Posted at 08:00AM on January 04, 2026 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Hollywood, Netflix, and Apple Are Behind Latest Pirate 'Brand' Blockades in Belgium * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > Site Blocking > t New information obtained through a transparency request reveals that major movie industry players, including Disney, Apple, and Netflix, are behind the latest site-blocking effort in Belgium. While the involvement of these companies is ...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 31, 2025 by pirate datasets like “Books3” @ TF Publishing
2025: Two Decades of Piracy Reporting: TorrentFreak's Retrospective * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t As a tradition, we use the last day of the year to look back at some of the biggest stories of the past twelve months. However, since TorrentFreak just celebrated its 20th anniversary, we're zooming out even further, looking back at some of the key moments ...
Home > Anti-Piracy > DMCA > t Cloudflares latest transparency report reveals a massive 3,800% surge in copyright-related takedown actions, fueled by a shift to more automated enforcement. By granting rightsholders direct API access, the company says that it was able to targe...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 28, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
\xe2\x80\x98Stranger Things\xe2\x80\x99 Is The Most Pirated TV Show of 2025 * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t 'Stranger Things' is the most pirated TV show of 2025 on torrent sites. The final season of the Netflix production beats its other global powerhouse, the Korean thriller "Squid Game." HBO's "The Last of Us", meanwhile, ended up in third place this year. At ...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 28, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Legal Push to Unmask Minions 3 Leaker Targets YouTube and Reddit * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t NBCUniversal is doing all it can to identify the person(s) behind a series of high-profile leaks of the film Minions 3, which is scheduled to come out on July 1, 2026. Through DMCA subpoenas, both Google and Reddit are compelled to hand over the personal de...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 24, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
French Torrent Giant YggTorrent Faces User Revolt after Introducing Paid 'Turbo Mode' * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t YggTorrent, the largest francophone torrent community, faces widespread pushback after it introduced a paid 'Turbo Mode' for 86 this week. For regular users, the tracker now has a limit of five torrent downloads per day and a 30-second download delay. Accor...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 23, 2025 by \n \n Authors & Copyright Scholars Back ‘Internet Archive’ in Landmark Legal Battle\n @ TF Publishing
Anna\xe2\x80\x99s Archive Backed Up Spotify, Plans to Release 300TB Music Archive * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t In what appears to be the largest music leak in history, Annas Archive says it has made a multi-terabyte 'backup' of Spotify, including metadata for nearly the entire catalog and audio files for 86 million tracks. While Anna's Archive typically focuses on b...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 22, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
Video Game Giants Suddenly Have RuTracker in their Crosshairs Again * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > DMCA > t RuTracker is not only Russia's largest torrent site, it's one of the oldest and most resilient pirate sites anywhere in the world. Most major entertainment companies have had issues with RuTracker at some point during its 21 years online, and th...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 22, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Brazilian Criminal Court Convicts Yout.com Owner in Landmark Stream Ripping Case * TorrentFreak
Home > Lawsuits > Apps and Sites > t The owner of popular U.S.-based stream-ripping site Yout.com has been found guilty of massive copyright infringement by a criminal court in Brazil. Last week, the court sentenced American citizen Johnathan Nader to a prison term of three ...
Home > Anti-Piracy > Takedowns and Seizures > t With the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) set to kick off in Morocco on December 21, a "vast operation" against illegal IPTV services is reportedly in the works. The plan follows an anti-piracy summit on Tuesday, where copyri...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 21, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
A DMCA "Bot War": Google Search Processed 5 Billion Takedown Requests in 2025 * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t Google Search has reached a staggering new DMCA takedown milestone, processing over five billion copyright removal requests in 2025. Driven by a massive automated reporting spike, mostly from Link-Busters, the total all-time count has now eclipsed 15.8 bill...
Home > Anti-Piracy > DMCA > t Hayase is a full-featured torrent streaming client optimized for anime content. The developer tried to stay clear of legal trouble by relying on user-installed extensions. However, MarkScan, the takedown partner of anime giant Crunchyroll, insis...
Posted at 08:00AM on December 19, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
Tweaks to IPTV Piracy Law That "Bans VPNs" Won't Change Its Intent or Scope * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > t Early December, Denmark's Ministry of Culture submitted a bill that aims to combat viewing of pirated content on illegal IPTV platforms. Public debate was more concerned with proposed restrictions on VPNs, with some concluding that the government wants...
Posted at 08:00AM on December 18, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
EU Ban on Russian War Propaganda Misfires: Blocks Social Media Giants & Pirate IPTV * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t To help its members comply with the EU sanctions against Russian war propaganda, the Dutch ISP trade association compiled a consolidated blocklist. This list is based on input from regulators in other countries and features over 700 blocking targets. It inc...
