Launched in 2024, Italy’s elaborate ‘ Piracy Shield ‘ blocking scheme was billed as the future of anti-piracy efforts.

To effectively tackle live sports piracy, its broad blocking powers aim to block piracy-related domain names and IP addresses within 30 minutes.

While many pirate sources have indeed been blocked, the Piracy Shield is not without controversy. There have been multiple reports of overblocking, where the anti-piracy system blocked access to legitimate sites and services .

€14,247,698 ‘Piracy Shield’ Fine

Cloudflare was caught up in several of those incidents and became one of Piracy Shield’s most prominent critics. Following an amendment that extended the scheme’s reach to DNS providers and VPNs, the American Internet infrastructure company refused to filter pirate sites through its public 1.1.1.1 resolver, arguing that it was unreasonable and disproportionate.

In response to the refusal, Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM launched a formal investigation. In January, the regulator concluded that Cloudflare has all the technological expertise and resources to implement the blocking measures. AGCOM argued that the company is known for its complex traffic management, and rejected the suggestion that complying with the blocking order would break its service.

After weighing all arguments, AGCOM imposed a €14,247,698 (USD $16.4m) fine against Cloudflare for failing to comply with the required anti-piracy measures. The regulator added that this fine represents 1% of the company’s global revenue, adding that the law allows for a maximum of 2%.

Cloudflare Formally Appeals

This week, Cloudflare explained in a blog post why it formally appealed the fine on March 8. According to the company, this case is about more than money, as it believes that the Piracy Shield blocking regime puts the open Internet at risk .

The company stresses that the controversial pirate site blocking system essentially operates as a “black box”.

“This case isn’t just about a single penalty; it’s about whether a handful of private entities can prioritize their own economic interests over those of Internet users by forcing global infrastructure providers to block large swaths of the Internet without oversight, transparency, or due process,” Cloudflare notes.

Cloudflare further stresses that the Piracy Shield’s flaws and shortcomings are no accident. In its blog post, the company points out that Piracy Shield was “donated” to the Italian government by SP Tech, an arm of the law firm that represents several of the scheme’s direct beneficiaries, including the Serie A, Italy’s top soccer league.

Failures and Flaws

Cloudflare once again reiterates that the Piracy Shield scheme is a blunt instrument that created an unavoidable risk of overblocking. This includes many innovative sites and services, including Government websites, educational resources, and access to Google Drive, which were all blocked at some point.

This massive overblocking and collateral damage was also confirmed in a study by researchers from the University of Twente last September. They concluded that Piracy Shield is linked to “significant collateral damage to legitimate infrastructure” and may pose a “potential threat to national security.”

AGCOM has been aware of the critique, including the European Commission’s concerns , but it continues to stay the course. Instead of limiting the impact, it broadened the scheme to include DNS resolvers and VPNs.

“Even when faced with clear evidence that Piracy Shield has caused significant and repeated overblocking, AGCOM did not change course. Rather, it chose to expand Piracy Shield to apply to global DNS providers and VPNs, services which are closely associated with privacy and free expression,” Cloudflare writes.

Challenging Piracy Shield’s Legality

In addition to overblocking concerns, Cloudflare also stresses that the Piracy Shield lacks transparency. These and other issues will likely be brought up during the appeal, which will also question the amount of the fine.

AGCOM previously noted that the €14 million fine is less than the legally permitted 2% of Cloudflare’s global revenue. However, Cloudflare counters that Italian non-compliance fines are capped at 2% of a company’s revenue within the relevant jurisdiction, which would be approximately €140,000, not 100 times that.

All in all, the company says that it will continue to challenge the controversial piracy blocking scheme to the best of its ability.

“We are not backing down. Cloudflare is appealing the €14 million fine, pushing for full access to AGCOM’s Piracy Shield records, and will continue to challenge the underlying legality of the Piracy Shield blocking orders in the Italian administrative courts,” Cloudflare notes.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In September 2024, Apple removed the popular music streaming app Musi from its App Store, affecting millions of users.

Apple’s action wasn’t completely unexpected. Music industry groups had been trying to take Musi down for a long time, branding it a ‘parasitic’ app that skirts the rules.

