Site-blocking orders are a routine tool for rightsholders in India, where the Delhi High Court has issued dozens against pirate platforms over the past several years.

These orders gradually expanded from basic site blocking orders that targeted just ISPs, to dynamic and updating blocklists, which also require global domain registrars to take action.

A new order, obtained this week by HBO and associated studios, follows the familiar template. It targets 30 “rogue website” operations as defendants, covering more than 120 pirate site domains. In addition to Indian ISPs, it also demands action from domain registrars including Namecheap, Porkbun, Tucows, and others.

This strategy is in line with previous court orders which have successfully taken down some of the largest pirate site domains. This latest order is no exception.

Pirate Streaming Giants

The order lists a wide range of pirate brands, including some heavy hitters. For example, it targets the popular streaming portal Streamzy.to, as well as other well-known pirate brands such as LordFlix, Watchseries, FMovies, YTS, KissKH, VegaMovies, MoviesMod, BollyFlix, MovieRulz, and FilmyZilla.

Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani concluded that the 30 pirate operations appear to be “flagrantly infringing online locations.” Their registrant details are masked, no traceable contact information is available, and the content is overwhelmingly unlicensed.

“This is, therefore, not a case of incidental infringement, but one where the primary purpose of the websites appears to be to facilitate infringement of the plaintiffs’ copyright,” the order reads.

Based on these arguments, the court granted an ad-interim injunction restraining all 30 sites from streaming or making available the studios’ copyrighted works, and directed ISPs and registrars to block and suspend the listed domain names.

Suspended Within a Day

The order was handed down on Monday, and a day later it already had a global effect. For example, lead defendant, streamzy.to, was placed on both clientHold and serverHold, suggesting that action was taken at the registrar and registry level.

Streamzy’s registrar on record is the Government of the Kingdom of Tonga, which recently began suspending pirate site domains following an earlier Delhi High Court order, after years of .to being considered a safe haven for pirates .

This change coincided with a restructuring where the Canadian domain name company Tucows took over the technical registry backend for .to domains. This takeover made it possible to suspend domain names through EPP status codes such as clientHold and serverHold.

These suspensions also apply to the other .to domain names that were targeted, including f-moviesz.to, cinespot.to, cineplay.to, and bollyflix.to. Notably, several of these are only put on clientHold (not serverHold), suggesting the registrar acted alone, without registry-level action.

In addition to the .to domain names, all Namecheap-linked domains have also been suspended. These were put on clientHold on July 28th, a day after the Delhi High Court order was issued.

Registrars Pushed Back on ‘Carte Blanche’

The order also brings something new to the table. Domain registrars Namecheap and Porkbun said they had no problem blocking the listed sites, but pushed back against a blanket order requiring them to block any future domain name that rightsholders send in.

These follow-up suspensions are part of the dynamic blocking structure, but the registrars are not comfortable with additional blocks without the court’s supervision.

Justice Bhambhani agreed with this reservation. He ruled that rightsholders who discover a new mirror domain must submit an affidavit to the registrar with supporting evidence. The registrar then technically verifies whether it is in fact a variant of an already-blocked site, and if so, suspends it as a temporary measure. At the same time, the rightsholders must file with the court to formally add the domain to the case.

“Any mechanism that requires an ISP or DNR to satisfy itself, upon its own assessment, that a subsequently identified website is a ‘rogue website’ engaged in infringement of the plaintiffs’ rights, would effectively cast upon such intermediary an adjudicatory responsibility that it is neither equipped nor authorised in law to discharge,” the order reads.

This effectively adds a new oversight layer to the blocking and suspension process.

Mixed Results

At the time of writing, most of the targeted domain names remain accessible outside of India. This includes domains using the popular YTS and KissKH brands. Interestingly, the main domains for these brands, which have over 100 million monthly visits, are not listed in the order.

Since the order was only issued a few days ago, it is possible that other domain registrars still have to take action. However, previous orders have shown that some registrars do not comply with Indian court orders at all.

Taking out domains with millions of monthly visits is still a notable result, with Streamzy.to as the main trophy.

However, the operators are not sitting still. Soon after the order was issued, they started to point their visitors to streamzy.org, as seen below.

At the same time, other .to domains from the same operation were all pointed to .org alternatives as well. And so, the game of whac-a-mole continues.

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A copy of the order in Home Box Office Inc & Ors. v. Streamzy.to & Ors. (2026:DHC:5967) is available here (pdf) . Via Livelawbiz . An overview of the defendants, domains, and registrars can be found below. There are 132 domain entries, including 10 subdomkains, excluding #116–121 which are skipped in the order.

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

Earlier this year, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) classified Vietnam as “ Priority Foreign Country ,” because of its lacking anti-piracy enforcement.

That designation, applied for the first time in over a decade, triggered a Section 301 investigation , opening the door to potential trade sanctions.

As part of this process, stakeholders were requested to provide input on Vietnam’s alleged shortcomings. This includes the piracy challenges and concerns, which were highlighted as the primary concern.

One of the key submissions came from the Motion Picture Association (MPA). As we reported earlier , Hollywood’s trade group called for tougher prison sentences and action against copycat pirate sites that swiftly take the place of ones that are shut down.

