For many pirate sites and apps, ad revenue is the only viable lifeline. This is why the advertising industry is an important ally in the fight against piracy.

Over the years, several ad-focused anti-piracy initiatives and partnerships have tried to prevent branded ads from appearing on these sites.

To track what kinds of ads appear on pirate websites and apps across Europe, the EU Intellectual Property Office ( EUIPO ) commissioned UK-based research firm White Bullet. The resulting report is one of the most detailed pictures available of how online piracy is funded.

The latest report on the state of the pirate advertising landscape was published this week. It covers 5,671 websites and 337 mobile apps monitored across 18 EU member states from January to November 2025, with the UK and US included as control countries.

White Bullet compiled a similar advertising report for EUIPO in 2021 and 2024, which makes it possible to measure progress over half a decade.

Major Brand Ads Surge on Pirate Sites

In 2024, major brands accounted for 20% of all estimated ad impressions on the monitored pirate websites. In 2025, that figure reached 36%, which is an 80% market share increase in a single year.

The EUIPO report defines major brands as those appearing on recognized industry lists such as the AdAge Global Marketers Index, and the Forbes Global 2000. These are not obscure companies, but include some of the most recognizable companies in the world. None are mentioned by name.

The increase in major brand market share on pirate sites is not an isolated incident. On the contrary, major brands represented just 3% of pirate site ad impressions in the 2021 report, which means that the cumulative increase over the past five years is over 1,000%.

The report also provides a possible reason for the increase, linking it to the termination of industry policing efforts. These may be connected to the EU’s MoU on online advertising and IPR, which has published no updates since early 2023.

“The massive growth in Major Brand advertising on IPR-infringing websites may be correlated with the 2023 termination of several coordinated outreach programmes focused on educating brands that had been placing advertising on IPR-infringing websites,” the report states.

The report does not mention any programs by name, nor is there hard evidence that their termination is driving the increase. It does, however, highlight some other intriguing trends.

Most Ads on the Worst Sites

The pirate sites tracked in the report were classified as either“high-risk” or “illegal”. Sites in the latter category are deemed copyright infringing by judicial or administrative authorities, typically as part of site blocking schemes.

These “illegal” sites featured by far the most major brand ads, growing to 59% of all ads on these sites in the fourth quarter of 2025. This means that on known pirate sites, major brand advertising is now the single largest category of ad content.

This problem is further illustrated by the performance of existing advertising blocklists, including those offered by the UK’s City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) and the WIPO ALERT platform .

These lists should help to prevent ads from appearing on pirate sites. However, the 2025 data suggests they fail to reach this goal.

Of the 404 pirate sites on PIPCU’s IWL blocklist , major brand advertising from UK advertisers reached 73.8% of estimated ad impressions, which is well above the pirate site average.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the blocklist itself is inadequate. Instead, the report finds that two brands with “global operations from China” together accounted for 96% of estimated major brand ad impressions on these sites. Logically, these Chinese brands do not use PIPCU’s blocklist.

Relatively Speaking

The report’s headline figures deserve some context, as we also noted when covering last year’s edition.

The 80% year-on-year increase in major brand ads is a relative share figure, not an absolute count. The total pool of monitored websites shrank from 7,250 in 2024 to 5,671 in 2025, and overall estimated ad impressions in the monitored countries dropped from 14.4 billion to 12.7 billion over the same period.

Last year, the data left room for an alternative explanation, suggesting that the surge in major brand ads was partly driven by a collapse in low-quality non-brand advertising, with the overall number of ad impressions dropping rapidly.

However, this doesn’t hold up in 2025, as the major brand share surged again, while the total advertising pool is shrinking far more slowly.

Big Business?

All of this raises the obvious question: how much money are pirate sites actually making from advertising?

The report estimates that worldwide ad revenue for the 5,671 monitored pirate websites reached 382 million euro ($433 million) in 2025. The 18 monitored EU countries accounted for 28.5 million euro.

The average pirate website generated 22,261 euro in estimated annual ad revenue, while the average pirate app brought in 44,447 euro.

Those figures are estimates based on extrapolated data, and the report points out that the actual numbers may be different. Also, there will be some large sites making well over a million annually, while most smaller ones make a few euros per day, if at all.

While piracy apps bring in more revenue than sites, on average, the earnings per impression are slightly lower for apps. Similar to sites, apps also saw an increase in major brand advertisements, from a 7% share in 2024 to 16% in 2025.

An overview of these and many other pirate advertising trends is available in the full EUIPO report, which is available below.

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The full report , titled ‘Online Advertising on IPR-Infringing Websites and Apps 2025’ was originally posted on the EUIPO website .

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

Tracking BitTorrent pirates isn’t all that hard since IP addresses are broadcasted publicly to anyone who’s interested.

With help from Internet providers, these addresses can then be linked to an account holder.

