Security News

Massive live sports piracy ring with 812 million yearly visits taken offline
2024-12-20 11:07

​The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has taken down one of the world's largest live sports streaming piracy rings, with over 821 million visits last year. [...]

Former Avaya employee gets 4 years for $88M license piracy scheme
2024-07-29 18:00

The three men, Raymond Bradley "Brad" Pearce, Dusti O. Pearce, and Jason M. Hines, were also ordered to forfeit large amounts of money as part of their sentencing, ranging from $2 to $4 million. "According to court documents, Brad and Dusti Pearce conspired with Hines to commit wire fraud in a scheme that involved generating and then selling unauthorized Avaya Direct International software licenses," reads a Department of Justice announcement.

Police seize record 50,000 Bitcoin from now-defunct piracy site
2024-01-31 19:58

The police in Saxony, eastern Germany, have seized 50,000 Bitcoin from the former operator of the pirate site movie2k. As the police announced, one of the two suspects voluntarily transferred Bitcoin to the Federal Criminal Police Office.

Microsoft sued for open-source piracy through GitHub Copilot
2022-11-05 14:07

Programmer and lawyer Matthew Butterick has sued Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI, alleging that GitHub's Copilot violates the terms of open-source licenses and infringes the rights of programmers. GitHub Copilot, released in June 2022, is an AI-based programming aid that uses OpenAI Codex to generate real-time source code and function recommendations in Visual Studio.

ACE seizes 42 soccer and live TV piracy web domains with millions of visitors
2022-11-04 20:16

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has shut down 42 websites for the pirated streaming of televised soccer games and live TV, seizing their domains and taking down the illegal streaming services. All 42 websites were operated by an Argentinian man and drew the majority of their traffic from the Latin American country, offering unauthorized streams of live matches of the Argentine Professional Soccer League, LaLiga, UEFA Champions League, and more.

Piracy OK: Russia to ease software licensing rules after sanctions
2022-03-07 16:19

The Russian authorities are drafting a set of measures to support the country's economy against the pressure of foreign sanctions, and when it comes to software licensing, the proposal greenlights a form of piracy. This special process will be eligible for cases where the copyright holder is from a country that has supported sanctions against Russia and only for products with no available Russian alternatives.

Piracy is alive and well, demand reaching 3.7 billion unlicensed streams and downloads
2022-02-04 04:30

Akamai released a research detailing the persistence of online piracy. The evolving piracy landscape, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center, costs the U.S. economy alone $29.2 billion in lost revenue each year.

Video-Game Piracy Group ‘Team Xecuter’ Leaders in Custody
2020-10-05 14:17

The Department of Justice has nabbed two alleged leaders of a global, notorious video-game piracy group called Team Xecuter. Console manufacturers and game developers implement various technical measures - from specific game cartridge designs to cryptographic keys on the software - to prevent the use of unauthorized firmware that could be used to play pirated video games.

Europol Shuts Down Over 30,500 Piracy Websites in Global Operation
2019-12-04 00:16

In a coordinated global law enforcement operation, Europol has taken down more than 30,500 websites for distributing counterfeit and pirated items over the Internet and arrested three suspects....

Europol wipes out 30,000+ piracy sites, three suspects cuffed to walk the legal plank
2019-12-02 20:13

Aw man, I was still downl...err.. great work everyone! Europol says its latest piracy takedown netted three arrests and more than 30,000 website takedowns.…