In total, there were more than 170 submissions from stakeholders. These include a massive 3,500+ page response filed on behalf of the Government of Vietnam, which we initially missed. It is worth highlighting separately, however, as the timing ties into the broader enforcement picture.

Vietnam Responds

Vietnam filed its response on July 2, before the USTR deadline. As expected, the country argues that it doesn’t belong on the priority watchlist, because its practices are not “unreasonable or discriminatory,” and they do not “burden or restrict U.S. commerce,” the two tests that matter under Section 301.

Instead, the country argues that any remaining problems are mostly capacity limitations, not policy shortcomings.

The submission closes by asking USTR to reconsider its stance, and remove Vietnam from the Priority Foreign Country List, without issuing any sanctions or imposing trade tariffs.

Piracy Crackdowns and Site Blocking as Defense

To back up its request, Vietnam cites a variety of anti-piracy efforts. The submission notes that more than 1,200 pirated websites were blocked in 2025, which is notable as the U.S. itself is still mulling its own site blocking legislation.

The report also cites other prominent enforcement actions. This includes the shutdown and prosecution of the Fmovies piracy ring , which was once the largest online piracy operation. This operation was dismantled in 2024 with intelligence from ACE, the MPA’s anti-piracy arm.

Meanwhile, Vietnam also mentions the shutdowns of Xoilac TV, Rophim, and Y2Mate. The latter operation was taken down in collaboration with music group IFPI , which should signal to Washington that it is cooperating on intellectual property matters.

The HiAnime Card

What stands out most in the submission is the timely mention of the HiAnime prosecution. This was publicly announced by the Vietnamese authorities on July 2, the same day that it submitted its USTR rebuttal.

The submission tells USTR that “on 1 July 2026, the Ministry of Public Security initiated criminal proceedings […] against 07 suspects” under Article 225 of the Criminal Code. It references more than 100 websites offering over 26,000 unauthorized films and roughly USD 12.85 million in advertising revenue.

While HiAnime isn’t mentioned in this description, we were able to pinpoint it as the key target in this prosecution , which was also confirmed by ACE .

Vietnam’s USTR submission does mention HiAnime.to by name elsewhere, among the sites and services that were “shut down or forced to terminate their operations.”

Crucially, the HiAnime operation already closed its doors in March, months before the prosecution was announced on July 2. This coincides with the USTR submission deadline, where that same prosecution is used in Vietnam’s defense.

Whether the timing is coincidence or tied to the deadline is unknown.

All Eyes on the Sentences

The enforcement actions highlighted by Vietnam are not news. The MPA and USTR have acknowledged the same takedowns, but complained that the resulting sentences carry no deterrent. For example, the Fmovies operators previously dodged prison , which allegedly does little to tackle the country’s piracy image.

Vietnam does not dispute this. Its submission restates the U.S. view that enforcement has been “light, mainly suspended sentences and low fines,” and answers by asking Washington to “recognize the efforts undertaken” rather than defending the outcomes.

What it offers instead is to update the current legislation. The MPA previously noted that Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security is drafting amendments to the Penal Code to better address high-tech crimes and cyber offenses.

Whether that will indeed result in harsher sentences and a deterrent effect that will make it less appealing for locals to run pirate sites has yet to be seen.

The HiAnime defendants are the next test. Four remain in custody awaiting trial, while the other three were placed under travel restrictions. At the time of writing, USTR has not issued a determination in the Section 301 investigation.

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A copy of Vietnam’s submission, filed through the Ministry of Science and Technology, is available here (pdf) .

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

France has been at the forefront of the fight against online piracy for years.

More recently, it has been one of the pirate site blocking pioneers. In addition to demanding action from ISPs, their orders also targeted DNS resolvers and VPN providers.

While the expansion of the blocking measures is still contested, French lawmakers have already prepared the next one.

The French Parliament has handed ARCOM , the country’s audiovisual and digital regulator, the power to block pirate sports streams in real time without checking each targeted piracy source manually. The change is part of a broader professional sports law that both chambers formally adopted on July 21.

Article 10 of the new law rewrites the section of the previous sports law, Article L. 333-10, which rights holders have used to block pirate streaming sites in recent years.

From Manual Checks…

Under the old system, a rightsholder would obtain a blocking order in court, targeting specific domain names. These orders would require ISPs, DNS resolvers, or VPN services to block access on their systems.

If new domains were spotted later, rightsholders would send these to ARCOM, whose sworn agents would confirm that each one is streaming matches illegally before ISPs are ordered to block these.

One of these older orders was issued on July 8 by the Court of Paris. In that case, the French football league (LFP) won a block against nine Internet providers, covering the full 2026/2027 season, with ARCOM having to approve each new site that’s added along the way.

The order lists 30 domains and their associated subdomains, including kzontop.com, ligue1live.xyz, iptvfrancai.com, euroiptv.fr and sportsurge100.is.

…To Automated Blocks

Under the old system, it can take days before a new target is added. That’s a problem when dealing with live-streaming piracy, one that the new law aims to fix.

The new law strips out the pre-check of domain names (or IP addresses) that are added after the initial order is issued. It lets ARCOM run an automated system that pushes freshly identified targets straight to providers during a live broadcast. The providers then have to take action “without delay”.