ISPs don’t hand over this data voluntarily; they typically require a subpoena or court order to take action. In the United States, these subpoenas are typically obtained by filing a copyright complaint in federal court against a “John Doe” who’s known only by an IP address.

Limited Retention

Internet providers typically store IP-address assignment details for a limited period that varies per company . For Comcast, this data retention period is 180-days.

The data retention policy has consequences for BitTorrent lawsuits. It means that rightsholders have to go to court within this window, if they want to unmask an alleged BitTorrent pirate.

This deadline is common knowledge and by now most rightsholders simply accept it for what it is. However, several recent movie piracy cases handled by attorney Kerry Culpepper show that there is another way to identify suspects, potentially for years after the infringing activity.

Borrowing Strike 3’s Records

The cases, filed on behalf of Capstone Studios, among others, targeted allegedly infringing IP-addresses that passed the 180-day deadline. However, since these same IP-addresses were previously targeted in lawsuits filed by adult producer Strike 3 Holdings, the film company saw an opening.

Instead of asking Comcast to dig up records that no longer exist, the movie companies asked the ISP to produce the subscriber information it had reportedly provided to Strike 3 for the same address.

Strike 3 is the most prolific rightsholder when it comes to filing BitTorrent piracy lawsuits, with thousands of new IP-addresses being targets every year.

These cases eventually landed on the desk of Magistrate Judge Cyrus Chung, who was skeptical about the tactic. In April, he denied the request, finding no reason to believe Comcast still held the requested information in its records.

“In short, the plaintiff provides no information that the third party has retained the information produced in the 2024 lawsuit, and the information it has provided affirmatively indicates that the third party does not retain such information,” Chung wrote in April.

Comcast Has the Requested Information

The movie companies didn’t give up easily and returned to court early June, with the missing piece. According to Culpepper’s declaration, Comcast had indicated that the records fell within its retention period for litigation documents.

Comcast’s retention limit for legal documents is longer than the 180 days for IP assignment logs, and the ISP purportedly said that it would produce the records if ordered. The movie company, meanwhile, agreed to pay the associated fees.

This new information was sufficient for Magistrate Judge Chung to grant the subpoena. In his order, he cites a 2009 federal appeals decision, Gotham Holdings v. Health Grades , that allows a party to subpoena documents that were produced in a separate lawsuit.

“Here, the plaintiff has shown that the third-party ISP possesses information relevant to its claim and that the limited discovery sought will not impose an undue burden or significant expense,” Judge Chung concluded, while granting the request.

This novel discovery technique is new for BitTorrent lawsuits. It means that, if a person is accused on one lawsuit, the chances that they are targeted in future cases increases, even outside the regular retention limit.

Are They the Same Person?

Taken together, the same IP address, the same client, a matching peer-ID fragment, do carry some circumstantial weight. The question is how much.

The ‘piggyback’ subpoenas were granted in at least four lawsuits, listed below, but there could be more. Whether this strategy will be used more regularly in the future has yet to be seen, but it raises a few questions.

The legal paperwork suggests that the defendants used the same IP-addresses, around the same time, as well as the same peer-ID. Therefore, plaintiffs conclude that they “are same person.”

However, it should be noted that in some cases, weeks have passed between the movie piracy and Strike 3 infringement, so in theory the IP-address could be assigned to a new person. The peer-ID argument tries to undercut that defense, but that also raises questions.

The legal paperwork references a peer-ID prefix, for example 2D5554333535572DC4B, which does indeed appear unique. However, most of this prefix (2D5554333535572D) identifies the torrent client ID in HEX, in this case it’s a version of uTorrent 3.5.5.

That would mean that only the three remaining characters of the prefix are unique. What complicates the matter further is that uTorrent typically generates a fresh peer ID per session , and a restart starts a new session, so the random portion of the ID changes.

Tit-for-Tat

All of this isn’t to say that the defendants aren’t the same people. The same IP address pointing to the same household, on the same client, is certainly possible and in many cases likely. However, proving it with certainty is another matter.

It’s also unknown whether any of these subscribers admitted wrongdoing in the related Strike 3 cases. Those suits are typically dismissed without context.

Whether Comcast will actually hand over the information has yet to be seen, but the plaintiffs arguments suggested that it has no objections before the subpoena was issued. If any subscribers are indeed targeted, they may also choose to push back.

For Capstone, the orders are welcome after the movie company lost a subscriber identification battle at the appeals court last year. There, the Ninth Circuit ruled that copyright holders can’t use a “DMCA subpoena shortcut” to identify internet subscribers suspected of copyright infringement.

As a result, rightsholders have to file slower more expensive federal lawsuits, including the ones at stake here. But with the new “piggyback” rulings, they are no longer tied to the 180-day retention windows.

—

Below are the four cases referenced in this article. The screenshots and quotes come from the first case, but the same language is often duplicated across cases.

