Last August, Irishman David Dunbar consented to a €480,000 damages judgment after Sky exposed his illegal IPTV operation.

This legal action effectively shut down the “IPTV is Easy” service. However, Sky Ireland wasn’t done yet, and had also set its sights on the service’s subscribers.

This was no veiled threat. In March, we reported that, based on Revolut records uncovered during proceedings against the operator, Ireland’s High Court had ordered Revolut to hand over the details of 304 IPTV subscribers connected to the now-defunct IPTV service. At the time, Sky said it intended to take legal action against some of those named.

While no lawsuit has been filed yet, this morning The Irish Independent reported that Sky has indeed sent out its first legal demand letters.

‘Prepared to Take Legal Action’

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Sky confirms that roughly 200 people have been targeted. Most of them are located in Wexford, but letters have also gone to people in Carlow, Clare, Cork, Dublin, Galway, and various other counties.

“Sky can confirm it has issued a first wave of cease-and-desist letters to c.200 individuals who paid for an unlawful subscription to the illegal IPTV is Easy service,” a Sky spokesperson informed us.

“Where an individual does not engage with us following receipt of this letter, Sky is prepared to pursue legal action. This may include seeking an injunction, damages arising from the infringement, and recovery of legal costs.”

While the paperwork is directly tailored to Sky, the text explicitly mentions local sports rightsholders. It notes that Clubber TV, LOITV, GAA+, and Premier Sports are ‘wholly aware’ of the situation and warns that failure to sign leaves them ‘with no other option but to take firm action’ independently.

14 Days to Sign Settlement

The letter, posted in full below , is sent by Sky’s Legal Litigation and Anti-Piracy Division. The recipients are told that they were identified as a subscriber of “IPTV Is Easy”.

Importantly, the cease-and-desist urges the former subscribers to sign and return a legally binding settlement agreement within 14 days.

With this settlement, recipients promise to “immediately and permanently disable” all IPTV subscriptions, to “never again infringe Sky’s copyright in any way including by watching any of its content or channels without paying the correct subscription fee,” and to never again subscribe to an illegal IPTV service.

If recipients comply, Sky says it will not name them publicly. If they do not, the company says it is “fully prepared to take further legal action, including issuing court proceedings.” In addition, a breach of the agreement might also result in follow-up legal action.

Deterrence Over Damages

With these warning letters, Sky likely hopes for a direct and indirect deterrent effect. By announcing publicly that IPTV subscribers are not untouchable, Sky hopes that IPTV subscribers will reconsider their habit.

In any case, the letter notes that Sky will retain a permanent record of the infringer’s name, address, and signed undertaking for as long as necessary. This means that signing the settlement will effectively place someone permanently on Sky’s radar.

The letter also warns recipients that their activity ‘may also involve criminal offences’ under Ireland’s Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000.

Sky is not seeking monetary damages, which stands in sharp contrast to recent approaches in Italy and France. Earlier this year, a French Public Prosecutor’s Office fined 19 IPTV subscribers between €300 and €400 after their identities were exposed through a reseller bust.

In Italy, the Guardia di Finanza identified thousands of subscribers following the dismantling of a pirate network, and rightsholders subsequently sent requests for €1,000 in damages on top of the criminal fines.

Sky’s approach is softer, at least for now. The Irish Independent’s technology editor Adrian Weckler told Newstalk Breakfast this morning that Sky had deliberately chosen not to pursue full civil prosecution, which would have been a more costly endeavor.

“They’re trying to walk a bit of a tightrope,” Weckler said. “They hope users will be freaked out by the letters and simply stop using them.”

Whether that strategy will work has yet to be seen. At the same time, it also remains unclear how Sky plans to verify whether the targeted users do indeed stay away from pirate IPTV services going forward.

In any case, the 200 letters represent a tiny fraction of an estimated 400,000 dodgy box households in Ireland. This means that there are plenty of targets remaining.

—

A copy of the official template for Sky’s cease-and-desist letter is available here (pdf)

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

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment ( ACE ) established itself as the world’s leading anti-piracy coalition.

The Motion Picture Association-led organization united rightsholders from all over the world, forming a united front against online copyright infringement.

While much of the enforcement work takes place behind closed doors, DMCA subpoenas are a staple information-gathering tool of ACE. Through these subpoenas, the organization requests third-party intermediaries to hand over information they have on various alleged pirate sites.

Earlier this year, ACE obtained a DMCA subpoena, compelling Discord to identify the operators of community servers attached to pirate streaming portals HDFull. This was paired with a broader subpoena, asking Cloudflare to share details on HDFull’s domain operator, as well as those of other sites.

