Earlier this year, the US Government included Russian social networking giant vKontakte in its list of notorious pirate sites. Branded as a 'hub' for infringing activity, the site was mentioned alongside The Pirate Bay, Fmovies, and Openload. While this critique isn't new, it's intriguing to see that, this week, several major music labels are praising the same site for helping the music industry to grow.
With a record international box office of over $40 billion behind him, MPAA chief Charles Rivkin has told movie exhibitors at CinemaCon that keeping a lid on unauthorized sites is one of his group's main goals. Describing the tackling of piracy as a "top priority", Rivkin framed the ACE anti-piracy coalition as a powerful group ensuring that movie makers maintain control and reap the rewards for their hard work.
Game developer and publisher Epic is not giving up on its copyright infringement lawsuits against cheating minors. The company successfully requested default entry against one alleged cheater and responded to the mother of another minor, who fiercely defended her accused son in court earlier.
A major ISP in Japan says it will begin blocking pirate sites voluntarily. There is no legal basis for site-blocking and the country's constitution forbids censorship. However, NTT says that it has adopted "emergency measures" until the necessary legislation can be put in place. Meanwhile, one of the sites targeted has mysteriously disappeared, abandoning 100m monthly visitors.
The people behind TVAddons and the ZemTV Kodi addon have failed to have their case dismissed. The defendants asked the Texas court to drop the case because they are foreign nationals with no connection to the state. However, the court disagrees which means that the legal battle continues.
French Minister of Culture, Françoise Nyssen, is considering implementing a national blacklist to target the streaming piracy epidemic. The proposed list should be regularly updated so that ISPs, search engines, and advertising companies can block the sites. The idea comes shortly after industry groups criticized the country for not doing enough to stop piracy.
Authorities in India are reporting success in their fight against online piracy. After measuring websites against standards established by the UK's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, complaints were filed with the registrars of 11 'pirate' websites. All of the domains were suspended and a further 89 domains are now being targeted.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. 'Pacific Rim: Uprising' tops the chart this week, followed by ‘12 Strong'. 'Den of Thieves' completes the top three.
Several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix have filed a lawsuit against Set Broadcast, LLC, which sells the popular IPTV service SET TV. The companies accuse the service and its operators of facilitating mass copyright infringement. In addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, the movie studios request an injunction to stop the infringing activity.