ARCOM’s agents no longer approve each block in advance, but they keep an oversight role. They will now audit the new additions afterward, and a blocked party can appeal to ARCOM’s president, even while the targeted sports event is ongoing.

The new law is expected to significantly increase the volume of blocked sites and services, with the goal to further deter live-streaming piracy.

The judicial process leading up to the blocks barely changes, with one significant exception. Foreign entities that organize or hold rights to competitions abroad can now bring these actions in French courts themselves, opening the door for Spain’s LaLiga and England’s Premier League.

The groundwork for the blocking scheme was already laid. Under a private 2025 agreement between rights holders and ISPs, first revealed by L’Informé , the parties tested real-time IP address blocking during the 2026 World Cup, with ARCOM involved.

Italy’s “Piracy Shield” as Inspiration

French officials have not hidden the inspiration for the new law. In a study delivered to the Assemblée nationale in December 2025 , the regulator recommended this automated real-time system, citing foreign precedents including Italy’s “Piracy Shield”.

The head of Italy’s own regulator AGCOM, Massimiliano Capitanio, publicly welcomed the vote on Instagram , describing it as France adopting a version of its “Piracy Shield” model.

That comparison is sensitive. Italy’s system has been heavily criticized for overblocking, at one point knocking Cloudflare and countless unrelated sites offline . European ISPs have since demanded that rightsholders be held liable for overblocking damage .

This critique is one of the reasons why ARCOM keeps a human supervision element in the takedown process. This is to avoid overblocking, which the regulator considered as being potentially unconstitutional in France.

Not Live Yet

With the new French law, yet another country moved to a more automated site blocking process. This follows the example of Italy and other countries, with support from rightsholders including the Motion Picture Association .

The updates to the French sports law still have to be implemented formally, which isn’t expected to happen until later this year.

Whether existing orders like the LFP’s will migrate to the automated system once it goes live, or whether only future orders will, is not yet clear. For now, however, France’s pirate sports blocking still runs the old, manual way.

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The Sports Law, adopted on July 21, can be found via the Assemblée nationale dossier here . A copy of the Court of Paris ruling in the LFP blocking case, issued on July 8, is available here (pdf) .

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

Last summer, adult content producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta, alleging that the tech company downloaded thousands of their films via BitTorrent to train AI models.

After Meta’s motion to dismiss was denied last month by U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee, Strike 3 filed an amended complaint expanding its claims to 2,973 films, up from the original 2,396.

With that many works at stake, potential statutory damages could reach a massive $446 million.

This week, Meta filed its answer to the amended complaint at the California federal court, denying all allegations while raising several affirmative defenses. At the same time, the company also gave further insight into the piracy allegations.

Meta’s Data Engineer

The original complaint identified a then-unnamed Facebook employee who allegedly used a residential Comcast IP address to download content, while also sharing files through Meta corporate IPs and what Strike 3 described as “stealth” IP addresses.

According to the amended complaint, that single address was linked to the infringement of 97 of Strike 3’s works.

Meta’s answer offers a straightforward explanation that has nothing to do with an organized data collection effort. The company admits that “the subscriber’s adult son was a Contingent Worker at Meta from October 2022 to October 2024.” It further confirms that the same person became “an employee at Meta with the title Data Engineer from April 2025 to May 2026.”

This phrasing is careful. By referring to “the subscriber’s adult son,” Meta positions the alleged torrenting as personal activity on a family member’s home Internet connection, unrelated to Meta.

Strike 3 apparently identified this person through their LinkedIn profile, which Meta says “speaks for itself”. In any case, Meta flatly denies that any employee’s BitTorrent activity was connected to its AI research or data collection.

The amended complaint, however, alleges that the infringement from the subscriber’s account stopped when the son’s contract with Meta ended.

Denials and a Fair Use Fallback

The broader answer follows a standard pattern of denials, which is common at this stage of a lawsuit. Meta denies downloading or uploading any of Strike 3’s adult films.

The tech company does admit downloading “portions of certain publicly available text datasets through direct download and by torrenting for purposes of developing and training some of its LLaMA models,” but insists these did not include adult films.

The company also acknowledges that it tried to prevent distributing any of the text files it had downloaded via BitTorrent for developing and training its language models. This shows that Meta admits sharing other content via BitTorrent, while explicitly denying Strike 3’s torrenting allegations.

In its affirmative defenses, Meta explicitly reserves fair use without asserting it. The company denies sharing any adult content, so fair use is not relevant, but it keeps it as an option just in case.

In the related Kadrey v. Meta lawsuit, where Meta admitted torrenting books for AI-training, fair use is the central defense, and Meta wants to keep that option open here as well.

Seeding Was “De Minimis”

As America’s most prolific copyright litigant, Strike 3 has built tens of thousands of lawsuits on the premise that sharing files via BitTorrent is copyright infringement. In those cases against individual defendants, a typical defense is that an IP address doesn’t identify a person.

Meta takes a different route. The company’s ninth affirmative defense doesn’t deny that data was uploaded from its IP addresses. Instead, it argues that any uploads during the torrenting process were “de minimis and did not result in the creation of an identifiable or usable copy of any copyrighted work.”

