piracy

One of the most popular television shows is also one of the most pirated television shows: Game of Thrones. The series has been marred by piracy in various ways throughout its life, not the least of which was the major leak that resulted in a handful of episodes hitting torrents networks before airing on HBO. Now that the seventh and final season is underway, HBO is in overdrive trying to protect its property, and it has its sights set on pirates.

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In a bizarre turn of events, at least in light of the company's anti-piracy actions, Google Search shows users the best torrenting websites in a single, convenient scrolling set of cards. These cards appear at the top of Google Search when users query 'best torrenting/torrent sites,' and they include things like isoHunt, Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, and more.

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Fame does have a price, as the Kodi, formerly XBMC, community is now finding out the hard way. The popularity of cord-cutting and set-top boxes led to the popularity of the open source Kodi home theater platform, which, in turn, lead to explosion of third-party add-ons. Not all add-ons, however, are created equal and some of them carry some legal liability. The worst case scenario did happen and one such add-on has been sued, causing other add-ons to quickly abandon ship before matter got worse.

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The recently released adventure-puzzle game Rime has brought light to the subject of DRM and anti-piracy software this last week. Shortly after release, those playing the PC version began complaining about noticeable performance issues with the game as a result of the Denuvo software, which checks to make sure the DRM is still intact. Rime's makers then promised to remove the software if it was cracked. Now, only five days later, they're keeping their word.

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Smurfs 2 might not be a memorable film, but it would probably go down in history in a notorious way. And not through any fault of its own, mind you. Almost comically, the film will be remembered in the piracy scene as the first title to have an Ultra HD, some would (incorrectly) call it 4K, copy ripped from a supposedly tightly protected UHD Blu-Ray Disc. In other words, the age of UHD BR piracy might be at hand.

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The upcoming fifth season of the show Orange is the New Black isn't due to premiere on Netflix until June 9th, but most of the episodes have already been leaked online. A hacker by the name of "TheDarkOverlord" has taken responsibility for the leak, claiming to have stolen the episodes from a third-party production vendor. The first episode appeared online early Saturday, with the following nine released to torrent sites shortly after when ransom demands failed to be met.

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The Recording Industry Association of America, more commonly known as the RIAA, is tired of the ‘antiquated’ process that is DMCA takedown requests. Both the RIAA and a total of 14 other groups have formally expressed their distaste for such takedowns, likening it to a game of whack-a-mole in which every request quickly results in a new listing for the same pirated content after the original is pulled. Instead, this collective wants to see ISPs filter out pirated content directly.

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The days of content software receiving notices of copyright infringement from their internet service providers are about to come to an end. The Center for Copyright Information announced today that it's killing off its Copyright Alert System, which began seeing use four years ago. The system would send a number of warnings to consumers when ISPs, studios, and artists detected copyright infringement through P2P file sharing, with different punishments envisioned depending on how many warnings a person had received.

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DRM, or Digital Rights Management (some call it Digital Restrictions Management), is a class of technologies and software aimed to protect copyrighted material from unauthorized access, a.k.a. piracy. But what if that DRM itself is guilty of helping pirates do exactly that? That is somewhat the position Google is finding itself in when the DRM technology it uses in its Chrome browser has been found to have a bug that actually makes it easier to lift encrypted videos streamed from the likes of Netflix or Amazon Prime and spread them around illegally.

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There's no doubt that software piracy is a major issue around the globe, costing companies and developers no small amount of money. In an attempt to better understand the practice on national levels, a group of researchers from Germany's MPRA have conducted a study determining that the rate of software piracy is significantly lower in countries with a higher collective intelligence.

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Since online piracy started becoming a thing in the late 90's, companies have warned that it cuts into sales. One could argue that piracy can act as a means for generating interest in something, which a person might later purchase. Or that pirates wouldn't be buying the movies/music that they illegally download anyway. A new study does show a link between movie piracy and lost sales, but it might actually be the studios' fault.

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Piracy is bad, and you shouldn't do it. But that doesn't stop many people from doing it. While it's hard to say which company has their software pirated the most, Adobe is a company that is no stranger to the issue. They've tried different methods to prevent piracy, but today they're taking a different approach, shame.

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