Lawsuits filed to address infringement can also play a key role as part of a wider deterrent messaging campaign. In the online arena inhabited by millions of pirates, dual-purpose lawsuits are especially common.

Even for Nintendo, suing every infringer isn’t just impractical. Negative exposure in the media has direct implications for image and branding. Additional risk of polluting or even displacing otherwise positive articles, could jeopardize what amounts to free advertising worth millions of dollars.

A deterrent message delivered on the back of the right case, however, could reach its target audience using the same means, with relatively few downsides. If the company had something similar in mind, a Nintendo lawsuit filed in November seems an almost perfect fit.

Targeting Jesse Keighin, aka EveryGameGuru, the lawsuit poses little risk to Nintendo’s image. It compresses many types of infringing and unlicensed activity into a single case, one so overwhelming in scope that resistance is likely to prove futile. Yet this complaint seems to offer more than just an easy win; on the deterrent front, it may offer something for everyone.

A Message For Gamers Everywhere?

Whether by pure coincidence or meticulous design, each type of offending alleged in the complaint relates to fairly common individual acts that, in isolation, millions of gamers will be familiar with already. The defendant’s potential downfall could send a message to pirates and emulator gamers everywhere: relatively minor individual acts can have serious consequences.

Live-streaming footage of games before their official release is a zero-tolerance issue for Nintendo, for example. Streaming is described in the complaint as the unauthorized public performance and reproduction of Nintendo’s copyrighted works. Live-streaming footage of any Nintendo game, regardless of date of release, using an illegal Switch emulator, is described as a violation of the company’s rights for exactly the same reason.

For those who enjoy sending links to friends or internet strangers, for the purposes of signposting locations where illegal emulators and/or ROMS can be downloaded, Nintendo alleges acts of inducement and contributory infringement. Sharing tiny files such as those carrying encryption keys, amounts to trafficking in circumvention devices under the DMCA.

As alleged, Keighin’s conduct was obviously much more serious than that of the average Joe. However, since relatively few gamers will be interested enough to soak up the details, any deterrent message – should Nintendo intend to send one – could end up especially broad.

That Keighin was a prolific streamer on YouTube, Discord, Twitch, TikTok, Trovo, Kick, Vaughn, Dlive, Picarto, Nimo, Facebook, and Loco, ensures social media reach with serious potential, although maybe not for a while.

Transforming a Dire Legal Position Into Something Worse

In an email dated November 8, notifying Keighin that a complaint had been filed at a court in Colorado, Nintendo expressed concern over evidence preservation, noting that things may have already gone off track.

“We have observed that, since filing of Nintendo’s litigation, you have begun deleting content you posted online, including content referenced in the Complaint. I write to remind you of your duty to preserve such evidence. Upon commencement of a litigation, litigants have a duty to preserve evidence relevant to the case,” the email reads.

“Please immediately confirm whether you have maintained copies of everything you have already deleted and that you will comply with your preservation obligations.”

Having received no such confirmation, a subsequent Nintendo email informed Keighin that efforts to serve him in person had failed multiple times already.

“We have been attempting to serve you with the summons and complaint (attached) for the above-captioned matter for multiple days, but after attempting several addresses, we have been unable to serve you personally. We believe you may be evading service. Indeed, we are aware that you have stated publicly that you are aware of this lawsuit,” the email reads.

Nintendo Not Thrilled By the Chase

In case the gamer preferred to waive formal service of the summons and complaint, Nintendo provided the necessary paperwork and offered to take care of everything upon receipt of a signature. Worth a shot, perhaps, but unlikely to succeed in light of Keighin’s response posted to X.

Court records reveal a number of failed attempts to serve the defendant at various addresses. One of those addresses appeared in five DMCA counternotices sent by Keighin, to reinstate content taken down by Nintendo DMCA notices.

An email sent to Nintendo on October 24, in connection with the suspension of an account for copyright infringement, suggested that further channel suspensions wouldn’t be effective.

According to Nintendo, it’s possible that preparations to avoid being served involved outside assistance. At various addresses, process servers found family members but no physical trace of the defendant.

To support its claim, Nintendo provided a screenshot of a Facebook post; it limited who could respond, but not who could view.

Fueling the Fire

Other evidence to show that Keighin knew about the lawsuit appears in a screenshot of a brief encounter with a 9news journalist hoping for a story. A Facebook post that used profanity to declare zero interest in the case, allegedly addressed a colleague at law firm Jenner & Block LLP using the word “BITCH”.

A friend’s post on X, suggesting that Keighin should fight the “legendary” lawsuit in court dressed as Mario, carried less weight than Keighin’s own posts three days later. They reveal a plan to “piss Nintendo off” by causing the company to waste “a ton of money” on legal fees, before ensuring that “Nintendo gets nothing” after waving “Bowser’s Bankruptcy Magic Wand.”

In his posts on social media, Keighin says that “he’s making sure there’s no precedence [sic] set here” and at minimum expects to “go down in video game history.”

The Nintendo lawsuit filed against Yuzu last year concluded with a win for the gaming company, minus any attempt to have the case settled on the merits, let alone set some type of precedent. Going down in video game history could go either way.