DMCA Subpoenas

A few days ago, ACE requested a new DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare, targeting 29 new domain names. The legal paperwork is filed by the Motion Picture Association and names Columbia, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros., who are all ACE members too.

Specifically, the subpoena demands identifying information, such as physical addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, payment information, and account history, related to the Cloudflare accounts associated with these sites.

The list of domain names is a testament to the global nature of the anti-piracy coalition, targeting French, Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian, Spanish, and Hindi-language sites, among others.

A Young French Torrent Tracker

One of the targeted domain names is la-cale.space , a French private BitTorrent tracker that launched in late December 2025. The site stands out because it’s a relatively new invitation-only community whose reach is more limited than public torrent or streaming sites.

The private tracker has grown quite significantly recently, particularly after the collapse of the French YggTorrent tracker. The subpoena will test how well the operators have shielded their identities.

The subpoena request lists “Moana” and “Gladiator 2” as two titles that are shared on the site. The legal paperwork also lists the private URLs, suggesting that the anti-piracy group has access to the private community.

A Veteran Chinese Torrent Forum

ACE’s subpoena also targets another pirate community that is the opposite of the French tracker in many ways. The Chinese forum known as “BT Home / 1LOU Station”, currently operating from 1lou.me, is far from a newcomer.

The veteran community has been operating in various incarnations for around two decades, hopping through domains including BTBTT, BTBBT, 1lou.icu, 1lou.pro, and now 1lou.me. It was one of the first torrent-oriented communities and remains online today, with millions of monthly visitors.

The long-running Chinese forum is also an unusual target, as it is predominantly popular in mainland China. As far as we know, ACE does not have any members there. That said, the Hollywood movie studios have commercial interests around the globe.

Vietnamese APIs & Other International Targets

The list of domain names also includes kkphim.com, ophim17.cc, and phim.nguonc.com, which are not typical pirate streaming sites. Kkphim.com openly markets itself as a developer API, supplying movie metadata, posters, and m3u8 stream links for use by third-party streaming sites.

Technically, these sites can also be used directly by end users, but they are marketed as a “Piracy as a Service” platform, allowing others to easily launch their own pirate sites.

The international nature of the subpoena targets doesn’t end in Vietnam. The legal paperwork also lists the Russian site Kino.pub, the Thai nanamovies.org, various domains of the Indian streaming portal Movierulz, the Polish wizja.cc, and several Brazilian streaming outlets, including rrrv.lol.

To top it off, ACE also brings back a familiar target in the form of series.ly. The Spanish-language streaming portal has been around for over a decade, and its admins were acquitted twice over the past few years, in part because linking to copyrighted content wasn’t a crime in Spain when the alleged offenses took place.

At the time of writing, the subpoena has yet to be signed by a court clerk, which is typically just a formality. After it’s signed, ACE will have to wait and see how accurate the information is that Cloudflare has on file.

Operators of pirate sites are known to use false data with their hosting and infrastructure providers, which often limits the value of these subpoenas. That said, ACE had success with this enforcement tool in the past, and even minor leads can be useful when paired with information from other sources.

—

A copy of the MPA’s §512(h) subpoena application is available here (pdf) , along with the associated declaration (pdf) and the notice to Cloudflare (pdf) .

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

The Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania ( LRTK ), the Baltic country’s media watchdog, has been one of Europe’s most active anti-piracy enforcers.

In recent years, it blocked hundreds of domains and thousands of IP addresses, fined users without going to court, and froze bank accounts tied to pirate operations.

Next month, LRTK will share some of its hard learned lessons in Geneva. At a meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Advisory Committee on Enforcement (ACE), LRTK’s Andrius Katinas will describe the Lithuanian approach as a template for other countries.

According to the contribution, which is publicly shared in advance of the June meeting, copyright enforcement in Lithuania is no longer just about copyright. It is “a method of hybrid warfare,” which can also counter Russian disinformation and safeguard the privacy of citizens.

Russian Disinfo as a “Hybrid Threat”

The hybrid-threat framing rests on two separate claims, which both are unrelated to copyright infringement. The first is that pirate IPTV services can, willingly or not, be used as distribution channels for Russian propaganda.

LRTK explains that many of the IPTV services it monitors operate from hostile countries and retransmit Russian state channels, which are sanctioned and formally banned by the European Union.

“Those channels include EU-sanctioned outlets that not only spread propaganda and disinformation, but also broadcast numerous national channels and live sports without the consent of the rights holders.”

