"Meta is involved in a class action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, a claim the company disputes..." writes the tech news site Hot Hardware.

But the site adds that newly unsealed court documents "reveal that Meta allegedly used a minimum of 81.7TB of illegally torrented data sourced from shadow libraries to train its AI models." Internal emails further show that Meta employees expressed concerns about this practice. Some employees voiced strong ethical objections, with one noting that using content from sites like LibGen, known for distributing copyrighted material, would be unethical. A research engineer with Meta, Nikolay Bashlykov, also noted that "torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right," highlighting his discomfort surrounding the practice.

Additionally, the documents suggest that these concerns, including discussions about using data from LibGen, reached CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who may have ultimately approved the activity. Furthermore, the documents showed that despite these misgivings, employees discussed using VPNs to mask Meta's IP address to create anonymity, enabling them to download and share torrented data without it being easily traced back to the company's network.

Amazon is removing the "Download & Transfer via USB" feature for Kindle e-books starting February 26th, closing a loophole that allowed users to download older, easily crackable DRM formats.

"At the very least, you'll still be able to transfer your e-books over Wi-Fi, and of course, transferring your e-books through Calibre will still work, too," notes Android Police. "[S]o it's not like we are losing access to dragging and dropping files onto a Kindle, we are simply losing access to a tool that facilitated easy piracy by pushing older formats of retail books from the website to your Kindle over USB."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Newly unsealed emails allegedly provide the "most damning evidence" yet against Meta in a copyright case raised by book authors alleging that Meta illegally trained its AI models on pirated books.

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting a controversial large dataset known as LibGen, which includes tens of millions of pirated books. But details around the torrenting were murky until yesterday, when Meta's unredacted emails were made public for the first time. The new evidence showed that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries through the site Anna's Archive, including at least 35.7 terabytes of data from Z-Library and LibGen," the authors' court filing said. And "Meta also previously torrented 80.6 terabytes of data from LibGen."

"The magnitude of Meta's unlawful torrenting scheme is astonishing," the authors' filing alleged, insisting that "vastly smaller acts of data piracy -- just .008 percent of the amount of copyrighted works Meta pirated -- have resulted in Judges referring the conduct to the US Attorneys' office for criminal investigation."

U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren has introduced a bill that would allow courts to block access to foreign websites primarily engaged in copyright infringement. The Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act would enable rightsholders to obtain injunctions requiring large Internet service providers and DNS resolvers to block access to pirate sites.

The bill marks a shift from previous site-blocking proposals, notably including DNS providers like Google and Cloudflare with annual revenues above $100 million. Motion Picture Association CEO Charles Rivkin backed the measure, while consumer group Public Knowledge criticized it as "censorious." The legislation requires court review and due process before any blocking orders can be issued. Sites would have 30 days to contest preliminary orders.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) today proposed a law that would let copyright owners obtain court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to foreign piracy websites. The bill would also force DNS providers to block sites. Lofgren said in a press release that she "work[ed] for over a year with the tech, film, and television industries" on "a proposal that has a remedy for copyright infringers located overseas that does not disrupt the free Internet except for the infringers." Lofgren said she plans to work with Republican leaders to enact the bill. [...]

Lofgren's bill (PDF) would impose site-blocking requirements on broadband providers with at least 100,000 subscribers and providers of public domain name resolution services with annual revenue of over $100 million. The bill has exemptions for VPN services and "similar services that encrypt and route user traffic through intermediary servers"; DNS providers that offer service "exclusively through encrypted DNS protocols"; and operators of premises that provide Internet access, like coffee shops, bookstores, airlines, and universities. Lofgren released a summary of the bill explaining how copyright owners can obtain blocking orders. "A copyright owner or exclusive licensee may file a petition in US District Court to obtain a preliminary order against a foreign website or online service engaging in copyright infringement," the summary said.

For non-live content, the petition must show that "transmission of a work through a foreign website likely infringes exclusive rights under Section 106 [of US law] and is causing irreparable harm." For live events, a petition must show that "an imminent or ongoing unauthorized transmission of a live event is likely to infringe, and will cause irreparable harm." The proposed law says that after a preliminary order is issued, copyright owners would be able to obtain orders directing service providers "to take reasonable and technically feasible measures to prevent users of the service provided by the service provider from accessing the foreign website or online service identified in the order." Judges would not be permitted to "prescribe any specific technical measures" for blocking and may not require any action that would prevent Internet users from using virtual private networks.Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge described the bill as a "censorious site-blocking" measure "that turns broadband providers into copyright police at Americans' expense."