– Capstone Studios Corp. v. Does 1-7, No. 1:25-cv-03564 — Silent Night. ( complaint , IP-addresses , motion for leave , and the granted motion )

– Capstone Studios Corp. v. Does 1-6, No. 1:25-cv-03561 — Breathe.

– Capstone Studios Corp. v. John Doe (73.95.253.148) – Silent Night

– Boy Kills World Rights, LLC v. John Doe (76.130.128.15) – Boy Kills World

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

The FIFA World Cup generates billions of dollars in broadcast rights revenue, making it one of the most valuable sporting events on the planet.

With the tournament in full swing, rightsholders are doing all they can to crack down on pirate sites and services.

Most of this enforcement takes place behind the scenes, through site blocking efforts and takedown notices, for example. This activity is typically picked up by broadcasters, but over the past day we also noticed a series of takedown actions appearing to come from FIFA directly.

FIFA Takedown Notices

While browsing through the Lumen Database , the transparency tool maintained by Harvard that archives copyright complaints, we spotted dozens of recent DMCA takedown notices that were sent to Google, listing “FIFA World Cup” as the sender.

FIFA has engaged in anti-piracy activities in the past, so the action doesn’t come as a surprise. However, the boilerplate language used in the notices stands out for various reasons.

For example, the targeted sites are accused of using “unauthorized brand configurations, proprietary digital layout assets, and trademarked media frames” to impersonate FIFA’s official platforms in Google Search results.

This appears to be a rather convoluted way to note that the pirate sites are using FIFA’s intellectual property without permission. Also, terms such as “brand configurations,” “trademarked media frames,” and “proprietary brand identity” are trademark concepts, which are typically not handled through copyright takedown notices.

AI-Generated?

It doesn’t stop there. The notices further claim that the pirate sites deploy “automated database scrapers and programmatic indexing matrices” to capture search traffic, and that “cloaked link structures” are “engineered explicitly to hijack our organic search footprint.”

This type of language is not something we see every day. In fact, the question remains whether it is written by an actual person. The reputable AI-checker tool Pangram clearly has its doubts, labeling it 100% AI-generated.

Full-domain Removal

The demands made in these takedown notices are not imaginary. However, these go well beyond what we typically see in a takedown notice. Instead of merely asking for the removal of the listed URLs, ‘FIFA’ wants Google to delist full domains.

“We request the complete, permanent de-indexing of this root domain and all its subdirectories from Google Search,” the notices read.

This type of demand goes well beyond what a DMCA takedown notice is intended for. While Google does remove full domain names in response to site blocking orders, DMCA takedown notices typically don’t warrant such a drastic remedy.

Over the past several days, more than 40 DMCA takedown notices were filed, identifying domain names including beststreameast.xyz, falconstreams.net, footybite1.live, streameastnow.net, streamiz.click and us-sport.eu.

How Google classifies these notices is unknown, but it does not appear to have fully delisted the domains. None of the URLs we checked triggered the standard DMCA removal notice in the search results, suggesting that these URLs were not removed either. Alternatively, these URLs were not indexed at all.

Who is Behind This?

The URL lists themselves raise further questions, as the “FIFA World Cup” notices do not stop at flagging FIFA content. The notices also target other sports with no obvious connection to the World Cup, including the NBA, Formula 1, NFL, WWE, and many others.

Given all the open questions and the unusual approach, we doubt whether FIFA is indeed behind these notices. The AI-generated boilerplate language, trademark complaints in a DMCA notice, and URLs of completely unrelated sports, are not what you would expect of a reputable organization.

TorrentFreak contacted FIFA to ask whether the organization, or a vendor acting on its behalf, submitted the notices. At the time of writing, no response has come in yet.

But if this isn’t FIFA, who is behind these notices then?

We can only speculate, but we have seen similar tactics in the past . In this case, that would mean that the operator of a pirate streaming site tries to get higher ranking competitors removed from Google search.

Whether these DMCA notices represent FIFA’s own enforcement operation or an attempt to exploit FIFA’s name during the world’s most-watched sporting event has yet to be seen. In any case, it shows that these types of broad takedown efforts deserve some serious scrutiny.

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

Starting nearly a decade ago, the World Intellectual Property Organization ( WIPO ) launched a plan to cut off revenue streams to pirate sites.

WIPO is well-respected internationally and part of the United Nations, which ensured cooperation from a wide variety of countries.

In 2019, WIPO launched an advertising blocklist that lets member states flag infringing sites. This list can then be shared with advertisers, who can use it to make sure that revenues don’t end up going to these sites.

This “WIPO Alert” system has been running for years with thousands of domain names being added. While it still functions today, WIPO has quietly been working on a new “WIPO Alert Pay” system that targets the payment services that counterfeit and pirate sites rely on.