As the person who gifted Nintendo more than they ever imagined, in what is likely to be an uncontested default judgment, history may quickly forget. That Nintendo will emerge without even a scratch, having easily maintained the usually tricky moral high ground, is indeed one for the history books. Maybe even worthy of a memorable quote.

“Should have done more research on me,” Keighin warned Nintendo’s legal team.

“You might run a corporation. I run the streets.”

The complaint and subsequent filings are available here

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

Lawsuits filed to address infringement can also play a key role as part of a wider deterrent messaging campaign. In the online arena inhabited by millions of pirates, dual-purpose lawsuits are especially common.

Even for Nintendo, suing every infringer isn’t just impractical. Negative exposure in the media has direct implications for image and branding. Additional risk of polluting or even displacing otherwise positive articles, could jeopardize what amounts to free advertising worth millions of dollars.

A deterrent message delivered on the back of the right case, however, could reach its target audience using the same means, with relatively few downsides. If the company had something similar in mind, a Nintendo lawsuit filed in November seems an almost perfect fit.

Targeting Jesse Keighin, aka EveryGameGuru, the lawsuit poses little risk to Nintendo’s image. It compresses many types of infringing and unlicensed activity into a single case, one so overwhelming in scope that resistance is likely to prove futile. Yet this complaint seems to offer more than just an easy win; on the deterrent front, it may offer something for everyone.

A Message For Gamers Everywhere?

Whether by pure coincidence or meticulous design, each type of offending alleged in the complaint relates to fairly common individual acts that, in isolation, millions of gamers will be familiar with already. The defendant’s potential downfall could send a message to pirates and emulator gamers everywhere: relatively minor individual acts can have serious consequences.

Live-streaming footage of games before their official release is a zero-tolerance issue for Nintendo, for example. Streaming is described in the complaint as the unauthorized public performance and reproduction of Nintendo’s copyrighted works. Live-streaming footage of any Nintendo game, regardless of date of release, using an illegal Switch emulator, is described as a violation of the company’s rights for exactly the same reason.

For those who enjoy sending links to friends or internet strangers, for the purposes of signposting locations where illegal emulators and/or ROMS can be downloaded, Nintendo alleges acts of inducement and contributory infringement. Sharing tiny files such as those carrying encryption keys, amounts to trafficking in circumvention devices under the DMCA.

As alleged, Keighin’s conduct was obviously much more serious than that of the average Joe. However, since relatively few gamers will be interested enough to soak up the details, any deterrent message – should Nintendo intend to send one – could end up especially broad.

That Keighin was a prolific streamer on YouTube, Discord, Twitch, TikTok, Trovo, Kick, Vaughn, Dlive, Picarto, Nimo, Facebook, and Loco, ensures social media reach with serious potential, although maybe not for a while.

Transforming a Dire Legal Position Into Something Worse

In an email dated November 8, notifying Keighin that a complaint had been filed at a court in Colorado, Nintendo expressed concern over evidence preservation, noting that things may have already gone off track.

“We have observed that, since filing of Nintendo’s litigation, you have begun deleting content you posted online, including content referenced in the Complaint. I write to remind you of your duty to preserve such evidence. Upon commencement of a litigation, litigants have a duty to preserve evidence relevant to the case,” the email reads.

“Please immediately confirm whether you have maintained copies of everything you have already deleted and that you will comply with your preservation obligations.”

Having received no such confirmation, a subsequent Nintendo email informed Keighin that efforts to serve him in person had failed multiple times already.

“We have been attempting to serve you with the summons and complaint (attached) for the above-captioned matter for multiple days, but after attempting several addresses, we have been unable to serve you personally. We believe you may be evading service. Indeed, we are aware that you have stated publicly that you are aware of this lawsuit,” the email reads.

Nintendo Not Thrilled By the Chase

In case the gamer preferred to waive formal service of the summons and complaint, Nintendo provided the necessary paperwork and offered to take care of everything upon receipt of a signature. Worth a shot, perhaps, but unlikely to succeed in light of Keighin’s response posted to X.

Court records reveal a number of failed attempts to serve the defendant at various addresses. One of those addresses appeared in five DMCA counternotices sent by Keighin, to reinstate content taken down by Nintendo DMCA notices.

An email sent to Nintendo on October 24, in connection with the suspension of an account for copyright infringement, suggested that further channel suspensions wouldn’t be effective.

According to Nintendo, it’s possible that preparations to avoid being served involved outside assistance. At various addresses, process servers found family members but no physical trace of the defendant.

To support its claim, Nintendo provided a screenshot of a Facebook post; it limited who could respond, but not who could view.

Fueling the Fire

Other evidence to show that Keighin knew about the lawsuit appears in a screenshot of a brief encounter with a 9news journalist hoping for a story. A Facebook post that used profanity to declare zero interest in the case, allegedly addressed a colleague at law firm Jenner & Block LLP using the word “BITCH”.

A friend’s post on X, suggesting that Keighin should fight the “legendary” lawsuit in court dressed as Mario, carried less weight than Keighin’s own posts three days later. They reveal a plan to “piss Nintendo off” by causing the company to waste “a ton of money” on legal fees, before ensuring that “Nintendo gets nothing” after waving “Bowser’s Bankruptcy Magic Wand.”

In his posts on social media, Keighin says that “he’s making sure there’s no precedence [sic] set here” and at minimum expects to “go down in video game history.”

