piracy
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Nintendo sues ROM-sharing website for at least $2 million
Nintendo isn't afraid of using litigation in its quest to stop piracy, recently succeeding in getting Switch piracy websites blocked in the UK. Now, it is continuing that fight by filing a multimillion dollar lawsuit against a ROM-sharing site.
Nintendo wins court case to block Switch piracy websites in the UK
Nintendo just scored another win in its ongoing crusade against pirates, although the consequences are slightly unusual this time around. The gaming giant has won a UK injunction that will have five major providers in the country (BT, EE, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin) block four sites that distribute pirated Switch games, help users modify vulnerable Switches and offer circumvention hardware. The court agreed with Nintendo that the sites were violating Nintendo trademarks, targeted the UK and didn't have a legal justification for the mods.
Movie sanitizing service ordered to pay $62 million in piracy suit
A jury has ordered "family-friendly" movie service VidAngel to pay $62.4 million to Hollywood studios for pirating their content. Disney, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. sued the company over copyright infringement. VidAngel bought retail DVDs of mainstream movies and ripped the video file. It pulled out adult content, cursing, sex and violent aspects and streamed the films to users. It claimed it was legally allowed to do this under the Family Entertainment And Copyright Act, which legalizes tech to censor certain aspects of movies, but the studios and the jury disagreed.
La Liga fined €250k for using its app to catch illegal soccer streams
Spanish soccer league La Liga has been fined for inappropriately using its app to catch illegal streaming. The Spanish data protection agency charged La Liga with a fine of 250 thousand euros for violating several EU laws on transparency and data privacy, and ordered the app's removal by June 30th. The popular app -- used by over four million in Spain for displaying game results -- was found to be tapping into the location data and microphones of users to find bars that were illegally broadcasting games. But the league of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona isn't taking this lying down -- La Liga will be appealing the decision.
Indian streaming giant broke Safari support to deal with security hole
Websites tend to drop support for a particular browser due to obsolescence or just a lack of functionality, but India's biggest streaming service apparently had another reason: a piracy-friendly security hole. TechCrunch sources understand that Disney-owned Hotstar disabled Safari support (both desktop and mobile) on June 7th to limit the effects of a flaw that let people bootleg videos, including premium material.
'Game of Thrones' premiere was pirated nearly 55 million times in one day
It won't surprise you to hear that Game of Thrones is a pirate magnet, but the sheer scale of that piracy may be reaching new heights. The analytics company MUSO has determined that people pirated the show's season eight premiere just shy of 55 million times in the first 24 hours. About 76.6 percent of those viewers relied on bootleg streams, while the rest were split between downloads (12.2 percent), public torrents (10.8 percent) and private torrents (0.5 percent). Just where people pirated the episode may be the most interesting part, though -- it speaks volumes about the limitations of TV and sreaming services.
Emmy Awards will kill off DVD screeners for good in 2020
Today's dispatch from the bureau of "Wait, they were still doing that?" comes from the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences. Deadline Hollywood is reporting that the people behind the Emmy Awards has decided to phase out the distribution of screener DVDs from its nominations process. In its place, the service will adopt a new members-only streaming service where they can watch items submitted for consideration.
Sony accused of blocking Kodi media app to discourage piracy
It won't shock you to hear many people use Kodi to pirate movies and TV shows, but Sony appears to be particularly alarmed. The Kodi team has accused Sony of blocking the installation of its media app on newer Android TVs following months of reports from users. They believe Sony is blocking the package ID from Google Play, and have worked around it by recompiling the app with a different ID to evade the company's filter.
Nintendo has a piracy problem with 'Super Smash Bros. Ultimate'
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is still two weeks away from being released, but a fully playable version of the game has already leaked online. Cut scenes, hidden content and parts of the game's soundtrack are also making the rounds on piracy forums, according to Ars Technica.
YouTube paid $3 billion to copyright owners through Content ID
Google has introduced a number of anti-piracy products and measures over the years, and in its latest report, the tech giant has revealed how some those products have been faring. In the paper entitled "How Google Fights Piracy" for 2018, Mountain View said YouTube has already paid $3 billion to copyright owners through Content ID. That's the video platform's system, which scans uploads against a database of files submitted by content owners and creators. When it detects that an upload uses another person's intellectual property, then they can earn from it, as well.
Sony sues California man for selling jailbroken PS4 consoles
There hasn't been much piracy in the PS4's five-year history, but that's been changing ever since users started discovering jailbreaks that would allow running unofficial software -- and Sony is eager to put a swift stop to it. The company has sued California resident Eric Scales for selling jailbroken PS4s on eBay and his own site with piracy in mind. Scales allegedly violated both Sony's copyrights and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing the console's copy protection and loading systems with bootlegged games like Call of Duty: WWII and God of War.