WIPO Alert Pay

At the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement session in Geneva this month, WIPO’s Todd Reeves described it as the next iteration of the same follow-the-money approach. While it is not publicly announced yet, Reeves presented the setup and results of the initial pilot.

WIPO Alert Pay relies on voluntary cooperation between rightsholders and payment service providers (PSPs), such as Mastercard and PayPal. Rightsholders can use the alert system to flag instances where pirate sites use their payment services, for subscriptions or VIP access for example.

Rightsholders have to supply required information, which is checked by WIPO for completeness before a domain name enters the system. The PSPs can then decide what action, if any, to take against the merchant’s account under their own terms and conditions.

Report, Check, Notify, List

As with the advertising blocklist, WIPO stresses that its role is limited. It hosts the platform, receives the flagged sites, and aggregates the results for the PSPs. According to Reeves, it makes no infringement determinations of its own.

“We’re not making any infringement determinations. We’re simply securely hosting the platforms,” Reeves said.

“We receive the list of the flagged sites by the right holders and verify that the required information and attestations are provided for the flagged sites. So it’s more of a formalities check than anything else.”

The process runs on a notice-and-review timer. Rightsholders first notify the site owners. If there is no response after three working days, WIPO steps in to send a second notice. If another three working days pass without a response, the site is added to the WIPO Alert Pay list and the payment providers take it from there.

71% of Flagged Listings Removed

The new Alert Pay system ran as a manual pilot from November 2024 to August 2025. Six unnamed rights holders took part, together with two payment providers.

Over that period, WIPO processed 17 actions covering 35 sites of concern. Reeves said 71% of the flagged listings were removed, and that all participants reviewed the system positively and that it was ready to scale.

The slide below, which was shown by Reeves, specifically notes that “broad adoption could be highly disruptive.”

The pilot also uncovered that some sites were displaying a Mastercard or PayPal logo without actually offering those services, presumably to signal trustworthiness.

The mention of Mastercard and PayPal is notable, especially since these two providers are also named in the system’s online forms. This doesn’t make it hard to guess who the two unnamed payment providers were that participated in the pilot.

From Pilot to Platform

With the pilot closed, WIPO is now working on finalizing the development. A software engineer has spent the past few months turning the manual workflow into an automated platform, which Reeves said is close to completion.

The platform already covers PayPal and Mastercard, but WIPO wants to add support for more providers to broaden the coverage. After that, the system will be promoted to rightsholders and their representatives, as well as the member states.

To get more information on the system, TorrentFreak reached out to WIPO two weeks ago, but the organization has yet to reply to our request for comment. However, it is expected that more information will come out when the official launch of WIPO Alert Pay is near.

—

The update on WIPO Alert Pay was presented at the 18th session of the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement on June 4, 2026. The supporting slide deck was not publicly available at the time of writing. All quotes and screenshots used in this article were pulled from the meeting’s webcast.

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

In May, thirteen major publishers won a massive $19.5 million default judgment against shadow library Anna’s Archive in a New York federal court.

This week, the same publishers, including Penguin Random House, Elsevier, and HarperCollins, filed a new complaint at the same court, this time with the relatively young pirate library WeLib as the target.

Again, the stakes are substantial, with the publishers seeking up to $19.5 million in potential damages for direct copyright infringement.

A New Entrant

The similarities don’t stop at the legal arguments and stakes. Anna’s Archive already highlighted the newcomer in a blog post last year, describing WeLib as a “new entrant” in the space that had copied both its collection and its code.

“They appear to have mirrored most of our collection, and use a fork of our codebase,” Anna’s Archive noted.

The same blog post was also critical of WeLib for not contributing back to the ecosystem and recommended that people avoid using the site.

This week, the publishers also warn against using the site, albeit for different reasons. Their complaint accuses WeLib’s unnamed and anonymous operators of widespread copyright infringement, while also confirming that connection to Anna’s Archive.

“Defendants’ entire business is the illegal copying and distribution of literary works,” the complaint notes, adding that “WeLib was created after its operators copied the source code and most of the contents of the Notorious Pirate Site, Anna’s Archive.”

Not a Library

WeLib describes itself as an “endless library” founded on the principle that “education and literature belong to everyone.” The publishers, however, clearly don’t agree with the library framing, noting libraries can be trusted; pirate sites not.

“Libraries are trusted institutions that serve the communities that fund them by lending books and other publications they have lawfully acquired. Using this label for WeLib explicitly misleads the public and allows WeLib to hijack the goodwill that libraries enjoy and have legitimately earned.”

“WeLib is no more than a pirate website that reproduces and distributes works of authorship owned by others to users for a profit, without authorization from or compensation to the copyright owners,” the complaint adds.

The complaint notes that WeLib’s operators made efforts to keep their identities hidden. However, the site itself quickly became a go-to portal for many book pirates.

