Torrent Domain Suspensions Damage Credibility, Registry Says

When the police coerce registrars to suspend domain names there are a series of damaging knock-on effects, Iceland's top domain registry says. ISNIC says that it's difficult to repair the kind of damage suspensions cause to the credibility of top-level domains, something that could be avoided through better understanding of…

Flixtor Finds Anti-Piracy Investigator on Its Doorstep, Shuts Down

Flixtor, a popular Popcorn Time-inspired movie streaming application, has shut down after an investigator from the MPAA's Motion Picture Association Canada showed up on the developer's doorstep. The torrent search engine TorrentLookup.com, which was maintained by the same team, was also pulled offline voluntarily.

“No Piracy” Symbol Added to New Unicode Standard

The Unicode Consortium has just delivered its 7.0 update containing more than 250 new emoji characters. In addition to sending recipients what appears to be an extended middle finger, users will also be able to transmit an eyepatch-wearing individual declaring "no piracy". For balance, the skull and crossbones is also…

EZTV Users Help to Fund Horror Movie, and Open Source Another

EZTV users may download many TV-shows for free, but they are by no means cheapskates. A team of filmmakers from Laos recently noticed that nearly all traffic to their Indiegogo campaign came from the torrent site. As a token of their appreciation they have now offered to open source their…

Game of Thrones Season Finale Sets New Piracy Record

The season finale of Game of Thrones has set a brand new piracy record, with a quarter million people sharing a single file at the same time. During the first 12 hours roughly 1.5 million file-sharers downloaded a pirated copy of the popular show, a number that will swell to…

Movie Piracy Combated by Narrowing Theatrical Release Window

A key motivation for people to illegally download is the long gap between a movie's theatrical release and its debut through other channels. To tackle this problem in Australia the exclusive theatrical release window will soon begin to narrow from 120 to 90 days.