Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has been targeted with DMCA subpoenas dozens of times. While the personal information it discloses may not always be accurate, it has been instrumental in several enforcement actions.

Shueisha vs. Mangajikan

In some instances, the mere threat of potential legal trouble may already be sufficient. This was the case a few months ago when the massively popular manga piracy site Mangajikan.com shut its doors days after publisher Shueisha obtained a DMCA subpoena directed at Cloudflare.

While Shueisha must have been pleased with the quick result, the publisher still didn’t know who was running the site. Shortly after Shueisha obtained the DMCA subpoena, the anonymous operator of mangajikan.com and related domain alammanga.com, submitted a motion to quash at a California federal court.

Anonymous Operator Relies on Cox Precedent

The ‘John Doe’ operator’s motion to quash cited several reasons why disclosure of their personal data should be denied. This includes the Cox precedent confirmed by the Court of Appeals in August , which held that DMCA subpoenas don’t apply to Section 512(a) service providers, i.e mere conduits that simply pass on bytes.

“Cloudflare is not a proper DMCA target in this instance because here, it only provides DNS and CDN services to the Domains and cannot remove or disable access to content,” Doe’s attorney explained.

“[F]ederal courts have repeatedly held that DMCA subpoenas cannot compel disclosure from service providers acting solely as conduits or CDNs, as they do not host or control the allegedly infringing content.”

The non-hosting argument appears to align with Cloudflare’s own policy. The company does not disable access to allegedly infringing URLs that use its CDN service because it doesn’t host the content permanently. Instead, Cloudflare forwards DMCA notices to the affected subscribers.

Shueisha Counters: Caching is Key

In its response, Shueisha pointed out that since Cloudflare temporarily stores the contested materials in its cache and then serves the content to the site’s visitors, Cloudflare qualifies as a Section 512(c) service.

The manga publisher backed up its claim by simply submitting a screenshot from Cloudflare’s own website describing how its cache “stores copies of frequently accessed content.”

“Cloudflare does, in fact, store content on its servers in the form of cached data which allows for faster loading of sites. Courts, particularly in this district, routinely issue DMCA subpoenas to Cloudflare that Cloudflare does not move to quash,” Shueisha argued.

Shueisha further argued that the pirate site’s operator failed to cite a single case in which Cloudflare was seen as an “improper recipient” of a DMCA subpoena in this context.

Jurisdiction, Fair Use, and Retaliation

In addition to the disagreement over the correct application of a DMCA subpoena, the operator argued that a U.S. court is not the right venue. In a declaration, they explained that Mangajikan.com allegedly blocked U.S. visitors, had a non-commercial nature, and has already been shut down.

The underlying DMCA notice is also invalid, they argued, because it didn’t properly identify the infringing content and failed to take fair use into account.

Finally, the John Doe operator asked the court for a protective order to shield his identity, noting that he feared retaliation since Shueisha had released personal details of adversaries in the past.

These additional arguments were contested by Shueisha. Crucially, the publisher said that since their declaration was submitted anonymously, the operator can’t be held to the standard of “penalty of perjury” so should be ignored.

Other defenses, such as fair use claims, do not need to be considered for a motion to quash, the publisher added.

Court: Caching Qualifies for a DMCA Subpoena

After reviewing the filings from both sides, the court ultimately sided with the manga publisher.

Firstly, Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Shueisha sufficiently identified a copyrighted work. In addition, its takedown notice included the required statement of good faith belief that Mangajikan’s use was unauthorized.

Finally, the court found that Cloudflare is not a mere conduit service provider under Section 512(a), as it stores cached content. Siding with Shueisha’s argument that Cloudflare functioned as a Section 512(c) service provider, the Court confirmed that a DMCA subpoena can be used.

“The parties offer limited evidence to demonstrate what functions Cloudflare performed for Doe’s websites. Still, Shueisha has made a prima facie showing that Cloudflare stores content on its servers in the form of cached data to support faster loading of sites.”

“Because there is no evidence to the contrary, the Court accepts Shueisha’s prima facie showing and concludes that Cloudflare functioned as a Section 512(c) service provider,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers added.

DMCA: A, B, C…

Interestingly, the order didn’t mention Section 512(b), which specifically references caching. That likely wouldn’t have changed the outcome, however, as DMCA subpoenas also apply to these services.