Delisting from the App Store was an existential threat to Musi, which took the matter to court . Musi claimed that the App Store removal was the result of “backroom conversations” between Apple and key music industry players, including Sony, IFPI, and YouTube.

The app developer accused Apple of breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The company hoped that the court would agree and compel Apple to reinstate the app, but that did not happen.

Court Dismisses Musi’s Complaint

In an order issued yesterday, Judge Eumi K. Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the case with prejudice, effectively ending the lawsuit.

In its defense, Apple has argued that the terms of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement (DPLA) allowed the company to delist apps “at any time, with or without cause.” That would be sufficient to remove Musi.

Musi has countered that, according to the same agreement, Apple needed to conduct a review to establish “reasonable belief” before an app would be removed from its platform. However, the court disagreed, stressing that there are no limitations to Apple’s removal rights.

“There is simply no textual basis in the DPLA to construe a limitation on Apple’s right to cease offering an application, as long as Apple provided notice,” Judge Lee writes.

Musi’s Claims Fail

Musi’s argument that Apple breached an “implied covenant of good faith” under California law also failed. While Apple was contractually allowed to remove the app, the court notes that Apple did not solely act in response to the YouTube claim.

“[T]he complaint reflects that Apple was facing pressure from multiple music industry complaints. The letter from Sony expressly states that its trade organization (the IFPI) had already tried to resolve issues with Musi through the app dispute process, but Musi was not cooperating,” the order reads.

The court already granted Musi the option to amend its complaint previously and allowed two months of discovery, including access to over 3,500 documents and depositions from Apple officials, but that was not enough. Therefore, the court dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning that it can’t be refiled.

Sanctions Against Musi’s Lawyers

In a separate order issued the same day, the court granted Apple’s motion for Rule 11 sanctions in part, ruling that one allegation in Musi’s amended complaint was factually baseless.

Musi had alleged in the first paragraph of its amended complaint that Apple “knew that this ‘evidence’ was false, as it has since admitted.”

Judge Lee found that this admission did not appear anywhere in the provided evidence. Therefore, Musi’s claim that Apple had “admitted” to knowingly relying on false evidence is sufficient to warrant sanctions.

“Claiming that Apple ‘admitted’ that it knowingly relied on false evidence conveys that discovery yielded damning evidence,” the order states, “but it did not.”

The sanctions order effectively removed the offending phrase from the amended complaint and ordered Musi’s law firm, Winston & Strawn LLP, to pay Apple’s reasonable attorneys’ fees related to the sanctions motion.

More Scrutiny

The sanctions ruling was not the first time Musi’s honesty came under scrutiny in this case. In a motion filed in May 2025 , Apple alleged that Musi had previously impersonated a Universal Music Group executive to get its app reinstated after an earlier removal.

Apple claimed that Musi founder Aaron Wojnowski forwarded a fabricated email to Apple purportedly from UMG’s Jason Miller, using the address jasonmiller@umusic.solar-secure.com, which is not a UMG address.

UMG later informed Apple the email was “fraudulent” and that Miller had no record of sending it. The same address was allegedly used to file a false copyright claim against a separate music streaming app, Yokee, in July 2020.

With the dismissal order now in place, the case is effectively closed. This means that the once very popular music app will not return to the App Store via this route. Musi still has the option to appeal, but whether it plans to do so is unclear. The company did not immediately return our request for comment.

—

A copy of Judge Eumi K. Lee’s order granting Apple’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf) . The order granting in part Apple’s motion for Rule 11 sanctions is available here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In 2024, the video rental and streaming company Redbox shut down its service and filed for bankruptcy.

The service, owned by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (now CSS Entertainment), was running hundreds of millions in losses per year and no longer saw a path to profitability.

With hundreds of filings, the bankruptcy case is a complex one. While these types of proceedings typically don’t have much news value, a rather intriguing piracy-related filing caught our eye last fall.

Court Clears Path for $100 Million Piracy Litigation Deal

Last October, it was reported that a company called Grove Street Partners was offering at least $100 million for the copyright litigation rights of Redbox ‘ bankrupt parent company.

However, before any deal could be signed and executed, the Delaware bankruptcy court first had to approve the sharing agreement that dictates how the proceeds of an eventual sale are shared. This happened earlier this month, when the agreement was formally approved by Judge Mary F. Walrath.

