On February 11, 2025, a coalition of forty media outlets took legal action in France hoping to slam the brakes on mass piracy of thousands of articles published each day.

Under the umbrella groups La Dépêche du Midi, La Montagne, Sud Ouest, Le Télégramme, Publihebdos, and La Nouvelle République du Centre, and together the “Alliance”, the publishers hoped to derail “parasitic” news platform, news.dayfr.com.

In operation since 2021, the apparently automated platform allegedly harvests the media companies’ articles. With assistance from AI, it then republishes plagiarized or obvious copies of the articles on its own portal. A regurgitation rate of between 5 and 15 articles every minute, means up to 6,000 articles are republished every day.

Investigation Reveals the Rest of the Iceberg

Days before the application was filed at the Court of Paris (Tribunal de Paris), articles appeared in French publications denouncing news.dayfr.com and its negative effects.

In an article published by Next, Jean-Marc Manach recalled holding a training session on fact-checking for a group of professional journalists. During that session, one participant apologized for taking a few moments to quickly complete and publish an article of their own.

“To illustrate why and how it was important to learn how to identify news articles and sites generated by AI (GenAI), I took the homepage of news.dayfr.com as an example,” Manach explained. “I had already identified it as the main GenAI plagiarist in French. But I didn’t expect the journalist to discover, stunned, that this site had just published a copy-paste of his article, posted online only half an hour earlier.”

A joint investigation by Libération and Next revealed that at least 1,000 similar sites churn out infringing content in much the same way. In some cases, AI ‘hallucinations’ aren’t noticed by site operators or the public, resulting in bogus automated news being taken as fact, then cited as source material for articles published on Wikipedia.

Articles reporting on the pirate news sites were reproduced by those very same sites, some with only minor cosmetic changes, as the example above shows. Other published articles were little more than elaborate fiction, yet still ended up on Google News due to the use of domains previously used by reputable resources.

Court of Paris Considers Request for Blocking

In a process that began on February 11, the plaintiffs summoned the leading ISPs in France – Bouygues Télécom, Free, Sfr, Sfr Fibre and Orange – to appear at a hearing on March 2025 before the Court of Paris. The aim was to obtain an order compelling the ISPs to block news.dayfr.com, to prevent customers from accessing plagiarized content.

The decision handed down by the Paris Court dated May 7 reveals that the ISPs – which currently block sites under a voluntary arrangement with the audiovisual industries – stopped short of offering their full cooperation.

ISP ‘Free’ sought assurances from the court that the requested measures respect the principle of proportionality and that blocking measures “would only be taken with respect to the domain name/address https://news.dayfr.com” and would only be in force for a maximum of 12 months.

Orange said it did not oppose the measures but asked the Court to confirm that the publishers had the right to act and that blocking measures would only target the sole domain identified in the application. Sfr and Sfr Fibre questioned whether the requested measures were proportionate and “strictly necessary”.

Site Previously Assessed by Judicial Commissioner

Blocking orders of this type can only be authorized by the judicial authority, after infringement of copyright or related rights has been established. The decision refers to reports drawn up by a judicial commissioner in December 2024, which found that many articles owned by various publishers had appeared on news.dayfr.com. Any changes made to the original works were swiftly dismissed as irrelevant.

“It is clear from all of these findings that the Alliance and the publishing companies have established with sufficient proof that the disputed site allows Internet users to access protected works without the authorization of the rights holders, notwithstanding the slight modifications made to the articles reproduced on the disputed site. The infringement of copyright and related rights has been established,” the decision reads.

The decision notes that the publishing companies are entitled to request measures to protect their rights, especially when considering obstacles that prevent the site’s operator being identified, such as hosting at Cloudflare.

“These elements demonstrate the knowledge of the entirely or almost entirely illicit nature of the links present on the disputed site by the people who contribute to this dissemination and the difficulty for the authors and producers to prosecute those responsible for this site,” the Court continues.

Blocking Order Granted

Having weighed the need for blocking measures against the risk of blocking legal content, the rights of the ISPs to conduct their business, and the infringing nature of the content in question, the Court ruled in favor of the publishers.

[The Court] orders the companies Orange, Sfr, Sfr fibre, Free and Bouygues télécom to implement or have implemented, at the latest within 15 days following the service of this judgment and for a period of 18 months from the implementation of the measures ordered, all measures likely to prevent access to the site , from French territory, including in the overseas departments or regions and single collectivities as well as in the Wallis and Futuna Islands, in New Caledonia and in the French Southern and Antarctic Territories, by their subscribers based on a contract taken out in this territory, by any effective means, and in particular by blocking the domain name

Orange, Sfr, Sfr fibre, Free and Bouygues telecom are responsible for any costs incurred when implementing the blocking and in the event that the measures face circumvention, the Court will consider submissions.

The question now is whether news.dayfr.com will attempt to circumvent blocking. Two changes are clear already; all articles listed in the publisher’s application have been taken down, and a new subdomain (euro.dayfr.com) is available. Unfortunately, a more significant issue may need to be addressed.

Dayfr.com may be considered a key threat to French publishers, but there’s nothing particularly unique about the site.

Look closely enough and the site’s ‘secret sauce’ becomes evident; it uses a content management system (Mubashier) ostensibly run from the Middle East, that’s also in use on many other sites. That raises the real possibility that successfully blocking dayfr.com would give rise to replacements using the same system.

