Facing potential U.S. trade sanctions over online piracy, Vietnam is using the recent shutdown and its criminal prosecution of the HiAnime piracy ring as a key line of defense. Notably, Vietnam's response was submitted on the same day that the HiAnime prosecution was made public. While the enforcement action is notable, the outcome and potential sentences will be even more important.

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French lawmakers have officially adopted a new sports law that replaces manual domain checks with support for automated, real-time piracy blocking. The system allows for instant blockades during live sports broadcasts, with oversight checks from regulator ARCOM being applied afterward rather than before.

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Scammers are allegedly exploiting a flaw in Facebook's 'Edit Post' feature to backdate stolen videos and hijack copyright claims through Meta's Rights Manager. This allows them to monetize content of other creators, while also hitting them with strikes. The problem is at the center of several Indian lawsuits that want the American tech giant to close this surprisingly simple loophole.

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Meta has responded to the amended multi-million copyright lawsuit filed by adult film producer Strike 3 Holdings. While flatly denying that it pirated adult films for AI training, Meta confirmed that a key IP address is traced to the home of one of its former data engineers. At the same time, Meta proposes a novel "de minimis" BitTorrent defense.

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Three years of litigation that triggered explosive allegations of DMCA "weaponization" and "maximum pain" pressure tactics quietly ended in coordinated settlements. X Corp and several music companies settled the copyright infringement lawsuit and X's antitrust counterstrike, with prejudice. The dismissals come shortly after X Corp.'s new parent company SpaceX went public, identifying the legal battle as a key threat.

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For the first time, a Canadian site-blocking order can target pirate sites that don't exist yet. The Federal Court has ordered ISPs to block thirteen piracy brands including 123Movies and FMovies, and its catch-all "Expanded Scope" allows Hollywood studios and broadcasters to add unrelated sites later, without having to go back to court.

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Sharing instructions on how to bypass court-ordered ISP blocks can be enough to freeze someone's personal savings in a piracy case, a French appeals court has ruled. The order is a mixed victory for Disney, which failed to prove the defendant was the de facto operator of the now-defunct Uptobox site. His DNS workaround posts were enough to keep roughly €197,000 frozen.

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Shutting down major piracy operations such as Fmovies and HiAnime means little if successors pop up within weeks. In their submissions to the USTR's Section 301 investigation into Vietnam, both the MPA and IIPA stress that taking down copycats and successor sites should be a key enforcement priority, in addition to prison sentences that actually deter.

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During the FIFA World Cup, law enforcement and private partners across multiple continents have seized or blocked well over a thousand pirate streaming domains, arrested suspects, and cut off advertising revenue. Taken together, "Operation Offsides" and "Operación Tarjeta Roja" are part of the broadest anti-piracy effort ever carried out during a sporting event.

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Belgium has added over 100 new domains to its ISP blocklist, but this expansion might not be as effective as it seems at first glance. Most of the blocked domains are already obsolete, as the operators of sites such as Zone-Telechargement and Wawacity have already switched to new TLDs in response to other blocking efforts. Notably, the order even targets 'information' pages that host no infringing content themselves.

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The EU's highest court has ruled that publishers who use state-of-the-art geo-blocking are not liable for copyright infringement, even when users bypass their restrictions with a VPN. The ruling, which was handed down in the landmark copyright battle involving digital copies of the iconic Anne Frank diary, also shields VPN providers from liability.

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AnimeFLV, the largest Spanish-language anime piracy site on the internet, has stopped serving video to its tens of millions of monthly visitors. The site, which the MPA flagged as a notorious market in its latest USTR submission, remains online with its directory intact. However, the videos have been unavailable for weeks now, without any explanation from the operators.

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The U.S. continues to crack down on sports streaming sites, seizing well over a hundred additional domain names this weekend. While these enforcement actions sorted effect, several of the targeted domains now use fallback domains on Iran's .ir country-code TLD, which might be harder to reach for American law enforcement.

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Google has told the European Commission that pirate site blocking causes "significant harm" and should not target DNS resolvers, VPNs or shared IPs. The submission was filed days before a U.S. congressional hearing signaled that American site blocking legislation is closer than ever to introduction. Early drafts of the American plans included DNS blocking, which makes Google's EU comments even more relevant.

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Pearson's anti-piracy vendor inadvertently used a DMCA notice to take down the official GitHub code repository of Pearson's own best-selling author, Paul Deitel. The prominent computer science educator pushed back, noting that the sender has "no idea of the damage they're doing" by taking down critical educational materials, requesting GitHub to restore access.