With the paperwork sorted, the rights to pursue copyright infringement claims of media titles once owned or controlled by CSS Entertainment and its subsidiaries, including Screen Media Ventures, can now be sold.

Grove Street remains the key candidate to take over the rights, which would allow the company to file lawsuits against Internet providers for turning a blind eye to piracy. This can potentially lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, which would provide a decent return on investment.

Piracy lawsuits are familiar territory for Grove Street. In 2023, before Redbox went bankrupt, it announced a partnership with American Films and its subsidiary FACTERRA, to “provide data monitoring and record evidence” supporting copyright infringement cases.

Future ISP Piracy Lawsuits & the Supreme Court

During a hearing at the bankruptcy court a few days ago, the trustee confirmed that while they have reached an “agreement in principle” with Grove Street, the formal purchase agreement is still being drafted and has not been executed. This means that there is no final price tag, although $100 million has been cited as the minimum.

$100 million is a substantial amount, especially considering that these litigation rights don’t guarantee success in court. In fact, the value of those rights largely depends on a case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This case, Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment , asks the Court to define when an ISP can be held liable for the infringement of its subscribers.

Cox was previously hit with a $1 billion jury verdict for failing to terminate repeat infringers despite receiving millions of DMCA notices. This led to several appeals and eventually ended up at the Supreme Court, where the Internet provider found the U.S. government on its side.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in December 2025, and a final decision is expected to come in later this year. That decision could either cement the value of the rights at stake here, or make it much more challenging to recoup the investment.

Private Lenders Get Most Money

The approved sharing agreement governs how proceeds will be divided between the trustee, George L. Miller, and HPS Investment Partners, the primary secured lender owed at least $500 million in principal alone.

Under the terms of the deal, the buyer of the rights will pay at least $100 million in five annual installments of $20 million each. After the trustee’s administrative costs are covered, the first $100 million in net proceeds splits 80% to the lenders and 20% to the estate. Above $100 million, the lenders’ share increases to 85%, with the estate receiving 15%

During the proceedings, a secondary lender, MidCap Financial Trust, was added as a party by the court order, and it will receive a pro-rata share of the lender share, alongside HPS.

The court also specifically preserved the rights of unions, including DGA, SAG-AFTRA, and WGA West, to ensure their outstanding payment claims remain active. However, with various parties seeking hundreds of millions in secured debt, it seems unlikely that everyone is made whole.

A Web of Legal Troubles

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Grove Street CEO Thomas Murphy confirmed that the external funds to acquire the rights are still in place, without mentioning any financial partners by name. First, however, a purchase agreement must be finalized.

This agreement is also key for a separate lawsuit that was filed against the company by a former executive. As highlighted last October, Jamie Warren, the former CFO of both American Films and Grove Street Funding (which is linked to Grove Street Partners), sued both companies over unpaid salary in 2024.

In May, 2025, a Texas federal court entered a final judgment in favor of the former employee, granting her $525,000, plus attorneys fees and costs. Thus far, the judgment has not been paid, but that could change soon.

A day after the bankruptcy court approved the sale of litigation rights, Murphy informed the Texas court that a first payment toward the outstanding judgment will follow shortly, adding that the CSS deal is ‘the only way that reasonably happens.’

Whether the sale will eventually go through has yet to be seen, but it is clear that a lot is riding on it: for Grove Street, its former CFO, Internet providers, lawyers, movie producers, and all the claim holders in the bankruptcy proceeding.

And even if the sale goes through, the profitability of the deal will depend, in no small part, on what the Supreme Court decides in the Cox case in the months ahead.

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A copy of the order of the Delaware Bankruptcy Court, approving the sharing agreement (pdf) that effectively greenlights the deal, is available here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Anti-piracy reporting tools have existed for years, but generally speaking, there is little interest from the public to expose pirates.

The Business Software Alliance previously offered people hard cash in exchange for tips, which helped , but there are other potential reward options too.

Online Pirate Hunters

The Czech anti-piracy company Warezio , which works for various international rightsholders, believes that it can motivate people to report pirate streaming links through a gamified experience. The company recently launched a new platform, inviting the public to help spot links to pirated content.