The complaint notes that, by WeLib’s own account, its collection includes 43 million books and 98 million articles. The site reportedly has over 80,000 active monthly users who accessed more than 51.7 million books and downloaded 14.5 million files last month.

While the site can be used for free, users can pay for fast downloads and to skip the queue. Subscriptions start at $7 per month for 25 fast downloads and 25 fast reads per day; while the top tier costs $90 a month for 1,000 daily downloads.

These payments, or “donations” as WeLib calls them, can be made through cryptocurrency, WeChat, and Alipay. They are allegedly processed through a company called Malum.co, which offers payment services to high-risk vendors, without the need for any KYC identity checks.

Damages and Domain Seizures

The complaint lists a sample of 130 copyrighted works as evidence. This mirrors the Anna’s Archive lawsuit, where the court awarded $150,000 per work, which is the statutory maximum, resulting in a total of $19.5 million.

In addition to the monetary damages, the publishers are also seeking a permanent injunction that aims to take the site offline. They ask the court to order third-party registries, registrars, and hosting providers to disable WeLib’s domains and render them untransferable.

This also includes a specific request to disable the authoritative nameserver for the .st domain, registered through Njalla, a Costa Rica-based registrar that is not necessarily responsive to U.S. court orders.

The AI Training Conundrum

As with other recent publisher lawsuits, the complaint also mentions AI training. Specifically, it alleges that WeLib supplies copyright infringing data to AI companies.

“WeLib has also been an illegal supplier of stolen content to the AI industry. In a recent lawsuit, publishers alleged that Meta utilized WeLib to train their Llama models,” the complaint reads.

The recent lawsuit they refer to is Elsevier Inc. v. Meta Platforms which is filed by several of the same publishers through the same law firm, Oppenheim + Zebrak. However, what that complaint actually says about WeLib is more specific and not in line with the current case.

The Elsevier v. Meta complaint describes WeLib as a source found within C4 training dataset Meta used, but identifies it as “formerly known as PDF Drive.” This dataset was built years ago from a Common Crawl snapshot and predates WeLib and even Anna’s Archive.

More confusingly, the complaint against WeLib that was filed this week makes no mention of it formerly being known as “PDF Drive”, or the C4 dataset for that matter.

According to our knowledge, there is no evidence that content hosted by WeLib was included in the C4 database. All we can confirm is that the database does include “PDF Drive” data and that the pdfdrive.com domain redirected to the new WeLib site at some point.

PDF Drive is a long-running PDF hosting site that has operated for years, predating Anna’s Archive entirely. It has no documented connection to Anna’s Archive’s codebase or collection. Whether it shares more than a domain redirect with the WeLib now being sued is unclear.

The publishers’ framing of WeLib as an active AI training pipeline may be getting ahead of the evidence. For now, WeLib has yet to respond. However, since anonymous operators typically don’t show up in court, this case may also copy Anna’s Archive’s path, heading to a default judgment.

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A copy of the complaint, filed by Oppenheim + Zebrak on behalf of the thirteen plaintiff publishers, is available here (pdf) .

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

In a complaint filed at a Nashville federal court in 2023, Universal Music, Sony Music, EMI and others, accused X Corp of “breeding” mass copyright infringement .

The social media company allegedly failed to respond adequately to takedown notices and lacks a proper termination policy.

In addition to the alleged legal shortcomings, public comments by X Corp’s boss Elon Musk were also referenced. Specifically, the complaint mentioned that Musk described the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as a “plague on humanity.”

X Corp Books Early Victories

With hundreds of millions in damages on the line, X Corp fought the lawsuit tooth and nail. This resulted in an early win in 2024 , when the court dismissed the music companies’ direct and vicarious copyright infringement claims.

The labels’ contributory infringement claims were partially dismissed, but Judge Trauger allowed the music companies to continue the case based on this remaining claim.

Proving contributory copyright infringement isn’t easy, however, and it became even more of a challenge when the Supreme Court raised the infringement bar in Cox v. Sony Music this year.

X Wants ‘Retrofitted’ Complaint Dismissed

After the Cox ruling, the music publishers filed a Second Amended Complaint under seal. While this copy remains outside the public eye today, X Corp filed a motion to dismiss it this week, which partly lifts the veil.

As expected, the music companies are trying to keep their case alive by reframing it as an “inducement” claim. That is the only surviving contributory liability claim in this case under the new standard.

X Corp clearly disagrees and the company filed a motion to dismiss the amended complaint a few days ago. The company notes that the music publishers’ attempt to “retrofit” an inducement claim is simply not supported by the provided evidence.

“Plaintiffs’ attempt to retrofit an inducement theory fails as a matter of law because the allegations suggest only insufficient action to prevent infringement, which Cox and other cases have held cannot support an inducement claim,” X Corp writes.