“In blocking broadcasts because of copyright infringement, the Commission also blocks access to hostile information (and vice versa), which is a method of hybrid warfare,” LRTK’s abstract of the upcoming presentation reads.

As a direct neighbor of Russia, Lithuania has been very active in taking down Russian disinformation. In addition to blocking numerous sites and services, LRTK also fined hosting provider UAB Melbikomas €10,000 for breaching EU sanctions by hosting more than 50 sports channels.

Filmai.in and other Privacy Threats

Pirate site blocking can also serve another purpose, as it prevents potential security breaches. Lithuania has experience with this, as user data of the popular local pirate site Filmai leaked online, including 645,000 email addresses, usernames, and plain text passwords.

This breach happened more than 5 years ago, and blocking the site does not remove the leaked data from the darknet. However, it may help to limit the fallout of future breaches at Filmai or other pirate sites.

These privacy issues are a serious concern, LRTK notes, stressing that pirate sites generally don’t have the best security.

Leaked credentials end up on the dark web, with LRTK suggesting that they can be picked up by hostile-state cyber groups for use in operations against state institutions and strategic companies. And since credentials of government officials have also been found in the Filmai leak, state security might become an issue.

“It has even been found that Government officials had registered on the Filmai website using official email addresses, creating security concerns, such as the potential for unauthorized access to State institutions, the signing of documents, or responding to residents’ inquiries,” LRTK writes.

Filmai is blocked now, and one of the administrators of the site was convicted in 2023 . However, the site itself remains online and, according to Similarweb , it remains among the top 100 visited sites in the country.

The Lithuanian Model

LRTK explains that it has broad experience with fighting piracy threats, using a wide variety of OSINT skills. It specifically mentions tools such as domaintools.com, oxylabs.io, epieos.com, Wireshark, and SimilarWeb, which help to identify perpetrators or monitor for illegal activities.

In recent years, the watchdog has blocked more than 400 domains and 7,000 IP addresses. In addition, it imposed fines in over 250 cases since 2023.

Much of this blocking system is centralized and automated. When LRTK identifies a new site, or a mirror of a previously blocked site, a blocking instruction is sent to all Internet service providers. Within twenty minutes, the domain or IP is blocked across the country.

LRTK has also frozen bank accounts linked to pirate operations, delisted URLs from Google Search, removed advertisements from pirate sites, and suspended illegal IPTV apps from Google Play and the Apple App Store.

The Dutch Export Problem

According to the presentation, Lithuania’s experience can “serve as a model for other national authorities and rights holders”. While that may be true, a Dutch example should show that blocklists should not be copied blindly.

In December 2025, the Dutch ISP trade association NLconnect tried to help ISPs by compiling a master blocklist, to comply with the EU’s ban on Russian disinformation. Because the Dutch government did not provide guidance, it compiled a reference blocklist of 797 domains, using blocklists from regulators in Germany, Austria, Estonia, Finland, and Lithuania.

As we reported at the time , this effort resulted in some unexpected blocks. Dutch users of Ziggo lost access to ShareChat, India’s largest homegrown social media platform with hundreds of millions of users. The same applied to Odysee.com, online radio aggregators Streema and Viaway, and various pirate IPTV domains including IPTV-home.net, Ottclub.tv, and Limehd.tv.

Most of those domains traced back to a single source: LRTK’s blocklist.

Responding to the issue, the Dutch regulator ACM informed us in December that it does not monitor the actual execution or the content of the sanctions list. However, after ISPs started to complain as well, ACM formally investigated the matter, concluding that LRTK’s blocklist is too broad for the Netherlands.

As reported by Tweakers in February, ACM eventually concluded that the Lithuanian list had been compiled under both the EU sanctions regulation and a broader Lithuanian national law banning Russian-financed television content.

This means that the Lithuanian list is not usable outside Lithuania, and NLconnect dropped the entire Lithuanian source list, shrinking their reference list from 797 domains to 335.

The Dutch overblocking example can’t be blamed on Lithuania, but it shows that when it comes to cross-border blocking efforts, caution is warranted. In any case, it is clear that blindly copying third-party blocklists is not the best approach.

—

The WIPO contribution, “Combating Digital Piracy: Strategic Enforcement through DNS/IP Blocking and OSINT Tools,” is available here (pdf) .

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

Real-Debrid is a French-operated premium link generator that can download files from cyberlockers and cache torrents for instant streaming.

The service has long been a key tool for many Stremio and Kodi, and is also widely used as unlimited cloud storage by Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby users who pair it with Sonarr and Radarr.