The ‘Online Hunter’ portal effectively turns people into pirate ‘hunters.’ As the name suggests, users of the site can report pirate links on various platforms and earn points when these are reviewed and approved.

There’s a wide variety of content that users can report, ranging from blockbuster movies to current live streaming events.

Newly discovered live streaming links have the most value, while previously reported content doesn’t bring in many points. With sufficient points, users can then buy vouchers for online streaming services such as Netflix, HBO, or Oktagon MMA , which is an official partner.

The new portal has not been widely promoted because Warezio prefers a soft launch. However, the first links have already been submitted. This is in part due to targeted promotion, which showed a banner to a select group of Oktagon streamers during the last event.

‘Online Hunter’ is currently targeted at countries in Eastern and Central Europe, but Warezio’s Jakub Hájek informs TorrentFreak that he hopes to expand it to Western Europe in the near future. That might also open the door to more rightsholders, he says, as “reporting to the authorities” is generally frowned upon in Eastern Europe.

Pirates Knock Out?

At the moment, Oktagon MMA is the only named partner. The MMA organization operates based on a pay-per-view model, which makes it more vulnerable to piracy than traditional VOD platforms.

“The financial damages caused by piracy are noticeable,” Oktagon’s Martin Šteso tells TorrentFreak

Šteso explains that the company previously relied on its social media team to track down infringing streams. However, that approach had significant limits in scale and reach, especially when dealing with a range of semi-private communities on services such as Discord.

By crowdsourcing detection of piracy threats that automated tools typically miss, Oktagon hopes to fight back against pirate streaming.

“The main goal is to uncover piracy groups, particularly those operating on platforms like Discord, that are otherwise incredibly difficult to detect. Because many of these communities are private and restricted to smaller circles, manual detection is nearly impossible,” Šteso notes.

Points, Levels and Leaderboards

‘Online Hunter’ currently supports reporting links on nine platforms: Discord, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, Twitter/X, YouTube, and ok.ru. As users report more links, they can reach new levels and climb the public leaderboard as their approved points increase.

Whether this gamified approach will appeal to the public at large has yet to be seen. Currently, there are just a few active flaggers on the platform, according to the leaderboard.

Warezio certainly believes in the project, and the company informs us that more rightsholders are welcome to get in touch if they actively would like to participate.

Oktagon MMA hopes that ‘Online Hunter’ will ultimately become a household tool to identify hidden pirate communities. Thus far, the MMA organization has promoted ‘Online Hunter’ to a select group of users, but a broader promotion is also being considered.

Whether crowdsourced human intelligence is a durable addition to automated anti-piracy tools remains to be seen, but a project like Online Hunters will certainly get people talking.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The anime industry has experienced a surge in popularity, but this growth is not limited to legal streaming platforms.

A significant portion of the demand for anime arrives from unofficial channels, with several major pirate websites dedicated solely to anime content.

This includes HiAnime.to, which, with an estimated 150 million+ monthly visits is one of the most trafficked websites on the Internet. However, a message now displayed across the site’s main domains suggests that may be about to change.

“It’s time to say goodbye. And thank you for a wonderful journey with great moments,” the message reads, also shown on other official domains, such as HiAnime.me.

The HiAnime name first appeared under its current name in March 2024, as a rebranding of the Aniwatch website, which was known as Zoro.to before that. Since then, its popularity has continued to grow. Until now.

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt

While the goodbye message seems crystal clear, the site’s official Discord server and Reddit community don’t appear convinced. While it is unclear whether the operators are moderating these communities, the mods and admins caution people not to jump to conclusions.

“We are currently aware of the situation and are actively reviewing the matter. We are monitoring the situation and attempting to obtain further clarification as of the moment,” a status message in the Discord channel reads.

At the same time, a Reddit thread urges people not to panic and stop sharing unverified information.

Legal Pressure

At TorrentFreak, we can verify that the “goodbye” message posted on the official HiAnime domains reads like a shutdown notice. Time will tell whether the site will indeed remain offline. It’s also an option that it will rebrand yet again.

HiAnime has had its fair share of legal pressure over the past two years. The MPA’s Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has targeted the site on multiple occasions, for example.

Earlier this month, the pressure further increased as the U.S. Trade Representative added HiAnime to its annual list of notorious piracy markets.

