Last week, Rep. Darrell Issa formally introduced his long-awaited site blocking bill: the American Copyright Protection Act.

The text wasn’t public when TorrentFreak first reported on the filing, but an earlier discussion draft suggested that only ISPs and DNS resolvers would be covered. That has changed.

The full text of the bill surfaced online after Public Knowledge shared a copy with Ars Technica. This shows that the final version of the bill goes further than the draft did, explicitly covering ISPs, DNS resolvers, and VPN providers.

VPNs Join the Blocking Parties

The bill allows copyright holders to ask a federal court to determine that a website is a ‘foreign piracy site’. With that declaration in hand, they can then petition for a blocking order that requires specific service providers to prevent people from accessing the site.

These providers exclude domain name registries and root nameservers, but virtual private networks are explicitly covered.

“The term ‘service provider’ includes providers of broadband internet access services, providers of domain name resolution services, and virtual private networks, but excludes root nameserver operators and top level domain registries,” the bill reads.

This VPN category is new. The discussion draft TorrentFreak reported on in June last year stated that “both internet service providers (ISPs) and DNS resolvers” would be covered, nothing more.

The bill doesn’t explain why VPNs were added, but it follows a European trend, including orders in France and Spain, where a broader set of intermediaries is required to block pirate sites.

Smaller services are exempt, as the proposed bill excludes “any entity that provides services to fewer than 100,000 monthly users or subscribers in the United States.” That means that it will target the larger providers.

Blocking ‘From the United States’

When an order is issued, providers have 14 to 30 days to “take all commercially reasonable steps to prevent users or subscribers from using its systems or networks to access the foreign piracy site from the United States.”

For a regular ISP, that requirement is pretty straightforward. However, for a VPN provider with servers in dozens of countries, it can be interpreted in more than one way, with varying consequences.

A VPN could block the pirate site on its U.S. servers only. That would mean that American subscribers are free to connect through servers in Amsterdam or Toronto, while a Canadian user who connects through New York would be blocked.

Alternatively, a VPN could block the site for everyone who connects from an American IP address, regardless of the server they choose. That should be technically possible without logging a user’s IP address.

The bill doesn’t explain how the technical implementation should work and a judge has no say in it either. The blocking orders can’t prescribe or require any specific blocking techniques, so this choice is left to the providers.

VPN providers can contest their inclusion in a blocking order. Before naming a provider, the court has to weigh several factors, including the “technical feasibility and efficacy” of the blocking.

VPNs raised similar objections in France, with little effect. Among other things, the Paris court concluded that a no-log policy doesn’t prevent VPNs from blocking sites.

Live Sports Fast Track

Not all blocking orders have to wait 14 days before being implemented. The court can shorten any deadline in the bill if it finds good cause. This includes blocking measures that target “time-sensitive events.”

Issa previously made it clear who this is for. At a House hearing in June, he said that enforcement has to be fast enough to make a difference during live sports broadcasts, which lose their value quickly.

“[W]hat is the reasonable speed? Can we do it at the speed of sound? Can we do it at the speed of light? More importantly, in a 45 minute or sometimes a fraction of that live sports broadcast, can we do it soon enough to make it no longer profitable for those who pop up and sell their clandestine wares?” he said.

In addition to sports, the “time-sensitive” carveout can also be used to protect movies and TV shows that leak online “not more than 24 hours after” their first authorized release in the United States.

To Be Continued

VPNs are not the only change since the first draft appeared last year. There are other nuances as well, which will be highlighted in future coverage.

For now, most commentary on the bill has come from opponents, including Public Knowledge and Re:Create. Rightsholders have been quiet so far and the MPA informed TorrentFreak that it will share a statement once Issa’s office issues its press release.

Whether Rep. Issa will get the bill across the finish line is uncertain. He retires at the end of this year, so he won’t be around to reintroduce it if it doesn’t pass during the current session.

Notably, this is not the only U.S. site blocking bill that’s being prepared. As previously reported, Senator Thom Tillis and Rep. Zoe Lofgren are working on a bicameral site blocking bill of their own.

This means that, after the SOPA-ghosts were defeated, there’s now some internal site-blocking competition on the Hill.

—

A copy of the American Copyright Protection Act of 2026 (H.R. 10364) is available here (pdf).

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

Earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung hosted a one-day gathering of studio bosses, ministers and filmmakers in the south of France.

This Lumière Summit closed with the signing of several thematic declarations, including one on international cooperation against piracy.

Representing Hollywood, Motion Picture Association (MPA) CEO Charles Rivkin was scheduled to give a keynote before a session on “the race against piracy,” but was held up in a presidential meeting. While MPA’s EMEA president Emilie Anthonis filled in briefly, the tone was already set by a minister, who put the piracy talk in perspective.

Gayton McKenzie, South Africa’s Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture, shared the stage with the chair of French regulator ARCOM and a deputy director general of WIPO, who outlined their anti-piracy track records.