At the end of 2024 , the service made headlines by implementing far-reaching anti-piracy measures, including hash and keyword filters. These changes were made to appease rightsholders following a formal notice from the Fédération Nationale des Éditeurs de Films (FNEF), the French film distributors’ trade body. Despite user backlash, Real-Debrid retained much of its user base.

A few days ago, complaints about Real-Debrid’s filtering started rearing their head again. Now it appears to be worse. Cached torrents that previously played without problems now return an error message: “File was removed from debrid service due to copyright infringement.”

Real-Debrid has taken action, whether voluntarily or not, but the operators have not commented publicly and did not respond to our request for comment either. The company’s most recent public communication, on its official X account, is close to six months old.

A New and Broader Piracy Filter

According to user reports circulating on Reddit and elsewhere, the new filter does not target specific torrent hashes, as the 2024 measures did. Instead, it appears to screen against filename patterns common to almost all scene and P2P releases.

ElfHosted , a managed hosting provider that offers Stremio and Plex stacks, among others, has published a documented list of names that it linked to the new Real-Debrid filter. The list includes names of release groups such as [rartv], [rarbg], and [eztv], as well as source markers including WEB-DL, WEBDL, WEB-Rip, WEBRip and AMZN.

This suggests that the removals are based on characteristics that are not directly triggered by the content itself, but by the filename. This means that files without ‘forbidden’ keywords or tags should survive, for now.

That theory is confirmed by a r/Piracy user who notes “only 4k or 4k HDR kind of streams have been removed and not 1080p ones” for the same shows. This does not mean that lower-quality releases are safe by definition; it all depends on whether the keyword filter is triggered.

“Most Users Lost 50-70% of Their Libraries”

ElfHosted built a tool called LitterBox that checks a user’s Real-Debrid library and counts how many cached torrents now return the infringement error. The company’s founder commented on Reddit that “most users have lost 50-70% of their libraries.”

ElfHosted has a commercial interest in the matter, as it points users to the bundles it sells for a Real-Debrid competitor. However, it is also the only named third-party source publishing technical details.

Exactly how bad users are impacted appears to differ per setup. Stremio users don’t appear to be hit as hard as those using Plex, Jellyfin, or Emby with Sonarr and Radarr. The latter try to load cached files, which has been removed.

Real-Debrid’s Corporate Restructuring

While the user impact is serious and undeniable, it is not immediately clear why Real-Debrid took this action. There is a largely unconfirmed and unverified report on an anonymous Netlify subdomain that appears to offer a timeline and context. While we can’t confirm most of it, the mention of a corporate restructuring is correct.

Information obtained by TorrentFreak from the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI), which maintains the French company registry, shows that Real-Debrid’s parent company, XT Network , underwent some legal changes recently.

On April 27, the registered office had already moved from Levallois-Perret to Montreuil. Ten days later, on May 7, the company was converted from a société à responsabilité limitée (SARL) to a société par actions simplifiée (SAS).

The two founders no longer appear as managers of the new company. Their roles are now held by holding companies: HOWLOO, a single-shareholder SARL based in Saint-Avertin, and DEVIUS, a single-shareholder SARL based in Saint-Herblain.

These types of restructuring operations can be done to change the liability of the persons and entities involved. What the reason is in this case is unknown, but it happened mere days before the renewed piracy crackdown.

The legal page on Real-Debrid’s website confirms the change and now identifies the owner as “XT Network SAS, Société par Actions Simplifiée au capital de 7000€, 86 Rue Voltaire, 93100 Montreuil,” where it previously listed XT Network SARL as the owner.

What’s Next

There has been no shortage of speculation or user complaints. Initially, the Real-Debrid subreddit ran a megathread covering the situation, but this has since been removed, and the posts now require approval from a moderator.

The discussion continues elsewhere, but real answers can only come from XT Network. If those come in, we will update the article accordingly.

For now, however, it appears that Real-Debrid is starting to toughen its stance against piracy even further. Last time, its actions only resulted in a relatively mild drop in traffic , but if the current situation continues, that will be much worse this time around.

—

A copy of the INPI attestation for XT Network, dated May 14, 2026, is available here (pdf).

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

In June 2024, Cengage Learning, Macmillan Learning, Elsevier, and McGraw Hill sued Google over Shopping ads that promoted pirated copies of their textbooks.

Last month, Google asked the court to throw out the last surviving copyright claim , arguing that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Cox Communications v. Sony Music had effectively killed the publishers’ theory of liability.

The publishers clearly disagree. In the opposition brief filed a few days ago, they accept the Supreme Court’s Cox framework and argue that their facts fit the stricter requirements anyway. They also note that an effort by Google to limit advertisements for pirated ebooks had the opposite effect.

