Piracy | The Verge

Redbox’s next product may be piracy lawsuits

2025-10-02T17:53:07-04:00

There's a new twist in the long and winding saga of Redbox's demise: Assets originally belonging to the company's corporate parent, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, may have finally found a buyer. But don't expect a resurrection of Redbox's red kiosks, or Chicken Soup's Crackle streaming service, any time soon.

According to a late Wednesday court filing, a company called Grove Street Partners has offered $100 million for so-called "IP Litigation Assets" owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment and its subsidiaries. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment owned the rights to hundreds of movies, mostly through its subsidiary S …

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Sports streaming hub Streameast ‘shut down’ in sting

2025-09-03T12:25:43-04:00

Some Streameast sites still appear to be live.

Streameast, one of the largest sports piracy platforms in the world, has been shut down according to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an antipiracy group that counts NBC Universal, Netflix, and Disney among its members.

ACE announced in a statement that it worked alongside Egyptian authorities to shut down the "notorious" platform, and The Athletic reports that after a year-long investigation Egyptian law enforcement carried out a sting on August 24th which disrupted the platform's streaming infrastructure. ACE claims that Streameast drew more than 1.6 billion visits across 80 domains over the past year, making it "the l …

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Senators are trying to force ISPs to block all foreign pirate sites

2025-08-07T12:45:10-04:00

Lawmakers have introduced a new bill aimed at countering "foreign piracy sites," as reported earlier by TorrentFreak. The bill, called the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors (Block BEARD) Act, would allow copyright holders to ask a federal court to block piracy websites.

The bipartisan legislation, led by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chris Coons (D-DE), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Adam Schiff (D-CA), marks yet another effort to block digital piracy in the US. Earlier this year, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act (FADPA) in January, which would similarly compel ISPs to block foreig …

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LimeWire’s new merch will help you impress your peer(-to-peer)s

2024-11-20T12:49:46-05:00

Dumbgood’s Limewire apparel collection includes a mix of sweaters, jackets, and tees. | Image: Dumbgood

LimeWire, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing app from the early aughts that was resurrected by new owners in 2022 as an NFT marketplace, is back once again. But this time it's just the platform's retro branding that's making a comeback as part of a new officially licensed apparel collection from lifestyle brand Dumbgood.

The collection includes a $120 Playlist Work Jacket, a $90 Disc Burning Green Zip Up Hoodie, and a $90 Gnutella Network Beige Pullover covered in iconography from the burnable CD-R discs that were an important accessory for those using the original LimeWire app.

The collection ranges in price from $42 for t-shirts to $120 for a jacket. | Image: Dumbgood" data-portal-copyright="Image: Dumbgood">

The collection also features a trio of $42 t-shirts, inclu …

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Studios are cracking down on some of the internet’s most popular pirating sites

2024-08-29T16:02:52-04:00

For years, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has worked with Hollywood's Motion Picture Association (MPA) to crack down on digital piracy, and this week, it seems like the organizations took a huge step toward reaching their goal.

Today, ACE - a coalition of over 50 major entertainment companies and production studios, including Amazon, Disney, and Warner Bros. - took partial credit for the shuttering of Fmovies, a popular network of streaming sites hosting pirated films and television shows. In a statement, ACE called Fmovies and its affiliated sites "the largest pirate streaming operation in the world," and according to …

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The DOJ has convicted five men for running a Netflix clone full of pirated TV shows

2024-06-21T11:41:15-04:00

After years of pursuing a group of piracy advocates for illegally hosting and streaming thousands of stolen TV shows, the Department of Justice doled out a series of convictions.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that Kristopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaurequi, and Peter Huber - five men who were responsible for running Netflix knockoff Jetflicks - have been convicted on multiple counts of copyright infringement and money laundering by concealment that could ultimately lead to jail time. The five defendants (along with three other individuals) were first charged back in 2019 when the US government arg …

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Kim Dotcom is ‘not giving an inch’ after sentencing of two Megaupload execs

2023-06-17T10:54:42-04:00

Megaupload officers Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk have each been sentenced in the years-long Megaupload case. | Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

I didn't expect to write about Megaupload in 2023, but here we are - former Megaupload officers Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk have been sentenced to more than two years in prison over their roles in the company, Associated Press reported on Thursday. The two men have been granted delayed sentences owing to the impending birth of Ortmann's child and van der Kolk's ill mother.

Dotcom tweeted about the convictions on Thursday, saying the light sentences two men got off easy because they are pinning the blame on him, adding that they "will make terrible witnesses for the US Govt."

ðŸ§µMegaupload Update ðŸ§µ

"There is no conspiracy. You …

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Somebody cracked Windows XP activation for offline use

2023-05-27T11:44:48-04:00

Windows lives on. | Image: Microsoft

The activation algorithm for Windows XP has, incredibly, finally been completely cracked, allowing for totally offline activation, according to The Register (via Ars Technica). A blog post on tinyapps covered a Reddit post discussing it, but the program allowing it has apparently existed for at least several months, possibly floating in the ether as a torrent download.

As for who created the software, nobody in the subreddit post knows, including user retroreviewyt, who first shared it and isn't even sure where they got it from, speculating it came from from a torrent somewhere.

In the meantime, someone appears to be working on reverse eng …

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You can watch Pluto TV in VLC, and the MPA considers this piracy

2023-02-28T15:15:31-05:00

Ad-supported free TV, but it’s in your browser. What’s the harm? | Screenshot: Chris Person

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) issued a DMCA notice to a GitHub repo that contained a playlist that let viewers watch Pluto TVs streams on their own apps, such as VLC, MPV, and Tvheadend. The move was first noticed by TorrentFreak, and GitHub has complied and removed the repo, which ultimately does nothing. If you still have a tiny text file, you can still do exactly what the MPA tried to stop.

Pluto TV, for those who do not watch it, is a service owned by Paramount that allows users to legally stream movies and TV shows free of charge on many devices. They have a mobile app, apps for Xbox and PlayStation, smart TVs, and dongles. User …

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Feds arrest Russians allegedly behind ‘world’s largest’ pirated ebook library

2022-11-20T13:09:25-05:00

Federal law enforcement arrested and charged two Russian individuals with criminal copyright infringement over their alleged involvement with the pirated ebook Z-Library. Z-Library, which has been around since 2009, billed itself as the "world's largest ebook library" before the US government shut down the site earlier this month.

According to the Department of Justice, the pair in question, Anton Napolsky and Valeriia Ermakova, were arrested in Argentina at the request of the US government on November 3rd. In addition to criminal copyright infringement, the two are also facing charges of money laundering and wire fraud. The US government s …

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