"Rather than attacking the problem at its source -- bringing the people running overseas piracy websites to court -- Congress and its allies in the entertainment industry has decided to build out a sweeping infrastructure for censorship," Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Meredith Rose said. "Site-blocking orders force any service provider, from residential broadband providers to global DNS resolvers, to disrupt traffic from targeted websites accused of copyright infringement. More importantly, applying blocking orders to global DNS resolvers results in global blocks. This means that one court can cut off access to a website globally, based on one individual's filing and an expedited procedure. Blocking orders are incredibly powerful weapons, ripe for abuse, and we've seen the messy consequences of them being implemented in other countries."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Meta is among a long list of companies being sued for allegedly using pirated material to train its AI models. Meta has never denied using copyrighted works but stressed that it would rely on a fair use defense. However, with rightsholders in one case asking for torrent client data and 'seeding lists' for millions of books allegedly shared in public, the case now takes a geeky turn. [...] A few weeks ago, the plaintiffs asked for permission to submit a third amended complaint (PDF). After uncovering Meta's use of BitTorrent to source copyright-infringing training data from pirate shadow library, LibGen, the request was justified, they argued. Specifically, the authors say that Meta willingly used BitTorrent to download pirated books from LibGen, knowing that was legally problematic. As a result, Meta allegedly shared copies of these books with other people, as is common with the use of BitTorrent.

"By downloading through the bit torrent protocol, Meta knew it was facilitating further copyright infringement by acting as a distribution point for other users of pirated books," the amended complaint notes. "Put another way, by opting to use a bit torrent system to download LibGen's voluminous collection of pirated books, Meta 'seeded' pirated books to other users worldwide." Meta believed that the allegations weren't sufficiently new to warrant an update to the complaint. The company argued that it was already a well-known fact that it used books from these third-party sources, including LibGen. However, the authors maintained that the 'torrent' angle is novel and important enough to warrant an update. Last week, United States District Judge Vince Chhabria agreed, allowing the introduction of these new allegations. In addition to greenlighting the amended complaint, the Judge also allowed the authors to conduct further testimony on the "seeding" angle. "[E]vidence about seeding is relevant to the existing claim because it is potentially relevant to the plaintiffs' assertion of willful infringement or to Meta's fair use defense," Judge Chhabria wrote last week.

With the court recognizing the relevance of Meta's torrenting activity, the plaintiffs requested reconsideration of an earlier order, where discovery on BitTorrent-related matters was denied. Through a filing submitted last Wednesday, the plaintiffs hope to compel Meta to produce its BitTorrent logs and settings, including peer lists and seeding data. "The Order denied Plaintiffs' motion to compel production of torrenting data, including Meta's BitTorrent client, application logs, and peer lists. This data will evidence how much content Meta torrented from shadow libraries and how much it seeded to third parties as a host of this stolen IP," they write. While archiving lists of seeders is not a typical feature for a torrent client, the authors are requesting Meta to disclose any relevant data. In addition, they also want the court to reconsider its ruling regarding the crime-fraud exception. That's important, they suggest, as Meta's legal counsel was allegedly involved in matters related to torrenting. "Meta, with the involvement of in-house counsel, decided to obtain copyrighted works without permission from online databases of copyrighted works that 'we know to be pirated, such as LibGen," they write. The authors allege that this involved "seeding" files and that Meta attempted to "conceal its actions" by limiting the amount of data shared with the public. One Meta employee also asked for guidance, as "torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In 'piracy' associated circles, Z-Library has one of the most followed Telegram channels of all. The shadow library's official channel amassed over 630,000 subscribers over the years, who were among the first to read site announcements and other key updates. Z-Library previously had some of its messages removed due to copyright infringement. While it didn't upload or directly link to infringing material on Telegram, rightsholders allegedly complained about the links that were posted to the Z-Library website. In response, Z-Library chose to no longer include links to its own homepage on Telegram. Instead, it referred users to Wikipedia and Reddit, where the links were still available. The same copyright awareness was visible at Anna's Archive, a popular shadow library search engine. This channel was also careful not to post direct links to infringing material. After all, sharing or uploading copyrighted books would undoubtedly lead to trouble.

Despite the reported caution, the channels of both Z-Library and Anna's Archive are no longer accessible today. Messages posted by these accounts were purged "due to copyright infringement", as shown below. Telegram didn't limit its action to removing posts; the channels are now entirely inaccessible. Those trying to access the channels in the Telegram app receive a pop-up message stating they are "unavailable due to copyright infringement." The simultaneous removal of both channels suggests they are linked to the same complaint or decision. The specific complaint and alleged copyright infringements remain unclear.