Cloudflare likely sees itself as a caching service in relation to its CDN services, as it typically does not remove cached content, unlike content that it hosts permanently. Therefore, the court’s ruling here should be seen as limited to this particular case.

For Mangajikan’s operator, the ruling effectively means that their battle for anonymity is over. However, the court did order the parties to create a protective order, which will limit how Shueisha can use Doe’s identity, particularly in public.

—

A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ order is available here (pdf)

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

Under the international umbrella of IFPI, the RIAA in the United States, and the BPI in London, the world’s leading recording labels have been on a constant upwards trajectory for a decade.

After the likes of Napster, Grokster, and LimeWire gatecrashed the party and introduced unwelcome (not to mention illegal) competition into the equation, in 2002 revenues tumbled and somehow managed to keep going south until 2014.

Making peace with YouTube was a necessary step that contributed billions of dollars to the overall recovery. The turning point came in 2015, marking the start of ten consecutive years of growth. Revenues more than doubled, from a low of US$12.9 billion in 2014 to a high of US$29.6 billion in 2024.

Piracy hasn’t gone away, but visible legal action against traditional pirate adversaries has been minimal, at least when compared to the periods when revenue was headed in the opposite direction.

Increased Threat, Unfinished Business

IFPI’s reporting in 2019 was upbeat; piracy had fallen dramatically and music consumption was on the up. Yet a relatively new form of consumption was already causing alarm and was soon described as a greater threat than pirate sites.

So-called stream-ripping was nothing new, but when fueled by the massive repository of recorded music on YouTube, the preferred tactic of shutting down the source was effectively obsolete. So, continuing along lines similar to those that had shuttered YouTube-MP3 in 2017, the industry took what action it could against sites that converted YouTube links into MP3 downloads.

One of the most notable disputes saw the RIAA take on the Russian owner of 2conv.com and FLVTO.biz. In an ideal world, the $83 million judgment in the labels’ favor back in 2022 would’ve dampened enthusiasm among those tempted by the same line of business. Ongoing streaming-ripping complaints in the RIAA’s annual reports to the USTR suggested minimal deterrent effect.

Y2Mate and Eleven Similar Sites Call it Quits

In an announcement Tuesday, IFPI confirmed that one of the most persistent threats with the greatest volume of online traffic, has now been shut down.

Y2Mate.com had been featured in the RIAA’s reports to the USTR for several years, and while its traffic had shown signs of decline more recently, 620 million visits per year between Y2Mate and eleven other sites (under common ownership), is clearly significant.

“Y2mate has been subject to website blocking actions in 13 countries and has appeared in numerous editions of the USTR Notorious Markets Report and the EU Counterfeit and Piracy Watchlist. The shutdown of the sites is a result of targeted enforcement action by IFPI against the operator of the sites,” IFPI reported.

“The operator of Y2mate and the other 11 websites agreed to shut down the sites for good and to stop infringing IFPI’s members rights in the future. Most of the domains are now in IFPI’s possession, including Y2mate.com, Yt1s.com, Utomp3.com, Tomp3.cc, and Y2mate.gg.”

Finer Details Go Unmentioned

Other than an agreement to shut down and a promise not to infringe IFPI’s members’ rights in the future, IFPI’s announcement offers no further detail on the agreement or the assumed change in circumstances that led to it. It’s reasonable to assume that domains were handed over as part of a deal, however.

The full list of domains is available below. Records suggest that several were updated recently, with at least one currently displaying the message below.

Given the record industry’s complaints over registrant details being hidden away, it’s somewhat ironic that most of the domains have WHOIS records displaying ‘Withheld for Privacy’. That being said, there are more significant gaps in the information being made available. The absence of a lawsuit is unusual; the lack of a large settlement amount, even more so.

Sites Operated From Vietnam

Considering that IFPI’s multi-year mission to shut down Y2Mate led them to Vietnam, and despite the chances of obtaining anything close to a deterrent custodial sentence being close to minimal, IFPI still managed to obtain the sites’ domain names.

In theory, this should make it more difficult to relaunch the sites, but in practical terms, Y2Mate has been evading site blocking measures for years and is unlikely to consider the loss of a few domains as especially problematic. Nevertheless, control of the domains means millions of eyes on the shutdown notice and any benefits that might bring.