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Bulgaria's highest court has ruled that civil site blocking is legally impossible under current national law. Bulgaria failed to properly transpose the EU directives that authorize blocking injunctions. The decision is a major setback for rightsholders, including the association of music producers, which has asked the European Commission to intervene.

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For years, Tonga's .to domain names have been a popular choice for pirate sites, but that may very well change. Following a restructuring of the domain name operation, the Government of the Kingdom of Tonga appears to have suspended several domains, including the popular German streaming portals S.to and BS.to. The action was taken in response to an Indian High Court order that was originally issued last December.

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Supported by U.S. intelligence, Vietnamese authorities have dismantled a massive network of over 100 pirate sites. Seven suspects have been charged with running a mass copyright infringement operation that included the now-defunct piracy giant HiAnime.to, allegedly earning $12.8 million in advertising revenue. The crackdown follows shortly after the U.S. called out Vietnam over its lacking anti-piracy enforcement.

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Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Obsession' tops the chart, followed by 'Masters of the Universe.' 'Citizen Vigilante' completes the top three.

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Researchers from Delft University of Technology have spent more than two decades building their decentralized BitTorrent client Tribler. The software is designed to be impossible to shut down and the project itself is also going strong, as it recently secured funding up until 2032. New research focuses on decentralized digital democracy, with a self-replicating BitTorrent seedbox as an illustrative use case.

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France's Gendarmerie nationale announced that it dismantled the organization behind YggTorrent, France's largest torrent site. Twelve people have been arrested on charges including money laundering. The site itself, however, was already destroyed months ago by a hacker who leaked its data and drained its crypto wallets. Meanwhile, the arrests are sending shockwaves through the wider French piracy scene.

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Sports broadcaster beIN and the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance propose to expand the European blocking efforts with a blacklist of rogue hosting companies. These companies can then be banned by their ASN, covering a series of IP-address blocks. By implementing the blocking measures across various network companies, including transit providers and internet exchanges, they aim to protect rights across the 'European Internet'.

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After more than fourteen years of legal battles, Kim Dotcom has lost his latest attempt to avoid extradition to the United States. New Zealand's Court of Appeal dismissed the Megaupload founder's challenge to the Justice Minister's surrender order, concluding that a likely U.S. prison sentence of at least 30 years does not amount to shockingly severe punishment.

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For years, rightsholders have pushed for broader site blocking orders, with no direct liability if these result in overblocking. EuroISPA, which represents over 3,300 European internet service providers, is now asking the EU Commission to change that. The association points to a series of overblocking incidents in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere, where rightsholders were not held accountable.

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The U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure of nearly 400 pirate streaming domain names that offered access to FIFA World Cup matches. This enforcement action, dubbed "Operation Offsides", targets popular brands including "rojadirecta", "koora", and "futbollibre". TorrentFreak tracked down several dozen domain names, which reveal that some of the largest streaming sites were not directly hit.

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DNS4EU is a relatively young DNS provider that launched last year with European Commission funding. The company is pitched as a privacy-first alternative to Google and Cloudflare, but it also comes with site blocking in mind. DNS4EU has shown an interest in pirate site blocklists, including the one that's maintained by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. After looking into it, however, DNS4EU decided not to use them, because BREIN isn't a government authority.

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One of Latin America's most-visited illegal sports streaming networks has been disrupted by ACE, UEFA, and Mexican authorities. The enforcement action targeted 44 domain names that were operating under popular sports streaming brands including PirloTV. While the enforcement effort appears to have disabled these domains, new ones swiftly popped up, perhaps even operated by the same people.

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A new report published by the EU Intellectual Property Office shows that the share of major brand advertising on pirate sites increased 80%. The problem is the worst on court-adjudicated pirate sites, where top brands account for more than half of all ads. The data further shows that anti-piracy blocklists don't always work as intended.

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After 180 days, Comcast can no longer say which customer was linked to a given IP address. This retention limit has kept old piracy accusations out of reach for years, but that's beginning to change. A series of BitTorrent lawsuits from film companies targets alleged pirates whose identities Strike 3 Holdings, an adult-content producer, had already obtained in earlier suits over the same addresses.

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In a series of DMCA takedown requests, "FIFA World Cup" is asking Google to permanently remove various pirate site domain names from its search results. While FIFA certainly is protective of its intellectual property, the seemingly AI-generated notices could be the work of a rival pirate site that's trying to take out some competition during the high-profile tournament.

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