There is no evidence to suggest that the legal pressure has anything to do with the goodbye message on the site, but it would be a fitting explanation. If any new information comes in, we will update this article accordingly.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In March of 2024, the Dallas-based IPTV operator William Freemon was sued for copyright infringement by Amazon, Netflix, and several major Hollywood studios.

Freemon defended himself but failed to hire a lawyer for his company, Freemon Technology Industries (FTI). Instead, he responded by filing various motions while refusing to formally answer the copyright infringement complaint.

With the case not moving forward, the movie companies eventually had enough and requested a default judgment of $18,750,000 in copyright damages.

Last month, a Texas magistrate judge recommended granting this in full, and this week, the order was formally adopted by U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay.

Judge Grants $18,750,000 Judgment

As detailed in our earlier coverage , Freemon allegedly operated four unauthorized streaming services: Streaming TV Now, TV Nitro, Instant IPTV, and Cash App IPTV. In addition, he was accused of running a pirate IPTV reseller operation called Live TV Resellers.

‘Streaming TV Now’ was the most popular IPTV service, according to the legal paperwork. It first appeared online in 2020 and offers access to 11,000 live channels, as well as on-demand access to over 27,000 movies and 9,000 TV series.

The studios identified a sample of 125 copyrighted works that were available through the IPTV services, including Universal’s Oppenheimer. As damages compensation, the court granted the recommended statutory maximum of $150,000 per work for willful infringement, for a total of $18,750,000.

This judgment amount will continue to grow, as the court approved a 3.51% annual post-judgment interest rate until the amount is paid in full. In addition, the attorneys’ fee award has yet to be determined and will also add to the total.

In addition to the damages, Judge Lindsay also entered a permanent injunction, which bars Freemon and FTI from reproducing, distributing, or publicly performing any of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, and from assisting others in doing so.

Injunction Targets Domain Names

The signed injunction also requires the eight domain names to be transferred immeidately to the studios’ control: instantiptv.net, streamingtvnow.com, streamingtvnow.net, tvnitro.net, cashappiptv.com, livetvresellers.com, stncloud.ltd, and stnlive.ltd.

The associated domain registrars have five days to facilitate theese transfers. If they fail to do so, the TLD registries can be ordered to either transfer the domains to a registrar of the studios’ choosing, or place them on registry hold, which would make them inaccessible too.

To address a potential whack-a-mole scenario, the studios can also return to court to add further domains to the injunction, as long as evidence shows Freemon operates them.

All in all, the court order is a clear victory for the movie companies. Whether the defendant will be able to pay over $18 million in damages is another matter. The domain seizure order does not have an immediate effect either, as all the mentioned domains have been offline for a while already.

That said, if Freemon ever attempts to relaunch the services, the movie companies will come prepared.

—

A copy of the default judgment, signed March 11, at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, is available here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

As pirate IPTV services have continued to grow in recent years, TV broadcasters and distributors have intensified their efforts to combat the problem.

Pay TV provider DISH Network , in tandem with the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy ( IBCAP ), has been particularly active on this front, filing a series of lawsuits in the United States.

DISH vs. Innetra

In one of these cases, DISH last year filed a copyright infringement complaint against UK hosting provider ‘Innetra PC’ at a California federal court, accusing the company of aiding widespread copyright infringement while ignoring takedown requests.

Based on IBCAP’s evidence, the complaint alleged that Innetra provided essential infrastructure for pirate streaming services, including the separately targeted Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV , as well as Honeybee, Xtremehd, and Caliptostreams.

In its complaint, DISH argued that Innetra could not rely on safe harbor protection, as it largely ignored hundreds of infringement notices. Additionally, Innetra allegedly failed to designate a DMCA agent and had no policy for terminating repeat infringers.

The complaint listed 171 copyrighted works and requested damages of up to $25 million against Innetra and its general partner, Elna Paulette Valentin was also named as a defendant personally.

Innetra Requested Dismissal

In July last year, Innetra responded with a motion to dismiss . The company argued that the court lacked jurisdiction, as the UK company has minimal to no contacts with the United States or California.

Among other things, Innetra said it had no U.S. servers and had signed up just one paying U.S. customer since its founding, whose account was only active for two months.