“[Truncated] DMCA Is a Plague On Humanity”

The music publishers’ inducement theory partly relies on a handful of public statements by Elon Musk, which they argue demonstrate that X encouraged its users to infringe. This includes the “DMCA plague” tweet.

While we don’t have access to the sealed complaint, X says that the music companies have included a truncated version of the tweet, which misses key context.

Musk was responding to reporting about Senator Hawley’s bill to cap copyright duration at 56 years, and expressing a political opinion that current copyright protection terms are too long.

“Plaintiffs truncate one of Mr. Musk’s posts to pretend that he called “the DMCA” itself a ‘plague on humanity.’ In fact, he said that “Overzealous DMCA is a plague on humanity”,” X writes.

“Plaintiffs’ excision is telling. No reasonable observer could read Mr. Musk’s full comment and think he was inciting infringement. Instead, he was expressing a political opinion – responding to reporting about Senator Hawley’s bill to retroactively cap copyright duration at 56 years.”

X further clarifies that Musk wasn’t flatly against all copyright protection. In a tweet posted a few months later he stressed that reasonable takedown requests are appropriate and will always be supported.

Understandable Frustration

The motion to dismiss adds more context than these tweets alone. It also references the music industry’s alleged threat to start a “massive” takedown notice campaign following a disagreement over licensing.

This is the same dispute that resulted in X’s antitrust complaint against the NMPA, Sony, Universal, and other major music publishers, claiming that they “ weaponized ” the DMCA to force licensing deals.

“Mr. Musk’s understandable frustration with such tactics was not inducement,” X writes.

No Inducement

The Musk tweet argument is colorful, but X’s motion to dismiss cites more arguments. For example, it counters the music publishers’ allegation that X’s platform features including display algorithms, and subscription and advertising systems, showed that X depends on infringing music.

X notes the court already dismissed this argument, noting that general platform features benefit all users equally and say nothing about intent to promote infringement specifically.

The publishers’ failure-to-stop-infringement allegations are not convincing either, X argues.

Much of the amended complaint allegedly returns to the original criticism that X was too slow to remove infringing content and too lenient with repeat infringers. The Cox ruling took away that argument.

As the Supreme Court made clear, contributory liability cannot rest on a provider’s knowledge of infringement and insufficient action to prevent it. That doesn’t qualify as inducement.

After 18 months of discovery, including the production of 150,000 pages and 21 depositions, X says the publishers found nothing that meets the inducement standard. As a result, they want the complaint dismissed.

For now, the motion sits with Judge Trauger. The music publishers will file their response, and the court will decide whether the Second Amended Complaint survives or whether Cox will effectively end this case.

—

X Corp’s motion to dismiss and supporting memorandum, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, are available here (pdf) and here (pdf) .

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

Stream-ripping services allow users to convert streaming audio and video into downloadable files.

That’s a useful feature for those who want offline copies of YouTube videos, but it also comes with copyright concerns.

Music labels have repeatedly taken legal action against stream rippers, both directly in court, and through site blocking actions. The latter have been effective throughout Europe, and in the UK, Brazil, Australia and elsewhere.

Canada can now be added to the growing list. A Federal Court in Ottawa, Ontario, issued the first ever stream-ripper blocking order in the country. This is also the first Canadian blocking order requested by music companies.

Labels Target Y2Mate, YTMP3 and SaveFrom

The case, filed last November by Sony, Universal, Warner Music and other labels, targets the unidentified “John Doe” operators of three well-known stream-ripping brands: Y2Mate, YTMP3, and SaveFrom.

After reviewing the paperwork, Justice Fothergill found that the operators infringed copyright. Among other things, the stream-rippers are liable for copyright infringement as they provide services with the ‘sole function’ to enable unauthorized reproduction, violating the Copyright Act.

The permanent injunction issued by Justice Fothergill requires the operators to stop their infringing activities. In addition, they must deactivate the domains. This includes Y2mate.ws, YTmp3.lat, Savefrom.space and Spowload.cc, but also any other infringing domains that provide similar stream-ripping services.

Blocking Order

In addition to the permanent injunction, Justice Fothergill issued a companion blocking order. This order requires nine major Canadian ISPs, including Bell, Rogers and Teksavvy, to block the four domain names.

The order follows the same structure established by the GoldTV precedent , and the more recent Soap2Day blocking order . To implement the order, the ISPs must use DNS blocking, DNS rerouting, or equivalent technical means.

The order also requires ISPs to put up a notification for visitors of the domains, explaining why it is blocked. As with previous orders, it remains valid for two years.

Copycats of Copycats

While the blocked domain names use familiar brands, they are not the original sites that operated under these names. For example, Savefrom.space has nothing to do with the much more popular Savefrom.net, which has millions of visitors instead of hundreds.

The fact that the more popular site is not targeted makes sense, as Savefrom.net decided to proactively block Canadian visitors after pressure from rightsholders a few years ago.