The Nintendo lawsuit filed against Yuzu last year concluded with a win for the gaming company, minus any attempt to have the case settled on the merits, let alone set some type of precedent. Going down in video game history could go either way.

As the person who gifted Nintendo more than they ever imagined, in what is likely to be an uncontested default judgment, history may quickly forget. That Nintendo will emerge without even a scratch, having easily maintained the usually tricky moral high ground, is indeed one for the history books. Maybe even worthy of a memorable quote.

“Should have done more research on me,” Keighin warned Nintendo’s legal team.

“You might run a corporation. I run the streets.”

The complaint and subsequent filings are available here

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

Lawsuits filed to address infringement can also play a key role as part of a wider deterrent messaging campaign. In the online arena inhabited by millions of pirates, dual-purpose lawsuits are especially common.

Even for Nintendo, suing every infringer isn’t just impractical. Negative exposure in the media has direct implications for image and branding. Additional risk of polluting or even displacing otherwise positive articles, could jeopardize what amounts to free advertising worth millions of dollars.

A deterrent message delivered on the back of the right case, however, could reach its target audience using the same means, with relatively few downsides. If the company had something similar in mind, a Nintendo lawsuit filed in November seems an almost perfect fit.

Targeting Jesse Keighin, aka EveryGameGuru, the lawsuit poses little risk to Nintendo’s image. It compresses many types of infringing and unlicensed activity into a single case, one so overwhelming in scope that resistance is likely to prove futile. Yet this complaint seems to offer more than just an easy win; on the deterrent front, it may offer something for everyone.

A Message For Gamers Everywhere?

Whether by pure coincidence or meticulous design, each type of offending alleged in the complaint relates to fairly common individual acts that, in isolation, millions of gamers will be familiar with already. The defendant’s potential downfall could send a message to pirates and emulator gamers everywhere: relatively minor individual acts can have serious consequences.

Live-streaming footage of games before their official release is a zero-tolerance issue for Nintendo, for example. Streaming is described in the complaint as the unauthorized public performance and reproduction of Nintendo’s copyrighted works. Live-streaming footage of any Nintendo game, regardless of date of release, using an illegal Switch emulator, is described as a violation of the company’s rights for exactly the same reason.

For those who enjoy sending links to friends or internet strangers, for the purposes of signposting locations where illegal emulators and/or ROMS can be downloaded, Nintendo alleges acts of inducement and contributory infringement. Sharing tiny files such as those carrying encryption keys, amounts to trafficking in circumvention devices under the DMCA.

As alleged, Keighin’s conduct was obviously much more serious than that of the average Joe. However, since relatively few gamers will be interested enough to soak up the details, any deterrent message – should Nintendo intend to send one – could end up especially broad.

That Keighin was a prolific streamer on YouTube, Discord, Twitch, TikTok, Trovo, Kick, Vaughn, Dlive, Picarto, Nimo, Facebook, and Loco, ensures social media reach with serious potential, although maybe not for a while.

Transforming a Dire Legal Position Into Something Worse

In an email dated November 8, notifying Keighin that a complaint had been filed at a court in Colorado, Nintendo expressed concern over evidence preservation, noting that things may have already gone off track.

“We have observed that, since filing of Nintendo’s litigation, you have begun deleting content you posted online, including content referenced in the Complaint. I write to remind you of your duty to preserve such evidence. Upon commencement of a litigation, litigants have a duty to preserve evidence relevant to the case,” the email reads.

“Please immediately confirm whether you have maintained copies of everything you have already deleted and that you will comply with your preservation obligations.”

Having received no such confirmation, a subsequent Nintendo email informed Keighin that efforts to serve him in person had failed multiple times already.

“We have been attempting to serve you with the summons and complaint (attached) for the above-captioned matter for multiple days, but after attempting several addresses, we have been unable to serve you personally. We believe you may be evading service. Indeed, we are aware that you have stated publicly that you are aware of this lawsuit,” the email reads.

Nintendo Not Thrilled By the Chase

In case the gamer preferred to waive formal service of the summons and complaint, Nintendo provided the necessary paperwork and offered to take care of everything upon receipt of a signature. Worth a shot, perhaps, but unlikely to succeed in light of Keighin’s response posted to X.

Court records reveal a number of failed attempts to serve the defendant at various addresses. One of those addresses appeared in five DMCA counternotices sent by Keighin, to reinstate content taken down by Nintendo DMCA notices.

An email sent to Nintendo on October 24, in connection with the suspension of an account for copyright infringement, suggested that further channel suspensions wouldn’t be effective.

According to Nintendo, it’s possible that preparations to avoid being served involved outside assistance. At various addresses, process servers found family members but no physical trace of the defendant.

To support its claim, Nintendo provided a screenshot of a Facebook post; it limited who could respond, but not who could view.

Fueling the Fire

Other evidence to show that Keighin knew about the lawsuit appears in a screenshot of a brief encounter with a 9news journalist hoping for a story. A Facebook post that used profanity to declare zero interest in the case, allegedly addressed a colleague at law firm Jenner & Block LLP using the word “BITCH”.

A friend’s post on X, suggesting that Keighin should fight the “legendary” lawsuit in court dressed as Mario, carried less weight than Keighin’s own posts three days later. They reveal a plan to “piss Nintendo off” by causing the company to waste “a ton of money” on legal fees, before ensuring that “Nintendo gets nothing” after waving “Bowser’s Bankruptcy Magic Wand.”