Finally, in common with similar preconfigured platforms, Mubashier-powered sites may be expected to ‘just work’ right out of the box, without customers having to put in too much effort.

That seems to be a pretty good fit when considering the intended purpose of dayfr.com; automatically grab content and then publish it with minor tweaks, if any. Masquerading as a genuine news site only serves as a distraction for other things going on in the background, including dubious SEO schemes.

Among many pages hidden from search engines are URLs that reveal a bit more about how the sites obtain content, and a few other things which may be a little more exposed than intended.

Efforts by some to offload malware seemed particularly rude, especially after spending considerable energy claiming to be ethical news sites. Of course, Cloudflare may offer some protection, but clusters of sites hosted in Germany, and right under the publishers’ noses in France, may not always have the type of cover they expected.

The Tribunal de Paris blocking order is available here ( pdf , French)

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

On February 11, 2025, a coalition of forty media outlets took legal action in France hoping to slam the brakes on mass piracy of thousands of articles published each day.

Under the umbrella groups La Dépêche du Midi, La Montagne, Sud Ouest, Le Télégramme, Publihebdos, and La Nouvelle République du Centre, and together the “Alliance”, the publishers hoped to derail “parasitic” news platform, news.dayfr.com.

In operation since 2021, the apparently automated platform allegedly harvests the media companies’ articles. With assistance from AI, it then republishes plagiarized or obvious copies of the articles on its own portal. A regurgitation rate of between 5 and 15 articles every minute, means up to 6,000 articles are republished every day.

Investigation Reveals the Rest of the Iceberg

Days before the application was filed at the Court of Paris (Tribunal de Paris), articles appeared in French publications denouncing news.dayfr.com and its negative effects.

In an article published by Next, Jean-Marc Manach recalled holding a training session on fact-checking for a group of professional journalists. During that session, one participant apologized for taking a few moments to quickly complete and publish an article of their own.

“To illustrate why and how it was important to learn how to identify news articles and sites generated by AI (GenAI), I took the homepage of news.dayfr.com as an example,” Manach explained. “I had already identified it as the main GenAI plagiarist in French. But I didn’t expect the journalist to discover, stunned, that this site had just published a copy-paste of his article, posted online only half an hour earlier.”

A joint investigation by Libération and Next revealed that at least 1,000 similar sites churn out infringing content in much the same way. In some cases, AI ‘hallucinations’ aren’t noticed by site operators or the public, resulting in bogus automated news being taken as fact, then cited as source material for articles published on Wikipedia.

Articles reporting on the pirate news sites were reproduced by those very same sites, some with only minor cosmetic changes, as the example above shows. Other published articles were little more than elaborate fiction, yet still ended up on Google News due to the use of domains previously used by reputable resources.

Court of Paris Considers Request for Blocking

In a process that began on February 11, the plaintiffs summoned the leading ISPs in France – Bouygues Télécom, Free, Sfr, Sfr Fibre and Orange – to appear at a hearing on March 2025 before the Court of Paris. The aim was to obtain an order compelling the ISPs to block news.dayfr.com, to prevent customers from accessing plagiarized content.

The decision handed down by the Paris Court dated May 7 reveals that the ISPs – which currently block sites under a voluntary arrangement with the audiovisual industries – stopped short of offering their full cooperation.

ISP ‘Free’ sought assurances from the court that the requested measures respect the principle of proportionality and that blocking measures “would only be taken with respect to the domain name/address https://news.dayfr.com” and would only be in force for a maximum of 12 months.

Orange said it did not oppose the measures but asked the Court to confirm that the publishers had the right to act and that blocking measures would only target the sole domain identified in the application. Sfr and Sfr Fibre questioned whether the requested measures were proportionate and “strictly necessary”.

Site Previously Assessed by Judicial Commissioner

Blocking orders of this type can only be authorized by the judicial authority, after infringement of copyright or related rights has been established. The decision refers to reports drawn up by a judicial commissioner in December 2024, which found that many articles owned by various publishers had appeared on news.dayfr.com. Any changes made to the original works were swiftly dismissed as irrelevant.

“It is clear from all of these findings that the Alliance and the publishing companies have established with sufficient proof that the disputed site allows Internet users to access protected works without the authorization of the rights holders, notwithstanding the slight modifications made to the articles reproduced on the disputed site. The infringement of copyright and related rights has been established,” the decision reads.

The decision notes that the publishing companies are entitled to request measures to protect their rights, especially when considering obstacles that prevent the site’s operator being identified, such as hosting at Cloudflare.

“These elements demonstrate the knowledge of the entirely or almost entirely illicit nature of the links present on the disputed site by the people who contribute to this dissemination and the difficulty for the authors and producers to prosecute those responsible for this site,” the Court continues.

Blocking Order Granted

Having weighed the need for blocking measures against the risk of blocking legal content, the rights of the ISPs to conduct their business, and the infringing nature of the content in question, the Court ruled in favor of the publishers.