The court order also acknowledges that the targeted domains are copycats, which gained popularity when the original sites became inaccessible.

Additionally, the order stresses that it targets “other similar platforms” operated by the defendants, which “appear” or “increase in popularity” once access to stream-rippers is blocked.

“[I]ndeed, the John Doe Respondents operate platforms that are themselves ‘copycats’ of similarly branded stream ripping services that were previously deactivated, and additional copycat platforms have already begun to appear on the Internet.”

While the current order only lists four domain names, Justice Fothergill clarifies that it can be expanded with new copycats or “similar platforms” in the future.

Preemptive Strike

The platforms named in the order are not particularly high-traffic targets today. According to Similarweb , Y2mate.ws has just shy of a million worldwide visits last month, while Spowload.cc had little over 130k.

Savefrom.space did not have any meaningful traffic, with Similarweb estimating a few dozen visits per day, globally. Ytmp3.lat, meanwhile, has no registered traffic at all and appears to be unreachable.

However, the record labels might partly use the blocking framework proactively rather than reactively. Since similar platforms and brands can be targeted going forward, it can use the current order to target sites that gain traction in the future.

To do so, rightsholders can file an affidavit identifying the new domain and confirming it meets the order’s conditions. If none of the nine ISPs object within ten business days, the court can expand the blocklist without further proceedings. A full hearing is only required if an ISP pushes back.

For now, however, this blocking order kicks off with four domain names.

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A copy of the permanent injunction is available here (pdf) and the site-blocking order, also issued by Justice Fothergill, can be found here (pdf) .

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

Last summer, adult content producers Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta.

The complaint accused the tech company of using adult films to assist its AI model training. Similar claims have been made by other rightsholders, including many book authors .

This latest case specifically focuses on Meta’s BitTorrent activity. That’s no surprise, as plaintiff Strike 3 is the most active copyright litigant in the United States, known for targeting thousands of alleged BitTorrent pirates .

Meta Wants Case Dismissed

In October 2025, Meta responded to the allegations by filing a motion to dismiss at a California federal court. Taking a page from the BitTorrent piracy defense playbook, Meta argues that the IP address evidence presented by the plaintiffs is meaningless without context.

The porn producers had linked numerous Meta IP addresses to unauthorized sharing activity. According to Meta, however, there is no evidence that the alleged activity on its corporate network was centrally orchestrated by the company. In fact, it countered that many alleged downloads predate Meta’s AI training activity.

In addition to denying the allegations, the tech company offered an alternative explanation. Meta suggested that employees or visitors may have downloaded the pirated videos for personal use.

Court: Torrenting is the Infringement

In an order released last week, U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee refused to throw the case out. In a 16-page order, she denied Meta’s motion and let all three of Strike 3’s direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement claims proceed.

One of Meta’s lead arguments was that, in order to prove direct infringement, Strike 3 had to show its films were actually used to train a model. However, Judge Lee explained that this is not needed, as Meta’s alleged copying of the films via BitTorrent is copyright infringement.

“Because Plaintiffs have adequately pleaded that their exclusive rights under the Copyright Act were violated when their films were torrented, they have satisfied the second element, regardless of whether their films were used to train specific AI models,” the order reads.

Coordinated, Not Coincidental

Another key question was whether the torrenting activity can be attributed to Meta, or if the downloads came from employees, who downloaded content for personal use.

Strike 3 argued that the actions were coordinated by Meta, showing similar download patterns across 47 corporate IP addresses and seven hidden ranges. This includes files with the same keywords downloaded on the same day.

Judge Lee found the coincidence theory implausible and pointed at a spreadsheet of addresses grabbing files with “teen” in the title, from “Teen Titans” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” through to explicit adult releases.

“The word “teen” appears in every file name. Similar patterns are shown repeatedly across the identified IP addresses. It strains credulity to suggest that these correlations are mere coincidence and the product of individual human selections,” Judge Lee noted.

“Instead, the many commonalities across files permit a reasonable inference that the downloads were operated by an algorithm using key terms, which accounts for why pornography was downloaded alongside children’s cartoons and sitcoms.”

Other download patterns also appeared to be illogical. For example, multiple IP-addresses from various ranges torrented eight episodes of Ted Lasso out of order, on a single day. Meta suggested that this could be coincidental download activity by several people, but Judge Lee believes this to be unlikely.

“But the odds that multiple people using the Corporate IP Addresses and the IP Ranges coincidentally torrented the same show, rather than simply streaming it, on the exact same day strains belief…”, Judge Lee writes.

Cox Doesn’t Save Meta

The contributory copyright infringement claim also survives. While the motion to dismiss was pending, the Supreme Court handed down Cox Communications v. Sony , raising the bar for contributory infringement. However, that wasn’t enough to help Meta at this stage.