In his posts on social media, Keighin says that “he’s making sure there’s no precedence [sic] set here” and at minimum expects to “go down in video game history.”

The Nintendo lawsuit filed against Yuzu last year concluded with a win for the gaming company, minus any attempt to have the case settled on the merits, let alone set some type of precedent. Going down in video game history could go either way.

As the person who gifted Nintendo more than they ever imagined, in what is likely to be an uncontested default judgment, history may quickly forget. That Nintendo will emerge without even a scratch, having easily maintained the usually tricky moral high ground, is indeed one for the history books. Maybe even worthy of a memorable quote.

“Should have done more research on me,” Keighin warned Nintendo’s legal team.

“You might run a corporation. I run the streets.”

The complaint and subsequent filings are available here

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

Development of AI continues to progress at a rapid pace. This includes work on large language models (LLMs), which are typically trained on broad datasets of texts.

These technologies promise unparalleled progress which could benefit society as a whole. Yet despite widely recognized potential, areas of significant concern remain.

That many LLMs were trained on datasets containing copyrighted content is now widely known. This has led to numerous complaints and high-profile lawsuits, with companies like OpenAI , Google, Meta , Microsoft, and NVIDIA facing allegations of copyright infringement.

The courts will ultimately decide whether rightsholders have legitimate copyright claims, or whether technology companies can indeed rely on a ‘fair use’ defense. It will likely take many years before a final decision is reached so until then, rightsholders are doing all they can to prevent future infringements.

Books3

The Books3 dataset, used to train many popular LLMs, initially attracted significant attention. The dataset was compiled by AI researcher Shawn Presser in 2020, using the library of ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik.

Books3 was widely shared online and incorporated into other databases, including ‘The Pile,’ an AI training dataset compiled by EleutherAI. This practice remained largely unchallenged for years, but when AI entered the mainstream, copyright complaints surged.

Due to pressure from rightsholders and anti-piracy groups, Books3 was removed from numerous online platforms over copyright concerns. Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance spearheaded several of these takedown actions, while describing AI-themed infringement as a major problem.

“We have a big task ahead of us in detecting and taking down illegal training datasets like Books3, but also in dealing with AI that has already been trained on illegal content and is now spreading on the internet,” Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund said previously.

BREIN vs. GEITje LLM

In the ensuing months, takedown efforts persisted. Notably, these efforts expanded beyond datasets containing complete books, targeting the models trained on this data as well.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has been active on this front and announced that, as a result, one of the largest Dutch LLMs ‘ GEITje-7B ‘ was taken offline as a result of their efforts.

This LLM was trained on ‘Gigacorpus’ a dataset of books and texts previously targeted by BREIN, including a vast collection of Dutch texts and books, some of which contained copyrighted material sourced from the shadow library LibGen

“We see a worldwide trend that creators of AI models have little or no respect for copyright,” BREIN writes.

“Apparently, the thinking is that all the attention, time and money put into copyrighted works by creators and media companies are less important than the AI models,” the group adds .

In their defense, the LLM creator cited copyright exceptions for text and data mining for scientific purposes. However, BREIN argued that the European AI Act mandates the use of lawfully acquired content as inputs for AI models.

This disagreement wasn’t tested in court. The LLM developers lack the funds to litigate the matter so took the decision to take GEITje offline voluntarily.

Voluntary Shutdown

Machine learning engineer Edwin Rijgersberg developed the GEITje LLM as a hobby. While the 7-billion parameter model became quite popular, he is not in a position to mount a legal challenge.

Rijgersberg previously consulted copyright experts who informed him that the issue isn’t as black and white as portrayed by some rightsholders. That said, a legal battle would be expensive.

“I cannot afford to engage in a lengthy and costly legal battle to resolve these issues. After all, GEITje was a non-commercial, scientific hobby project. For this reason, I am complying with BREIN’s request,” Rijgersberg notes .

While BREIN stresses the importance of protecting copyrights, GEITje’s developer still has hope for an open-source Dutch-language AI landscape

“In my view, the future of European AI still lies in open-source AI. Only when AI is free to use, can be studied by everyone, and is freely available to modify and share for any purpose. can we truly speak of sovereign AI.”

While GEITje won’t make a comeback, Rijgersberg highlights that there are now many other Dutch LLMs available to the public. These models are trained on various datasets, which may or may not include copyrighted material.

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

Development of AI continues to progress at a rapid pace. This includes work on large language models (LLMs), which are typically trained on broad datasets of texts.

These technologies promise unparalleled progress which could benefit society as a whole. Yet despite widely recognized potential, areas of significant concern remain.

That many LLMs were trained on datasets containing copyrighted content is now widely known. This has led to numerous complaints and high-profile lawsuits, with companies like OpenAI , Google, Meta , Microsoft, and NVIDIA facing allegations of copyright infringement.

The courts will ultimately decide whether rightsholders have legitimate copyright claims, or whether technology companies can indeed rely on a ‘fair use’ defense. It will likely take many years before a final decision is reached so until then, rightsholders are doing all they can to prevent future infringements.