As a representative of the South African government, McKenzie said he agreed that piracy is bad. However, he took issue with almost everything else.

“We need to define what is piracy,” he said. “There’s a failure by the people tasked to fight piracy not to define it definitively,” the minister added, before going into more detail on an alleged double standard.

His first example came from the same summit. That morning, McKenzie said, a filmmaker had told the audience that his film was banned in Egypt but that people could still see it there thanks to piracy.

The filmmaker said he was glad people could see it “and then people clapped,” McKenzie said.

He gave a second example, a Canadian production about a gay hockey player, apparently the series Heated Rivalry, which he said is now being pirated in the countries where it is banned, to add that “everybody in the industry is clapping.”

From personal history the minister also recalled that, during South Africa’s apartheid regime, several films were not allowed to be distributed, leaving piracy as the only option.

When dealing with this type of banned content and censorship, piracy is put in a different light, apparently with filmmakers praising it. However, when poor people pirate, they face legal issues, McKenzie said. He called the industry’s approach “a bit schizophrenic” with “dual standards.”

‘Egyptians Love Piracy’

The filmmaker that McKenzie referred to was Tarik Saleh, the Swedish-Egyptian director of The Nile Hilton Incident and Cairo Conspiracy. These movies are set in Cairo, but they are banned in Egypt.

At the opening session of the summit, Saleh said he was told to leave the country before shooting his first film.

“I was going to shoot my first film in Egypt and I was asked to leave. Uh, I’m putting it nicely. I mean, they said, ‘Get the f*ck out of here,'” he said, after which he chose to make the films in Morocco.

Saleh added that Egyptians can still see his films thanks to piracy, which he doesn’t mind.

“[H]ere is where piracy come into the picture in a little reversed way. Egyptians love piracy, which is working very well for me,” he said with a laugh.

There was no applause though. Instead, the moderator jumped in noting that the regulators on the afternoon’s piracy panel could be asked about it. Nobody asked them. Instead, McKenzie is the one who brought it up.

‘We’re Not Children’

McKenzie’s second point was addressed to the people sitting next to him. ARCOM chair Martin Ajdari just said they issued more than 22,000 blocking and delisting injunctions in five years, with 10,000 alone in 2026, while the piracy audience was slashed in half since 2018.

McKenzie said that was impressive, but he stressed that successes in one country are less effective if other countries do little to nothing. He compared it to two people in a boat that is leaking on only one side.

“We on the same boat. We both hate piracy,” he said. “The boat is leaking on our side and you are praising, like, where we are sitting we’ve done this.”

The minister also criticized that developing countries are being pressured into compliance. This came after WIPO’s Sylvie Forbin listed some of the conditions that came with WTO membership in the 1990s. This appeared to strike a nerve with McKenzie, who pushed back.

“Don’t try to punish us like we are children, because we are not children,” he said, not directly aiming at his fellow panelist.

South Africa has more recent experience with that kind of pressure. In 2020, U.S. copyright groups asked Washington to review the country’s trade preferences over the fair use provisions in its copyright bill, which U.S. copyright groups considered too broad.

‘We Are Not Beggars’

Money also came up at the end of the session, when the moderator asked Forbin whether the cooperation network the summit’s declaration envisions will bring the Global South on board. Forbin said WIPO already works with many countries, stressing that participation in its efforts such as WIPO Alert, remains voluntary.

McKenzie stressed that his position has nothing to do with money. South Africa is not short on funds to pay for anti-piracy efforts. It could pay as much as Sweden or the UK, but it mostly wants to be taken seriously.

“We don’t lack the money. There are countries that lack the money,” McKenzie said. “But we don’t want to be treated like, here’s money for you, do one, two, three. We want you also to listen to our ideas.”

“We are not beggars,” he added. “We want a partnership of equals.”

McKenzie said his government is already in touch with Canal+ about football piracy and that anti-piracy warnings now run before every match in South Africa. South Africa wants to help address piracy, as long as it is treated as a serious partner.

The Lumière Summit closed with a formal declaration to strengthen international anti-piracy cooperation.

This voluntary agreement does not include any hard commitments, and for now it has not been signed by any South African representative either.

—

The videos for all the sessions are available through the summit website. The quotes used in this article were transcribed by TorrentFreak from these recordings.

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

Belgium was relatively late to the site blocking party, but since a dedicated anti-piracy department opened its doors, the country has caught up quickly.

The first blocking order under this new regime, obtained by sports rightsholder DAZN in April 2025, started quite aggressively. In addition to major ISPs, it required Cloudflare, Google and Cisco to stop resolving pirate streaming domains through their public DNS services, under threat of €100,000 in fines per day.

Cisco’s response was also aggressive, as the company pulled its OpenDNS service out of Belgium entirely. Google and Cloudflare, meanwhile, complied in their own ways, but all three companies challenged the order.