[The Court] orders the companies Orange, Sfr, Sfr fibre, Free and Bouygues télécom to implement or have implemented, at the latest within 15 days following the service of this judgment and for a period of 18 months from the implementation of the measures ordered, all measures likely to prevent access to the site , from French territory, including in the overseas departments or regions and single collectivities as well as in the Wallis and Futuna Islands, in New Caledonia and in the French Southern and Antarctic Territories, by their subscribers based on a contract taken out in this territory, by any effective means, and in particular by blocking the domain name

Orange, Sfr, Sfr fibre, Free and Bouygues telecom are responsible for any costs incurred when implementing the blocking and in the event that the measures face circumvention, the Court will consider submissions.

The question now is whether news.dayfr.com will attempt to circumvent blocking. Two changes are clear already; all articles listed in the publisher’s application have been taken down, and a new subdomain (euro.dayfr.com) is available. Unfortunately, a more significant issue may need to be addressed.

Dayfr.com may be considered a key threat to French publishers, but there’s nothing particularly unique about the site.

Look closely enough and the site’s ‘secret sauce’ becomes evident; it uses a content management system (Mubashier) ostensibly run from the Middle East, that’s also in use on many other sites. That raises the real possibility that successfully blocking dayfr.com would give rise to replacements using the same system.

Finally, in common with similar preconfigured platforms, Mubashier-powered sites may be expected to ‘just work’ right out of the box, without customers having to put in too much effort.

That seems to be a pretty good fit when considering the intended purpose of dayfr.com; automatically grab content and then publish it with minor tweaks, if any. Masquerading as a genuine news site only serves as a distraction for other things going on in the background, including dubious SEO schemes.

Among many pages hidden from search engines are URLs that reveal a bit more about how the sites obtain content, and a few other things which may be a little more exposed than intended.

Efforts by some to offload malware seemed particularly rude, especially after spending considerable energy claiming to be ethical news sites. Of course, Cloudflare may offer some protection, but clusters of sites hosted in Germany, and right under the publishers’ noses in France, may not always have the type of cover they expected.

The Tribunal de Paris blocking order is available here ( pdf , French)

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

On February 11, 2025, a coalition of forty media outlets took legal action in France hoping to slam the brakes on mass piracy of thousands of articles published each day.

Under the umbrella groups La Dépêche du Midi, La Montagne, Sud Ouest, Le Télégramme, Publihebdos, and La Nouvelle République du Centre, and together the “Alliance”, the publishers hoped to derail “parasitic” news platform, news.dayfr.com.

In operation since 2021, the apparently automated platform allegedly harvests the media companies’ articles. With assistance from AI, it then republishes plagiarized or obvious copies of the articles on its own portal. A regurgitation rate of between 5 and 15 articles every minute, means up to 6,000 articles are republished every day.

Investigation Reveals the Rest of the Iceberg

Days before the application was filed at the Court of Paris (Tribunal de Paris), articles appeared in French publications denouncing news.dayfr.com and its negative effects.

In an article published by Next, Jean-Marc Manach recalled holding a training session on fact-checking for a group of professional journalists. During that session, one participant apologized for taking a few moments to quickly complete and publish an article of their own.

“To illustrate why and how it was important to learn how to identify news articles and sites generated by AI (GenAI), I took the homepage of news.dayfr.com as an example,” Manach explained. “I had already identified it as the main GenAI plagiarist in French. But I didn’t expect the journalist to discover, stunned, that this site had just published a copy-paste of his article, posted online only half an hour earlier.”

A joint investigation by Libération and Next revealed that at least 1,000 similar sites churn out infringing content in much the same way. In some cases, AI ‘hallucinations’ aren’t noticed by site operators or the public, resulting in bogus automated news being taken as fact, then cited as source material for articles published on Wikipedia.

Articles reporting on the pirate news sites were reproduced by those very same sites, some with only minor cosmetic changes, as the example above shows. Other published articles were little more than elaborate fiction, yet still ended up on Google News due to the use of domains previously used by reputable resources.

Court of Paris Considers Request for Blocking

In a process that began on February 11, the plaintiffs summoned the leading ISPs in France – Bouygues Télécom, Free, Sfr, Sfr Fibre and Orange – to appear at a hearing on March 2025 before the Court of Paris. The aim was to obtain an order compelling the ISPs to block news.dayfr.com, to prevent customers from accessing plagiarized content.

The decision handed down by the Paris Court dated May 7 reveals that the ISPs – which currently block sites under a voluntary arrangement with the audiovisual industries – stopped short of offering their full cooperation.

ISP ‘Free’ sought assurances from the court that the requested measures respect the principle of proportionality and that blocking measures “would only be taken with respect to the domain name/address https://news.dayfr.com” and would only be in force for a maximum of 12 months.

Orange said it did not oppose the measures but asked the Court to confirm that the publishers had the right to act and that blocking measures would only target the sole domain identified in the application. Sfr and Sfr Fibre questioned whether the requested measures were proportionate and “strictly necessary”.

Site Previously Assessed by Judicial Commissioner

Blocking orders of this type can only be authorized by the judicial authority, after infringement of copyright or related rights has been established. The decision refers to reports drawn up by a judicial commissioner in December 2024, which found that many articles owned by various publishers had appeared on news.dayfr.com. Any changes made to the original works were swiftly dismissed as irrelevant.

“It is clear from all of these findings that the Alliance and the publishing companies have established with sufficient proof that the disputed site allows Internet users to access protected works without the authorization of the rights holders, notwithstanding the slight modifications made to the articles reproduced on the disputed site. The infringement of copyright and related rights has been established,” the decision reads.

