President Trump’s announcement on Sunday revealed his plan to save the U.S. movie industry, which according to him is “dying a very fast death.” The solution is tariff-based and most likely damaging to the major Hollywood studios.

Some media reports said the industry had been expecting the announcement. Others described the news sending shockwaves through Hollywood. The bottom line is President Trump’s belief that to prevent the movie industry’s imminent death, “any and all” movies produced in “foreign lands” will be subjected to a 100% tariff.

‘WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!’

In his Truth Social post, Trump blames the apparent demise of the industry on unspecified countries “offering all sorts of incentives” to draw filmmakers away from producing movies in the United States.

“Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is

Last September, Apple removed popular music streaming app Musi from its App Store, affecting millions of users.

Apple’s action didn’t come as a complete surprise. Music industry groups had been trying to take Musi down for months, branding it a ‘parasitic’ app that skirts the rules.

Delisting from the App Store put the future of Musi directly at risk. The company initially hoped to resolve the matter with Apple behind closed doors, but since the tech giant was unwilling to reverse its decision, Musi took the matter to court.

“Backchannel Scheme”

Musi claimed that the App Store removal was the result of “backroom conversations” between Apple and key music industry pl

Originally the home of The Pirate Bay, Sweden has a long and well documented history when it comes to online piracy.

As in other countries, however, many Swedish pirates have made the switch from relatively cumbersome torrents to on-demand streaming. That includes pirate IPTV services.

According to recent estimates, some 700,000 Swedish households have access to illegal IPTV services. These subscriptions are sold at a very low cost, making them substantially cheaper than the official plans offered by local streaming services such as Viaplay.

Sweden’s IPTV Crackdown

Viaplay and other rightsholders have grown increasingly worried about this trend and these concerns have reached lawmakers too. Earlier this year, Swedish Minister of Culture, Parisa Liljestrand, said

Attempts to significantly downplay the scale of the piracy problems faced by major European football leagues, are simply at odds with the facts on the ground.

They’re also just as unhelpful as the staggering annual loss estimates spouted by rightsholders.

These figures have a tendency to become ‘fact’ after endless repetition, before being built upon and defended to the very last man, in blood if that becomes necessary.

Seemingly powerless to curtail piracy in any meaningful way, major European leagues are combining increasingly bitter rhetoric with threats against intermediaries, while tearing up what was left of the anti-piracy rule book.

With their backs against the wall and so much at stake, some quite reasonably argue that a new approach was desperately needed. For those caught in the crossfire, new does not mean improved. It means seemingly random websites faili

Online piracy is a constant headache for copyright holders; one that’s particularly difficult to beat.

Due to those who run pirate sites often ignoring takedown requests, copyright holders also target search engines and other online platforms that inadvertently help users to find pirated content.

Search engine removals are not new and Google has documented this process for more than a decade. Initially, the company only received a few thousand removal requests per day, but this number has grown spectacularly over the years.

Link-Busters: Breaking Takedown Records

Copyright holders typically outsource this work to third-party companies that scan the web for links to pirated material. Link-Busters is one of these companies, one that has swiftly dominated the market in terms of output.

Domiciled in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Link-Bu

When site-blocking is publicized by those who acquire an injunction, attention tends to be carefully drawn towards key messaging.

Being seen to take action against piracy is a public reminder to pirate sites and suppliers that rightsholders are always watching. At the top of the supply chain that’s unlikely to act as a deterrent but lower down, where resellers and the public are much more exposed, even a pause for thought could prove useful.

In broad terms, anti-piracy announcements in this context are more easily framed as regular advertising. New and improved, whatever couldn’t be wiped away last time will now meet our toughest formula yet. So capitulate now, because we are going nowhere.

Blocking in Belgium

News of [yet another blocking order](https://torrentfreak.com/dazn-pirate-iptv-action-coincided-with-massive-public-dns-blockade-250407

Following its launch in 2016, Fmovies presented a major threat to Hollywood and after years online, it was one that seemed near impossible to defeat.

The site’s operators were linked to dozens of popular pirate sites, together generating billions of visits annually.

While the MPA’s anti-piracy flagship ACE tied the operation to Vietnam early on, an effective shutdown proved to be unusually complicated. In addition to gathering intelligence, Hollywood’s diplomatic powers were required to force a breakthrough.

