Data published by the piracy monitoring firm MUSO suggests that the season opener of Game of Thrones was pirated 90 million times. Most of the traffic was generated by unauthorized streaming services, with torrent downloads making up a small fraction of the total, less than ten percent.
Exactly one year ago, KickassTorrents was shut down following a criminal investigation by the United States. While the site no longer exists in its former glory, the name is still around. Several original staffers remain dedicated to carrying the torch, for example. Today we take a look at KAT's past, present, and the future.
Anti-piracy group BREIN is determined to have The Pirate Bay blocked in the Netherlands, preferably as soon as possible. The group no longer wants to wait for a local Supreme Court hearing on the matter and hopes to speed up the issue with a preliminary injunction.
Between December 2011 and March 2012, New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau illegally intercepted the private conversations of Kim and Mona Dotcom, and Megaupload co-defendant Bram van der Kolk. A new ruling handed down by the High Court means that Dotcom will be denied access to the recordings.
HBO is doing its best to keep Game of Thrones piracy under control. The company is monitoring various popular torrent swarms and sending thousands of warnings targeted at Internet subscribers whose connections are used to share the season 7 premiere of the popular TV series.
A UK-based IPTV service appears to have shut down as a result of police action. After doing business for two years, BulkyIPTV's service went dark yesterday. Shortly after the service's owner sent out an email saying that the ride was over. "Today I was arrested. Everything has been shut down," he said.
Last month, leading Kodi addon repository TVAddons shut down in the wake of a lawsuit filed in the US by satellite and broadcast provider Dish Network. Just over a month later and with no other news surfacing, TF has now discovered that several recent and historical TVAddons' domains have been transferred to a Canadian law firm.
Today we bring you the next episode of the Steal This Show podcast, discussing renegade media and the latest file-sharing and copyright news. In this episode, we talk to two Hackers from 2600 and the radio show Off The Hook.
In Germany, several major Hollywood studios are actively pursuing alleged BitTorrent pirates, charging hundreds of euros for illegally downloaded movies and TV-shows. While this is common practice, a local court recently clarified that the copyright holders must provide solid evidence if they want their claims to hold.