The decision notes that the publishing companies are entitled to request measures to protect their rights, especially when considering obstacles that prevent the site’s operator being identified, such as hosting at Cloudflare.

“These elements demonstrate the knowledge of the entirely or almost entirely illicit nature of the links present on the disputed site by the people who contribute to this dissemination and the difficulty for the authors and producers to prosecute those responsible for this site,” the Court continues.

Blocking Order Granted

Having weighed the need for blocking measures against the risk of blocking legal content, the rights of the ISPs to conduct their business, and the infringing nature of the content in question, the Court ruled in favor of the publishers.

[The Court] orders the companies Orange, Sfr, Sfr fibre, Free and Bouygues télécom to implement or have implemented, at the latest within 15 days following the service of this judgment and for a period of 18 months from the implementation of the measures ordered, all measures likely to prevent access to the site , from French territory, including in the overseas departments or regions and single collectivities as well as in the Wallis and Futuna Islands, in New Caledonia and in the French Southern and Antarctic Territories, by their subscribers based on a contract taken out in this territory, by any effective means, and in particular by blocking the domain name

Orange, Sfr, Sfr fibre, Free and Bouygues telecom are responsible for any costs incurred when implementing the blocking and in the event that the measures face circumvention, the Court will consider submissions.

The question now is whether news.dayfr.com will attempt to circumvent blocking. Two changes are clear already; all articles listed in the publisher’s application have been taken down, and a new subdomain (euro.dayfr.com) is available. Unfortunately, a more significant issue may need to be addressed.

Dayfr.com may be considered a key threat to French publishers, but there’s nothing particularly unique about the site.

Look closely enough and the site’s ‘secret sauce’ becomes evident; it uses a content management system (Mubashier) ostensibly run from the Middle East, that’s also in use on many other sites. That raises the real possibility that successfully blocking dayfr.com would give rise to replacements using the same system.

Finally, in common with similar preconfigured platforms, Mubashier-powered sites may be expected to ‘just work’ right out of the box, without customers having to put in too much effort.

That seems to be a pretty good fit when considering the intended purpose of dayfr.com; automatically grab content and then publish it with minor tweaks, if any. Masquerading as a genuine news site only serves as a distraction for other things going on in the background, including dubious SEO schemes.

Among many pages hidden from search engines are URLs that reveal a bit more about how the sites obtain content, and a few other things which may be a little more exposed than intended.

Efforts by some to offload malware seemed particularly rude, especially after spending considerable energy claiming to be ethical news sites. Of course, Cloudflare may offer some protection, but clusters of sites hosted in Germany, and right under the publishers’ noses in France, may not always have the type of cover they expected.

The Tribunal de Paris blocking order is available here ( pdf , French)

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

Late 2022, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.

The record labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

A Texas federal jury found Grande guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement, and the ISP was ordered to pay $47 million in damages .

The copyright infringement verdict was confirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals but the lower court’s decision on how damages should be calculated was overturned. A new trial will determine the appropriate amount but in the meantime, Grande continues to protest the liability ruling.

Grande Petitions Supreme Court

Earlier this year, Grande asked the Supreme Court to intervene. The Internet provider argued that current law lacks clear standards for handling copyright infringement notices or terminating subscriber accounts.

The petition asked the Supreme Court to answer two key questions, which Grande phrased as follows:

“Whether an ISP is liable for contributory copyright infringement by (i) providing content-neutral internet access to the general public and (ii) failing to terminate that access after receiving two third-party notices alleging someone at a customer’s IP address has infringed.”

Assuming that third-party notices are valid, other questions also remain unanswered. For example, is it fair to disconnect subscribers from vital services? How many notices should trigger a disconnection when ISPs receive millions of them? And should subscribers be protected in any way?

Grande essentially argues that the DMCA, as it’s written, is too ambiguous to handle the present repeat infringer conundrum. Ideally, the law should be clarified but for now it hopes that the court can provide additional clarity.

Music Companies: Rampant Infringement

Last week, the music companies responded to Grande’s argument. In an opposition brief, they note that the questions posed by the ISP are “utterly divorced from reality” and not worth the Court’s attention.

The brief counters the ISP’s focus on subscribers for which it received two copyright infringement notices, noting that the ISP had no intention of disconnecting any subscribers, no matter how many notices they received.

The music companies contend that Grande’s situation is not a symptom of confusing laws, but a consequence of its own “egregious” policies.

“In truth, Grande had a policy to never terminate service to a customer for engaging in copyright infringement,” the music companies write.

“The trial record demonstrated that Grande knew that dozens of its users infringed more than 1,000 times—and one infringed nearly 14,000 times— annually, yet Grande did nothing in response.”

The music companies stress that Grande had no problem terminating subscribers who didn’t pay their bills. However, when rightsholders repeatedly complained about pirating subscribers, it took no action.

The DMCA clearly states that ISPs must adopt and implement a repeat infringer policy to benefit from safe harbor protection. However, according to the music companies, Grande’s policy was to keep servicing these subscribers instead.

Supreme Court or Congress?

All in all, the plaintiffs see no reason for the Supreme Court to take on this case. If Grande believes that the DMCA safe harbor definitions should be changed, it should petition lawmakers, the music companies add.

“If Grande thinks the safe harbor should be radically expanded to allow the kind of shocking disregard for copyrights it displayed, it should take that up with Congress, not this Court.”