Last summer, these efforts paid off handsomely; or so it appeared. After the main Fmovies site fell apart in July, related streaming portals including Bflix, Aniwave, and Zorox fell like dominoes in the weeks after, with ACE taking [partial credit](https://t

In 2015, Portugal’s General Inspectorate of Cultural Activities (IGAC) finalized an agreement hailed as a groundbreaking development in the fight against online piracy.

A multi-industry memorandum of understanding saw rightsholders, anti-piracy group MAPINET, ISP group Apritel, and DNS.pt, the organization responsible for .PT domains, team up with advertising companies and consumer groups to fight piracy – together.

Based on reports from rightsholders, MAPINET filed monthly complaints to IGAC and within 15 days, ISPs voluntarily blocked pirate sites and advertisers took measures to prevent ad placement.

The Pirate Bay had been previously blocked by court order, but with judicial oversight no longer a requirement under the voluntary program, progress was swift. Within weeks m

Spotify has certainly come a long way since it allowed us to hand out free invite codes to its beta launch 16 years ago.

With over 600 million monthly active users, across over 180 markets, it is now the world’s most popular music streaming service by a significant margin.

The streaming giant has always positioned itself as a competitor to pirate services, but its success also relied on pirates. In the early days, Spotify allegedly used MP3s from The Pirate Bay to populate its beta service. The notorious Swedish torrent site was instrumental in other ways too.

“If Pirate Bay had not existed or made such a mess in the market, I don’t think Spotify would have seen the light of day. You wouldn’t get the l

For streaming services such as Netflix, Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems provide a level of control over the company’s most valuable assets, including movies, TV shows, and other content for consumer consumption.

DRM not only restricts access to customers authorized to consume content, it can determine when and how it’s consumed too. When all goes to plan, DRM should also prevent end users from casually copying movies and TV shows, which should result in a positive contribution towards minimizing the spread of pirated content online; at least in theory.

Widevine Everywhere

Ultimately, whether users loathe it or just hate it, DRM exists in billions of web browsers and devices. One of the most widespread is Google’s Widevine and avoiding its footprint today is almost futile. It can be found in Chrome, Firefox and similar browsers, m

In recent years, music and movie companies have filed several lawsuits against U.S. Internet providers, for failing to take action against pirating subscribers.

One of the main allegations is that ISPs fail to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers in “appropriate circumstances”, as the DMCA requires.

These lawsuits resulted in multi-million dollar judgments against Cox and Grande. Meanwhile, more companies are at risk too, including Frontier Communications, which emerged from bankruptcy four years ago.

Frontier vs. Movie and Music Companies

Frontier is fighting not one, but two legal battles. After the company was sued by several prominent record labels including UMG, Sony Music and Warner Music, a group of independent [film companies](https://torrentfre

Even after years of trawling the invaluable Lumen Database, the scale of online copyright infringement today still manages to surprise week after week. And with more time spent searching, the greater the chances of the archive surfacing curiosities from years ago, or unusual items from the more recent past.

Take the bait and time has a tendency to get eaten away in journeys down various rabbit holes, and that’s a good thing. Without Lumen, censorship would undoubtedly thrive in a darker place; it already needs little encouragement.

Free Speech (Terms and conditions apply, YMMV)

After a spurious attempt to deindex one of our articles with a bogus copyright claim, research led us by chance down a parallel path, revealing an even greater threat to free speech and legitimate reporting.

The nature of a sizeable number of the takedown notices

The internet has made video entertainment more accessible than ever before. With plenty of legal streaming services releasing new content every week, there’s no shortage of options.

While this is good news, choice brings its own difficulties. Because there are a myriad of legal options available today, paying several monthly subscription fees can become a costly endeavor. As a result, pirate streaming sites and services are thriving.

Hollywood and other copyright holders are trying to tackle this problem through enforcement. This has resulted in both large crackdowns and smaller successes, but new threats are always lurking around the corner. Sometimes they pop up in unexpected places.

A Piracy Optimized Browser?

Browser app Seekee has attracted quite a lot of attention recently, particularly on social media where people have noticed that the app is surprisingly good at accessing

Back in 2019, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, alongside the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and Hollywood’s MPA, had reason to celebrate following a successful enforcement operation.

Their target was a CDN (Content Delivery Network) known as Moonwalk, which offered vast quantities of movies and TV shows for pirate site operators to embed in their own sites.