The hosting provider did not disregard the idea of a legal battle entirely. Instead, it said that if DISH insisted on filing a lawsuit, it could do so in the United Kingdom, not in the United States.

“Dish may pursue its dispute in the United Kingdom, where Innetra is located. Dish, however, may not force foreign defendants that lack minimum contacts with the United States, let alone California, to defend themselves in the United States,” Inntra wrote in its motion last year.

Court Dismisses $25 Million Lawsuit

After the motion to dismiss was filed, the court allowed DISH sixty days of jurisdictional discovery before ruling on the motion to dismiss. However, that proved not to be enough to overcome the jurisdiction challenges.

Last week, Judge Noël Wise granted Innetra’s motion to dismiss, concluding that DISH had failed to demonstrate specific personal jurisdiction over the UK hosting company. The case was dismissed without prejudice.

The court applied the “purposeful direction” test established in recent Ninth Circuit case law, which requires a plaintiff to show that a defendant made regular sales in the forum and consciously cultivated a customer base there. However, based on the evidence provided by DISH, that is not the case here.

At the time of the alleged infringement, in 2024, Innetra had no U.S. customers at all. Two American customers briefly appeared in 2025: one paid $682 over two months before cancelling, and the other signed up for nine days without purchasing anything. The court described these contacts as “scant, fleeting, and attenuated.”

DISH also argued that Innetra’s peering arrangements with NTT and Lumen showed a deliberate effort to reach U.S. users. However, evidence provided during discovery showed that Innetra contracted with the German and Dutch branches of these companies, not their U.S. affiliates. Innetra did not use U.S.-based servers from these companies.

Finally, the court was not convinced by DISH’s evidence that nearly 49,000 instances of pirate IPTV services used Innetra’s infrastructure to transmit content into the U.S. Since these pirate services were making the connection to U.S. users, not Innetra, the hosting provider is not responsible for jurisdictional purposes.

What’s Next?

Because the case was dismissed without prejudice, DISH is allowed to refile the case, potentially with extra evidence. And as Innetra noted in its motion to dismiss, DISH can also file a lawsuit in the United Kingdom if they like.

For Innetra, putting up a defense turned out to be vital. After all, another DISH lawsuit against Ukraine-based hosting provider Virtual Systems recently showed that not responding in court can result in a multi-million-dollar default judgment.
For now, there is no sign of follow-up action against Innetra yet. However, DISH certainly continues its enforcement efforts elsewhere. Just last month, the company filed a fresh $21 million lawsuit against pirate IPTV operation DMTN , whose operator allegedly posed as Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan.

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A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Noël Wise’s order on the motion to dismiss is available here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Through its non-profit organization, the Internet Archive (IA) aims to preserve digital history for generations to come.

The Archive’s popular Wayback Machine has archived decades of web history, and it also aims to preserve content directly: by scanning physical books or recording old gramophones, for example.

One of the more unique preservation projects centers around Myspace, which was the leading social network twenty years ago. The site was particularly popular among musicians, but today it’s a shell of its former self with virtually no new activity. In fact, quite a bit of content was permanently lost.

The Myspace Dragon Hoard

In March 2019, Myspace publicly announced that all music uploaded to the platform between 2003 and 2015 had been wiped. As the result of a failed server migration, an estimated 50 million songs from 14 million artists were gone.

Days later, Internet Archive employee Jason Scott announced on X that some files may have been preserved. An anonymous academic group had mailed him a hard drive containing roughly 490,000 of those recordings, scraped from Myspace between 2008 and 2010.

“ANNOUNCING THE MYSPACE MUSIC DRAGON HOARD, a 450,000 song collection of mp3s from 2008-2010 on Myspace, gathered before they were all ‘deleted’ by mistake,” Scott posted at the time.

This collection was uploaded to archive.org and made available for free, allowing people to stream and download the music without any limits. In addition, an unnamed entity launched a companion site, lostmyspace.com, with a dedicated search and playback interface for the archived files.

With key historical data safely stored, the Myspace preservation effort was celebrated widely. However, not everyone was pleased.

Musician Sues Internet Archive

Two years ago, the Illinois-based musician Anthony Martino found out that several of his songs were part of the Myspace Dragon Hoard. These files were hosted by the Internet Archive without his permission and formed the basis of a legal challenge.