None of this means that the return of the sites is inevitable. Yet, if that was the chosen path, preventing it would be almost impossible. Enforcement with lasting results remains elusive in Vietnam, and sites like these can be launched, torn down, and relaunched in the time it takes to eat a sandwich.

The full list of websites shut down by IFPI:

9convert.com
In-y2mate.com
Tomp3.cc
Ump3.cc
utomp3.com
y2mate.gg
yt1s.gg
youtubepp.com
y2mate.com
yt1s.com
vidcombo.com
Y2mates.com

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

With many millions of daily users, Reddit is undoubtedly one of the most visited sites on the Internet.

The platform celebrated its 20th anniversary this summer and has grown from a hobby site, started by two college roommates, to a billion-dollar company.

This growth also brought added responsibility. In addition to the billions of casual, insightful, and heartwarming messages, Reddit’s popularity was also embraced by those who color outside the lines of the law.

Reddit’s Transparency

One of the issues Reddit has to deal with is copyright infringement, a relatively small task early on. In the first transparency report published ten years ago , Reddit reported that it received 176 takedown requests in an entire year.

Most of these DMCA notices did not lead to any removals, with Reddit stating that the infringing content was often stored on external sites and that “links do not generally infringe copyright.”

Today, that perspective has changed. Reddit’s current copyright overview clearly states that hyperlinks can trigger copyright violations. This is also evident from the many subreddits that warn members not to link to pirated material.

2025: DMCA Notices Up, Removals Down

The volume of takedown notices has also evolved quite a bit. According to Reddit’s latest transparency report , the company received 58,920 copyright takedown notices in the first half of 2025, a 5% increase over the 56,210 notices in the same period last year.

Despite receiving more takedown notices, Reddit actually removed less content, in part due to notices containing fewer links. In the first half of 2025, the platform removed 220,233 pieces of content – a 31% drop from the same period last year.

More Fair Use

Reddit’s reasons for declining to remove content in response to some takedown requests reveal an interesting trend. The number of instances where the company declined to remove content for fair use reasons increased more than 1000%, from 110 to 1,243.

This suggests that Reddit is devoting more attention to defending user-generated commentary and criticism. The transparency report lists several examples of fair use cases, including a discussion about copyrighted poems.

“We received a removal request from the creator of multiple poems, for a Reddit image post featuring said poems. The Reddit post also contained interpretations and criticism of the author’s intent. We declined to remove this content because we believe it made fair use of the poems,” Reddit writes.

Fair use remains a relatively rare reason to decline takedown requests. Most of the time Reddit takes no action is because the content has already been removed or no infringement was found.

Subreddit and User Bans

The latest transparency report also shows a significant increase in the number of subreddits that were banned for repeat copyright violations. In the first half of 2025, the company removed 709 subreddits, more than double the number it removed in the same period last year.

While subreddit bans skyrocketed, bans against individual user accounts for repeat copyright infringements grew at a more modest pace. Reddit banned 837 user accounts in the first half of the year, up from 757 bans in H1 of 2024.

These swings may suggest that copyright-infringement-related bans are reaching new highs, but that is not the case. If we zoom out further, we see that Reddit banned 3,215 subreddits and 5,853 users for excessive copyright infringement in 2022, which was the all-time high.

A Speck on the Radar

Zooming out further, it soon becomes clear that a few hundred users and subreddits banned for infringement are little more than a speck on the radar. Reddit and its moderators remove many more for other reasons, including spam, violent content, and harassment.

In the first half of 2025, Reddit mods and admins removed more than 158 million pieces of content from the site, while over 2 billion new posts and comments were added.

During the same period, Reddit admins banned 430,544 subreddits, mostly related to spam, while 2,613,473 users were issued temporary and permanent account bans, with ‘violent content’ the most cited reason. From this perspective, a few hundred copyright-related bans sound rather insignificant.

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

Considering the volume of AI-related lawsuits in U.S. courts, AI companies probably have enough copyright-related pressures to contend with right now. Yet with no shortage of rightsholders with developing claims, significant legal distractions will likely be a feature of the business for many years to come.