In July 2025, the court suspended the DNS blocking requirement against Cisco pending a final ruling, after which OpenDNS returned to Belgium. This also put additional DNS blocking orders on hold. However, that may very well change in the near future.

Court Upholds DNS Blocking

That final ruling has now arrived, and it’s not what the DNS providers were hoping for. On August 20, the President of the French-speaking Business Court of Brussels rejected the core of their challenge. The DNS blocking requirement stands.

The order itself hasn’t been published, but a new implementation decision from Belgium’s anti-piracy department summarizes the outcome and explains how the blockade will work in practice.

According to the decision, the court ruled that it’s technically possible for alternative DNS resolvers to block domains, and that the companies failed to show that the costs would be disproportionate. Worries that some users near the border could be caught by geolocation overblocking errors did not change that decision.

“Imposing a blocking measure on the main alternative DNS resolution service providers helps strengthen the effectiveness of the blocking injunction imposed on ISPs, which is regarded as a relevant measure,” the decision reads.

“The combination of these measures is intended to discourage users seeking access to unlawful content, as their experience as consumers of football matches, which they are very attached to watching live, will be disrupted,” it adds.

The court order also included some small wins for the DNS providers. For example, it scrapped the requirement to redirect users to a warning page, noting that this measure can’t be imposed on DNS resolvers.

The penalties for non-compliance were also softened. The €100,000 per day fine remains, but it only counts on days that DAZN matches are broadcast live. There’s a €20 million maximum per company, and fines don’t apply to under-blocking caused by “an exceptional geolocation error.”

Evolving Blocklist with a 90-minute Clock

The department’s decision also explains how the blocking will work in practice. The order covers matches from Belgian football competitions, including the Jupiler Pro League. As the season continues, DAZN can submit one blocklist update per week, with a maximum of 100 new domains.

There’s no fixed schedule. Instead, DAZN tells the department which matchday it wants the blocklist updated for, at least seven working days in advance. The DNS resolvers then get five working days to implement the changes.

The actual blockades should go live 90 minutes before a match starts, to catch pirates off guard.

“It is also with this effectiveness of the blocking measure in mind that it was decided that it should operate intermittently, and that it should only be implemented one and a half hours before the start of matches,” the implementation order reads.

“In this way, users find it more difficult to anticipate the blocking and plan around it in advance.”

The evolving nature of the blocklist is apparent from the publicly shared data, which shows that the domains blocked under this order have grown from 58 to 258 after it was first issued.

OpenDNS Exit Looms

As reported last year, Google and Cloudflare complied with the original order. The latest order doesn’t change anything for them. However, for Cisco it’s a different story.

During the hearing, Cisco informed the department that it will pull OpenDNS out of Belgium again.

The company stated that the public DNS system “does not allow for the implementation of selective, geolocated and dynamic blocking as required by the order,” and that enabling it “would compromise the performance, stability and security of that service.”

Pulling out of Belgium is the only concrete measure Cisco is “technically able” to implement, the company added. The Belgian anti-piracy department accepts this drastic measure as compliance with the order.

The DNS resolvers have three months to implement the blocking measures. For now, OpenDNS remains available in Belgium and Cisco indicated it intends to appeal the ruling. TorrentFreak was told that a formal statement was still being finalized at the time of publication.

Unless the appeal changes anything, OpenDNS users in Belgium can expect the service to go dark for a second time later this year.

—

A copy of the Belgian anti-piracy department’s implementation decision of September 7 is available here (pdf).

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

Earlier this year, a wave of hypervisor bypasses allowed pirates to ‘crack’ Denuvo-protected games on the day of release.

However, those bypasses weren’t Denuvo’s only headache. For those who preferred a less invasive approach, an anonymous cracker going by the name “ voices38 ” continued to release many old-school cracks that patch Denuvo’s checks directly.

These traditional cracks don’t require users to disable Windows security features, which makes them quite popular. Catering to this demand, voices38’s output accelerated this summer, resulting in five Denuvo releases on a single day earlier this month. This didn’t go unnoticed at the Denuvo headquarters.

Denuvo Takes ‘voices38’ to Court

On Monday, Denuvo GmbH took legal action. In a complaint obtained by TorrentFreak, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Austrian company accuses voices38 of bypassing its Anti-Tamper technology on 26 games. This is a violation of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision, it argues.

Denuvo explains that the person using the ‘voices38’ handle has targeted the protection measures of a wide range of titles. This includes older titles such as FIFA 20 and PES 2020, as well as recent blockbusters including Hogwarts Legacy, Black Myth: Wukong, Resident Evil Requiem and Doom: The Dark Ages.

“Defendant is a computer hacker who is focused on reverse engineering, hacking, or ‘cracking’ video games employing Denuvo’s Anti-Tamper product,” Denuvo writes in the complaint, while mentioning that Reddit is one of their release channels.

“Defendant has bypassed DRM restrictions in copyrighted works, removing protections that allow copyright owners to restrict who may access their works, and allowing for pirated versions of those copyrighted works,” it adds.