Last December, Martino filed a copyright infringement complaint in federal court. He argues that the recordings from his Myspace should not have been included to begin with, as he made these inaccessible to the public around 2011, long before Myspace lost the data.

An amended complaint, filed in January, accuses Internet Archive of copyright infringement, requesting the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work for willful infringement.

In addition to 11 works in the Myspace database, Martino also claims IA scanned and digitized his physical CD liner notes and printed lyrics, adding 48 additional works to the mix. This puts the (theoretical) maximum damages at $8,850,000.

However, in its answer, Internet Archive pointed out that potential damages should be reduced to the statutory minimum, as low as $200 per work, because any infringement was innocent. That would put the damages floor at roughly $11,800.

Internet Archive: We Didn’t Upload Anything

The Internet Archive vehemently disputes the copyright infringement claims. The organization explains that it was not directly involved in uploading the ‘Myspace Dragon Hoard’. IA notes that this was done by the anonymous academic researchers that were mentioned earlier.

“A group of academics that had saved some of the lost materials uploaded their archive onto the Internet Archive’s website,” the Archive’s attorney informed the court in a joint case management statement last week, noting that the organization is protected against third-party claims by the DMCA safe harbor.

IA does not see any outstanding issues and says that, to its understanding, all of Martino’s takedown DMCA requests were eventually processed.

In its formal answer to the complaint, Internet Archive also raises a notable counter-argument: it denies that any license Martino granted to Myspace by uploading his recordings was “fully and immediately revocable,” and denies that such a license prohibited distribution to third parties outside Myspace’s platform.

Martino, meanwhile, remains convinced that IA has a more active role. Among other things, he points to public statements by Scott himself describing his role in coordinating the collection’s upload.

To Trial

Since the case will move forward to trial, both parties will get the chance to conduct discovery to find evidence for their claims. The eventual trial date has not been scheduled yet, but both parties suggest planning it for April of 2027.

This is not the first music copyright dispute the Internet Archive is involved in. The organization was previously sued by several major music labels for digitizing gramophones. This case was settled confidentially last September.

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A copy of Martino’s amended complaint is available here (pdf) . The Internet Archive’s answer can be found here (pdf) , while the case management statement is here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Last month, we reported on a new push from the Motion Picture Association and the ACE anti-piracy alliance, hoping to identify several pirate site operators.

They obtained DMCA subpoenas at a California federal court, requiring Discord and Cloudflare to share all personal information they have on customers associated with domains such as hdfull.org, sflix.fi, and pstream.mov.

ACE has used these subpoenas as an intelligence-gathering tool for years. While these efforts are often fruitless, as many site owners use fake data, they occasionally have some effect. That’s also true for the latest round, which has motivated P-Stream to shut down permanently.

P-Stream Shuts Down

A few hours ago, P-stream’s operator, Pas, informed TorrentFreak that they decided to shut down the website effective immediately. This decision is a direct result of the DMCA subpoena and the added legal pressure, which previously resulted in the loss of the Discord server as well.

People who try to access the site’s official domain are now redirected to a shutdown message . Pas stresses that P-Stream never hosted any infringing material, but the operator can’t afford to mount a legal defense if it came to that.

“Although P-Stream does NOT host, control, or guarantee any media or content, I can’t afford to fight that in court. So to be safe, P-Stream will no longer host a public instance,” the operator writes.

While the operator regrets the shutdown, Pas also mentions that the project was life-consuming and took its toll, so the decision to throw in the towel could be a healthy one on that front too.

Code Remains Public

P-Stream was launched in April 2024, when movie-web was shut down by legal pressure from Hollywood. It eventually grew into a popular project of its own with close to an estimated ten million visits last month.

However, two years after its predecessor’s demise, history is repeating, perhaps in more ways than we now know.

The P-Stream project was largely based on sudo-flix, which itself was a successor to the original movie-web code. Today, the (alleged) P-Stream code remains available as well, through publicly available GitHub repositories . Whether these repos are controlled by the site’s operator is unknown.

As always, there will likely be people who try to keep the project going, and once they become popular enough, these projects will come on Hollywood’s radar, repeating the same process.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.