After hearing the positions of both sides, it is now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether it will take on this case or not.

Interestingly, this is not the only repeat infringer case currently under review. Last year, Cox Communications filed a similar petition , warning that the current situation could have devastating consequences for the ISP industry and the public.

The Supreme Court previously signaled interest in the issue. While it’s yet to accept the petition, the Court requested the U.S. Solicitor General’s views, to hear what the Government thinks about the matter.

—

A copy of the music companies’ opposition brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court is available here (pdf)

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

Late 2022, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.

The record labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

A Texas federal jury found Grande guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement, and the ISP was ordered to pay $47 million in damages .

The copyright infringement verdict was confirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals but the lower court’s decision on how damages should be calculated was overturned. A new trial will determine the appropriate amount but in the meantime, Grande continues to protest the liability ruling.

Grande Petitions Supreme Court

Earlier this year, Grande asked the Supreme Court to intervene. The Internet provider argued that current law lacks clear standards for handling copyright infringement notices or terminating subscriber accounts.

The petition asked the Supreme Court to answer two key questions, which Grande phrased as follows:

“Whether an ISP is liable for contributory copyright infringement by (i) providing content-neutral internet access to the general public and (ii) failing to terminate that access after receiving two third-party notices alleging someone at a customer’s IP address has infringed.”

Assuming that third-party notices are valid, other questions also remain unanswered. For example, is it fair to disconnect subscribers from vital services? How many notices should trigger a disconnection when ISPs receive millions of them? And should subscribers be protected in any way?

Grande essentially argues that the DMCA, as it’s written, is too ambiguous to handle the present repeat infringer conundrum. Ideally, the law should be clarified but for now it hopes that the court can provide additional clarity.

Music Companies: Rampant Infringement

Last week, the music companies responded to Grande’s argument. In an opposition brief, they note that the questions posed by the ISP are “utterly divorced from reality” and not worth the Court’s attention.

The brief counters the ISP’s focus on subscribers for which it received two copyright infringement notices, noting that the ISP had no intention of disconnecting any subscribers, no matter how many notices they received.

The music companies contend that Grande’s situation is not a symptom of confusing laws, but a consequence of its own “egregious” policies.

“In truth, Grande had a policy to never terminate service to a customer for engaging in copyright infringement,” the music companies write.

“The trial record demonstrated that Grande knew that dozens of its users infringed more than 1,000 times—and one infringed nearly 14,000 times— annually, yet Grande did nothing in response.”

The music companies stress that Grande had no problem terminating subscribers who didn’t pay their bills. However, when rightsholders repeatedly complained about pirating subscribers, it took no action.

The DMCA clearly states that ISPs must adopt and implement a repeat infringer policy to benefit from safe harbor protection. However, according to the music companies, Grande’s policy was to keep servicing these subscribers instead.

Supreme Court or Congress?

All in all, the plaintiffs see no reason for the Supreme Court to take on this case. If Grande believes that the DMCA safe harbor definitions should be changed, it should petition lawmakers, the music companies add.

“If Grande thinks the safe harbor should be radically expanded to allow the kind of shocking disregard for copyrights it displayed, it should take that up with Congress, not this Court.”

After hearing the positions of both sides, it is now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether it will take on this case or not.

Interestingly, this is not the only repeat infringer case currently under review. Last year, Cox Communications filed a similar petition , warning that the current situation could have devastating consequences for the ISP industry and the public.

The Supreme Court previously signaled interest in the issue. While it’s yet to accept the petition, the Court requested the U.S. Solicitor General’s views, to hear what the Government thinks about the matter.

—

A copy of the music companies’ opposition brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court is available here (pdf)

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

Late 2022, several of the world’s largest music companies including Warner Bros. and Sony Music prevailed in their lawsuit against Internet provider Grande Communications.

The record labels accused the Astound-owned ISP of not doing enough to stop pirating subscribers. Specifically, they alleged that the company failed to terminate repeat infringers.

A Texas federal jury found Grande guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement, and the ISP was ordered to pay $47 million in damages .

The copyright infringement verdict was confirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals but the lower court’s decision on how damages should be calculated was overturned. A new trial will determine the appropriate amount but in the meantime, Grande continues to protest the liability ruling.

Grande Petitions Supreme Court

Earlier this year, Grande asked the Supreme Court to intervene. The Internet provider argued that current law lacks clear standards for handling copyright infringement notices or terminating subscriber accounts.

The petition asked the Supreme Court to answer two key questions, which Grande phrased as follows:

“Whether an ISP is liable for contributory copyright infringement by (i) providing content-neutral internet access to the general public and (ii) failing to terminate that access after receiving two third-party notices alleging someone at a customer’s IP address has infringed.”

Assuming that third-party notices are valid, other questions also remain unanswered. For example, is it fair to disconnect subscribers from vital services? How many notices should trigger a disconnection when ISPs receive millions of them? And should subscribers be protected in any way?

Grande essentially argues that the DMCA, as it’s written, is too ambiguous to handle the present repeat infringer conundrum. Ideally, the law should be clarified but for now it hopes that the court can provide additional clarity.

Music Companies: Rampant Infringement

Last week, the music companies responded to Grande’s argument. In an opposition brief, they note that the questions posed by the ISP are “utterly divorced from reality” and not worth the Court’s attention.