Services like these aren’t necessarily the cheapest option, but if time is money, having a one-stop-shop video supplier take care of pretty much everything, ads included, could certainly lighten the load for those short on time.

Moonwalk allegedly supplied content to 80% of known Russian streaming portals before it was shut down. A knock-on effect quickly claimed the scalps of other big players including HDGO and Kodik, at

First released in 2004 as part of the broader “Piracy: It’s a Crime” campaign, the “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” PSA quickly became iconic.

Its dramatic equation of online piracy with stealing handbags, televisions, and cars, also made it a fertile breeding ground for memes, satire, and ridicule.

While the main commercial is well-remembered, a lesser-known ‘street sales‘ equivalent has largely been forgotten. Even the official piracyitsacrime.com campaign website eventually vanished, only for the domain name to be later acquired and cleverly redirected to the famous IT Crowd parody mocking the original ad.

Piracy. It’s a Crime

Two decades on, the “You Wouldn’t Steal” video remains ingrained in internet culture. Yet, new details about th

For those not directly involved, assessing the effectiveness of an anti-piracy campaign meets significant challenges.

The results of campaigns are often measured by those behind them, in some cases after receiving significant financial assistance from friendly governments. Whether by coincidence or otherwise, subsequent reports suggesting that everyone wasted their money are impossible to find.

Reports of successful campaigns are less scarce but since supporting evidence now amounts to commercially-sensitive corporate information, details showing why the investment paid off tend to be restricted.

Estimating the results of an anti-piracy campaign that strives to increase awareness is much more straightforward. Publicly unencumbered by requirements to decrease piracy while increasing sales, success amounts to more people being aware of the issues than before the campaign launched.

Tackling online piracy is a complicated endeavor that often begins with efforts to identify the operators of infringing sites and services. This is also where the first hurdles show up.

Many pirates keep their identities concealed. This applies to the operators of sites and services as well as their users.

This relative anonymity is a nuisance to anti-piracy groups, including the RIAA and MPA. While most online services refuse to voluntarily hand over user details, legal tools can help rightsholders move forward.

In recent years, DMCA subpoenas have established themselves as a key anti-piracy enforcement tool. These requests don’t require any oversight from a judge and are typically signed off by a court clerk. This makes them ideal to swiftly identify online pirates.

DMCA Subpoenas at Risk

Both the RIAA and MPA have used these subpoenas to identify owners of pi

Since early February, Spain has faced unprecedented yet avoidable nationwide disruption to previously functioning, entirely legitimate online services.

A court order obtained by top-tier football league LaLiga in partnership with telecommunications giant Telefonica, authorized ISP-level blocking across all major ISPs to prevent public access to pirate IPTV services and websites.

In the first instance, controversy centered on Cloudflare, where shared IP addresses were blocked by local ISPs when pirates were detected using them, regardless of the legitimate Cloudflare customers using them too.

When legal action by Cloudflare failed, in part due to a [judge’s insistence](https://torrentfreak.com/judge-confirms-laligas-right-to-block-cloudflare-in-purs

For major companies like Nintendo, tackling online piracy isn’t just about punishing individual infringers; it’s about strategic deterrence.

Filing lawsuits against casual gamers who may have made an isolated mistake is not a good look and could potentially backfire. Nintendo understands that and carefully picks its battles.

The case against Jesse Keighin, better known under his gaming handle “EveryGameGuru”, exemplifies this approach. Filed in a Colorado federal court last November, Nintendo’s complaint lists many alleged wrongdoings, including pre-release game streaming using pirated ROMs and distribution of circumvention tools.

Add in the public exposure through streaming platforms such as YouTube, Discord, and Twitch, and it’s not difficult to see why Nintendo sin

Five years ago, the World Health Organization formally declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic.

Follow-up measures taken by governments and organizations around the world directly affected the lives of billions of people.

Those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs started to work from home, if possible. The same applied to school-going youth, who saw their social lives cut off due to lockdowns and curfews.

The devastating health crisis is over today, but its impact can’t be understated. Aside from lingering health issues, the aftermath also extends to the online piracy niche, where the effects of COVID-19 were already visible in anecdotal piracy figures early on.

In early 2020, we reported that there was increased interest in the movie Contagion, a decade-