torrentfreak

Over the past year there has been a wave of copyright infringement lawsuits against alleged cheaters or cheat makers. Two of the driving forces behind these cases are GTA V developer Rockstar Games and its parent company Take-Two Interactive. In Australia, the companies filed a lawsuit in...

Earlier this year, several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix filed a lawsuit against Dragon Media Inc, branding it a supplier of pirate streaming devices. Under the flag of anti-piracy group ACE, the companies accused Dragon of using the Kodi media player in combination with pirate...

The fact that ISPs around the world are blocking pirate sites to prevent copyright infringement is nothing new. The practice has been going for more than decade. Aside from voluntary arrangements, such as the one currently playing out in Portugal, ISPs tend to wait for courts to hand down an...

Copyright holders are increasingly demanding that ISPs should block access to pirate sites in order to protect their business. This is also the case in Australia, where blocking injunctions were made possible three years ago following amendments to copyright law. In recent years various...

Following the shutdown of Megaupload in 2012 and the simultaneous raids on founder Kim Dotcom and his colleagues in New Zealand, the US Government has tried to extradite the tech entrepreneurs. They believe that the former Megaupload quartet should be handed over to face charges of copyright...

Last year several major record labels, represented by the RIAA, filed a lawsuit against ISP Grande Communications accusing it of turning a blind eye to pirating subscribers. According to the RIAA, the Internet provider knew that some of its subscribers were frequently distributing copyrighted...

Compared to many other companies in the video industry, Netflix traditionally had a fairly pragmatic approach to the piracy phenomenon. Now, however, with billions of dollars being spent creating its own content, the company is a major player in the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment...

A few days ago, the channel of gaming YouTuber Eroktic was targeted with two DMCA copyright complaints. The takedown notices targeted videos in which Eroktic, based on third-party information, discussed an alleged security breach that would affect users of the multiplayer shooter game “Escape...

In several countries around the world, notably the United States, Canada, and the UK, rightsholders and their agents send copyright notices to alleged infringers. In most cases, recipients are accused of downloading and sharing copyright-infringing content using BitTorrent. The notices contain...

In recent years, New Zealand has been the center stage of the largest copyright battle in Internet history; the criminal prosecution of Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom. While this case remains ongoing, one of the country’s largest political parties is facing ‘infringement’ problems of its own. In 2014...

While it’s not getting making big headlines in the mainstream media, US courts are still loaded with BitTorrent related lawsuits. The cases are filed by a small group of copyright holders. To state their claim, these companies generally rely on IP-addresses as evidence. These IP-address details...

This week we have four newcomers in our chart. First Man is the most downloaded movie. The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated...

It’s safe to say that Swedish ISP Bahnhof is one of the most aggressive companies when it comes to defending its customers from interference initiated by outside parties. The ISP is an outspoken critic of copyright trolls and has taken a number of measures to ensure that it’s extremely difficult...

Privately raising cash to bring ideas and projects to fruition can be a daunting task. Convincing potential investors is rarely easy, with many demanding a large piece of the final pie in return. To help solve this problem, in 2009 US-based Kickstarter was born, a site that has developed into a...

Thanks to wonders of DHT and PEX, public torrents can be shared among millions of people without a need for a dedicated tracker. However, the existence of standalone trackers is always a plus for torrent users, since these servers are able to put sharers in touch with each more quickly...

Following the example of the United States, the EU now has its very own piracy watch list. The plan was first announced in January by the European Commission, which asked various stakeholders for input. This eventually resulted in a 40-page report in which various pirate sites and...

In recent years it has become much easier to stream movies and TV-shows over the Internet. Legal services such as Netflix and HBO are flourishing, but millions of people are streaming from unauthorized sources as well, often paired with perfectly legal streaming platforms and devices...

In many developed countries, rightsholders are in dispute with search engines over the appearance of pirated content in search results and other indexes. Back in August, TV companies under the Gazprom-Media umbrella filed complaints at the Moscow City Court, demanding that Yandex remove links to...

Over the past two decades, the Software Alliance (BSA) has represented major software companies including Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Oracle, in their fight against under-licensed businesses. This has resulted in audits at thousands of companies worldwide, whose computers are carefully...

The ‘upload filters’ topic has been widely debated in the European Parliament this year. While most attention has been focused on copyright-infringing material and Article 13, another filtering discussion has been going on at the same time. This summer the EU Commission pushed forward a plan...