Books3

The Books3 dataset, used to train many popular LLMs, initially attracted significant attention. The dataset was compiled by AI researcher Shawn Presser in 2020, using the library of ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik.

Books3 was widely shared online and incorporated into other databases, including ‘The Pile,’ an AI training dataset compiled by EleutherAI. This practice remained largely unchallenged for years, but when AI entered the mainstream, copyright complaints surged.

Due to pressure from rightsholders and anti-piracy groups, Books3 was removed from numerous online platforms over copyright concerns. Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance spearheaded several of these takedown actions, while describing AI-themed infringement as a major problem.

“We have a big task ahead of us in detecting and taking down illegal training datasets like Books3, but also in dealing with AI that has already been trained on illegal content and is now spreading on the internet,” Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund said previously.

BREIN vs. GEITje LLM

In the ensuing months, takedown efforts persisted. Notably, these efforts expanded beyond datasets containing complete books, targeting the models trained on this data as well.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has been active on this front and announced that, as a result, one of the largest Dutch LLMs ‘ GEITje-7B ‘ was taken offline as a result of their efforts.

This LLM was trained on ‘Gigacorpus’ a dataset of books and texts previously targeted by BREIN, including a vast collection of Dutch texts and books, some of which contained copyrighted material sourced from the shadow library LibGen

“We see a worldwide trend that creators of AI models have little or no respect for copyright,” BREIN writes.

“Apparently, the thinking is that all the attention, time and money put into copyrighted works by creators and media companies are less important than the AI models,” the group adds .

In their defense, the LLM creator cited copyright exceptions for text and data mining for scientific purposes. However, BREIN argued that the European AI Act mandates the use of lawfully acquired content as inputs for AI models.

This disagreement wasn’t tested in court. The LLM developers lack the funds to litigate the matter so took the decision to take GEITje offline voluntarily.

Voluntary Shutdown

Machine learning engineer Edwin Rijgersberg developed the GEITje LLM as a hobby. While the 7-billion parameter model became quite popular, he is not in a position to mount a legal challenge.

Rijgersberg previously consulted copyright experts who informed him that the issue isn’t as black and white as portrayed by some rightsholders. That said, a legal battle would be expensive.

“I cannot afford to engage in a lengthy and costly legal battle to resolve these issues. After all, GEITje was a non-commercial, scientific hobby project. For this reason, I am complying with BREIN’s request,” Rijgersberg notes .

While BREIN stresses the importance of protecting copyrights, GEITje’s developer still has hope for an open-source Dutch-language AI landscape

“In my view, the future of European AI still lies in open-source AI. Only when AI is free to use, can be studied by everyone, and is freely available to modify and share for any purpose. can we truly speak of sovereign AI.”

While GEITje won’t make a comeback, Rijgersberg highlights that there are now many other Dutch LLMs available to the public. These models are trained on various datasets, which may or may not include copyrighted material.

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

Development of AI continues to progress at a rapid pace. This includes work on large language models (LLMs), which are typically trained on broad datasets of texts.

These technologies promise unparalleled progress which could benefit society as a whole. Yet despite widely recognized potential, areas of significant concern remain.

That many LLMs were trained on datasets containing copyrighted content is now widely known. This has led to numerous complaints and high-profile lawsuits, with companies like OpenAI , Google, Meta , Microsoft, and NVIDIA facing allegations of copyright infringement.

The courts will ultimately decide whether rightsholders have legitimate copyright claims, or whether technology companies can indeed rely on a ‘fair use’ defense. It will likely take many years before a final decision is reached so until then, rightsholders are doing all they can to prevent future infringements.

Books3

The Books3 dataset, used to train many popular LLMs, initially attracted significant attention. The dataset was compiled by AI researcher Shawn Presser in 2020, using the library of ‘pirate’ site Bibliotik.

Books3 was widely shared online and incorporated into other databases, including ‘The Pile,’ an AI training dataset compiled by EleutherAI. This practice remained largely unchallenged for years, but when AI entered the mainstream, copyright complaints surged.

Due to pressure from rightsholders and anti-piracy groups, Books3 was removed from numerous online platforms over copyright concerns. Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance spearheaded several of these takedown actions, while describing AI-themed infringement as a major problem.

“We have a big task ahead of us in detecting and taking down illegal training datasets like Books3, but also in dealing with AI that has already been trained on illegal content and is now spreading on the internet,” Rights Alliance Director Maria Fredenslund said previously.

BREIN vs. GEITje LLM

In the ensuing months, takedown efforts persisted. Notably, these efforts expanded beyond datasets containing complete books, targeting the models trained on this data as well.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has been active on this front and announced that, as a result, one of the largest Dutch LLMs ‘ GEITje-7B ‘ was taken offline as a result of their efforts.

This LLM was trained on ‘Gigacorpus’ a dataset of books and texts previously targeted by BREIN, including a vast collection of Dutch texts and books, some of which contained copyrighted material sourced from the shadow library LibGen

“We see a worldwide trend that creators of AI models have little or no respect for copyright,” BREIN writes.

“Apparently, the thinking is that all the attention, time and money put into copyrighted works by creators and media companies are less important than the AI models,” the group adds .

In their defense, the LLM creator cited copyright exceptions for text and data mining for scientific purposes. However, BREIN argued that the European AI Act mandates the use of lawfully acquired content as inputs for AI models.

