It’s not Sunday night yet, but fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones may have already seen the show’s upcoming episode floating around online: A new report says the fourth episode of the season was leaked just days after hackers claimed they’d stolen 1.5 terabytes of data from the network. [More]
piracy
Was The ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 7 Premiere Really Pirated A Whopping 90M Times?
By 7.21.17
It is not news that people have been illegally watching the season 7 premiere of Game of Thrones — by this point, we pretty much expect that one of the most-pirated shows on TV will be, well, pirated. But one report claims that the first episode of this final season has been pirated a whopping 90 million times since it aired last Sunday. [More]
Popular Pirate Streaming Site Shuts Down, Urges Users To Go Use Netflix Instead
By 5.9.17
Less-than-legal media sites arise, thrive, fade, and die all the time without fanfare or commentary. A big one, Coke and Popcorn, is apparently joining that list — but what makes its demise fairly unusual is that it is actually warning users that it’s shutting down… and asking them to go legit. [More]
‘Game Of Thrones’ Still Most-Pirated Show On TV, Despite HBO Efforts
By 12.27.16
HBO has a bit of a challenge on its hands: every new episode of its mega-hit Game of Thrones is viewed by tens of millions of fans… but a huge percentage of them aren’t actually HBO subscribers. They’re pirating the show, instead. And once again, the show’s most recent season has landed at the top of the “most-torrented” lists for the year. [More]
Cisco Says It Can Now Shut Down Pirated Live Video Feeds Mid-Stream
By 10.21.16
There are a growing number of pirated live video streams available online, giving viewers unauthorized access to pay-TV, pay-per-view events, and other feeds. Copyright holders say the usual method of sending a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice isn’t fast or effective enough, as hosts of these streams either ignore the demands or quickly move to a different host. Now, Cisco says it has developed a way for copyright holders to play a better game of Anti-Piracy Whac-A-Mole by giving them a way to cut off feeds mid-stream. [More]
Leaking That Movie Where Leo DiCaprio Dances With A Bear Will Cost Former Dr. Phil Show Staffer $1.12 Million
By 9.30.16
Every awards season, the internet fills up with pristine, pirated copies of Oscar-contending movies, many of them ripped from screeners sent out by the studios to promote the films. One staffer on the Dr. Phil Show who has admitted to leaking a copy of The Revenant online was recently sentenced to fork over $1.12 million to the studio. [More]
Recording Industry Sues Site That Lets You Rip YouTube Clips Into MP3s
By 9.28.16
There are a number of sites and services that will let you easily convert a streaming YouTube video into a more usable file. YouTube itself has gone after some of these sites, but now the recording industry is challenging the legality of a popular site that allows users to rip audio-only MP3 files from YouTube clips. [More]
The IOC Is On The Prowl To Take Down “Periscope Pirates”
By 8.17.16
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is infamous at this point for being very, very tight-fisted with any and all things Olympic. And it makes sense, to a point: they literally have one job (Olympics) and companies sign contracts worth billions of dollars for exclusive rights to air and share the Games. Even using gifs of Olympic events is banned, a harsh rule in our visual and image-based era. So you can imagine how well the IOC takes to having anyone live-streaming the events on the sly. (Spoiler: not well at all.) [More]
U.S. Navy Facing $600 Million Lawsuit For Software Piracy
By 7.20.16
Let’s be honest here: we probably mostly have a mental picture of the kind of entity that gets accused of software piracy, and that picture is probably someone in their late teens or early twenties. What it doesn’t look like in probably anyone’s head is “like a division of the U.S. military.” And yet that’s exactly who — or what — is being sued for copyright infringement on a massive scale. [More]
Google Fights Piracy By Making It Less Convenient For You — And It Works
By 7.14.16
People, by and large, will do the thing that’s easiest and most convenient to do. In 1999, the easiest way to get digital music was to log onto Napster and leave it running overnight, and so an era of widely-distributed internet piracy was born. These days, it’s pretty easy to access legal digital goods, so more people do that — but piracy still lurks around the edge. So how to quash it? [More]
Did You Pirate Game Of Thrones? Beware Of Phishing Scam Posing As Copyright Notice
By 7.8.16
HBO’s Game of Thrones isn’t just another wacky sitcom about fancy chairs. It’s also the most frequently pirated show on TV, with huge numbers of people clamoring each week to download and share the latest episode. Scammers are now trying to cash in on this sizable audience by sending phishing emails disguised as copyright notices. [More]
Google Chrome Has A Bug That Makes It Super Easy For Pirates To Purloin Streaming Video
By 6.27.16
Lots of things made our modern all-online, all-video era possible: Internet connections got faster, tech got cheaper, and so on. But the thing that made companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu willing and able to become household names in TV is a little invisible: it’s the ability to keep you paying for content. [More]
Student Arrested After Live-Streaming Movie Premiere On Facebook
By 6.3.16
Usually, when you hear of a video pirate getting caught, it’s because of vigilant theater staff or annoyed theatergoers, but it was a piracy-monitoring service in India that resulted in a college student from Indiana being arrested for live-streaming a movie premiere from inside a Chicago theater. [More]
Movie Theater Owners Brush Off Idea Of $50 Opening-Day Home Video Releases
By 3.16.16
Last week, we told you about Screening Room, the streaming video startup from Napster co-founder and guy-who-was-played-by-Justin-Timberlake-in-that-Facebook-movie Sean Parker that hopes to sell home video access to new movies the same they hit theaters. Even though the Screening Room model reportedly includes plans to share the wealth with theater owners, an industry lobbying group is shrugging off the idea. [More]
More Than 500,000 People Have Already Illegally Downloaded Kanye West’s Tidal-Only Album
By 2.16.16
Kanye West’s latest album, The Life of Pablo, was originally supposed to be a short-time exclusive on the $20/month streaming service Tidal, but then the fickle artist announced over the weekend that it would remain a Tidal exclusive, with the implication that anyone who wants to hear it needs to ante up for the monthly subscription… or illegally download it like more than half a million people have already done. [More]
Warner Bros., BMG, Rightscorp Agree To Pay $450K For Using Robocalls To Hassle Alleged Music Pirates
By 1.12.16
Even when you’ve been accused of violating the copyright of a major music publishers, you still have the right to not be harassed by unsolicited pre-recorded calls demanding payment for those supposed violations. That’s why Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and other defendants have agreed to pay out $450,000 to thousands of alleged music pirates. [More]
Warner Bros. Trying To Block Devices That Get Around 4K Video Copyright Protection
By 1.4.16
A week ago, Warner Bros. home video folks announced they would be catering to the growing number of 4K TV owners by releasing 35 recent titles — including Mad Max: Fury Road and The LEGO Movie — on ultra-HD BluRay discs. Two days later, the entertainment giant was in court, suing to stop a company from selling devices that would let users get around the digital copyright protections on these, and other, 4K titles. [More]
Cox Must Pay $25M For Failing To Stop Repeat Pirates
By 12.18.15
Weeks after a court ruled that Cox Communications had deliberately ignored repeat piracy offenders and put up roadblocks to prevent certain copyright holders from filing infringement claims, a jury has handed down a $25 million verdict against the cable and Internet provider. [More]