The brief counters the ISP’s focus on subscribers for which it received two copyright infringement notices, noting that the ISP had no intention of disconnecting any subscribers, no matter how many notices they received.

The music companies contend that Grande’s situation is not a symptom of confusing laws, but a consequence of its own “egregious” policies.

“In truth, Grande had a policy to never terminate service to a customer for engaging in copyright infringement,” the music companies write.

“The trial record demonstrated that Grande knew that dozens of its users infringed more than 1,000 times—and one infringed nearly 14,000 times— annually, yet Grande did nothing in response.”

The music companies stress that Grande had no problem terminating subscribers who didn’t pay their bills. However, when rightsholders repeatedly complained about pirating subscribers, it took no action.

The DMCA clearly states that ISPs must adopt and implement a repeat infringer policy to benefit from safe harbor protection. However, according to the music companies, Grande’s policy was to keep servicing these subscribers instead.

Supreme Court or Congress?

All in all, the plaintiffs see no reason for the Supreme Court to take on this case. If Grande believes that the DMCA safe harbor definitions should be changed, it should petition lawmakers, the music companies add.

“If Grande thinks the safe harbor should be radically expanded to allow the kind of shocking disregard for copyrights it displayed, it should take that up with Congress, not this Court.”

After hearing the positions of both sides, it is now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether it will take on this case or not.

Interestingly, this is not the only repeat infringer case currently under review. Last year, Cox Communications filed a similar petition , warning that the current situation could have devastating consequences for the ISP industry and the public.

The Supreme Court previously signaled interest in the issue. While it’s yet to accept the petition, the Court requested the U.S. Solicitor General’s views, to hear what the Government thinks about the matter.

—

A copy of the music companies’ opposition brief filed at the U.S. Supreme Court is available here (pdf)

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

For those who had fun playing #laligagate ‘collateral damage bingo’ over the weekend, a full house meant identifying the top internet intermediaries and services, blocked by LaLiga on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Most services utilize shared IP addresses, so typically the number of non-pirate sites blocked at the same time can run to hundreds of sites, potentially more. According to hayahora.futbol data, the following were targeted more than most:

24x Cloudflare IP addresses, 3x Meteverse IP addresses, 3x Twitch, 2x QUICCloud, 2x Netify, and 1x InfinityFree.

GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, and Vercel are among those targeted previously but for whom blocking at one or more ISPs inexplicably remains in place. For those tracking recent events, seeing Vercel on the list again was an unwelcome surprise.

Vercel Blocked Again

Back in April, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch described LaLiga’s blocking as “ indiscriminate ” and tantamount to an “unaccountable form of internet censorship.”

Yet, while Vercel didn’t hold back its critique, the company also pledged to contact LaLiga to see if surprise no-notice IP address blocking could be replaced by something a little more organized and substantially less blunt. Specifically, a blocking method that wouldn’t result in innocent sites being blocked at the same time.

In a post published Sunday on X, Rauch had some good news, and some bad news.

“We’ve been working with [the team at LaLiga] to ensure uninterrupted access in Spain to the @vercel global CDN,” Rauch revealed.

To help LaLiga mitigate the risk of overblocking, Gauch says the company set up an inbox which gave LaLiga direct access to its Site Reliability Engineering incident management system. This effectively meant that high priority requests could be processed swiftly, in line with LaLiga’s demands while avoiding collateral damage.

And the Bad News

“Vercel has set up a dedicated inbox for LaLiga to file reports. Sadly, they just blocked another Vercel CDN IP without using this mechanism,” Gauch wrote on Sunday.

Why LaLiga apparently chose to disregard Vercel’s overtures isn’t clear. Having the ability to avoid collateral damage and then going in the opposite direction makes little sense.

“A soccer organization should *not* have the ability to broadly block internet infrastructure access to millions of Spanish customers across major internet service providers,” Gauch continued.

“CDN providers like Vercel front millions of mission-critical websites and applications behind the IPs being blocked. Even in the situation a block is required, it can be done on a hostname basis via TLS SNI, rather than IP.

“We’re closely monitoring the situation and continue to offer our assistance to LaLiga to minimize the blast radius of these blocks and help preserve free access to the internet in Spain.”

Targeting X and Vimeo

Documenting every site affected by LaLiga blocking would be a monumental task but a few stood out over the weekend as potentially significant. Given his stance on free speech, there’s a non-zero risk of Elon Musk taking issue with X IP addresses being blocked to prevent piracy.

That being said, at least one demand from the Indian government to suspend 8,000 X accounts may have demanded Musk’s undivided attention. Threats to arrest local staff aren’t to be taken lightly.

Unfortunately, the X account that revealed the existence of the threats was itself blocked in India on Friday .

Pressure builds on ISPs

When pirate site blocking begins in most countries, it falls to local ISPs to carry out the blocks. Since ISPs are the de facto point of complaint when customers’ internet connections develop a sudden ‘fault’, they tend to shoulder a bigger reputational risk than rightsholders.

The difference in Spain, in respect of the court order behind the mayhem of the last 90 days, has two parts. Most importantly, regardless of the existence of a court order, every time a CDN IP address is added to the list by an ISP, they are well aware of the collateral damage that’s likely to cause.