Circumvention, Not Copyright Infringement

Denuvo doesn’t actually own the copyrights to any of these games. This means that Denuvo can’t sue “voices38” for traditional copyright infringement, as the game companies could.

Instead, Denuvo’s complaint relies on the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. Under this section of US copyright law, it is prohibited to bypass a digital lock that controls access to a copyrighted work, or to distribute tools and instructions that help others to bypass copyright protections.

Importantly, the DMCA allows anyone that’s harmed by these bypasses to file a lawsuit. Denuvo argues that, since its entire business revolves around selling tamper protection to game companies including EA, Ubisoft, Capcom, and Sony, the cracks are directly hurting its business.

As far as we know, this is the first time Denuvo has sued a cracker in a U.S. court. While the lawsuit mentions game titles and their respective owners, none of the rightsholders are part of the lawsuit.

Reddit User, Steam Accounts and a Discord ID

The obvious problem is that nobody knows who voices38 is. The complaint names the defendant as “an unknown individual or entity,” together with ten unnamed Doe defendants.

Denuvo has done some homework, though. The filing lists a Discord user ID, a Reddit account and seven Steam profiles that it believes are linked to the cracker.

Denuvo hopes the information linked to these accounts will eventually unmask the cracker. Games have to be bought before they can be cracked, for example, and Steam purchases come with payment details.

With a case on file, Denuvo can ask the court for permission to subpoena Valve, Reddit and Discord for the associated account details. There’s no discovery request in the docket yet, but that will likely follow soon.

The complaint includes two DMCA anti-circumvention claims and requests damages, as well as an injunction that would bar voices38 from circumventing Denuvo’s Anti-Tamper protection in any games, including future ones that have yet to be created.

The ‘future’ part will be needed, as the list of 26 games was already outdated when the complaint was filed. In recent weeks, ‘voices38’ has released several new cracks, including Persona 3 Reload and Star Wars Outlaws.

What’s Next

Whether Denuvo will be able to identify ‘voices38’ has yet to be seen. Typically, these types of crackers take their precautions. But even if the subpoenas don’t deliver, the lawsuit is not necessarily pointless.

If Denuvo obtains a default judgment with an injunction, it will be easier to have accounts and download links removed.

A ruling in Denuvo’s favor could act as a deterrent, as confirmation that Denuvo can sue crackers directly may spook some people involved.

For now, the case is in its early stages. Time will tell what information Denuvo will request from Reddit, Discord and other third parties, and whether ‘voices38’ will make an appearance in court.

—

A copy of Denuvo’s complaint against voices38, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf) .

The 26 games listed in the complaint, with the publisher named by Denuvo:

1. Need for Speed Heat (Electronic Arts)
2. EA Sports FIFA 20 (Electronic Arts)
3. Star Wars: Squadrons (Electronic Arts)
4. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered (Electronic Arts)
5. EA Sports FIFA 21 (Electronic Arts)
6. Hi-Fi Rush (Bethesda)
7. F1 2021 (Electronic Arts)
8. Dead Space Remastered (Electronic Arts)
9. Doom: The Dark Ages (Bethesda)
10. Mafia: The Old Country (2K Games)
11. LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight (WB Games)
12. Hogwarts Legacy (WB Games)
13. Total War: Three Kingdoms (SEGA)
14. Starlink: Battle for Atlas (Ubisoft)
15. Shining Resonance Refrain (SEGA)
16. PES 2020 (Konami)
17. Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster (SEGA)
18. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Ubisoft)
19. Anno 1800 (Ubisoft)
20. Sonic Frontiers (SEGA)
21. Assassin’s Creed Mirage (Ubisoft)
22. Pragmata (Capcom)
23. Resident Evil Requiem (Capcom)
24. Black Myth Wukong (Game Science)
25. Stellar Blade (Sony)
26. 007 First Light (IO Interactive)

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

Blocking foreign pirate sites at the ISP level has been off the table in the United States since the SOPA bill was shelved in 2012.

That changed in January last year, when Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA).

This proposal set the blocking wheels in motion and a last summer, Senators launched the Block BEARD draft. Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa , who chairs the House IP subcommittee, continued working on a draft of his own blocking bill, the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA).

Issa’s bill was being discussed among stakeholders but was not formally introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, until now .

Congressional records show that Issa introduced H.R. 10364, describing it as a bill “to establish procedures for blocking access to foreign online locations engaged in copyright piracy, and for other purposes.” There is no name listed, but Issa previously used the “American Copyright Protection Act” title.

A Site Blocking Bill Without Text

At the time of writing, the text is not online yet. Congress.gov notes that the Government Publishing Office has not yet received it, and Issa’s office has not issued a press release. TorrentFreak contacted Issa’s office for a comment and a copy of the text, but we didn’t immediately hear back.