In other words, the fragments exchanged during BitTorrent transfers don’t amount to a meaningful copy. As far as we know, this argument has not been tested in court before, so it will be interesting to see how this will fare.

Meta also takes aim at Strike 3’s copyrights themselves. The tenth affirmative defense alleges that the adult films may incorporate others’ works without permission and may be “derivative of or copy preexisting works, including works undisclosed in Plaintiffs’ copyright filings with the U.S. Copyright Office.” Strike 3, Meta suggests, may have overstated its own copyright claims.

The remaining defenses include a statute of limitations argument, uncertainty about Strike 3’s copyrights, and a constitutional challenge arguing that the statutory damages would violate the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

With potentially hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, it is clear that Meta will fight the matter tooth and nail. Alternatively, an early settlement is also an option. The case now moves forward, with mediation due by early August and a jury trial set for February 2028.

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A copy of Meta’s answer to the amended complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf) . For full context, Strike 3’s amended complaint is available here (pdf) .

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

Canada’s approach to pirate site blocking has evolved quite a bit since the Federal Court issued the first ‘GoldTV’ order in 2019.

That original order targeted a specific service and a fixed set of domain names. If rightsholders wanted to add a domain to the blocklist, they had to go back to court.

Later orders against Soap2Day and, more recently, various stream-ripping sites , went a step further. Instead of targeting specific operations run by the same people, they allowed rightsholders to update the blocklist with alternative domains that would pop up, as well as copycats of the already named brands.

These new orders streamlined the site blocking process. Rightsholders no longer had to file a new case for every domain that popped up. They did, however, still have to go back to the Federal Court, which had to issue a new order before anything new could be blocked.

Rightsholders say these types of blocking orders are needed to effectively curb piracy. However, they are not without criticism. Opponents including the Canadian ISP TekSavvy have previously complained that site blocking is a slippery slope , where more sites might eventually get blocked with less oversight.

Hollywood Seeks Broad Blocking Order

Thus far the global trend has indeed been to expand blocking powers and the latest Federal Court order, issued earlier this month, is no exception.

The blocking order, requested by Rogers, TVA, Netflix and various Hollywood studios such as Disney and Warner Bros., targets thirteen named piracy brands. This includes existing domain names, but also any future domains that use the same brands, whether these are linked to the original operation or not.

The order requires Canadian ISPs, including Bell, Rogers, Telus, and TekSavvy, to block an initial list of 18 domains and subdomains. It is also the first Canadian blocking order to cover both IPTV subscription services and public streaming sites in a single proceeding.

The order splits its targets into two groups. Six are IPTV subscription services: Apollo Group TV, Diablo IPTV, GLO TV, IPGuys, Jio TV, and Smart4K/Platinum. The other seven pirate streaming sites are 123Movies, Cineby, FMovies, HydraHD, Putlocker, TheTVApp, and WatchSeries.

After the first site blocking order survived several appeals, there hasn’t been any significant opposition from ISPs to the follow-up orders. That also applies here, as the most recent blocking order was approved without any notable pushback.

Schedule 1 lists 13 domains and five subdomains. With more than 50 million global monthly visitors, 123moviesfree.net is one of the prime targets. However, the value of this order lies less in what it blocks today than in what it can block tomorrow.

The Catch-All ‘Expanded Scope’ Order

The blocking order adds a new feature which is framed as an “Expanded Scope.” Earlier Canadian orders reached a single brand and its copycats. The latest blocking order goes further, as it also covers “similarly infringing platforms operating under other brands.”

This effectively means that the movie studios and other rightsholders can add new pirate sites and services to the blocklist. Justice Southcott agreed that this is needed to deal with the piracy whac-a-mole problem where new pirate sites swiftly take the place of blocked ones.

“[W]hen access to infringing platforms is blocked, other similarly infringing platforms appear and/or increase in popularity,” the order reads.

To justify the expansion, Justice Southcott looked at a recent UK High Court order , described as an “omnibus order,” which we covered in May. According to the Motion Picture Association, which represents its member studios in site blocking efforts, this order makes it possible to block any “structurally infringing audiovisual piracy service” without naming it in advance.

The UK judgment itself has still not been published on BAILII or the National Archives, as far as we know, but it is clearly seen as the new frontier in site blocking efforts.

Adding New Brands

The order explains how new brands are added through what it calls a “Simplified Procedure.” To add a platform, rightsholders must file an affidavit which confirms that the new target meets the order’s conditions.

In this case, it means that the target’s sole or predominant purpose is the unauthorized distribution of the studios’ film and television works, that it operates like the IPTV or open-web services already named, that it is reachable in Canada, and that the operator was sent a notice of infringement and given seven days to respond.

If no targeted ISP files a notice of motion to object within five business days, the updated list takes effect without any hearing and no further order from the court. These new submissions can be made every ten business days.

That last part is a subtle but notable change. Under the stream-ripper order issued last month, ISP silence meant the Court “may grant an Order amending Schedule 1 as proposed by the Applicants without further proceedings.” A judge still signed off, even if nobody argued.

Under the new order, silence alone is enough. The proposed list “shall be considered Schedule 1 under this Order,” with no involvement from the court at all.