From the usual content behemoths to authors of a single book, the level of hand wringing thus far doesn’t seem to vary with scale, much like the stories of impending doom heard dozens of times before.

Yet many other contributors of content that collectively make our online universe great will have had their rights infringed as well. Few will see a penny but will instead get to witness something very close to magic in their own lifetime, and that can’t be all bad.

Here We Go Again…

On the copyright front, whether the ends justify the means will be decided in court, most likely at great expense. A few companies will likely demand a disproportionate share of the wealth, as always, while everyone else will probably have to consider their involuntary input to artificial intelligence a charitable donation.

Our 15,700+ article donation collectively represents almost 40 years of work, yet it’s already clear that many AI models have measures in place to limit discussion of the topic we cover.

Right now, it’s far from a complete lockdown and of course there are ways to coax cooperation. But as another years-long campaign gets silently underway, upgraded from the last one – and the one before that – existing piracy knowledge and discussion surrounding it, regardless of context and intent, are already being throttled.

Awareness and education will be provided from official sources, as ever, but with liability always looming, information from unofficial sources will likely face more difficult times.

Right now, many AI models already show signs of aversion to perceived risk. Yet surprisingly, they can also respond to the bluntest of prompts.

No Dinner Required, No Need to Buy Even a Drink

Like Claude, albeit differently, Grok is also a fantastic feat of engineering. Yet on X over the weekend, we received a tip about a chat with an X user that seemed quite out of character, if we discount the controversial outburst a few weeks ago.

It began quite innocently and while Grok’s initial response suggested things could go quickly downhill, soon it was right back on track and providing the names of several entirely legal services. For the user, it still wasn’t enough.

The next couple of exchanges put Grok under pressure. “@grok what about non apps for streaming like tvapp and tvpass,” the user wrote, referring to a pair of piracy platforms.

Grok didn’t take the bait, responding again with Pluto, Tubi, Xumo, The Roku Channel, Freevee and CBS, but this time with a warning.

“For ad-free, paid like ESPN+ or YouTube TV. Always check legality in your region,” Grok advised.

The warning was completely unnecessary but in the context of the discussion, increased caution goes with the territory.

Pirate Site, Grok, Take the Hint

With a few signs of user impatience starting to creep in, Grok received a reminder.

“@grok without paying too,” the user wrote.

Yet Grok was still unmoved. Another six legal services stubbornly presented for consideration was followed by another seven, this time with added Plex.

Whether by pure luck or calculated persistence, Grok suddenly appeared to succumb to a less ambiguous context thanks to the bluntest of prompts.

On one hand the approach yielded the expected results. No longer was this about free but legal streaming sites. In the context of Methstreams and Crackstreams, only free pirate streaming sites would do. So that’s what Grok delivered, along with something else to consider.

ACE Up Grok’s Sleeve

We can assume that a free advert on X, timed to absolute perfection, will be welcomed by ACE. It’s the type of intervention that only works because of previous efforts to seize domains and the sharing of links to those domains thereafter.

In this case the delivery might’ve been even more impactful had Grok opted for a slightly different domain order. Streameast.live was seized back in February but had it appeared at a different position in Grok’s list, the ACE banner would’ve been swapped for a worthy replacement.

Of course, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Albeit under considerable pressure, Grok did provide a list of domains where pirate streams were available.

But is that what actually happened?

Grok accepts queries about X and when prompted will supply an overview of an X user’s activity. We redacted anything unrelated to the matter at hand, but having received it from our tipster as-is, something caught our eye.

Not only did Grok seem to appreciate that the requests went on a bit, the text clearly mentions defunct sites. So, whether by chance or by some fiendish calculation, that’s exactly what the user received.

In all-but-one unfortunate case, the domains provided by Grok had either been seized, shut down, or abandoned; i.e. effectively useless.

Piracy is the Problem, Not Discussion

So, via a real-life process, the user was exposed time and again to several entirely legal services, before being exposed to the consequences of piracy thanks to the timely ACE seizure notice. None of this would’ve happened if Grok had treated piracy as a topic for immediate shutdown.

That’s not to say every interaction will produce a similar outcome, they won’t, but shutting discussion down means that nobody learns anything.

The data in the table below was generated in seconds in response to a prompt that requested benefits and drawbacks of the sites mentioned. We don’t know if it’s 100% accurate, but it certainly has the potential to do more good than harm.