That leaves the 2025 discussion draft, of which we had previously reviewed a copy , as the best indication of what the bill might be. That blocking framework would let copyright holders obtain court orders, requiring both ISPs and DNS resolvers to block foreign pirate sites.

Unlike the other blocking proposals, Issa’s early draft stipulated that the Judicial Conference would maintain a roster of designated judges to hear all blocking cases, while the Copyright Office would publish a list of active orders.

Issa’s proposal also uniquely targeted overblocking. The draft included a provision stating that a third party whose site was wrongly blocked as the result of a rightsholder’s error could claim up to $250,000 in compensation.

Whether any of these provisions have made it into the recently introduced bill is unknown, we will update this article when the text becomes available.

Competing Site Blocking Bills

The bill doesn’t come as a surprise. On June 30, Issa told The Capitol Forum that his intention was “to introduce it this week before we go on this district work period.” That never happened, however.

Notably, Issa is retiring at the end of this term, which leaves a few months to get anything through the House. While that is not impossible, the bill does face some competition on the Hill.

There are currently three separate site blocking efforts in the US. Earlier this year, TorrentFreak reported that Senator Thom Tillis and Rep. Lofgren were merging FADPA and Block BEARD into a single bicameral bill covering both ISPs and large DNS resolvers.

Lofgren later confirmed she was negotiating a “ four corners agreement ” with Issa and Senators Blackburn, Coons, Schiff and Tillis.

A source previously described the two efforts as separate, uncoordinated tracks. Whether that changed since is unknown. If ACPA is the House half of a consensus deal, Lofgren’s name should appear among the cosponsors. If not, the House has two blocking bills, with the Senate version as the third.

Opposition

Interestingly, opposition already responded to the bill’s introduction before the text is published online. Specifically, Public Knowledge warns that the bill turns broadband providers into copyright police.

“More importantly, applying blocking orders to global DNS resolvers causes global blocks. This means that one court can cut off access to a website globally, based on a single individual’s filing and an expedited procedure,” says Meredith Rose, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge.

“Small businesses and nonprofits face the greatest risks for site blocking but have the fewest protections. In Europe, we’ve seen overblocking bring down digital infrastructure for hotels, car mechanics, retail shops, telehealth programs, and even a nunnery.”

Rightsholders have been quieter. The MPA, which gave Issa its Industry Champion Award last year , had not issued a statement when this article was published. We asked the group for a comment but it did not immediately reply.

—

Breaking story, updates may follow.

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

Last month, we reported that a copyright lawsuit targeting PassThePopcorn, BroadcasTheNet, HDBits, and three other private trackers may have been filed by an impostor.

Defense attorneys had tracked down the Canadian filmmaker whose name appeared on the complaint, who told the court under oath that he had nothing to do with the case.

The plaintiff responded by claiming to be a different Matthew Schneider , a UK filmmaker who had independently made three films with exactly the same titles as his Canadian namesake. This matter was scheduled to be discussed in an in-person hearing at the Illinois federal court last Thursday, but at the eleventh hour the plaintiff filed a notice of voluntary dismissal.

Dismissed, But Not Over

Responding to the notice, Judge Andrea R. Wood acknowledged the dismissal but made clear that the court retained jurisdiction over the pending motion for a rule to show cause. This means that, while the copyright claims against the trackers are dismissed, the alleged impostor still faces possible sanctions.

The hearing was converted to a telephone conference so that no one had to travel to Chicago. At the hearing, the person claiming to be the UK Matthew Schneider confirmed that he no longer wished to pursue the copyright claims.

That does not close the books on this case, as defense Attorney Erin Russell , representing Doe 1, confirmed that they were still seeking sanctions.

However, Russell flagged a practical problem related to the earlier “impostor” allegations. Any sanctions award would be uncollectible unless the court first establishes who the plaintiff actually is. That would also ensure that a judgment isn’t entered against the wrong person.

When asked by the judge to confirm his identity, the plaintiff confirmed that Matthew Schneider is his legal name and that he lives in London. The defense, in turn, said that their investigation pointed in another direction.

A Banned User With a Grudge?

If the plaintiff is indeed an impostor, the new question is why they would file a lawsuit against several prominent private trackers? Judge Wood asked defense counsel whether they had any ideas, calling it an odd situation.

This prompted Russell to propose a potential motive, which surfaced after investigating the matter, presumably with cooperation from a tracker operator. According to her, the person behind the email address that filed the lawsuit was no stranger to the private trackers.

Russell told the court it appeared likely that this person was caught selling or trading invites for these trackers. The person in question was allegedly blacklisted as a result and, in Russell’s words, “bears ill will” over it, which would make the lawsuit an act of revenge.

These allegations are presented as a theory, with no supporting evidence being filed yet, but it would explain the rather odd circumstances and bizarre twists and turns the case has seen so far.

More Evidence Needed

The plaintiff, however, maintains that he’s a UK filmmaker. Previously, he submitted a page with film metadata, but he promised to submit a copy of his own version of “Do Us Part” this week, when Judge Wood asked him at the hearing.