Together, the two changes remove both limits that applied before. The court no longer has to sign off on blocklist updates, and the additions no longer have to involve a brand that was already named in the case.

Justice Southcott describes this as “an incremental modification to precedent site-blocking orders.”

A Judicial Guardrail

Justice Southcott did not grant everything the studios asked for. The rightsholders wanted the new order to also apply to “any works for which the Applicants own the copyright.”

The order limits its scope to “the Applicants’ Works,” meaning the specific titles mentioned in the judgment. In practice, that prevents the studios from using copyrights they acquire later to justify new additions, without first going back to court.

TekSavvy, which previously fought back against site blocking in Canada, has already published a compliance page for the order. While the company did not oppose the current order, it remains highly skeptical.

“[W]e see blocking orders as a grave violation of network neutrality and a fundamental change to what we do as an ISP. The principles of common carriage and network neutrality mean ISPs carry traffic to and from end users in as neutral a fashion as possible,” TekSavvy notes.

The latest order runs for two years, with the blocklist starting at 13 domains and five subdomains. The more telling figure may be how many names get added before it expires.

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A copy of the site-blocking order, issued by Justice Southcott, is available here (pdf) . The full domain list can be found here (pdf) .

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

At the height of the cyberlocker boom in the early 2010s, Uptobox was already an established name.

The platform remained online despite a fierce anti-piracy crackdown that led to the demise of Megaupload, Hotfile, and many other file-hosting services.

Uptobox eventually met its fate in September 2023, when a coalition of entertainment companies including Disney, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Paramount, and Warner Bros. obtained a court order to seize its servers at various data centers.

Uptobox Crackdown

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment claimed responsibility for the operation, which was carried out simultaneously in France and the UAE. While Uptobox put up a fight in court, hoping for a comeback , the courts disagreed and kept it offline.

Behind the scenes, Disney was pursuing a parallel case against a French national residing in the UAE. Local news site L’Informé previously identified the defendant by his X.com pseudonym “Starouille”, who previously described himself as the CTO of Uptobox.

In October 2023, Disney obtained an order from a Paris enforcement judge, authorizing seizures of up to €16.127 million against his personal bank accounts. In the legal paperwork, Disney described the defendant as one of the “founders, operators, and de facto co-directors” of Uptobox.

When the seizure was executed at the BNP Paribas bank, it froze approximately €197,000. Two additional seizures followed under separate orders. These seized assets are not damages awards, but they are kept as a security while the case is fought on its merits.

Not a Director

Starouille, who is identified in the legal paperwork as ‘M. [U]’, did not agree with the way Disney described him. His lawyer Me Damien Faupin argued that he was a technical contractor who managed server infrastructure, not a co-director. The CTO title on social media did not reflect reality, the lawyer clarified.

In January 2025, the enforcement judge agreed that Disney could not prove the defendant’s director role, ordering the seized funds released. However, Disney objected and requested a stay of execution while they appealed. This decision eventually came this month.

After considering all evidence, the Court of Appeal upheld the finding that Disney failed to prove Starouille was a de facto director. The evidence showed he began as a freelancer in 2012, but there’s no hard evidence that he actually had a managerial function.

“The fact that [the defendant] presented himself on social media, notably on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, as ‘Chief Technical Officer’ (CTO) of Uptobox does not in itself constitute, even assuming this title to be accurate, a sufficient element to establish that, beyond operations of installation, maintenance, and upgrading of servers, he was more generally engaged in management or technical development of the service.”” the court said (all quotes aretranslated) .

The Court of Appeal noted that there was insufficient evidence to prove the defendant was engaged in the general management of the service. Instead, his role was strictly limited to operations, maintenance, and server upgrades. This was corroborated by evidence seized at hosting provider Opcore, which listed him as “interlocuteur technique N1” (Technical Liaison Level 1).

While the court concluded that Disney failed to prove that the defendant had a director role, it ultimately ruled that the funds should remain frozen for another reason.

DNS Tweets Keep Funds Frozen

The court order notes that the defendant was not ignorant of the alleged piracy-facilitating activities of Uptobox. In fact, his own social media posts showed that he was aware of site blocking efforts and shared information on how these could be bypassed.

For example, in one of the X/Twitter posts that are no longer public, Starouille wrote (translated): “for those who can no longer access Uptobox/Uptostream, change your DNS on all your devices (procedure here: uptobox.info/dns). You can also use uptobox.link.”

When a user asked whether this was about “yet another court order,” Starouille confirmed, and he later posted specific instructions for changing DNS settings in a Freebox router’s download manager.

According to the Court of Appeal, these posts show that the defendant was aware of the blocking orders, as well as the copyright-related reasons for these blocking measures. His defense that the DNS instructions were meant to help rightsholders contact the service was dismissed.

“[The defendant] cannot validly maintain that his message, far from enabling the circumvention of an institutional block, was solely intended to allow users, rightsholders such as the appellant, or any other natural or legal person to be able to contact the company or the service, in particular to report a copyright infringement problem.”

