Australia is seeking to strengthen its site-blocking legislation, allowing 'pirate' sites to be added to injunctions without court oversight while removing sites from search results. In a submission to the government, Google says it opposes the measures, describing them as "rushed" and without supporting evidence. In its submission, Village Roadshow says Google's piracy fight is a "sham" and helps people "steal movies".
With millions of visitors per month, Torrent9 is known as one of the major torrent sites. For the past few days, however, the site no longer has an option to download anything. Instead, users were confusingly encouraged to sign up with a VPN, which caused serious trouble at the VPN company in question.
The latest proposals surrounding the controversial Article 13 indicate that upload filters - the mechanism that has been widely warned about for months - are front and center in negotiations. Sites like YouTube will be required to obtain licenses for content they make available and cooperate with rightsholders to ensure no unauthorized communications to the public, unless they want to be held liable.
A group of record labels and music publishers, including UMG Recordings and Universal Music, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the company behind the poker website PokerNews. The music companies note that several podcasts published through PokerNews use unlicensed recordings. They request damages that could add up to several million dollars.
With hundreds of thousands of visitors, predominantly in French-speaking countries, streaming site HDS.to has been a force to be reckoned with. A few days ago, however, the site suddenly went offline. According to a message that was briefly posted on the site, it has shut down permanently. Why the operators took this drastic decision remains unknown.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. 'Mission: Impossible - Fallout' tops the chart this week, followed by ‘The Meg'. 'The Equalizer 2' completes the top three.
1337x.to, one of the world's most popular torrent sites, is being blocked by anti-malware company MalwareBytes. The tool claims that 1337x is engaged in "fraud" and is a "scam to try to steal your information or credit card details" yet Google gives the torrent site a clean bill of health. MalwareBytes is also claiming the same against PCgames-download.com, without supporting evidence.
Several major Hollywood studios have obtained a blocking order against one of South America's most popular pirate sites. Various iterations of Cuevana have been a thorn in the side of Disney, Fox, Paramount, Columbia, and others for almost a decade but following legal action in Argentina, the site will now be blocked by the country's Internet service providers.
WatchAsap, a paid streaming site that was promoted by the defunct 123movies, now displays a familiar seizure banner. The banner mentions that the domain name was seized by the feds as part of an ongoing criminal case. Whether that's true or not remains a mystery for now.