Judge Wood also noted that the plaintiff had not submitted a sworn affidavit with his response to the sanctions motion. Responding to this, the plaintiff offered to provide one.

Looking further ahead, Judge Wood said she expects a hearing at which the two Canadian declarants, including the ‘other’ Matthew Schneider, would testify by video. That video hearing would also require the plaintiff to appear on camera. The next status hearing is set for October 2.

For now, the private tracker operators can be relieved that the copyright claims against them are gone. However, the question of who filed this case is not resolved yet.

—

The court’s order on the voluntary dismissal is available here (pdf) . TorrentFreak attended the hearing via telephone and the coverage is based on our notes.

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

Over the past two years, rightsholders of all kinds have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

Meta is among a long list of companies now being sued for this allegedly infringing activity. This includes a class action lawsuit filed by authors including Richard Kadrey and Sarah Silverman, which accused Meta of training its Llama models on pirated books, and of sharing those books with other BitTorrent users in the process.

Last summer, Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that the AI training itself was fair use , leaving the BitTorrent distribution claims as the last live part of the case. Earlier this year, Meta added a new line of defense to those claims. In a supplemental interrogatory response, the company argued that any uploading of pirated books during its torrent downloads was “part-and-parcel” of a fair use purpose.

Meta stated that BitTorrent was “a more efficient and reliable means of obtaining the datasets,” and in the case of Anna’s Archive the only way to get them in bulk. Since torrent users upload to each other by design, any sharing was simply “an inherent characteristic of the BitTorrent protocol.”

Both of Meta’s torrenting claims are now being tested in three related lawsuits , filed by Chicken Soup for the Soul, academic publisher Cognella, and John Carreyrou’s Cambronne Inc. These three cases are all assigned to Judge Chhabria and target the same shadow library torrenting activity.

Ask Torrenting AI Rivals

Instead of waiting for Meta to document the technical details of its torrent client setup, the publishers went to the two AI rivals that could potentially disprove the seeding requirement.

In August, they subpoenaed OpenAI and Anthropic for the identity, versions and configurations of every torrent client the companies have used since 2019. This specifically includes any records of efforts to prevent seeding.

In similar lawsuits, both companies have admitted that they used books from shadow libraries. If they configured a torrent client not to upload, Meta’s “necessity” argument would be in trouble.

“If OpenAI torrented but configured its clients to suppress uploading, then the redistribution Meta calls an ‘inherent characteristic’ of the protocol was a setting Meta declined to change,” the publishers told the court.

That argument builds on an earlier finding in the legal battle, which revealed that a Meta engineer wrote a script to prevent seeding, but apparently not leeching.

OpenAI and Anthropic Won’t Talk

Instead of insisting on all requested documents, the publishers also offered an alternative. If OpenAI or Anthropic would simply explain how they acquired the shadow-library data and whether they tried to prevent uploading, the torrent document demands would be dropped.

The AI companies didn’t take the offer, however, and they pushed back instead. Both companies informed the court that examining the technical features of the relevant torrent client directly would be better, adding that their own practices say nothing about Meta’s.

“Clients are not interchangeable, they differ in their default upload settings, in whether those defaults can be reconfigured, and in their capacity to suppress uploading during and after a download,” Anthropic’s lawyers wrote.

“What Anthropic’s client allowed shows nothing about what Meta’s did.”

OpenAI made the same point, noting that there is no evidence that it used the same torrent clients or “built ‘comparable corpora’ to Meta.”

Judge Sides With AI Rivals

In a new order released last week, Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson sided with the two AI companies. Without deciding on Meta’s seeding arguments, the court concluded that the torrent logs of AI rivals are not the best place to gather evidence.

“To the extent Meta’s fair use defense hinges on the assertion that its use of BitTorrent was the only way BitTorrent can be used, that assertion can be tested by examining the BitTorrent client itself,” Judge Hixson writes.

Asking OpenAI or Anthropic for their logs says little about Meta’s technical setup or the technical capabilities of torrent clients.

“Any user of a torrent client would be relevant in that sense. Why can’t Plaintiffs’ expert use the torrent clients to show how torrent clients can be used?” the order adds.

Similarly, the claim that shadow library data could only be downloaded in bulk through torrents, would be something the publishers can check with the libraries directly, instead of trying to get that information through other AI companies.

Meta’s Own Server Data

In these three cases, the court decided that getting data from AI rivals is off limits. However, the same doesn’t apply to data from Meta’s own servers.

On September 11, Judge Hixson granted a motion in the related class action case filed by Kadrey and other authors. This order covers the command history files for every server Meta used to torrent, including its virtual machines and AWS instances.

Command histories are the logs a server keeps of every command an operator types. For a torrenting machine, that presumably includes how the torrent client was installed and any changes made to its upload settings.