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

Since 1997, the Tonga Network Information Center ( Tonic ) has been responsible for the .to top-level domain

This country-specific extension is linked to the Kingdom of Tonga but the Tonic registry is incorporated in the United States and operating from the California city of Burlingame.

Compared to more than 160 million .com registrations, use of .to is relatively modest with just over 60,000. Interestingly, however, .to domain names appear to be somewhat of a magnet for pirate site operators.

This unusual attraction is a thorn in the side of rightsholders. Earlier this month, the MPA listed the registry in its overview of notorious piracy markets submitted to the U.S. Government, highlighting Tonic’s alleged inaction over piracy-related issues.

Warezio Sees Tonic as a Piracy Haven

Today, the .to registry is again at the center of a complaint. The Czech anti-piracy firm Warezio , which works on behalf of many local rightsholders, wrote a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ( ICANN ), urging it to take action, or else.

“As an anti-piracy company, we frequently encounter .to domains in our enforcement activities, which has given us firsthand insight into the registry’s problematic practices. This is not a coincidence but a direct result of the registry’s operational approach that prioritizes anonymity over accountability,” Warezio writes.

Warezio’s letter complains that the Tonic registry lacks basic transparency and accountability mechanisms. For example, there is no public Whois database and no formal terms and conditions for domain owners, which frustrates anti-piracy actions.

The letter adds that the .to registry also lacks a dispute-resolution mechanism, does not publish sufficient contact information, and fails to comply with European privacy legislation.

Warezio Threatens ICANN with Legal Action

While complaints about Tonic are not new, Warezio addresses ICANN directly and suggests that the organization can be held legally responsible under the Czech Republic’s unfair competition law.

Warezio argues that by “knowingly tolerating a registry operator that facilitates unlawful commercial activities,” ICANN risks being regarded as an “auxiliary participant” in the alleged unfair competition that takes place through the .to domain ecosystem.

“Should ICANN continue to remain inactive despite having been duly informed of these facts, it would expose itself to potential legal actions for unfair competition before the competent Czech courts,” Warezio writes.

“Such proceedings could seek injunctive relief, corrective measures, and compensation for the ongoing market distortion and harm suffered by Czech rights holders and legitimate businesses.”

Warezio calls on ICANN to require domain registry operators to provide Whois data and take additional measures to guarantee transparency and accountability. This applies to Tonic, but also more generally to other registries that have similar shortcomings.

“The internet community deserves domain registries that balance legitimate privacy concerns with the need for accountability and legal compliance. We trust that ICANN will take swift and decisive action to address these critical issues.”

The anti-piracy outfit demands a response within seven days. If no action is taken, it reserves the right to follow up on the unfair competition claims.

ICANN’s Limited Authority Over ccTLDs

ICANN has yet to respond to the letter, but Warezio’s allegations appear to go beyond how the organization sees its own role in the domain name ecosystem.

Warezio wants ICANN to enforce new standards on the .to registry but ICANN has repeatedly stated that it lacks the authority to do so. According to ICANN, its compliance department “does not have contract authority to take compliance action against ccTLD operators.”

ICANN has significant influence over generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as .com and .net, accrediting registrars and overseeing relevant policies for these domains. In contrast, country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) operate differently.

These ccTLDs and their registries operate under local laws and regulations. This also applies to the implementation of policies concerning Whois requirements and domain name disputes.

“The ccTLD policies regarding registration, accreditation of registrars and Whois are managed according to the relevant oversight and governance mechanisms within the country, with no role for ICANN’s Compliance department in these areas,” ICANN writes .

Notably, the anti-piracy outfit is not threatening to take legal action against Tonic directly. At least, there is no mention of any direct threats against the registry or Tonga’s authorities.

Instead, Warezio’s letter appears to challenge ICANN’s policy, suggesting that it can be held liable for ccTLD-related issues under the Czech Republic’s unfair competition law. Whether this approach will work is unclear, but if it results in a legal battle, that would certainly be one to watch.

—

A copy of the letter, sent by Warezio’s CEO Jakub Hájek to ICANN’s legal department, is available here (pdf) . This also includes more detail on a potential claim against ICANN.