Inducement

Under the new Cox standard, contributory copyright infringement applies if one of two conditions is met. This includes inducement, which requires evidence that a defendant actively encouraged copyright infringement. According to the publishers, that is the case here.

The publishers argue the entire Google Shopping platform fits that description. For each of the 7,359 textbooks they identified, Google created an ad promoting an infringing copy, placed it at the top of search results, targeted it at users it predicted would click, and linked it to a pirate site that delivered the book.

Google previously noted that the shopping platform is largely automated and content neutral, which would disfavor inducement. However, the publishers’ brief cites several examples of “specific acts” by Google that “actively encourage” infringement.

‘Ad Ban Only for Legitimate Sellers’

The first act is what the publishers describe as Google’s inverted ebook advertisement policy. Google banned ebook ads from its Shopping platform in 2021, citing piracy concerns. According to the publishers, the ban didn’t have the desired effect.

The publishers say that the ban worked as advertised against legitimate ebook sellers, who were blocked from promoting licensed copies through Google Shopping. Pirate sellers, meanwhile, continued to advertise infringing copies on the same platform.

“Google was well-aware (including because Plaintiffs told Google) that its ‘ban’ was not really a ban, since Google was blocking ads for legitimate ebooks, but running ads for pirated ebooks, thus showing consumers only pirated ebook products,” the opposition brief reads.

The publishers don’t go into detail on how pirate sellers were able to circumvent the ban, but the result is that people were shown ads for pirate books, not legitimate ones.

Running ads for the very products a policy was meant to block, the publishers argue, is evidence of the intent that inducement requires. A company that flouts its own anti-piracy ad policy cannot then claim it had no idea what was happening on its platform.

‘No Neutral Conduit’

Google positioned itself as a neutral conduit that simply displays advertisements that are supplied by third parties. However, the publishers reject this and note that the search engine has a much more active role.

“Google is not a list-serve or modern-day bulletin board like Craigslist, passively allowing users to post listings. Google is a sophisticated ad agency at scale, actively deciding what to advertise, how to advertise it, and to whom to target the advertisement,” they note, in favor of their inducement argument.

As a third category, the publishers stress that Google had the required knowledge of the allegedly infringing activities. They sent Google “hundreds of notices” identifying thousands of specific infringing ads and pirate merchants. These ads allegedly stayed online after the takedown notices were sent.

When the publishers complained to Google, the company allegedly flagged notices as “duplicative”, while threatening to stop reviewing all the publishers’ infringement notices for up to six months.

Tailored to Infringement

While satisfying the inducement prong would be sufficient, the publishers also argue that the second Cox element applies here. They argue that Google’s ads were “tailored to infringement” and not capable of “substantial or commercially significant noninfringing uses.”

Google’s motion applied that standard at the platform level: Google Shopping overall has obvious non-infringing uses, so it cannot be ‘tailored to infringement.’ The publishers, however, counter that the standard applies one level down.

The publishers note that each shopping ad for pirate ebooks was individually tailored. These ads, created by Google, were used to promote pirate books and served no purpose other than to induce copyright infringement.

“Plaintiffs are suing Google for knowingly creating and serving specific advertisements for known pirate sellers that include links to known infringing products, thereby inducing infringement. That Google also advertises non-infringing fishing-poles and garden-hoses does not exempt Google from liability for advertising infringing ebooks,” they write.

Redactions and Reply

Google’s argument that much of its shopping platform is automated should also be rejected, the publishers note. They stress that there are still decision-making humans involved in the process.

The opposition brief includes large portions of redacted text, so there is likely more evidence than what’s shared in public.

Overall, however, the publishers ask the court to deny Google’s motion for partial judgment on the pleadings. This decision will determine whether the final copyright infringement claim survives. Before that decision is issued, Google will get the chance to reply.

—

A copy of the publishers’ opposition to Google’s motion for partial judgment on the pleadings, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is available here (pdf) .

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

In Malaysia, Astro has been the dominant pay-TV operator that held the FIFA World Cup broadcast rights since the early 2000s.

During the previous tournaments in Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022), the company marketed itself as “the Home of the World Cup” but that changed for the 2026 tournament this summer.

Last week, Malaysia’s Minister of Communications, Datuk Fahmi Fadzil, announced that the 2026 World Cup rights had gone to public broadcaster Radio Televisyen Malaysia and IPTV service Unifi TV, which is operated by Telekom Malaysia.

This means that, with help from the government, which paid RM24 million for the rights (~$6.1 million), many Malaysians will have access to free streams.