The order goes back to early 2025, when Meta admitted that it had held back relevant documents until after the discovery deadline had passed. To make up for that, Judge Chhabria gave the authors extra discovery, including records showing how Meta’s torrent clients were set up and used.

Meta argued that the log files it had already handed over were enough. Judge Hixson disagreed, however, ordering Meta to hand over the command histories as well.

The authors hope these command histories will also reveal exactly which copyrighted works Meta torrented. Whether the data will show any of that has yet to be seen.

For now, whether Meta could have downloaded the books without seeding is a question for the plaintiffs’ experts, who will have Meta’s own server records to work with. Their opening reports in the Meta cases are due later this month.

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A copy of Judge Hixson’s order on the OpenAI and Anthropic subpoenas is available here (pdf) . The joint letter briefs can be found here (pdf) and here (pdf) . The command history order in Kadrey v. Meta is available here (pdf) .

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

For many years, Vietnamese football fans who wanted a free Premier League stream with local commentary knew exactly where to go.

‘Xoi Lac TV’ and its sister sites offered pirated streams featuring all major leagues, switching to new domains each time a blocking order caught up with the last one.

For the operators involved, these free streams became serious business. Betting banners were shown with every match and generated substantial revenue. That lucrative business model also drew Vietnam’s cybercrime police, who raided the operation in February and charged 30 people a month later.

However, that was only the opening chapter in a story that carries international weight today. Last week, police in Hung Yen province closed their investigation and asked prosecutors to charge 74 people.

Massive Piracy Operation with its Own Commentators

The investigation’s conclusion, as reported by Dan Tri and VnExpress , describes two linked piracy operations.

The first pirate site, ’90 Phut’, was founded in late 2018. Investigators say Hanoi technology entrepreneur Pham Nguyen Dung put up the money, programmer Nguyen Cong Dinh wrote the code, and the two split the profits.

When the operation was shut down in February, it ran XoilacTV, 90PhutTV, VeboTV, ThapcamTV, BanhkhucTV and CakeoTV, while Dinh also ran the ‘Cakhia’ network with another defendant.

The 74 suspects are allegedly part of the operation’s staff. This includes more than 30 Vietnamese commentators who were paid 200,000 to 500,000 dong per match, roughly $8 to $20. The other defendants managed servers, streams and the financial side.

The commentary was the brand, and its best-known voices used names such as ‘Batman’ and ‘Scarecrow’. ‘Batman’, it turned out, was Dinh himself, who investigators say made more than 12 billion dong, roughly $470,000, from the operation.

The investigation also found that the sites streamed 1,529 matches without permission, infringing the rights of the Premier League and local broadcasters, while generating revenue from betting brands including 8XBET, LU88, Man88 and HBET.

Police estimate that these ads brought in more than 130 billion dong, roughly $5 million, between April 2025 and January 2026. Rightsholders, meanwhile, claim losses that are much higher.

Vietnam’s pay TV service K+ preliminarily estimates its losses at more than $83 million, and the Premier League, which licenses its rights to K+ for Vietnam, at more than $4.6 million. The figures have yet to be confirmed at an eventual trial.

Gambling Charges Carry the Weight

The 74 defendants face a variety of charges, including copyright infringement, organizing gambling, gambling, and distributing obscene material. Fifty-one , including Dung and Dinh, are recommended for prosecution on both the copyright and organizing gambling counts.

Whe sites are known for piracy, but the gambling charges carry more weight. Vietnam’s Penal Code caps copyright infringement at three years in prison, no matter how profitable it is. Meanwhile, organizing gambling as a professional operation carries up to ten years in prison.

This means that the betting ads, which are illegal in Vietnam, could make up the bulk of the sentences. For now, however, nothing is final yet.

In Vietnam, police close an investigation with a written conclusion and a proposal to prosecute, which is the stage this case is at now. The prosecution now has up to 30 days to indict, send the file back for more work, or drop the case.

Thanks From London, Pressure From Washington

The ‘Xoi Lac’ crackdown has not gone unnoticed outside of the country’s borders. In May, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security announced that the British Embassy in Hanoi had sent a letter thanking it for the takedown. According to the ministry, the letter praised the enforcement effort that protected copyright holders.

Washington was not immediately convinced. At the end of April, the U.S. Trade Representative designated Vietnam a ‘Priority Foreign Country’ over its failure to tackle online piracy, the first country to receive that label in thirteen years.

A month later, USTR opened a formal Section 301 investigation into Vietnam’s intellectual property enforcement, a process that can end in widely feared tariffs. USTR said that Vietnam has taken some steps, but added that infringement “continues to impair the competitive position of U.S. innovators and creators.”

While the original Xoi Lac raids came weeks before the USTR’s decision, Vietnam is now using it as a defense, mentioning it in tandem with the takedowns of Rophim and Y2Mate in its July response to the investigation, asking to be taken off the priority list.

