Snap Inc., the owner of Snapchat, has taken action after its source code was illegally leaked online. The code, which was uploaded to Github by a user who claims to be in Pakistan, was removed from the Microsoft-owned development platform in response to a DMCA takedown notice.
New court documents suggest that the BBC has yet to find the source of the leaked 'Doctor Who' footage that previously appeared online. The British company is hoping that Microsoft can help. At a federal court in Washington, the BBC requested a DMCA subpoena targeted at a OneDrive user who shared the infringing material online late June.
Major labels including Universal, Warner Bros, Sony, and others have teamed up to sue two more YouTube-ripping sites. FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com are reportedly operated out of Russia, but according to information provided to the US Trade Representative by rightsholders earlier this year, the sites provide MP3 downloads to users from servers hosted in Germany.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. 'Avengers: Infinity War' tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom'. 'Rampage' completes the top three.
Scammers, masquerading as legitimate copyright holders such as Netflix and Disney, are using Google DMCA takedown tools to manipulate search results. Some webmasters complain that hundreds of links are being pulled offline by the notices. Anti-piracy outfits MUSO and Blue Efficience, which are among the impersonated companies, confirm that not all requests in their name are legitimate.
BitTorrent has been acquired by the founder of the TRON cryptocurrency, with the latter considering the possibility of introducing currency incentives for people who seed. The big question now is whether this would cause people to share more freely or, given the huge culture shock, perhaps not at all.
Despite two lost legal battles in the US, domain name seizures, and millions of dollars in damage claims, Sci-Hub continues to offer unauthorized access to academic papers. The site's founder says that she would rather operate legally, but copyright gets in the way. Sci-Hub is not the problem she argues, it's a solution, something many academics appear to agree with.
Video games have deployed a number of techniques over the years to deter pirates, with some more entertaining than others. Evil Bite, the small developer team behind the 'Depraved' city builder game, have got in on the action with a time-bomb DRM that slowly fills the game's warehouses with pirate hats to render them useless.