After initially denying anything was wrong, ISPs’ now mention the court order more quickly, with phrasing that implies that their hands are tied.

As mentioned earlier, when an X user told Movistar that Vimeo was inaccessible due to blocking, Movistar responded by shifting the blame to the court order.

Casually reporting the blocking of a NASDAQ-listed company is in itself unusual. Arguably, however,the bigger issue concerns the crucial role played by ISPs when LaLiga and Telefonica filed the original application.

Through deals with exclusive rights holder Telefonica, the ISPs sell LaLiga TV packages so had a vested interest in the order being passed. None of the ISPs challenged the application and the fact that they were all in agreement was one of the factors that led to the judge rubber-stamping the application.

In Movistar’s case, the content is indeed currently blocked on the platform due to a court order, but it’s a court order that it a) agreed to comply with, b) stands to benefit from, and c) was requested by owner Telefonica.

Meanwhile, LaLiga president Javier Tebas appears bullish on the role played by intermediaries in the war on piracy. In a recent interview with Argentinian news outlet Clarins, he put three tech companies on notice.

“Google, Cloudflare and to a lesser extent X (the former Twitter), are necessary participants for the crime to be consumed. LaLiga is not going to stop until they go to jail and I am very stubborn,” he warned.

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

For those who had fun playing #laligagate ‘collateral damage bingo’ over the weekend, a full house meant identifying the top internet intermediaries and services, blocked by LaLiga on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Most services utilize shared IP addresses, so typically the number of non-pirate sites blocked at the same time can run to hundreds of sites, potentially more. According to hayahora.futbol data, the following were targeted more than most:

24x Cloudflare IP addresses, 3x Meteverse IP addresses, 3x Twitch, 2x QUICCloud, 2x Netify, and 1x InfinityFree.

GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, and Vercel are among those targeted previously but for whom blocking at one or more ISPs inexplicably remains in place. For those tracking recent events, seeing Vercel on the list again was an unwelcome surprise.

Vercel Blocked Again

Back in April, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch described LaLiga’s blocking as “ indiscriminate ” and tantamount to an “unaccountable form of internet censorship.”

Yet, while Vercel didn’t hold back its critique, the company also pledged to contact LaLiga to see if surprise no-notice IP address blocking could be replaced by something a little more organized and substantially less blunt. Specifically, a blocking method that wouldn’t result in innocent sites being blocked at the same time.

In a post published Sunday on X, Rauch had some good news, and some bad news.

“We’ve been working with [the team at LaLiga] to ensure uninterrupted access in Spain to the @vercel global CDN,” Rauch revealed.

To help LaLiga mitigate the risk of overblocking, Gauch says the company set up an inbox which gave LaLiga direct access to its Site Reliability Engineering incident management system. This effectively meant that high priority requests could be processed swiftly, in line with LaLiga’s demands while avoiding collateral damage.

And the Bad News

“Vercel has set up a dedicated inbox for LaLiga to file reports. Sadly, they just blocked another Vercel CDN IP without using this mechanism,” Gauch wrote on Sunday.

Why LaLiga apparently chose to disregard Vercel’s overtures isn’t clear. Having the ability to avoid collateral damage and then going in the opposite direction makes little sense.

“A soccer organization should *not* have the ability to broadly block internet infrastructure access to millions of Spanish customers across major internet service providers,” Gauch continued.

“CDN providers like Vercel front millions of mission-critical websites and applications behind the IPs being blocked. Even in the situation a block is required, it can be done on a hostname basis via TLS SNI, rather than IP.

“We’re closely monitoring the situation and continue to offer our assistance to LaLiga to minimize the blast radius of these blocks and help preserve free access to the internet in Spain.”

Targeting X and Vimeo

Documenting every site affected by LaLiga blocking would be a monumental task but a few stood out over the weekend as potentially significant. Given his stance on free speech, there’s a non-zero risk of Elon Musk taking issue with X IP addresses being blocked to prevent piracy.

That being said, at least one demand from the Indian government to suspend 8,000 X accounts may have demanded Musk’s undivided attention. Threats to arrest local staff aren’t to be taken lightly.

Unfortunately, the X account that revealed the existence of the threats was itself blocked in India on Friday .

Pressure builds on ISPs

When pirate site blocking begins in most countries, it falls to local ISPs to carry out the blocks. Since ISPs are the de facto point of complaint when customers’ internet connections develop a sudden ‘fault’, they tend to shoulder a bigger reputational risk than rightsholders.

The difference in Spain, in respect of the court order behind the mayhem of the last 90 days, has two parts. Most importantly, regardless of the existence of a court order, every time a CDN IP address is added to the list by an ISP, they are well aware of the collateral damage that’s likely to cause.

After initially denying anything was wrong, ISPs’ now mention the court order more quickly, with phrasing that implies that their hands are tied.

As mentioned earlier, when an X user told Movistar that Vimeo was inaccessible due to blocking, Movistar responded by shifting the blame to the court order.

Casually reporting the blocking of a NASDAQ-listed company is in itself unusual. Arguably, however,the bigger issue concerns the crucial role played by ISPs when LaLiga and Telefonica filed the original application.

Through deals with exclusive rights holder Telefonica, the ISPs sell LaLiga TV packages so had a vested interest in the order being passed. None of the ISPs challenged the application and the fact that they were all in agreement was one of the factors that led to the judge rubber-stamping the application.