This disagreement wasn’t tested in court. The LLM developers lack the funds to litigate the matter so took the decision to take GEITje offline voluntarily.

Voluntary Shutdown

Machine learning engineer Edwin Rijgersberg developed the GEITje LLM as a hobby. While the 7-billion parameter model became quite popular, he is not in a position to mount a legal challenge.

Rijgersberg previously consulted copyright experts who informed him that the issue isn’t as black and white as portrayed by some rightsholders. That said, a legal battle would be expensive.

“I cannot afford to engage in a lengthy and costly legal battle to resolve these issues. After all, GEITje was a non-commercial, scientific hobby project. For this reason, I am complying with BREIN’s request,” Rijgersberg notes .

While BREIN stresses the importance of protecting copyrights, GEITje’s developer still has hope for an open-source Dutch-language AI landscape

“In my view, the future of European AI still lies in open-source AI. Only when AI is free to use, can be studied by everyone, and is freely available to modify and share for any purpose. can we truly speak of sovereign AI.”

While GEITje won’t make a comeback, Rijgersberg highlights that there are now many other Dutch LLMs available to the public. These models are trained on various datasets, which may or may not include copyrighted material.

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

Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ( USPTO ) organized an anti-piracy symposium where several experts discussed recent achievements, new challenges, and potential solutions.

Held at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, the meeting brought together public and private sector players to discuss various copyright and piracy-related topics.

For example, trial attorney Vasantha Rao, who works as the Department of Justice Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, discussed the Gears Reloaded case, the Z-Library takedown , plus international domain seizure actions including Operation Offsides .

Michael Christin, another trial attorney at the DoJ, went into great detail on the Jetflix case, discussing various challenges his team faced while litigating the case.

This was an openly accessible symposium, so discussion and commentary was limited to information already in the public record. That said, when discussing future anti-piracy solutions, more novel perspectives were brought up.

Piracy is ‘Maturing’

In a session on the latest trends in piracy and piracy prevention, Piracy Monitor founder Steven Hawley explained that piracy as an industry has evolved. There are many professional ‘pirate’ actors offering various services, both to consumers and aspiring site operators.

“I would say first off, the piracy in the universe has really matured, it’s metastasized, it’s a multichannel, multilevel industry, multinational phenomenon,” Hawley said.

“Market entry for a pirate is easy. If you wanted to become a pirate tomorrow, you could go online and find organizations that provide Piracy as a Service, they’ll give you content, they’ll give you a distribution platform, they’ll design your user interface, quite sophisticated.”

Marissa Bostick, Head of Global Litigation at the Motion Picture Association (MPA) , also sees a combination of increased professionalism and brazenness. Interestingly, this is paired with a shift from free to paid piracy services, with Bostick mentioning ‘ Magis TV ‘ as one of the examples.

“Users are paying to get access to the pirated content, whether it’s IPTV, premium cyber locker accounts, illegal password services, set-top boxes, there are various forms of this. It means the pirates are actually getting direct streams of income,” Bostick said.

The fact that some pirate services don’t even try to lie low anymore is evident in examples of brazen behavior. They openly advertise themselves through billboards and register for trademarks, as Magis TV recently did .

“Piracy is really sometimes coming out of the shadows. So what we’re seeing, and we see this in Latin America, for example, billboards for piracy sites. They’re paying influencers to go on social media and promote them. They’re registering for trademarks. This is not something that’s happening on some dark web,” Bostick added.

The American ‘Site Blocking’ Dream

The speakers went into great detail on these and other challenges. This ultimately led to the question of what can be done in response. Aside from litigation, including criminal prosecutions, pirate site blocking was frequently mentioned as a solution.

MPA’s Marissa Bostick said that they have been working on this for many years and that it’s been one of the most effective anti-piracy remedies.

There are now site blocking solutions in more than 50 countries around the world, including Australia France, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and South Korea.

The United States is notably absent from this list, but that may change. Bostick said that, with bipartisan and bicameral support, site blocking legislation may eventually move forward in the United States.

The call for site blocking was supported by many other speakers, including Lui Simpson of the Association of American Publishers , who stressed that the U.S. “is lagging far behind” compared to other countries, partly because the initial SOPA site blocking proposal failed in 2012.

“We’re hopeful that this time around we’ll make progress. As you know, we tried this maybe 13 years ago. The hope now is that the misinformation will not be so much of a hindrance here to actually getting a remedy in place.”

“It is long overdue. I think we’re one of the few, let’s just say more developed countries that unfortunately does not have this remedy,” Simpson added.

Attenzione!

U.S. site blocking discussions are not new and, in a meeting dedicated to anti-piracy solutions, there was little pushback. That said, it is clear that if site blocking comes to America, it should be done right.

This means that potential errors and overblocking should be ruled out, for as far as that’s possible. This is particularly important now that the Italian “ Piracy Shield ” site blocking scheme is cause for continued controversy.

That hasn’t gone unnoticed by the panelists at the symposium. Steven Hawley, for example, mentioned the “Piracy Shield” has had its challenges, especially because much of the process is automated without detailed verification.

“It sounds like a great system, but it needs fine-tuning. I guess this is a message to anyone who’s developing platforms like this, watch out for false positives,” Hawley said.