Shortly after the deal was announced, Astro confirmed that it lost the rights. While the company said that it remains determined to be the home for Malaysian sports fans, paying millions of dollars for the broadcasting rights was not economically viable.

Astro: Piracy Devalued Broadcast Rights

Unlike the publicly funded broadcaster RTM, Astro would have had to recoup its investment in the World Cup rights commercially. That’s a significant challenge, according to the broadcaster, which explains that rights costs and piracy are both on the rise.

“Rising costs, driven by inflation and escalating international sports broadcasting rights, have significantly increased the financial investment required,” the company wrote.

“Meanwhile, rampant piracy has diminished the value of such rights to all legitimate platforms. In particular, the 2018 and 2022 World Cup were extensively pirated events in Malaysia,” the broadcaster added in its press release .

It is rare for a major broadcaster to publicly cite online piracy as one of the reasons why their bid for the licensing rights has reached a clear ceiling. They clearly believe that at the current price point, piracy has eroded the value of the broadcast rights too much.

Piracy Might Drop Now

Intriguingly, piracy could drop significantly now that Astro no longer has the FIFA World Cup broadcasting rights. Through MyTV, matches will be publicly available to millions of Malaysians rather than sitting behind a paywall. That removes one of the strongest piracy incentives: the costs.

Competing with piracy is much easier for a public broadcaster with government funding, which can offer matches for free. As a result, people who pirated the World Cup in 2018 and 2022 may now move back to freely available licensed broadcasts, lowering the piracy rate.

Of course, those piracy rates could easily pick up again when matches end up behind a paywall in the future.

Piracy Incentives in China, India, and Elsewhere

With roughly a month until kickoff, FIFA has reportedly finalized broadcast deals in more than 175 territories, but final agreements have yet to be signed in China and India .

Reports suggest that disagreements about FIFA’s licensing fees have proven to be a stumbling block. With billions of views at stake, these countries are two of FIFA’s most important markets in terms of audience demand.

This demand would not simply disappear when there are no formal broadcasters. Instead, it would redirect to unofficial streaming, including pirate ones. This adds an interesting element to the negotiations, as rightsholders and FIFA certainly don’t want to breed piracy habits.

For now, the FIFA World Cup begins on June 11, with broadcasts through both legal and pirate channels. Whether 2026 turns out to be the most pirated World Cup yet has yet to be seen.

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

In March, a coalition of thirteen major publishers, including Penguin Random House, Elsevier, and HarperCollins, filed a fresh lawsuit against Anna’s Archive.

The publishers allege the shadow library is facilitating “staggering” levels of piracy, including the use of their books as training material for AI models.

This lawsuit follows on the heels of a case various music companies filed against the site a few months earlier. They sprung into action when Anna’s Archive said it would publish material from a Spotify scrape it had obtained earlier.

As a result of the legal pressure and an injunction released in favor of the music companies, Anna’s Archive lost several domain names. Faced with a U.S. court order, the site eventually moved to .GL, .PK, and .GD domains , which remain active today.

The music companies won a massive $322 million default judgment against Anna’s Archive in April. However, while the site reportedly removed the Spotify files that triggered the music case, it continued to offer many millions of books.

The Publishers Seek $19.5 Million Judgment

The books are still being pirated, and widely used as AI training material, so the publishers now seek their own default judgment. This includes a broad permanent injunction targeting the surviving domains.

After Anna’s Archive failed to respond in court, the publishers now ask for the maximum $150,000 per work in statutory damages for 130 works, which adds up to a total of $19,500,000. That’s $1.5 million for each of the thirteen plaintiff publishers.

The financial compensation is little more than a footnote, as the site’s operators remain unknown and unlikely to pay anything. The permanent injunction the publishers request is more important, as that could help to take Anna’s Archive’s domains offline.

The music companies already obtained a similar injunction in their case, but that is no longer as effective, since Anna’s Archive stopped actively offering the Spotify files through its website. The books, however, remain available.

Injunction Targets More Than 20 Intermediaries

The publishers ask the court to issue an injunction targeting Anna’s Archive and all domain registries, registrars, hosts, and internet service providers connected to the three remaining domains. The order would prevent the transfer of the domains to anyone other than the publishers or the music companies.

The proposed injunction names more than twenty specific companies, including familiar names from the music lawsuit such as Cloudflare, Public Interest Registry, Tucows, Njalla, the Switch Foundation, The Swedish Internet Foundation, and the National Internet Exchange of India.

