The Premier League is engaged in pioneering action to cut down on the availability of pirated matches in the UK. This will inevitably drive up the complexity of obtaining high-quality pirate streams for free and increase costs for premium feeds. Today, TF takes a look at several common 'pirate' setups to see how much people are currently handing over to get 'free' streams.
Soccer Streams is widely known to provide links to pirated sports streams and is no stranger when it comes to receiving DMCA takedown requests. However, the site doesn't shy away from sending their own either. The site recently asked GitHub to remove a repository because it published their code without permission.
Leading Russian search engines have met with local telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor to work out how the services will stop pirate sites, mirrors, VPNs, and other anonymization tools from appearing in search results. Search engines will now receive lists of banned resources automatically and will mesh their IT systems with the government's so the latter can ascertain compliance.
The past few days have been pretty hectic for many torrent sites, several of which have suffered downtime due to DDoS attacks. But the trouble doesn't stop there. WorldWideTorrents had its domain name suspended, while IsoHunt.to has disappeared without a trace.
TVAddons hosts thousands of third-party addons for Kodi but one, which was submitted last week by now-retired developer MetalKettle, has drawn criticism from the makers of Plex. In a strongly worded legal letter, Plex threatened tough action. But, after TVAddons promptly assisted, the dispute was quickly settled. This, TVAddons says, is a demonstration of how disputes should be handled.
Kim Dotcom hopes that his new file-sharing service K.im will create a "copyright revolution." The platform will offer a secure platform for people to share files and get paid for them while offering copyright holders the option to monetize piracy.
The Pirate Bay suffered some downtime today, welcoming users with a Cloudflare error message, which is nothing new really. But earlier this week the site was hard to reach for a more unusual reason; the Game of Thrones season finale overloaded the torrent site with visitors.
After more than a decade online, HDClub, Russia's leading HD & 3D torrent site, has permanently shut down. With around 170,000 users, HDClub was known for high-quality releases that often leaked to sites like The Pirate Bay. However, its operators say that continual complaints from rightsholders, third-party attacks, and the demise of hardcore enthusiasts, mean the end of the site.