Streaming exclusives may have revived piracy
Services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video were supposed to eliminate a large amount of online piracy, and to a degree they have. Why steal TV shows when they're included with your monthly subscription? However, piracy might be back on the rise -- and the services themselves may shoulder some of the blame. Networking giant Sandvine has published a report showing that BitTorrent file sharing has climbed back to 32 percent of all upstream data traffic after several years of decline. While Sandvine doesn't want to reach a definitive conclusion, marketing VP Cam Cullen believed it might be due to an excessive number of exclusives on streaming services.
Canada court says ISPs can charge studios for hunting pirates
It could soon prove expensive for media makers to chase online pirates in Canada. The country's Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that internet providers are entitled to "reasonable" compensation when asked to link pirates' IP addresses to customer details. Voltage Pictures (the production firm behind The Hurt Locker) intended to sue roughly 55,000 customers of telecom giant Rogers for allegedly bootlegging movies, but balked when Rogers wanted to charge $100 per hour to comply with the requests for information. Rogers won the initial Federal Court case, but had to defend itself at the Supreme Court when Voltage appealed the case.
Music labels sue Cox again for allegedly ignoring piracy
Music labels really, really aren't a fan of Cox's internet service. Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. have sued Cox again for contributing to copyright infringement after it allegedly refused to take "reasonable measures" to fight piracy. While internet providers are supposed to terminate the accounts of users who ignore warnings against bootlegging music, Cox only ever conducted "soft terminations" (temporary disconnections) and warned some users over 100 times. It even instituted a cap on the volume of accepted copyright complaints and cut back on the number of anti-piracy staffers, according to the labels.
Notorious Denuvo gaming cracker Voksi arrested in Bulgaria
Anti-piracy tech company Denuvo isn't messing around when it comes to game hackers. It touts its digital rights management (DRM) tool as uncrackable and for the most part, it held up for years. But in 2016, a Bulgarian games cracker called Voksi managed to break the system, and now he's been arrested.
Nintendo can quickly ban Switch pirates from online play
Nintendo has implemented some pretty stringent anti-piracy measures for the Switch, and according to one console hacker, it has already started banning game cart certificates. In a lengthy PSA on the SwitchHacks subreddit, "SciresM" said Nintendo can now quickly detect if the game you're trying to play online has been legitimately purchased, whether it's a game cart or a digital copy. The gaming giant performs server-side checks, so you can't bypass them -- if it determines that you're playing a legit copy, it issues an authorization token that can't be forged. In case it catches you trying to play a pirated copy, it will prevent your game from connecting and could even permanently ban your console from being able to access the Nintendo network.
Microsoft defends conviction of e-waste recycler over piracy
Many were upset that e-waste recycling pioneer Eric Lundgren was going to prison for creating his unofficial Windows restore discs, and in some cases pointed the finger at Microsoft for its role in the conviction. Microsoft, however, doesn't think he's a hero... and thinks it's getting a bad rap. The software giant has posted a response to critics that characterizes Lundgren's piracy as fully intentional while simultaneously washing the company's hands.
Hackers find an 'unpatchable' way to breach the Nintendo Switch
Security researchers from ReSwitched have discovered a Nintendo Switch vulnerability that could let hackers run arbitrary code on all current consoles. Dubbed "Fusée Gelée" ("Frozen Rocket") it exploits buggy code in the NVIDIA Tegra X1's USB recovery mode, bypassing software that would normally protect the critical bootROM. Most worrisome for Nintendo is that the bug appears to be unpatchable and could allow users to eventually run pirated games.
Amazon, Netflix and studios sue subscription service over piracy
Hollywood studios usually fight piracy by chasing after software add-ons and free streaming services, with the occasional device thrown in. A paid service, however? That's relatively rare... or at least, it has been. Amazon, Netflix and multiple Hollywood studios (including Disney, Fox, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros.) have sued SET Broadcast over allegations its SET TV service is used expressly for piracy. While there is a dedicated set-top box, the centerpiece is a $20 per month subscription service that offers access to over 500 live TV channels and "thousands" of on-demand shows, including Netflix shows and movies that are still officially limited to theaters. As you might guess, the media giants argue SET TV is focused "overwhelmingly, if not exclusively" on pirated material.
Google's piracy filter nixes 'Kodi' from autocomplete search results
Google has made an effort in recent years to bury any content that might infringe upon copyrights or promote piracy. Now, according to TorrentFreak, the company has banned "Kodi" from its autocomplete feature. Now, if users type "Kodi" into a Google search box when looking for the media player software, it won't come up as a suggestion.