The list also adds new entities that are linked to the surviving domains: TELE Greenland/Tusass for .gl, PKNIC for .pk, and Grenada’s National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission for .gd. Several hosting and registrar companies are also mentioned, including DDOS-Guard, IQWeb FZ-LLC, Hosting Concepts B.V., OwnRegistrar, Neterra, Webglobe, and CentralNic Registry.

The order would require these parties to permanently disable the domains and authoritative nameservers, cease all hosting services, preserve identifying evidence, and “refrain from frustrating” the judgment.

Will It Work?

Without a formal defense from Anna’s Archive, the chances are high that the publishers will win this legal battle. However, whether they will get the desired result is a different matter.

Even if the permanent injunction is granted, it depends on whether they are intermediaries who will fall under the U.S. jurisdiction, or whether they will comply voluntarily.

The permanent injunction obtained by the music companies, which also targeted the .GL, .PK, and .GD domains, hasn’t reached the desired result yet. Whether a new order targeting more intermediaries will fare any better has yet to be seen.

—

A copy of the publishers’ memorandum of law supporting the motion for default judgment is available here (pdf) . The proposed default judgment can be found here (pdf) .

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

Adult entertainment is big business on the internet, and several of the largest brands in this niche are owned by the Aylo conglomerate.

Formerly known as Mindgeek, Aylo is the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube. It also owns many adult brands, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.

Over the years, the company has built an impressive library of more than 40,000 registered copyright works. The company’s enforcement arm, Aylo Premium, protects this content by various means. It has sent many millions of takedown requests and also targets pirate sites in court, hoping to shut these down.

Earlier this year, Aylo won a $90 million default judgment against a porn piracy network that included ‘Freshporno,’ ‘Kojka,’ and ‘PornHeal,’ among others. While that was a major win, at least on paper, plenty of targets remained.

That included Pornhits.com, which Aylo sued in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington last December. The complaint named Anatoly Chernov as the alleged operator, along with twenty unidentified Doe defendants, and accused them of displaying 5,635 of Aylo’s registered works on the site without authorization.

According to Aylo, Pornhits misleadingly suggests that it is a user-generated content platform. The complaint alleges the upload feature visible on the site is “inoperative and illusory,” which means that all infringing content was added by the site’s operator directly. Aylo also said it sent 44,934 DMCA takedown notices, which were all ignored.

Aylo’s $84 Million Demand

As is often the case in these types of lawsuits, the defendant did not appear in court to defend himself. As a result, Aylo requested a default judgment, asking for $15,000 in statutory damages per infringed work, which is less than the maximum of $150,000 per work.

However, with 5,635 works at issue, the total does add up to $84,525,000.

To justify the figure, Aylo pointed to SimilarWeb data showing that Pornhits attracted approximately 1.7 million U.S. visitors in October 2025 alone. If all these visitors signed up for official subscriptions, the company said it would earn roughly $17 million per month.

While pirate views do not directly translate to lost sales, Aylo also referenced that the same court awarded $15,000 per work in near-identical adult content piracy defaults. This includes the Yespornplease case, which was also handled by the same U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle.

“More Than Mere Guesswork”

Last week, Judge Settle granted the default judgment but rejected the damages calculation. Instead of $15,000 per work, he awarded the statutory minimum of $750, bringing the total to $4,226,250.

The order recognizes Aylo’s previous wins in the same court, but it also signals a clear shift in approach.

“The Court acknowledges these cases but determines that, upon further review, a lower award is warranted here,” Judge Settle wrote.

He noted that other district courts have begun requiring more rigorous evidence to support above-minimum awards in these types of cases. That includes evidence of its own lost profits or the infringer’s profit increase, which is clearly not available here.

“Calculating damages is difficult but the Court requires more than mere guesswork. Aylo fails to offer any concrete evidence of lost profits, relying instead upon conjecture as to the effect of Chernov’s piracy on its bottom line,” the order adds.

Judge Settle pointed out that Aylo had also failed to estimate the added profits of Pornhits, the number of visitors who might have actually paid for an Aylo subscription, or how much of the Pornhits site is dedicated to Aylo’s content.

“It is unclear to the Court whether Aylo’s works constitute even a substantial portion of pornhits’ overall content. Without such evidence, an award of $84 million would be an inappropriate windfall,” the order reads.

Domain Transfer Granted

The damages reduction clearly stands out, but the practical impact is limited. Chernov never appeared in the case, lives outside the United States, and is unlikely to pay any damages amount, whether $84 million or $4 million.

The injunction that comes with the order, on the other hand, is enforceable.

