Several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix have filed a lawsuit against Omniverse, which offers live streaming TV packages to several IPTV providers. The companies accuse the service and its operator of facilitating copyright infringement. With the lawsuit, they hope to stop the infringing activity and recoup damages for the harm that was done.
Vox Media has targeted a YouTuber over a critical reaction video of The Verge's highly criticized "PC Build" how-to. The company sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube, claiming that the video infringed its rights. While Vox may have hoped to bury the video, it move swiftly backfired.
With the ink barely dry on Wednesday's agreement for the final draft of Article 13, the EU Commission published an eyebrow-raising piece Thursday. While much of it is implied, the Commission suggests that the millions of people who opposed Article 13 have been misled and are therefore poorly informed.
South Korea will expand its site blocking measures with SNI eavesdropping, so HTTPS sites can be blocked as well. The new measure, which will also affect pirate sites, has generated widespread opposition. While it's more effective than standard DNS blocking, it's certainly not impossible to circumvent.
Japan is set to make it illegal to download any infringing content from the Internet after the government adopted the policy this week. The law currently covers movies and music but will be extended to encompass games, manga, and other copyrighted content. Infringers will face up to two years in jail.
The European Parliament and Council agreed on the final text of the EU Copyright Directive. This includes the controversial Article 13, which opponents fear will lead to broad upload filters. The full package will now go to the European Parliament for a final vote, which is expected to take place in March or April.
After breaching Russian federal law by failing to remove banned sites from its search results, Google now appears to be complying. Local reports indicate that the US search giant has removed around 73% of the URLs present in the country's register of banned sites, a move which heads off its own blocking in Russia.
As the Chinese blockbuster movie “The Wandering Earth” is breaking records at the box office, copyright holders and authorities are trying to crack down on piracy. China's Copyright Administration is calling on the public to help report piracy and clean up the Internet. Reportedly, this strategy is having some results.
The Trustworthy Accountability Group, an anti-piracy certification program operated by giants including Google, Facebook, Disney and Warner, has launched Project Brand Integrity in Europe. With the assistance of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit and Europol, the aim will be to purge ads from pirate sites.