This was not the first time Starouille’s social media activity was used against him in court. As L’Informé previously reported, a since-deleted tweet showing a car entering a parking lot tagged “@online DC2” helped entertainment companies locate Uptobox servers at Scaleway’s second data center in Vitry-sur-Seine, facilitating the September 2023 raid.

Importantly, this is not a finding on the merits. Starouille is not held liable, the court merely concluded that Disney’s claims are plausible enough to keep the funds frozen for now.

From €16 Million to €306,000

The defendant also booked a win, at least on paper. Disney previously calculated its claim using the lost Disney+ subscription revenue over 2020-2023, applying its 15% streaming market share to Uptobox’s estimated one million monthly unique visitors.

The Court of Appeal adjusted this number downward, citing a study which concluded that roughly 80% of pirates already subscribe to legal streaming services. This means that these would not necessarily result in lost revenue.

Additionally, the court found that Starouille’s alleged wrongful conduct was limited to his July-August 2023 social media posts, which further limits the damages.

Ultimately, this shorter ‘liability’ window and the reduced lost subscriptions, slashed the authorized asset freeze of more than €16 million to €306,000. However, since this is still more than the €197,000 that’s frozen at BNP Paribas, nothing is returned yet.

For now, Starouille’s savings remain frozen and the merits case is pending. No piracy damages have been awarded yet, but the ruling shows that publicly instructing users to circumvent court orders can be used to justify piracy-related asset seizures.

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A copy of the Paris Court of Appeal ruling is available here (pdf) .

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

Earlier this month, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security announced it had dismantled the network behind the high-profile HiAnime piracy ring .

While the associated site already closed its doors in March, the action is vital for Vietnam since the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) recently classified it as “ Priority Foreign Country ,” because of its lacking anti-piracy enforcement.

Last month, USTR formally started a Section 301 investigation which opened the door to potential trade sanctions. As part of this process, stakeholders were requested to provide input on Vietnam’s alleged shortcomings. This includes the piracy challenges and concerns, which are highlighted as the primary concern.

One of the key submissions for the USTR investigation comes from the Motion Picture Association ( MPA ), which represents the major Hollywood studios, Netflix and Amazon. The MPA has vast experience in the country through its anti-piracy arm ACE and assisted in local copyright enforcement efforts for years.

This cooperation resulted in the takedown of the Fmovies piracy ring, for example, and ACE also provided key intelligence for the recent HiAnime action. While the MPA is pleased with the enforcement efforts, it hasn’t been pleased with how Vietnamese courts and prosecutors deal with the matter.

MPA: ‘Mild Sentences are the Problem’

When MPA submitted its commentary the HiAnime arrests had not been announced yet. The MPA has since applauded the arrests, but its USTR filing suggests that the eventual sentences will be crucial.

Previously, the prosecutions of key defendants in the Fmovies piracy ring , dubbed the largest piracy operation ever, resulted in suspended prison sentences and relatively low fines. The same applied to the operator of the popular BestBuyIPTV service .

MPA’s SVP Global Policy and Government Affairs, Gail MacKinnon, informed the USTR that the lack of deterrent penalties in Vietnam are the main reason why online piracy remains a significant problem in the country.

“Without sentences and monetary penalties that outweigh the financial gains from copyright infringement, online piracy operations originating in Vietnam will not be sufficiently deterred,” MPA’s submission reads.

“There needs to be visible and credible consequences to effectively deter infringement and counter the perception that piracy is a low-risk, high-reward activity,” MacKinnon adds.

Copycats, Successors, and Resurgents

MPA notes that, as a result of the mild sentences, major takedowns are often only a short-lived success. Pirate brands or operations often reappear swiftly, a problem India’s High Court previously likened to a “hydra-headed” threat.

In its recommendations to the USTR, MPA urges Vietnam to make sure that such copycats and successors are also addressed properly.

“Take effective and deterrent enforcement action against the notorious piracy services identified by MPA, including timely follow-up actions against any successor, mirror, or copycat sites that emerge”

“Criminal enforcement action must be taken against the operators of these pirate syndicates to ensure that they do not resurface. Consistent enforcement is also necessary to deter the emergence of copycat
services that fill the gap left by these shutdowns.”

Much of the same critique is shared by International Intellectual Property Alliance ( IIPA ), which highlighted the same problem in their submission to the USTR’s Vietnam investigation.

The IIPA documents the same pattern in more detail, tracing a rather obvious branding shift that started in 2023, when Zoro.to was shut down by ACE, but not before it was rebranded as AniWatch. A year later, Aniwatch became HiAnime , which eventually went offline this year.

IIPA’s submission, which also predates the HiAnime crackdown announcement, also calls for tougher enforcement and deterrent sanctions.

“It is critical for responsible enforcement authorities, including the relevant police units, the MPS, and the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism (MOCST), to follow through on infringement complaints, take meaningful and effective enforcement actions, and impose deterrent sanctions against infringing websites.”

Dispatch 38

Both the MPA and IIPA acknowledge that Vietnam has started to take the piracy problem more seriously. In May, the Vietnamese government issued Official Dispatch No. 38, asking agencies nationwide to intensify IP-related enforcement efforts, including actions against piracy websites.