Specifically, Judge Settle ordered Verisign, the registry operator for the .com top-level domain, to change the registrar of record for pornhits.com to EuroDNS, which has to transfer the domain to Aylo Premium Ltd. The current registrar, Namecheap, was also ordered to cooperate.

The order also includes a ‘dynamic’ aspect, as we’ve seen previously, allowing Aylo to return to court to extend the injunction to additional domains, subdomains, or IP addresses that the Pornhits operator might use to continue or evade the infringing activity.

This permanent injunction is much needed because, at the time of writing, Pornhits.com remains up and running.

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A copy of Judge Benjamin Settle’s order on the motion for default judgment is available here (pdf).

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

More than six years ago, Bulgaria informed the U.S. authorities that it wanted to shut down the country’s largest torrent trackers, including ArenaBG, Zamunda, and Zelka.

Specifically, the country asked the U.S. authorities for help. That help eventually arrived in January this year, when the domain names of these torrent trackers were effectively seized .

The multinational effort involved Bulgarian authorities and law enforcement, as well as their American counterparts. This included the U.S. Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigations, and National IPR Coordination Center, which were all featured on the seizure banner that’s still online today.

Multi-Decade Crackdown

The crackdown did not come as a surprise. Rightsholders have complained about the Bulgarian torrent trackers for many years, and the local authorities have also tried to address these issues for nearly two decades.

As far back as 2010, Yavor Kolev, the head of Bulgaria’s Computer Crimes Department, said that his organization was intent on shutting down Zamunda and ArenaBG. At the time, police investigations into these trackers had already been ongoing for years.

While the authorities managed to shut down some pirate sites over the years, these major targets survived. In fact, Zamunda had grown to become the 11th most visited site at the start of 2026, until its main domain was seized in January.

U.S. Piracy Watch List

Bulgaria’s challenge to address the local piracy problems motivated the USTR to add the country to the Special 301 Report. This annual overview is meant to urge foreign governments to improve policy and legislation in favor of U.S. copyright holders.

In 2025, for example, Bulgaria was put on the “Watch List” with USTR stating that the country “continues to be a safe haven for online piracy.”

There was change afoot, however, as the country enacted new legislation in 2023 that would make it easier to investigate and prosecute piracy cases. While that had not been used until recently, it provided the basis for the crackdown that took place in January.

Bulgaria Removed from Watch List

The implementation of the new legislation and the subsequent torrent tracker crackdown worked. The latest version of the USTR Special 301 Report specifically states that Bulgaria was removed because of the progress it has made. This relates to the shutdowns and associated prosecutions, which remain ongoing.

“Bulgaria is removed from the Watch List this year due to significant enforcement actions and progress in criminal prosecutions during the past year,” USTR writes.

USTR specifically references Article 172a of the updated criminal code, which allows for the criminal prosecution of people who “ create conditions ” for online piracy through the “development and maintenance” of torrent trackers and other platforms. This law was used as the basis for the January crackdown, which led to the arrest of several individuals.

“In January 2026, Bulgarian law enforcement seized the five most popular Bulgarian piracy domains, executed search and seizure warrants at 30 locations, and arrested several individuals, some of whom have been charged under Article 172a discussed above,” the report reads.

According to local reports , the operation targeted 44 websites, not just the three mentioned trackers. By February, three of the four detained individuals had been formally charged.

While Bulgaria must be happy with this development, the country was previously removed from the watchlist in 2007 and 2018, just to be readded over new concerns within a few years. Time will tell whether this year’s removal will last.

More Removals and Additions

Bulgaria isn’t the only country to see its status change in this year’s Special 301 Report. Argentina and Mexico are both moved from the Priority Watch List to the lower-tier Watch List.

Argentina is credited for its February 2026 agreement with U.S. authorities, where the country promised to address site-blocking, ISP liability, and online enforcement. Mexico’s lowered risk is tied to draft amendments to the Federal Copyright Law and Federal Criminal Code, which would clarify ISP secondary liability and remove the “direct economic benefit” requirement, which was a roadblock for criminal piracy prosecutions.

The European Union, meanwhile, was added to the Watch List for the first time as a bloc since 2006. USTR cites a wide variety of concerns, including parts of the Digital Services Act, which rightsholders believe may impact their rights. The newly applicable AI Act is also flagged for monitoring.

The most notable change related to Vietnam, however, which was the first country in thirteen years to be designated as a Priority Foreign Country. According to the USTR, the country’s failure to take action against copyright infringers has turned it into a safe haven for pirate site operators.

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A copy of the U.S. Trade Representative’s 2026 Special 301 Report is available here (pdf) .

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