Last month, Denuvo filed a DMCA anti-circumvention lawsuit against the anonymous game cracker ‘voices38’ at a federal court in California.

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

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

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

Subpoenas for Discord, Valve and Reddit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crypto Transactions on FixedFloat

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

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

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

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

What’s Next

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

Since 2024, French courts have repeatedly ordered public DNS resolvers to block access to pirate sports streaming sites.

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

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

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

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

beIN Returns for Penalties

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

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

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

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

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

The DNS Blocking Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaving France?

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

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

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

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

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

‘Recklessly Dangerous’

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

For more than a decade after the SOPA protests, pirate site blocking was a subject U.S. lawmakers preferred to avoid.

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

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

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

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

Who Has to Block?

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

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

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

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

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

What is a Pirate Site?

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

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

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

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

The Liability Shield

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Pays?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Public Blocklist?

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

Every few years, rightsholders get the opportunity to tell the European Commission which pirate sites and services deserve a spot on its Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List.

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

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

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

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

Geo-Unblocking Free Football Broadcasts

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

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

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

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

Circumventing Pirate Site Blockades

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VPN Technology is Fine

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

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

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

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

AFTVnews Downloader Short Codes

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

A copy of LaLiga’s submission to the European Commission is available here (pdf).

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

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

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

In October 2020, the RIAA used a DMCA notice to remove the popular YouTube download tool youtube-dl from GitHub.

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

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

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

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

IFPI Flags yt-dlp as “Major Problem”

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

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

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

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

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

Four GitHub Handles

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

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

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

Circumvention?

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

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

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

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

Officially Hosted in the United States

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

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

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

AI ‘Ripping’ Threats

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

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

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

—

IFPI’s submission to the EU Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List consultation, which includes a variety of additional targets, is available here (pdf).

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

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

Last week, we reported that the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA) puts virtual private networks on the list of intermediaries that could be ordered to block pirate sites.

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

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

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

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

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

VPNs Are Exempt

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

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

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

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

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

Designate First, Block Later

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

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

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

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

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

Hollywood Applauds, Public Knowledge Objects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nintendo is doing everything in its power to prevent gamers from playing pirated games on its Switch console.

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

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

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

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

Judge Grants Default Judgment

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

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

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

$4.5 Million Damages Award

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

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

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

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

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

Shops and Reddit Account Already Gone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pirate streaming sites that cater to a Chinese-speaking audience are typically not a priority for Hollywood’s anti-piracy forces.

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

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

Tencent Sues ‘Chinese’ Pirate Site in Florida

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

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

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

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

$100 Million in Potential Damages

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

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

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

Olevod Fights Back

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judge: Olevod Can’t Escape Florida Lawsuit

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

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

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

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

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

Roadmap for Chinese Rightsholders?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pirate streaming apps have been popular on Android-based devices and Amazon’s Fire TV stick, which in itself became a go-to tool for pirates.

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

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

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

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

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

LiveNetTV Shutdown and Settlement

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

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

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

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

Police Raid in February

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

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

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

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

Domain Name Takeovers

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

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

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

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

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The ten domains transferred to the Motion Picture Association, as shared by ACE, with the date each record was last updated according to WHOIS:

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

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