Dispatch 38 also requests prosecutors and courts to prioritize serious copyright cases, improve prosecution timelines, and to strengthen deterrence. The MPA separately notes that the Ministry of Public Security is drafting amendments to the Penal Code to better address high-tech crimes and cyber offenses.

Whether the recent wave of enforcement actions and policy signals will be enough to change Vietnam’s piracy image has yet to be seen. The HiAnime arrests are recent, and the planned prosecution of the site’s operators will be the first real test of whether the judicial system is ready to move along.

—

The IIPA’s Section 301 comments are available here (pdf) . The MPA’s filing can be found here (pdf).

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

As the FIFA World Cup is gearing up for the grande finale in New York this weekend, international law enforcement offices look back at one of the largest anti-piracy efforts in sports history.

With help from private and public partners from all over the world, authorities seized well over a thousand domain names of pirate sports streaming sites. In the United States, the effort was branded “Operation Offsides” , which initially targeted nearly 400 domain names offering unauthorized World Cup streams. That turned out to be just the start.

Operation Offsides

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Operation Offsides on June 26, targeting pirate sites that streamed World Cup matches. The seizure warrant was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, but this appears to be sealed, as we were unable to locate a copy in the court database.

The DOJ and Homeland Security Investigations ran a similar crackdown during the 2022 Qatar World Cup , seizing 78 domains at the time. The 2026 action is at least five times larger, however, and was the result of international cooperation.

The domains were identified with assistance from FIFA , beIN Media Group, NBCUniversal, ACE , the UFC, and Warner Bros. International coordination through the DOJ’s ICHIP network extended the operation’s reach to Peru and Bulgaria, described in the announcement as known centers of online piracy activity, with supporting actions in Croatia, Romania, Poland, and Colombia.

The authorities did not mention any domains by name but TorrentFreak traced many through passive DNS data, with the current tally at 627 identified domains (listed below). While the seizures hit several major sports streaming sites, other popular sites operating under foreign-registry TLDs outside U.S. jurisdiction managed to survive.

Visitors of the blocked domain names, meanwhile, ran into the following splash banner, listing many of the partners involved.

The “Operation Offsides” seizures came in waves. Last weekend, more than 100 additional domains were seized , many of them fallback domains that pirate sites had switched to after the initial round. That same report also revealed that several operators switched to Iranian .ir fallback domains, in an effort to switch to infrastructure that is harder for U.S. law enforcement to reach.

Colombia Leads “Operation Red Card”

Two days before the World Cup final, Colombia’s Fiscalía General announced the results of a separate multinational enforcement effort it had coordinated under the name “Operación Tarjeta Roja” (Operation Red Card).

The international action brought together prosecutors, law enforcement agencies, and public ministries from nine countries: Colombia, the United States, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, and Chile, with support from private-sector audiovisual and sports organizations.

In Colombia alone, 1,140 domains and URLs used for unauthorized sports streaming were ‘suspended’. Across all participating countries, the total reached 1,840. Similar to the U.S. operation, the authorities did not name any domains.

“While the planet focused on the FIFA World Cup 2026, a group of nations went after the structures that profit from counterfeiting and theft of digital content,” said Fiscalía’s Raúl González Flechas, commenting on the news.

The Colombian operation, which targeted both counterfeiting and piracy, also resulted in 15 arrests. Four suspects in Soacha, near Bogotá, were accused of hacking into a telecom company’s platforms to offer cheap ‘pirated’ cable TV, posing as employees of the company. Two of the four accepted the charges.

Separately, 11 people running shops selling counterfeit World Cup merchandise were charged with trademark infringement and related offenses. Authorities seized 4,223 counterfeit sports items, 11,353 fake logos ready to be applied to garments, and 2,150 counterfeit Colombian Football Federation shields during raids in Bogotá, Itagüí, Cali, Acacías, and Bucaramanga.

Argentina Blocks FútbolLibre

Argentina also contributed to Operación Tarjeta Roja earlier in the tournament. In early July, the country’s UFECI cybercrime unit opened investigations against three platforms: Stella TV, Tele Latino, and sites associated with FútbolLibre, one of the most widely used pirate sports streaming brands in the country.

FútbolLibre had already been under investigation since 2022. This time, complaints from rightsholders DirecTV and Personal Flow provided additional evidence.

Three federal judges ordered ENACOM , Argentina’s communications regulator, and NIC Argentina , the country’s domain registry, to block access to 14 platforms and sites. However, as is often the case, there is no shortage of copycats using the same brands.

Pirate Ad Revenue Targeted

The enforcement wave was not limited to government action. The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) previously announced that it had cut off advertising revenue to 1,376 sites that illegally streamed sports or offered other World Cup content, through its Pirate Domain Exclusion List.

Rather than targeting domains directly, TAG aims to starve pirate streaming site operators of the ad revenue, so they will eventually give up.

“Global sporting events like the World Cup are prime targets for criminals who try to intercept legitimate ad dollars by stealing popular streaming content,” said TAG COO Rachel Nyswander Thomas.

More Results Expected

With the World Cup final set for this weekend, additional enforcement results from other participating countries may still be announced.

Whether these combined efforts have had lasting impact on pirate sports streaming availability has yet to be seen. The disruption certainly has an effect, but the enforcement efforts have also shown that some pirate site operators are resilient.