The shift from paywalled to open-access scientific publishing is progressing, driven in part by platforms like Sci-Hub -- a website that allows users to upload PDFs of published papers and share them with anyone. While the shadow library website has faced ongoing attempts by publishers to block access, it has another problem: the platform features many outdated or retracted papers that could spread misinformation or flawed findings. Ars Technica reports: Sci-Hub works a bit like a combination of cache and aggregator for published materials. Whenever it gets a request for a paper that's not already in its database, it uses leaked login credentials to go to the website of whatever journal published the paper and obtain a copy. If it already has a copy, however, it will simply serve that up instead. This leaves open the possibility that it will have obtained a copy of a paper prior to its retraction and continue to distribute that copy after the paper has been retracted.

To check this, the researchers obtained a list of nearly 17,000 retracted papers and searched for them on Sci-Hub. They then visually examined the documents that were returned. They found that 85 percent of them contained no indication that the paper had been retracted. "The availability of [unlabeled retracted articles] in the field of health sciences is particularly high," they note, "which indicates a significant risk of their unintended use and further citation in future research."

While corrections are less severe than retractions, they're likely to suffer a similar problem. And corrections will often involve the technical details of a paper -- the experimental approaches or raw data that will be critical for anyone wanting to replicate or extend previously published results. So, if anything, their impact will be more significant. Ars notes that a system called Crossmark is available to help find the most up-to-date version of a paper, including any corrections or retraction notices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In a landmark ruling, the Court of Milan has ordered (PDF) Cloudflare to block pirate streaming services that offer Serie A football matches. The court found that Cloudflare's services are instrumental in facilitating access to live pirate streams, undermining Italy's 'Piracy Shield' legislation. The order, which applies in Italy, affects Cloudflare's CDN, DNS resolver, WARP and proxy services. It also includes a broad data disclosure section. [...]

The Court of Milan's decision prohibits Cloudflare from resolving domain names and routing internet traffic to IP addresses of all services present on the "Piracy Shield" system. This also applies to future domains and aliases used by these pirate services. The order applies to Cloudflare's content delivery network (CDN), DNS services, and reverse proxy services. The order also mentions Cloudflare's free VPN among the targets, likely referring to the WARP service. If any of the targeted pirate streaming providers use Cloudflare's services to infringe on Serie A's copyrights, the company Cloudflare must stop providing CDN, authoritative DNS, and reverse proxy services to these customers. (Note: This is an Italian court order and Cloudflare previously used geotargeting to block sites only in Italy. It may respond similarly here, but terminating customer accounts only in Italy might be more complicated. )

Finally, the order further includes a data disclosure component, under which Cloudflare must identify customers who use Cloudflare's services to offer pirated streams. This should help Serie A to track down those responsible. The data disclosure section also covers information related to the 'VPN' and alternative public DNS services, where these relate to the IPTV platforms identified in the case. That covers traffic volume and connection logs, including IP-addresses and timestamps. In theory, that could also cover data on people who accessed these services using Cloudflare's VPN and DNS resolver. [...] The court ordered Cloudflare to cover the costs of the proceeding and if it doesn't implement the blocking requirements in time, an additional fine of 10,000 euros per day will apply.

A piracy ring that gave 22 million subscribers in Europe cheap access to content stolen from international streaming services has been shut down by Italian authorities after a two-year investigation. From a report: The criminal enterprise used a complex international IT system to "capture and resell" live programming and other on-demand content from companies including sports broadcaster DAZN, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount, Sky and Disney+, prosecutors said in a statement on Wednesday.

Authorities estimate the operation generated revenues of roughly $264.3 million a month [non-paywalled link], or $3.2 billion a year, and caused combined damages of more than $10.6 billion to the affected broadcast companies. "The rate of profit you get from these illegal activities with lower risk is equivalent to that of cocaine trafficking," Francesco Curcio, the criminal prosecutor who led the investigation, told reporters.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court signaled it may take up a case that could determine whether Internet service providers must terminate users who are accused of copyright infringement. In an order (PDF) issued today, the court invited the Department of Justice's solicitor general to file a brief "expressing the views of the United States."

In Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications, the major record labels argue that cable provider Cox should be held liable for failing to terminate users who were repeatedly flagged for infringement based on their IP addresses being connected to torrent downloads. There was a mixed ruling at the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit as the appeals court affirmed a jury's finding that Cox was guilty of willful contributory infringement but reversed a verdict on vicarious infringement "because Cox did not profit from its subscribers' acts of infringement." That ruling vacated a $1 billion damages award and ordered a new damages trial. