Hacker News with Generative AI: Piracy

Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding (arstechnica.com)
Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn’t illegal without proof of seeding
Legal Issues, Piracy, Copyright, Books, Technology
495 points by isaacfrond 8 hours ago | 342 comments
ISP Must Unmask 100 Alleged BitTorrent Pirates in RIAA Lawsuit (torrentfreak.com)
Altice, parent company of Internet provider Optimum, must disclose the personal details of a hundred alleged music pirates. The request comes from a group of prominent record labels and is part of an ongoing copyright infringement liability lawsuit. Altice, meanwhile, will receive anti-piracy information, including that related to a letter the RIAA previously sent to BitTorrent Inc., the owner of popular torrent client uTorrent.
Copyright Infringement, Lawsuits, Music Industry, Piracy, ISPs
7 points by gslin 2 days ago | 0 comments
Google's Piracy Purge: 3.5B DMCA Takedown Notices in a Year (torrentfreak.com)
Google has completed the busiest twelve months ever on the DMCA takedown front. The popular search engine processed a record-breaking 3.5 billion takedown requests during the year. Ironically, this milestone is in part a byproduct of ongoing anti-piracy measures, including site blocking and search engine removals, with no end in sight.
Copyright, Law Enforcement, Google, Piracy, Internet
67 points by gslin 5 days ago | 8 comments
"Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right": Meta emails unsealed (arstechnica.com)
Meta's alleged torrenting and seeding of pirated books complicates copyright case.
Copyright Law, Meta, Legal Cases, Piracy, Technology
22 points by adrian_mrd 15 days ago | 6 comments
New Bill Aims to Block Pirate Sites in the U.S. (torrentfreak.com)
Pirate site blocking orders are a step closer to becoming reality in the United States after Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act earlier today.
Legislation, Piracy, Copyright, Internet
31 points by ls612 23 days ago | 14 comments
U.S. Anti-Piracy Symposium Emphazises Need for Site Blocking (torrentfreak.com)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) held an anti-piracy symposium last week to discuss the latest achievements, challenges, and solutions in combating piracy.
Copyright, Piracy, Law, Legal, Intellectual Property
30 points by gslin 24 days ago | 14 comments
Appeals Court Affirms U.S. Navy Should Pay $154k in Piracy Damages, Not $155M (torrentfreak.com)
Software company Bitmanagement has been dealt another blow in its piracy battle against the U.S. Navy. Instead of winning over $155 million in damages, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court's ruling, awarding a mere $154,400 for the Navy's unauthorized installations of the German company's software.
Legal, Piracy, Software, Government, Navy
19 points by askl 26 days ago | 3 comments
Authors seek Meta's torrent client logs and seeding data in AI piracy probe (torrentfreak.com)
Meta is among a long list of companies being sued for allegedly using pirated material to train its AI models. Meta has never denied using copyrighted works but stressed that it would rely on a fair use defense. However, with rightsholders in one case asking for torrent client data and 'seeding lists' for millions of books allegedly shared in public, the case now takes a geeky turn.
Artificial Intelligence, Copyright Law, Piracy, Lawsuits, Technology
163 points by miki123211 32 days ago | 167 comments
Meta Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database (wired.com)
Meta just lost a major fight in its ongoing legal battle with a group of authors suing the company for copyright infringement over how it trained its artificial intelligence models.
Artificial Intelligence, Copyright Infringement, Legal Battles, Meta, Piracy
7 points by mdhb 42 days ago | 1 comments
A swashbuckling tale of Italian software piracy – 1983-1993 (2022) (genesistemple.com)
Everyone had a favorite videogame shop as a kid, where plenty of happy – or perhaps, not-so-happy – memories took place. Maybe it was EG or a Game, if one is UK based, or perhaps a Gamestop, Blockbuster or a mom-and-pop shop even. As for me, well, most of my games, as a child, I bought them at newspaper kiosks.
Video Games, Piracy, Italy, History, Nostalgia
115 points by alberto-m 46 days ago | 47 comments
TV Group Couldn't Force U.S. ISPs to Block Pirates, UK ISPs May Offer Help (torrentfreak.com)
More than two-and-a-half years ago, a group of Israel-based TV companies entered a new phase of their multi-year war against the country’s most popular and resilient pirate sites.
Internet, Piracy, Law, Technology, Media
7 points by gslin 49 days ago | 0 comments
More Than Half of All Google Search Takedowns Now Come from Link-Busters (torrentfreak.com)
Link-Busters is the unofficial DMCA takedown champion of 2024. The anti-piracy outfit works for many of the world's largest publishing companies and is currently flagging the majority of all 'pirate' URLs to Google search; more than two billion in total. Despite this stellar effort, book pirates are chalking up new records too.
Copyright, Piracy, Google Search, DMCA, Publishing
14 points by isaacfrond 50 days ago | 0 comments
Piracy in the UK: the failed war on illegal content (huckmag.com)
Piracy, UK, Law, Content, Media
50 points by CarbonBasedUnit 55 days ago | 32 comments
Bogus Pirate IPTV Portals Run by Law Enforcement "Entrap Hundreds" (torrentfreak.com)
According to a phrase popularized by Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims should be supported by extraordinary evidence. A new piracy scare story published on Sunday takes a different approach. The extraordinary claim is that fake IPTV portals run by law enforcement are entrapping "ordinary users" to obtain evidence of their crimes. Supported by exactly zero evidence, the report claims that hundreds of internet users have already been identified.
IPTV, Piracy, Law Enforcement, Crime
15 points by gslin 57 days ago | 0 comments
Court of Milan orders Cloudflare to block ‘piracy shield’ domains, IP addresses (torrentfreak.com)
In a landmark ruling, the Court of Milan has ordered Cloudflare to block pirate streaming services that offer Serie A football matches.
Legal Issues, Piracy, Streaming Services, Italy, Football
148 points by DanAtC 59 days ago | 157 comments
Canada's First Pirate Site Blocking Order Expires (torrentfreak.com)
Canada, Copyright Law, Piracy, Internet Law
61 points by gslin 67 days ago | 30 comments
French Piracy Blocking Order Goes Global, DNS Service Quad9 Vows to Fight (torrentfreak.com)
In an ongoing escalation of its fight against online sports piracy, media giant Canal+ secured court orders compelling DNS providers Quad9 and Vercara to block access to pirate streaming sites in France. Quad9 says that it's determined to appeal what it sees as an absurd application of copyright law. For now, however, it will block the targeted domain names globally.
Copyright Law, Piracy, DNS, France, Internet
36 points by latexr 71 days ago | 22 comments
Piracy Shield Blacks Out Tech News Site by Blocking Another CDN IP (torrentfreak.com)
Italy's Piracy Shield IPTV blocking system is back in the news today after yet another completely avoidable blocking blunder. On Monday night, yet another CDN IP address was added to the blocklist rendering innocent sites unavailable. Italian tech news site DDaY, a long-standing critic of Piracy Shield's indiscriminate blocking, was among those affected.
Piracy, Censorship, Italy, CDN, News
10 points by gslin 72 days ago | 0 comments
We have been pirated; we're a real game studio now (itch.io)
Gaming, Piracy, Indie Games
9 points by stoatstudios 79 days ago | 0 comments
UK Police and Fact Continue IPTV Piracy Whack-a-Mole (torrentfreak.com)
A 42-year-old man was arrested in a recent UK crackdown on illegal IPTV suppliers, with a special mention for 'illicit Firesticks'. Local police, in collaboration with anti-piracy group FACT, also sent cease and desist letters to thirty other suspects. While FACT warns that pirate operators risk criminal penalties, there appears to be no end in sight for the streaming piracy whack-a-mole.
IPTV, Piracy, Law Enforcement, Technology, Digital Rights
9 points by hn_acker 80 days ago | 0 comments
Police bust pirate streaming service making €250M per month (bleepingcomputer.com)
An international law enforcement operation has dismantled a pirate streaming service that served over 22 million users worldwide and made €250 million ($263M) per month.
Cybercrime, Piracy, Streaming, Law Enforcement
88 points by woldemariam 82 days ago | 166 comments
Nintendo Wants Reddit to Expose R/SwitchPirates Users in 'Pirate Shop' Lawsuit (torrentfreak.com)
As part of an ongoing piracy lawsuit, Nintendo has filed a motion to subpoena Reddit, Discord, and other online platforms for information related to the alleged operator of several pirate shops.
Nintendo, Piracy, Lawsuits, Gaming, Online Platforms
37 points by gslin 83 days ago | 3 comments
Largest piracy network [serving over 22M users in Europe] taken d (independent.co.uk)
Police across 10 countries have taken part in a massive operation targeting what is believed to be the world’s largest piracy network.
Piracy, Law Enforcement, Europe, Security
8 points by taimurkazmi 84 days ago | 5 comments
European Police Pull Plug on 'Largest' Illegal Streaming Service (barrons.com)
An international police operation has shut down "one of the world's largest" illegal online streaming services, used by some 22 million people worldwide and causing billions of euros in copyright damages, EU law agencies said on Wednesday.
Copyright, Piracy, Streaming Services, Law Enforcement, Europe
11 points by SirLJ 86 days ago | 10 comments
Supreme Court wants US input on whether ISPs should be liable for users' piracy (arstechnica.com)
The Supreme Court signaled it may take up a case that could determine whether Internet service providers must terminate users who are accused of copyright infringement.
Law, Copyright, Internet, Piracy, Supreme Court
45 points by nobody9999 87 days ago | 51 comments
Z-Library Helps Students to Overcome Academic Poverty, Study Finds (torrentfreak.com)
A recent study published in the Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice sheds light on people's motivations to use Z-Library. Expensive books and limited access to academic material play a key role among those surveyed. That includes a group of Chinese postgraduate students who believe that shadow libraries help to overcome (academic) poverty.
Academic Poverty, Education, Piracy, Research, Libraries
419 points by hn_acker 93 days ago | 130 comments
Etsy Accuses Game Boy Publisher of Piracy for Selling Its Own Games (timeextension.com)
"The retro publisher FerranteCrafts has taken to social media to provide an update on why some of its physical games are disappearing from their Etsy store, and the reason is honestly pretty baffling to us."
Piracy, Video Games, Business Disputes, Retro Gaming
6 points by josephcsible 101 days ago | 2 comments
Key Pirate Bay Figures Don't Recognize Themselves in TV Series (torrentfreak.com)
The long-awaited Pirate Bay TV series premiered in Sweden on Friday, through official channel and (eventually also) on The Pirate Bay.
Entertainment, Piracy, Sweden
21 points by hn_acker 102 days ago | 0 comments
Every arthouse buff you know is pirating films (i-d.co)
Earlier this year, Daniel, a filmmaker from England, wanted to watch Béla Tarr’s take on Macbeth, a TV movie by the Hungarian auteur that had aired in 1982 on the Magyar Televízió network.
Filmmaking, Piracy, Arthouse Cinema
115 points by XzetaU8 102 days ago | 135 comments
Pirating "The Pirate Bay" TV Series Is Ironically Difficult (torrentfreak.com)
The Pirate Bay made its debut as a TV series on the Swedish streaming platform SVT Play earlier today. International viewers are left waiting until other services pick it up. In the meantime, some may be tempted to explore unofficial channels for pirated copies of the show. But finding a pirated copy is proving surprisingly difficult.
Television, Piracy, Streaming Services
112 points by HieronymusBosch 105 days ago | 85 comments