Posted at 08:00AM on December 17, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
Judge: GoDaddy Must Unmask Owners of 100+ "Copyright-Infringing" Domains * TorrentFreak
Home > Lawsuits > Apps and Sites > t In late May 2025, a Gibraltar-based company asked GoDaddy to deny service to over 100 domains, based on allegations of widespread copyright infringement. A subsequent DMCA subpoena, compelling GoDaddy to disclose the operators' personal d...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 16, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Hollywood Warns: \xe2\x80\x98Extortionary\xe2\x80\x99 Codec Patent Fees Could Hike Streaming Subscription Prices * TorrentFreak
Home > Lawsuits > t For decades, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) has been Hollywood's main protector of intellectual property rights, especially when it relates to piracy. In a recent federal lawsuit, however, the roles are reversed. Siding with Disney, the MPA calls ou...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 15, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
Automated Real-Time Pirate IPTV Blocking in France "Within Six Months" * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > Site Blocking > t French telecoms regulator Arcom says it expects an automated, real-time pirate IPTV blocking system to be operational no later than the first half of 2026. Inspired by systems in place in the UK and Italy, Arcom aims to simplify existin...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 14, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Online Piracy Can Boost Box Office Revenue, Study Suggests * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t A new academic study counterintuitively concludes that online piracy can boost revenue for some films. By analyzing years of box office data, as well as upload details from The Pirate Bay, researchers found that high-quality leaks of "spectacle" movies, suc...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 13, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Google Removes Sci-Hub Domains from U.S. Search Results Due to Dated Court Order * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > Site Blocking > t Google has removed dozens of new Sci-Hub domain names from its search results in the United States. Unlike typical DMCA takedowns, the removals were triggered by a dated court order that was not enforced for several years. This appears ...
Home > Anti-Piracy > Takedowns and Seizures > t The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment says it was behind the sudden closure of MKVCinemas, a popular India-based streaming site that disappeared unexpectedly last month. As part of the same operation, ACE says it also s...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 12, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
Scammers Mimic Cloudflare's 'Error 451' Site Blocking Notice to Infect Pirates * TorrentFreak
Home > Piracy > t Earlier today we saw fairly compelling evidence that blocking pirate sites can lead to internet users being infected with malware. Apparently inspired by Cloudflare's use of HTTP Error 451, which greets pirates when attempting to visit sites blocked in the ...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 10, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Rampant U.S. Piracy is a Multibillion-Dollar Concern for Japanese Manga Publishers * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > t A recent report, published by the Japanese anti-piracy group Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ), shows that manga piracy is rampant. American pirates, in particular, are a key roadblock in Japan's mission to expand the export of manga and anime. At the sa...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 10, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
IPTV Pirate's Bitcoin Booty Sold at Auction For Just Over $1 Million * TorrentFreak
Home > Lawsuits > IPTV and Streaming > t In 2024, a man convicted for his involvement in pirate IPTV service Viking IPTV received a relatively modest suspended sentence, despite serving several thousand customers. However, a cryptocurrency analysis revealed transactions dati...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 09, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
EU Report Distills AI-Training Lessons from Napster Piracy Era: Don't Sue, License * TorrentFreak
Home > Law and Politics > t An in-depth analysis on AI training and copyright, commissioned by the European Parliament, cautions against repeating the mistakes of the early 2000s when online piracy boomed. Instead of suing AI companies into oblivion or relying on "opt-out" m...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 08, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
Bypass Amazon Fire TV Stick Piracy Ban and See What Happens Next * TorrentFreak
Home > Opinion Articles > t After enjoying years of relative freedom to do whatever they liked with their Amazon Fire TV Sticks, last month users were informed that apps linked to piracy would be blocked, banned, or even deleted moving forward. With alerts now appearing on u...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 07, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Lithuanian Watchdog Fines Torrent Tracker Users for Pirating Local Blockbuster * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > t Lithuanias media watchdog continues its crusade against individual file-sharers. New data reveals that dozens of users on private trackers Linkomanija and Torrent.lt have been fined 140 this year for sharing the local hit movie "The Southern Chronicles...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 06, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Belgium's Latest Pirate Site-Blocking Order Spares DNS Providers * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > Site Blocking > t The Brussels Business Court has issued a new site-blocking order, targeting popular pirate sites including 1337x and Soap2day. Surprisingly, this latest order only requires major ISPs to take action. This is a notable change, as the ini...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 05, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
Court Empowers Hollywood in Race to Block \xe2\x80\x9cWicked: For Good\xe2\x80\x9d Piracy * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > Site Blocking > t Australia's Federal Court has responded to an urgent request by the major Hollywood studios, Netflix and Apple, to protect the movie Wicked: For Good from some of the world's most notorious pirate streaming sites. After issuing an initi...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 04, 2025 by Andy Maxwell @ TF Publishing
DDoS Guard: LaLiga's Piracy Blocks Test Whether Anyone Will Protect the Internet * TorrentFreak
Home > Anti-Piracy > Site Blocking > t Internet infrastructure company DDoS-Guard is concerned by the power granted to Spain's LaLiga in its fight against piracy. Describing the scale of over-blocking as "astonishing", Dmitry Nikonov, Head of Web Application Protection, beli...
Posted at 08:00PM on December 03, 2025 by Ernesto Van der Sar @ TF Publishing
Supreme Court: Can ISPs Be Liable For Piracy By Doing Nothing? * TorrentFreak
Home > Lawsuits > Repeat Infringer > t Can an ISP be held liable for piracy simply by "doing nothing"? Yesterday, the Supreme Court addressed this billion-dollar question. While record labels argued that Cox turned a blind eye to "habitual abusers," the ISP warned that expan...
