Over the past several months it's become increasingly clear that copyright holders, authorities, and sundry third parties intend to do something about the dramatic rise of infringing modified Kodi setups. This week, after several addons including the popular Phoenix went down, accusatory fingers were pointed all around. So who is really to blame for the Kodi crackdown?
Cloudflare can be held liable for copyright infringements committed by its customers, even if the websites in question are hosted abroad. A California District Court concluded that cached copies on Cloudflare's servers tie alleged infringements directly to the United States.
A man who sold retro-gaming systems with thousands of installed games has faced the wrath of Nintendo and Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. The Raspberry Pi-based consoles contained many titles for old gaming systems including Gameboy, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Megadrive and Playstation. But, despite their age, BREIN says that infringement of all kinds must be punished.
The popular movie streaming service FMovies hasn't been around for very long, but it's already lost a federal lawsuit in the United States. The court issued a default judgment for copyright infringement against the site's operators, who chose not to defend themselves, ordering them to pay $210,000 in damages. In addition, the site may soon lose its domain name.
Russia is making good on its threat to crack down on VPN and proxy services that provide access to blocked sites. A new law submitted to the State Duma will see the country's telecoms watchdog identify such services and compel their hosts to hand over operators' personal details. Should block bypassing continue, access to the service will be terminated by the country's ISPs.
Usenet provider Eweka has lost another court battle with Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. The service provider must identify a former customer who's accused of uploading copyright-infringing material. According to the court, the provider is obliged to do the same in future cases, without a court order.
The popular TV Scene group DIMENSION reappeared this week, after a hiatus of nearly two months. The group is a household name among many pirates, who are welcoming the new releases. Although there's no official explanation for the stretch of absence, the group is now back in full swing.
A new report from the Digital Citizens Alliance, which bundles Internet piracy, hacking, malware, and fake news into one convenient bundle, suggests that platforms like Facebook and YouTube should collaborate to weed out "bad actors." In the same way that casinos share information about cheats, Internet platforms should do the same, the report argues.