Sweden's Patent and Market Court has ordered a local ISP to block access to several large torrent and streaming platforms. The interim ruling, which comes into force at the end of October, requires Telia to block The Pirate Bay, Dreamfilm, FMovies, and NyaFilmer following a complaint from Hollywood and local studios.
Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive Software are taking a clear stand against cheat developers. An Australian Federal court has granted search and seizure orders against several people who are believed to be connected to the cheating software "Infamous."
Sites that link to copyright-infringing content aren't currently illegal under Japanese law but efforts are underway to close the loophole. The government is considering prison terms of up to five years for site operators who knowingly link to pirated content and refuse to respond to takedowns requests.
A video-on-demand platform recently declared "Poland's most popular piracy website" by the MPAA has hit back at Hollywood's claims. In a submission to the United States Trade Representative in early October the MPAA said that CDA.pl hides behind a reverse proxy server to thwart rightsholders. However, the company says it's legal, takes down content quickly, and even provides automated takedown tools.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again'. 'Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation' completes the top three.
Last year the film industry launched a legal search engine that targets 'pirates' specifically. The site is set up in such a way, that it draws people who search for pirate related terms. However, this also appears to have confused the "Web Sheriff," who targeted the site's URLs with takedown notices.
Researchers from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, conducted a study to find out which piracy warnings are seen as most effective by the general public. As it turns out, more explicit variants tend to be favored. "STOP. This is illegal. You may be monitored and you may be fined," paired with an appropriate warning icon, is seen as relatively most effective.
The creator of controversial third-party Grindr application 'Fuckr' has withdrawn his opposition to a Grindr copyright complaint. Grindr filed a DMCA takedown notice with Github in September, stating that Fuckr infringes Grindr's intellectual property rights. However, after initially filing a counter-notice to have his software reinstated, Fuckr's creator has now backed away, fearing a prolonged copyright battle.
Over the past weeks, there has been a lot of discussion about 'paid' seeding, which is one of the new proposals from the Tron/BitTorrent team. However, this idea is far from new. The Tribler research team has been working on its 'bandwidth as currency' idea for over a decade, and they now have a fully operational token marketplace in their torrent client.