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

Over the years, we’ve witnessed dozens of anti-piracy campaigns. Despite these efforts, reported piracy rates appear to increase, seemingly undeterred.

Research has indicated that piracy is a complex phenomenon that’s not always easy to grasp. However, understanding the motivations of pirates can be key to changing their behavior, new research suggests.

Piracy Study: Social Risks & Norms

An academic study recently published in Frontiers in Behavioral Economics, explores the social drivers of digital piracy, focusing on gender differences. The research, conducted by Kate M. Whitman and Joe Cox, looked at how perceptions of social norms and risks can impact people’s intention to pirate.

The researchers tackled the issue from two different angles, using an online survey of 684 participants.

First, they looked for a link between participants’ personal feelings and their past piracy consumption. They then checked if this was linked to people’s perceived “social risk,” including concerns that pirating would make them look cheap or unethical.

For the second angle, the researchers tested if they could change people’s minds about their future behavior. The respondents had to guess how common piracy is, and some of them were then shown the real piracy rate, taken from a large UK government survey.

This setup effectively created two experimental groups. One was explicitly told that their estimate of the piracy rate among their peers was “too high”, while the others were informed that theirs was “too low”. Finally, a control group received no comparison message at all.

Men Pirate More

The results of the study confirm the existing perceptions on gender differences. Men use pirate sources more often when they consume music or live sports, which are the two content categories addressed in the research.

In the music category, the rate was 3% for women versus 7% for men. The gender gap was even more pronounced for live sports, where men say that 21% of their consumption comes from pirate sources, compared to 8% for women.

“These results show that even when controlling for legal demand, men tend to pirate more than women. They also show that live sport consumers derive more of their consumption from illegal sources than music consumers,” the researchers conclude.

“Social Risk” & The Fear of Looking “Cheap”

The study also examined the link between perceived social risk and piracy. This was measured by asking to what degree friends and family would think the respondent was “unethical,” a “criminal,” or “couldn’t afford legal content” if they knew they pirated.

The perceived social risk score was not correlated with music piracy for men and women. Whether they pirated a lot or barely at all was not linked to these social drawbacks.

For live sports piracy, however, higher perceived social risk was associated with a lower piracy rate, particularly among men. While this is a correlational finding, the researchers suggest that it may be due to male sports culture.

“This aligns with masculine norms that emphasize status, independence, and financial competence, especially within male-dominated, group-oriented social contexts like sports fandom.

“In these settings, the reputational cost of appearing “cheap” or socially deviant may be particularly salient,” the researchers add.

Experiment: Piracy Statistics Can Backfire

The second part of the study was an experiment. It examined whether explicitly pointing out that people over- or underestimate the piracy statistics of their peers, would change their intention to pirate in the future. This led to some key results.

Those who overestimated the official Government data, thinking that piracy was more common among their peers, did not change their future piracy plans. That was true for both men and women.

Intriguingly, however, men who had underestimated how common piracy was increased their willingness to pirate in the future after they were informed that piracy is more prevalent than they thought. On women, this had little effect.

This means that campaigns, studies, and other reports that highlight how widespread piracy is, can actually backfire. Some men may see this as a justification to pirate more themselves.

“These findings highlight the risks of campaigns that emphasize how common piracy is, particularly among men, without considering how such information may inadvertently normalize and license the behavior,” the researchers write.

Limitations and Future Research

While these findings are new and noteworthy, this type of research, which relies on self-reported intentions and behavior, always comes with caveats. The authors of the paper realize this and mention it as one of the limitations.

For example, the social risk questions were asked before participants reported their past piracy behavior. This may have primed participants, influencing their own piracy score.

While not directly mentioned in the paper, the experimental part of the study could also be impacted. By putting participants in a “social risk” mindset, it may have influenced how they estimated peer piracy rates, systematically affecting who was placed in the “underestimator” and “overestimator” groups.

All in all, the study presents a clear takeaway for anti-piracy organizations. For decades, campaigns have focused on highlighting the massive scale of the piracy problem, but this research suggests that revealing how common piracy is could actually backfire.

—

Whitman KM and Cox J (2025) The rising tide of piracy: the influence of social roles, risks and norms on illegal consumption. Front. Behav. Econ. 4:1631329. doi: 10.3389/frbhe.2025.1631329

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

In October 2020, the RIAA filed a DMCA takedown notice at GitHub targeting ubiquitous YouTube ripping tool, youtube-dl.