The success of these and future enforcement efforts will largely depend on how far the reach of the international authorities goes, and whether pirate site operators can still find unblocked fallback infrastructure. By the next World Cup in 2030 we should know more.

—

This article will be updated if more results from participating countries or partners come in.
—–

Below is a non-exhaustive and non-verified list of 627 domain names that, according to information gathered by TorrentFreak, were seized as part of Operation Offsides.


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foxtrend.click
freedomgloryproject.com
freekoora4you.com
freekora.com
fsportsshd.xyz
fullmatch-hd.com
funteam.info
futbol-libres.org
futbollibre-ag.com
futbollibre-hd.com
futbollibre-tv.com
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goal-koora.live
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gosports.website
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istreameast.app
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From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The Diary of Anne Frank is widely regarded as one of the best-known literary works in history.

While the diary’s importance is universally recognized, the accessibility of its digital manuscripts has been at the center of a Dutch copyright battle that eventually made its way to the Court of Justice of the European Union ( CJEU ).

The legal dispute was triggered by differences in copyright protection terms in the EU. Parts of Anne Frank’s manuscripts remain protected in the Netherlands until 2037, while the same material entered the public domain in Belgium and many other EU member states years ago.

To navigate these conflicting laws, the Dutch Anne Frank Stichting published a scholarly edition online using “state-of-the-art” geo-blocking to prevent Dutch residents from accessing the site. Visitors from the Netherlands and other countries where the work is protected are met with a clear message, informing them about these access restrictions.

“The scholarly edition of the Anne Frank manuscripts cannot be made available in all countries, due to copyright considerations,” is the message blocked visitors get to see.

Despite these blocking measures, the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds was not pleased. The Fonds essentially argued that if a block isn’t 100% bypass-proof, the content shouldn’t be online at all.

The Dutch lower court dismissed this argument, stating the defendants had taken reasonable measures to prevent access from the Netherlands. The Fonds appealed, without result, and the case is now before the Dutch Supreme Court, which referred several questions to the EU’s top court to decide the fate of VPN neutrality and the sufficiency of geo-blocking.

State-of-the-Art Geo-Blocking Is Good Enough

In January, Advocate General Rantos published his opinion concluding that geo-blocking is a sufficient measure and that VPN providers are neutral intermediaries. That opinion was not binding, but it set the tone for what followed.

Last week, the CJEU’s Second Chamber delivered its final judgment. The Court ruled that a work that’s in the public domain in some EU member states, but still under copyright in another, can be published on a geo-blocked website without being considered an infringing “communication to the public” in the protected country.

The Court recognized that geo-blocking can be circumvented with a VPN, but that is not the decisive factor. If a publisher specifically chose to use a state-of-the-art geo-blocking to block visitors from a specific country, it is clear that these people are not the intended audience.

“While it is true that geo-blocking measures, including state-of-the-art measures, can, like any technological measure, be circumvented, particularly through the use of a VPN or similar service, the possibility of such circumvention cannot, in itself and in all circumstances, be a decisive factor in finding those measures to be inadequate and, therefore, ineffective,” the judgment reads.

The Court also rejected the idea that publishers should be required to use stricter access controls, such as subscriptions or login requirements. Imposing those measures would disproportionately restrict free access for users in public-domain countries.

The Anne Frank website also uses a self-declaration barrier, shown above, asking visitors to confirm that they are accessing the site from a public-domain country. The Court found that this type of measure, on its own, is not sufficient or effective.

VPN Providers Are not Liable

VPN providers are not liable if they are used to bypass state-of-the-art geo-blocking measures. The same logic also holds if the geo-blocking measures are ineffective to begin with.

The EU’s top court sees VPN providers as neutral intermediaries, referring to previous rulings where YouTube and Uploaded were not held liable for pirating users. As an intermediary, a VPN itself simply acts as a secure, neutral routing tool that’s not communicating anything to the public.

“The provider of a VPN or similar services that are used in order to circumvent an ineffective geo-blocking measure and are lawful technical tools which users may legitimately use cannot be regarded as also having communicated the work to the public,” the judgment reads.

The Court explained that a VPN provider “does not give end users access to a protected work” and added that it “does not play an ‘indispensable role'” in any act of communication.

This conclusion is significant. It effectively confirms that the EU’s highest court does not see VPN providers as copyright infringers simply because their technology enables users to bypass geographical restrictions.

The Broader Fallout

The CJEU ruling means that VPN providers are not held directly liable under EU law. However, this finding still has to be interpreted by local courts.

In this case, it goes back to the Dutch Supreme Court, which still has to decide whether the geo-blocking system deployed by the Anne Frank Stichting actually meets the “state-of-the-art” threshold.

The ruling comes at a time when the status of VPNs in copyright enforcement is also being tested from the opposite direction. In France, for example, VPNs are required to block pirate sites, as they are seen as key intermediaries, similar to ISPs.

The CJEU ruling is not in direct conflict with the French court orders, which are issued under the French Sports Code. However, these blocking orders are actively contested too and may eventually find their way to the EU’s top court as well.

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A copy of the CJEU’s judgment in Case C-788/24 (ECLI:EU:C:2026:559) is available here .

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