In Movistar’s case, the content is indeed currently blocked on the platform due to a court order, but it’s a court order that it a) agreed to comply with, b) stands to benefit from, and c) was requested by owner Telefonica.

Meanwhile, LaLiga president Javier Tebas appears bullish on the role played by intermediaries in the war on piracy. In a recent interview with Argentinian news outlet Clarins, he put three tech companies on notice.

“Google, Cloudflare and to a lesser extent X (the former Twitter), are necessary participants for the crime to be consumed. LaLiga is not going to stop until they go to jail and I am very stubborn,” he warned.

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

For those who had fun playing #laligagate ‘collateral damage bingo’ over the weekend, a full house meant identifying the top internet intermediaries and services, blocked by LaLiga on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Most services utilize shared IP addresses, so typically the number of non-pirate sites blocked at the same time can run to hundreds of sites, potentially more. According to hayahora.futbol data, the following were targeted more than most:

24x Cloudflare IP addresses, 3x Meteverse IP addresses, 3x Twitch, 2x QUICCloud, 2x Netify, and 1x InfinityFree.

GitHub Pages, Cloudflare, and Vercel are among those targeted previously but for whom blocking at one or more ISPs inexplicably remains in place. For those tracking recent events, seeing Vercel on the list again was an unwelcome surprise.

Vercel Blocked Again

Back in April, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch described LaLiga’s blocking as “ indiscriminate ” and tantamount to an “unaccountable form of internet censorship.”

Yet, while Vercel didn’t hold back its critique, the company also pledged to contact LaLiga to see if surprise no-notice IP address blocking could be replaced by something a little more organized and substantially less blunt. Specifically, a blocking method that wouldn’t result in innocent sites being blocked at the same time.

In a post published Sunday on X, Rauch had some good news, and some bad news.

“We’ve been working with [the team at LaLiga] to ensure uninterrupted access in Spain to the @vercel global CDN,” Rauch revealed.

To help LaLiga mitigate the risk of overblocking, Gauch says the company set up an inbox which gave LaLiga direct access to its Site Reliability Engineering incident management system. This effectively meant that high priority requests could be processed swiftly, in line with LaLiga’s demands while avoiding collateral damage.

And the Bad News

“Vercel has set up a dedicated inbox for LaLiga to file reports. Sadly, they just blocked another Vercel CDN IP without using this mechanism,” Gauch wrote on Sunday.

Why LaLiga apparently chose to disregard Vercel’s overtures isn’t clear. Having the ability to avoid collateral damage and then going in the opposite direction makes little sense.

“A soccer organization should *not* have the ability to broadly block internet infrastructure access to millions of Spanish customers across major internet service providers,” Gauch continued.

“CDN providers like Vercel front millions of mission-critical websites and applications behind the IPs being blocked. Even in the situation a block is required, it can be done on a hostname basis via TLS SNI, rather than IP.

“We’re closely monitoring the situation and continue to offer our assistance to LaLiga to minimize the blast radius of these blocks and help preserve free access to the internet in Spain.”

Targeting X and Vimeo

Documenting every site affected by LaLiga blocking would be a monumental task but a few stood out over the weekend as potentially significant. Given his stance on free speech, there’s a non-zero risk of Elon Musk taking issue with X IP addresses being blocked to prevent piracy.

That being said, at least one demand from the Indian government to suspend 8,000 X accounts may have demanded Musk’s undivided attention. Threats to arrest local staff aren’t to be taken lightly.

Unfortunately, the X account that revealed the existence of the threats was itself blocked in India on Friday .

Pressure builds on ISPs

When pirate site blocking begins in most countries, it falls to local ISPs to carry out the blocks. Since ISPs are the de facto point of complaint when customers’ internet connections develop a sudden ‘fault’, they tend to shoulder a bigger reputational risk than rightsholders.

The difference in Spain, in respect of the court order behind the mayhem of the last 90 days, has two parts. Most importantly, regardless of the existence of a court order, every time a CDN IP address is added to the list by an ISP, they are well aware of the collateral damage that’s likely to cause.

After initially denying anything was wrong, ISPs’ now mention the court order more quickly, with phrasing that implies that their hands are tied.

As mentioned earlier, when an X user told Movistar that Vimeo was inaccessible due to blocking, Movistar responded by shifting the blame to the court order.

Casually reporting the blocking of a NASDAQ-listed company is in itself unusual. Arguably, however,the bigger issue concerns the crucial role played by ISPs when LaLiga and Telefonica filed the original application.

Through deals with exclusive rights holder Telefonica, the ISPs sell LaLiga TV packages so had a vested interest in the order being passed. None of the ISPs challenged the application and the fact that they were all in agreement was one of the factors that led to the judge rubber-stamping the application.

In Movistar’s case, the content is indeed currently blocked on the platform due to a court order, but it’s a court order that it a) agreed to comply with, b) stands to benefit from, and c) was requested by owner Telefonica.

Meanwhile, LaLiga president Javier Tebas appears bullish on the role played by intermediaries in the war on piracy. In a recent interview with Argentinian news outlet Clarins, he put three tech companies on notice.

“Google, Cloudflare and to a lesser extent X (the former Twitter), are necessary participants for the crime to be consumed. LaLiga is not going to stop until they go to jail and I am very stubborn,” he warned.

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