Lui Simpson also stressed that the U.S. should learn from site blocking schemes in other jurisdictions. However, she was not referring to overblocking, but to the tendency of blocked sites to launch alternative domains almost instantly.

If the U.S. proposes a site blocking solution, it should be dynamic, so that new domains can be added swiftly.

Bostick acknowledged this and stressed that the MPA has more than a decade of experience with site blocking measures around the globe. So, they can use everything they learned thus far to come up with a balanced and effective solution.

“We have over ten years of experience at this point with site blocking in various countries, different parts of the world, and how it can work seamlessly and effectively. So we need to use all that and use that experience to move forward,” Bostick stressed.

All in all, the USPTO’s anti-piracy symposium offered an intriguing peek into the learnings and priorities of various key players in the public and private sector. It also revealed that despite previous successes, there are still many challenges ahead.

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

Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ( USPTO ) organized an anti-piracy symposium where several experts discussed recent achievements, new challenges, and potential solutions.

Held at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, the meeting brought together public and private sector players to discuss various copyright and piracy-related topics.

For example, trial attorney Vasantha Rao, who works as the Department of Justice Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, discussed the Gears Reloaded case, the Z-Library takedown , plus international domain seizure actions including Operation Offsides .

Michael Christin, another trial attorney at the DoJ, went into great detail on the Jetflix case, discussing various challenges his team faced while litigating the case.

This was an openly accessible symposium, so discussion and commentary was limited to information already in the public record. That said, when discussing future anti-piracy solutions, more novel perspectives were brought up.

Piracy is ‘Maturing’

In a session on the latest trends in piracy and piracy prevention, Piracy Monitor founder Steven Hawley explained that piracy as an industry has evolved. There are many professional ‘pirate’ actors offering various services, both to consumers and aspiring site operators.

“I would say first off, the piracy in the universe has really matured, it’s metastasized, it’s a multichannel, multilevel industry, multinational phenomenon,” Hawley said.

“Market entry for a pirate is easy. If you wanted to become a pirate tomorrow, you could go online and find organizations that provide Piracy as a Service, they’ll give you content, they’ll give you a distribution platform, they’ll design your user interface, quite sophisticated.”

Marissa Bostick, Head of Global Litigation at the Motion Picture Association (MPA) , also sees a combination of increased professionalism and brazenness. Interestingly, this is paired with a shift from free to paid piracy services, with Bostick mentioning ‘ Magis TV ‘ as one of the examples.

“Users are paying to get access to the pirated content, whether it’s IPTV, premium cyber locker accounts, illegal password services, set-top boxes, there are various forms of this. It means the pirates are actually getting direct streams of income,” Bostick said.

The fact that some pirate services don’t even try to lie low anymore is evident in examples of brazen behavior. They openly advertise themselves through billboards and register for trademarks, as Magis TV recently did .

“Piracy is really sometimes coming out of the shadows. So what we’re seeing, and we see this in Latin America, for example, billboards for piracy sites. They’re paying influencers to go on social media and promote them. They’re registering for trademarks. This is not something that’s happening on some dark web,” Bostick added.

The American ‘Site Blocking’ Dream

The speakers went into great detail on these and other challenges. This ultimately led to the question of what can be done in response. Aside from litigation, including criminal prosecutions, pirate site blocking was frequently mentioned as a solution.

MPA’s Marissa Bostick said that they have been working on this for many years and that it’s been one of the most effective anti-piracy remedies.

There are now site blocking solutions in more than 50 countries around the world, including Australia France, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and South Korea.

The United States is notably absent from this list, but that may change. Bostick said that, with bipartisan and bicameral support, site blocking legislation may eventually move forward in the United States.

The call for site blocking was supported by many other speakers, including Lui Simpson of the Association of American Publishers , who stressed that the U.S. “is lagging far behind” compared to other countries, partly because the initial SOPA site blocking proposal failed in 2012.

“We’re hopeful that this time around we’ll make progress. As you know, we tried this maybe 13 years ago. The hope now is that the misinformation will not be so much of a hindrance here to actually getting a remedy in place.”

“It is long overdue. I think we’re one of the few, let’s just say more developed countries that unfortunately does not have this remedy,” Simpson added.

Attenzione!

U.S. site blocking discussions are not new and, in a meeting dedicated to anti-piracy solutions, there was little pushback. That said, it is clear that if site blocking comes to America, it should be done right.

This means that potential errors and overblocking should be ruled out, for as far as that’s possible. This is particularly important now that the Italian “ Piracy Shield ” site blocking scheme is cause for continued controversy.

That hasn’t gone unnoticed by the panelists at the symposium. Steven Hawley, for example, mentioned the “Piracy Shield” has had its challenges, especially because much of the process is automated without detailed verification.

“It sounds like a great system, but it needs fine-tuning. I guess this is a message to anyone who’s developing platforms like this, watch out for false positives,” Hawley said.

Lui Simpson also stressed that the U.S. should learn from site blocking schemes in other jurisdictions. However, she was not referring to overblocking, but to the tendency of blocked sites to launch alternative domains almost instantly.

If the U.S. proposes a site blocking solution, it should be dynamic, so that new domains can be added swiftly.

Bostick acknowledged this and stressed that the MPA has more than a decade of experience with site blocking measures around the globe. So, they can use everything they learned thus far to come up with a balanced and effective solution.