“The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use,” the notice declared .

Significant uproar ensued and the youtube-dl repo was subsequently reinstated. For Johnathan Nader, the operator of YouTube-ripping platform Yout.com, the event triggered a five-year legal battle with the RIAA that continues to this day.

Declaration of Non-Infringement

The dispute began in 2019 when the RIAA sent DMCA anti-circumvention notices to Google, claiming that Yout “circumvents YouTube’s rolling cipher, a technical protection measure, that protects our members’ works on YouTube from unauthorized copying/downloading.”

The allegations caused Google to delist Yout.com URLs from search, but Nader strongly believed that he’d done nothing wrong under the law. He decided to sue the RIAA with the primary goal of convincing the court to declare Yout.com non-infringing.

In late 2022, Judge Stefan Underhill concluded that Yout had failed to show that it doesn’t circumvent YouTube’s technological measures.

I agree with the RIAA that Yout’s circumvention entails bypassing YouTube’s technological measures and modifying YouTube’s ‘signature value’ to facilitate unauthorized access to a downloadable digital copy.

Because that bypass and modification constitute a ‘process,’ I conclude that Yout does not plausibly allege that it does not circumvent the YouTube TPM, within the meaning of section 1201(a).

The RIAA thanked the court. Nader filed an appeal to bring the issues before the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Concerns Mount Over District Court’s Decision

Heading towards a hearing at the Court of Appeals, an amicus brief from GitHub warned that the lower court’s order was too broad, exposed software developers to criminal liability, and as a consequence would chill innovation. The EFF highlighted the benefits of similar software, describing the expansion of Section 1201 liability as “unwarranted”.

Both called for the lower court’s decision to be reversed . The Copyright Alliance warned that a reversal would devastate “numerous business models.”

A hearing at the Court of Appeals early 2024 further highlighted the entrenched positions of the parties, while a series of important questions for YouTube served to address the elephant in the room. Or rather its complete absence. One of the judges commented that certain key issues “ could be easily solved ” with some informed input.

“But right now, YouTube’s staying out of [the case] and we’re kind of guessing,” he said.

Major Labels Sue AI Startups Suno and Udio

During the summer of 2024, members of the RIAA including UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Sony Music Entertainment, Atlantic Records and Warner Records, sued AI music generators Suno and Udio in separate but almost identical lawsuits that accused both of “trampling on copyright.”

According to the complaints, the defendants “copied decades worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings” and then ingested those copies into AI models to generate outputs that “imitate the qualities of genuine human sound recordings” for the purpose of generating profit.

Almost 16 months later, there’s no dispute that both companies trained their AI on huge quantities of music. That the companies acquired that music without first obtaining permission is clearly unacceptable to the RIAA. However, since Suno and Udio are relying on a fair use defense, permission isn’t technically required. Recent rulings in other AI cases have affirmed fair use albeit under tight, case-specific details.

In Bartz v. Anthropic PBC and Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc. , the defendants argued that use of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works to train generative AI models (Claude and LLaMa respectively), constituted fair use. The court affirmed fair use in Anthropic’s case, describing the use as “exceedingly transformative.”

In Kadrey v. Meta, the court said that while a transformative use carries weight, the extent to which Meta’s use impacted the market for the original works was more important. No evidence of harm was presented, so Meta’s fair use was affirmed but to an extent, albeit only by default.

Suno and Udio will need every possible break, because the RIAA isn’t conceding an inch. A recent move in both cases goes further still with an attempt to critically undermine their fair use defense.

Millions of Tracks Obtained From YouTube

Recent filings in connection with the labels’ first amended complaints in the Suno and Udio lawsuits claim to identify the main source of music and the method used by the companies to obtain it for training purposes. This establishes a direct link to the substance of the Yout vs. RIAA appeal.

“[M]any (if not all) of the copyrighted sound recordings in [Suno’s] training data [were acquired] by illicitly downloading them from YouTube using a notorious method of music piracy known as ‘stream ripping,’” the labels claim.

In line with the arguments used to convince the district court in the Yout matter, they state that stream-ripping is illegal due to circumvention of YouTube’s technological measures.