Judge Lee recognized that, if Meta merely offered its infrastructure to copyright infringers, this would not be sufficient to trigger liability.

“Standing alone, Plaintiffs’ allegation that Defendant ‘provid[ed] access to its servers, data centers, IP addresses, computers, networks, [and] accounts’ would be insufficient under Cox Communications,” she wrote.

However, Strike 3’s allegation went further, alleging that Meta encouraged copyright infringement by offering specific tools and services for it.

“Plaintiffs plausibly allege that Defendant took active steps to encourage torrenting by implementing an algorithm and establishing VPCs – tools tailored to infringe copyrighted works using BitTorrent.”

The vicarious copyright infringement also survived the motion to dismiss. According to Judge Lee, Meta has a direct financial interest in amassing high-quality training data for its commercial AI products.

The Case Continues

While Meta’s motion to dismiss failed on all claims, the company’s defenses could still succeed further down the line, when the evidence is reviewed in detail.

For example, Meta argued that testimony in a related case shows that its torrenting servers went live in 2024, not 2018, so they cannot be the same infrastructure behind ranges active for years.

Additionally, Meta said much of the infringing activity in this case took place years before the company started training its video models. Those and other points will be contested in detail as the case proceeds.

For now, the case heads into discovery. Meta must answer the complaint, the parties are due to attempt mediation by early August, and a jury trial is set for February 2028.

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A copy of Judge Eumi K. Lee’s order denying Meta’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf) .

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

Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism rarely names the pirate sites it helps shut down, and its June 12 announcement was no exception.

It redacted the three high-profile target domains as “Hari***,” “Manhwa***” and “Kun***.”

These match the names of three well-known manhwa aggregators: Harimanga, Manhwaclan and Kunmanga, all of which started having access problems in late May, right when Vietnamese police seized their servers.

Initially it wasn’t clear why the sites suddenly went offline, but the authorities confirmed that this was the result of a large enforcement operation that has been in the works for a long time.

The three sites have reportedly been operated by a Vietnamese couple since January 2023, serving unauthorized English translations of Korean webtoons to readers across Asia, North America and Europe, while paying the bills with banner ads and member donations .

The sites carried around 14,700 titles, about 70 percent of them Korean, and pulled in more than 1.1 billion visits a year by SimilarWeb’s count. Industry estimates put the damage to Korea’s content business at 207.2 billion won, roughly $136 million .

One Operation, Three Sites

Naver Webtoon, which did much of the early legwork, says a single operation ran all three portals, and it had been chasing these exact domains for years. We can independently confirm the latter, as Harimanga, Manhwaclan and Kunmanga all appear by name in a 2023 DMCA subpoena Naver sent to Cloudflare.

This time, the company mapped the network with open-source intelligence and handed the evidence to Korean officials, who passed it to Vietnamese authorities.

Vietnamese police questioned the couple on May 19 and seized the servers three days later . Prosecutors plan to charge them locally, with Korea’s copyright agency and Naver helping on the paperwork. Korea has also suggested extraditing the couple for trial and recovering their earnings, though that is a hope more than a plan.

A Broader Crackdown

The takedown did not arrive alone. Around the same time, Korea announced the extradition of a 37-year-old man suspected of running Newtoki, which is described as the country’s most notorious manga and webtoon pirate site.

The man reportedly left Korea in 2017 and took Japanese citizenship in 2022, which normally puts a person out of reach. Officials say it is the first time Japan has handed one of its own nationals to Korea under a treaty the two signed in 2002.

The Korean piracy crackdown coincides with a new emergency blocking power , which has been live since May 11. This enables the government to order internet providers to block pirate sites without first clearing it with a review committee. The ministry blocked 34 sites on day one.

Newtoki and its sister sites shut themselves down on April 27 , just before the power took effect.

On Washington’s Watchlist

There is also a bigger backdrop in Hanoi. In May, the U.S. Trade Representative branded Vietnam a “Priority Foreign Country” over online piracy, its harshest label and the first in thirteen years, then opened a Section 301 investigation that put tariffs on the table.

Washington’s complaint is that Vietnam rarely makes piracy hurt. Even in its biggest cases, against the operators of Fmovies and BestBuyIPTV, courts handed down suspended sentences and small fines with little deterrent effect.

This Korea-driven case now tests exactly that. Police seized the servers and pulled the couple in for questioning, firmer than the usual response. Whether that will continue has yet to be seen.

For now, Harimanga, Manhwaclan and Kunmanga are unlikely to come back in their original form. That said, sites like these have a habit of returning under new names, and at the time of writing, several clones remain online.

https://claude.ai/chat/818e0d6e-a99a-45ec-8381-0e43d403e857

https://x.com/kakaoent_pcok/status/2065358465820934643

https://gemini.google.com/app/db2adf824248b950

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