“We have over ten years of experience at this point with site blocking in various countries, different parts of the world, and how it can work seamlessly and effectively. So we need to use all that and use that experience to move forward,” Bostick stressed.

All in all, the USPTO’s anti-piracy symposium offered an intriguing peek into the learnings and priorities of various key players in the public and private sector. It also revealed that despite previous successes, there are still many challenges ahead.

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

Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ( USPTO ) organized an anti-piracy symposium where several experts discussed recent achievements, new challenges, and potential solutions.

Held at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, the meeting brought together public and private sector players to discuss various copyright and piracy-related topics.

For example, trial attorney Vasantha Rao, who works as the Department of Justice Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, discussed the Gears Reloaded case, the Z-Library takedown , plus international domain seizure actions including Operation Offsides .

Michael Christin, another trial attorney at the DoJ, went into great detail on the Jetflix case, discussing various challenges his team faced while litigating the case.

This was an openly accessible symposium, so discussion and commentary was limited to information already in the public record. That said, when discussing future anti-piracy solutions, more novel perspectives were brought up.

Piracy is ‘Maturing’

In a session on the latest trends in piracy and piracy prevention, Piracy Monitor founder Steven Hawley explained that piracy as an industry has evolved. There are many professional ‘pirate’ actors offering various services, both to consumers and aspiring site operators.

“I would say first off, the piracy in the universe has really matured, it’s metastasized, it’s a multichannel, multilevel industry, multinational phenomenon,” Hawley said.

“Market entry for a pirate is easy. If you wanted to become a pirate tomorrow, you could go online and find organizations that provide Piracy as a Service, they’ll give you content, they’ll give you a distribution platform, they’ll design your user interface, quite sophisticated.”

Marissa Bostick, Head of Global Litigation at the Motion Picture Association (MPA) , also sees a combination of increased professionalism and brazenness. Interestingly, this is paired with a shift from free to paid piracy services, with Bostick mentioning ‘ Magis TV ‘ as one of the examples.

“Users are paying to get access to the pirated content, whether it’s IPTV, premium cyber locker accounts, illegal password services, set-top boxes, there are various forms of this. It means the pirates are actually getting direct streams of income,” Bostick said.

The fact that some pirate services don’t even try to lie low anymore is evident in examples of brazen behavior. They openly advertise themselves through billboards and register for trademarks, as Magis TV recently did .

“Piracy is really sometimes coming out of the shadows. So what we’re seeing, and we see this in Latin America, for example, billboards for piracy sites. They’re paying influencers to go on social media and promote them. They’re registering for trademarks. This is not something that’s happening on some dark web,” Bostick added.

The American ‘Site Blocking’ Dream

The speakers went into great detail on these and other challenges. This ultimately led to the question of what can be done in response. Aside from litigation, including criminal prosecutions, pirate site blocking was frequently mentioned as a solution.

MPA’s Marissa Bostick said that they have been working on this for many years and that it’s been one of the most effective anti-piracy remedies.

There are now site blocking solutions in more than 50 countries around the world, including Australia France, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and South Korea.

The United States is notably absent from this list, but that may change. Bostick said that, with bipartisan and bicameral support, site blocking legislation may eventually move forward in the United States.

The call for site blocking was supported by many other speakers, including Lui Simpson of the Association of American Publishers , who stressed that the U.S. “is lagging far behind” compared to other countries, partly because the initial SOPA site blocking proposal failed in 2012.

“We’re hopeful that this time around we’ll make progress. As you know, we tried this maybe 13 years ago. The hope now is that the misinformation will not be so much of a hindrance here to actually getting a remedy in place.”

“It is long overdue. I think we’re one of the few, let’s just say more developed countries that unfortunately does not have this remedy,” Simpson added.

Attenzione!

U.S. site blocking discussions are not new and, in a meeting dedicated to anti-piracy solutions, there was little pushback. That said, it is clear that if site blocking comes to America, it should be done right.

This means that potential errors and overblocking should be ruled out, for as far as that’s possible. This is particularly important now that the Italian “ Piracy Shield ” site blocking scheme is cause for continued controversy.

That hasn’t gone unnoticed by the panelists at the symposium. Steven Hawley, for example, mentioned the “Piracy Shield” has had its challenges, especially because much of the process is automated without detailed verification.

“It sounds like a great system, but it needs fine-tuning. I guess this is a message to anyone who’s developing platforms like this, watch out for false positives,” Hawley said.

Lui Simpson also stressed that the U.S. should learn from site blocking schemes in other jurisdictions. However, she was not referring to overblocking, but to the tendency of blocked sites to launch alternative domains almost instantly.

If the U.S. proposes a site blocking solution, it should be dynamic, so that new domains can be added swiftly.

Bostick acknowledged this and stressed that the MPA has more than a decade of experience with site blocking measures around the globe. So, they can use everything they learned thus far to come up with a balanced and effective solution.

“We have over ten years of experience at this point with site blocking in various countries, different parts of the world, and how it can work seamlessly and effectively. So we need to use all that and use that experience to move forward,” Bostick stressed.

All in all, the USPTO’s anti-piracy symposium offered an intriguing peek into the learnings and priorities of various key players in the public and private sector. It also revealed that despite previous successes, there are still many challenges ahead.

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