Vietnam’s response also cited the HiAnime case . The Ministry of Public Security only announced criminal proceedings against seven HiAnime suspects on July 2, the same day Vietnam filed its rebuttal in Washington.

Whether the 74-defendant recommendation is in any way influenced by the international pressure is unknown. It is now up to the prosecutor to decide what steps to take next. Meanwhile, a search for ‘xoi lac’ and its related brands still returns a long list of copycats, whose operators are unknown.

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

Rightsholders have linked piracy to terrorism and organized crime for several decades.

The framing first emerged in the late 1990s, when IFPI raised concerns about criminal networks smuggling pirated CDs across borders.

The terrorism angle was added in 2003, when the U.S. House held a hearing on piracy’s “ links to organized crime and terrorism .” Around the same time, Interpol chief Ronald Noble told Congress that IP crime had become “the preferred method of funding for a number of terrorist groups.”

The most cited connection appeared in 2009, when a movie industry-funded RAND report linked film piracy, organized crime, and terrorism. This report blurred the line between counterfeiting and piracy, but it has been widely referenced ever since.

“Never Forget”

More recently, the Digital Citizens Alliance , with support from the creative industries, has kept the tradition alive. In 2017, it bundled piracy with ISIS recruiting videos, malware and fake news. As recently as May this year, it linked pirate IPTV to drugs, weapons and the mafia .

Yesterday, the Washington group expanded the terrorist connection with a new angle. Titled “ Hostile Signals ,” the report argues that piracy does not only provide income, it can also act as a sanction-circumventing broadcasting channel.

To add extra weight, the report notes that the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks “is days away” and closes with “Never Forget.” With the press release coming out yesterday, the timing is notable.

Pirate IPTV Services Carry Terrorist Channels

Researchers from Atlanta security firm risk3sixty signed up for 25 pirate IPTV services from U.S. connections between May and August. Seventeen of these carried at least one channel tied to a designated terrorist organization or a sanctioned state broadcaster.

Hezbollah’s television station, Al-Manar, was available on all seventeen. The Houthi-run Al-Masirah channel appeared on nine, Iran’s Al-Alam on seven, and Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV on two.

“Al-Manar, the broadcast outlet of Hezbollah, which has a long history of attacking American targets and is responsible for at least 291 U.S. deaths over decades, is carried by all 17 piracy platforms identified to allowing carriage,” the report reads.

The report names several allegedly problematic services, including Lion OTT, Sansat VIP, OTTOcean, Belitvision and Wish IPTV, which could all be accessed from U.S. internet connections.

The U.S. banned Al-Manar’s satellite feed in 2004, and a Brooklyn man was later sentenced to 69 months in prison for providing material support to a terrorist organization after selling the channel to New York customers. Despite these crackdowns, pirate IPTV offers a “back door”.

“A piracy subscription has restored what two decades of federal action removed,” the report concludes.

Concerns & Nuance

The report’s conclusions are alarming, suggesting that pirate IPTV services could be used to radicalize people.

“National security officials, policymakers and citizens alike should be concerned,” it warns.

“Piracy platforms have created a new avenue for terrorist organizations and state adversaries to distribute recruitment messaging to U.S. audiences, including content intended to inspire acts of violence.”

At the same time, however, the report also recognizes that the findings say nothing about the viewership of these channels. Not just that, these channels are in Arabic and likely without subtitles. They are part of a much broader offering which can include thousands of channels.

Additionally, it is worth pointing out that many of these streams, including Hezbollah’s, are freely accessible through the broadcasters’ own websites. This includes Al-Manar.

The Justice Department seized 13 Hezbollah-linked domains in 2023, including seven that carried the channel’s name, but the station’s main site sits under Lebanon’s .lb domain. This domain falls outside of the U.S. jurisdiction and still streams to American visitors today.

The availability on the regular web may take away some of the report’s punch, but it actually sets up the payoff that follows.

Solution: Site-Blocking

The Digital Citizens Alliance report does not only signal the problem, it also offers a potential solution. It argues that site-blocking measures that are used against pirate sites can also be used to block terrorist content.

“These findings reinforce the need for the United States to adopt measures to prevent overseas piracy networks from operating in the country,” the report notes.

The timing for this request fits, as U.S. site blocking bills are on the agenda again. Rep. Darrell Issa’s American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) are both on the table, and Issa has signaled that a bipartisan, bicameral bill is close.

In August, MPA chief Charles Rivkin and the head of the IPR Center used the World Cup domain seizures to make the same site blocking request .

The site blocking discussions are ongoing in Washington and it is expected that stakeholders on the content-owner side will use the “Hostile Signals” report as further evidence that stopping piracy can potentially have a broader effect.

“‘Never Forget’ became the enduring rallying cry for those who experienced the 9/11 attacks. It’s also a reminder to never let the terrorists back in, in any form,” the report concludes.

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A copy of the Digital Citizens Alliance / risk3sixty report “Hostile Signals” is available here (pdf) .

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