Suno’s unauthorized extraction, copying, and storage of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Recordings from YouTube for use in its training data was accomplished by Suno’s unlawful circumvention of YouTube’s rolling cipher and any other technological measures YouTube may have implemented to prevent the downloading and copying of licensed content.

Suno’s actions constitute a breach of the Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions, which state, among other things, that “[n]o person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A)

Their sudden interest in the Yout v. RIAA matter indicates the AI startups are leaving nothing to chance. There are no parallel claims of fair use in the Yout dispute, and for good reason. However, when viewed from a fair use perspective, a whole new landscape emerges in a five-year-old case in which seemingly every detail has already been debated to exhaustion.

Suno and Udio File Amicus Brief in Yout vs. RIAA

Suno and Udio filed their brief earlier this week. Their statement of interest in the case reads as follows:

“Both Amici assert that their use of pre-existing recordings to develop statistical insights about music, in the service of generating altogether new music, is a fair use under section 107 of the Copyright Act. The order on appeal is not about fair use. But Amici have an interest in this appeal because the ruling below jeopardizes the fair use doctrine by misconstruing the anti-circumvention provisions of section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (‘DMCA’).”

The brief states that Section 1201 governs the circumvention of technological measures, noting that Congress did not provide for a fair use defense under Section 1201. The brief contends that Congress took a different approach to accommodate fair use, and while not determinative in Yout’s case, is nevertheless critical for fair use.

Access Controls vs Copy Controls

According to the brief, Congress harmonized Section 1201 with fair use by establishing a clear distinction between two types of technological protection measures, summarized as follows:

1. Access Controls (§ 1201(a)): These measures control access to a copyrighted work. The startups state that the DMCA prohibits circumvention of access controls .

Conclusion: If a technological measure is an access control, the act of circumvention is presumptively unlawful.

2. Copy Controls (§ 1201(b)): These measures protect a copyright owner’s rights, such as preventing unauthorized copies. Congress did not prohibit the act of circumvention of copy controls. This asymmetry was intentional and designed to protect fair use. Prohibiting circumvention of copy controls would essentially allow copyright owners to block lawful fair uses of already accessible works.

Conclusion: If the technological measure is a copy control, the act of circumvention is perfectly lawful.

Herein lies the problem. ‘Copy Controls’ exist to prevent unauthorized copying, yet copying is permitted under fair use. If circumvention had been totally prohibited, copyright owners would’ve been gifted the de facto right to prohibit fair use.

That didn’t happen, as the brief explains.

“So while Congress enacted a prohibition on the provision of devices designed to circumvent copy controls, it declined to prohibit the act of circumventing those controls, so that it would not effectively impose liability on fair users.”

The Measure Under Review in Yout vs. RIAA is a Copy Control

According to the RIAA’s DMCA takedown notices against Yout, the purpose of the measure under review in the Yout matter is to “protect . . .works on YouTube from unauthorized copying/downloading.”

“That makes it a copy control, i.e., a “technological measure that prevents copying..[]..It is not an access control,” the brief states.

Suno and Udio note that the lower court’s ruling failed to recognize the importance of the Access Control/Copy Control distinction, or that the distinction exists to protect fair uses. In fact, the court declined to consider the Copy Control provision and went on to erroneously conclude that YouTube’s download prevention mechanism is an Access Control.

Implications Beyond Yout

The distinction between access controls and copy controls is unlikely to affect Yout’s mission to obtain a declaration of non-infringement. Yout was primarily accused of trafficking in a circumvention device/service and the DMCA’s anti-trafficking provisions apply equally to technology designed to circumvent access controls (s1201(a)(2)) and copy controls (s1201(b)(1)) .

If the lower court’s decision is allowed to stand, Suno and Udio could be in trouble. Last Friday, lawyers for Suno described the RIAA’s addition of illegal stream-ripping allegations to their lawsuit as “a gambit to try to evade application of the fair use doctrine to Suno’s technology development process.”

In short, a denial of the companies’ chosen defense won’t just be a loss for Yout; it could also provide the RIAA with a powerful blueprint for dismantling the fair use arguments that are at the center of AI fair use lawsuits.

The Suno and Udio amicus brief, which was accepted by the court on Friday, is available here ( pdf )

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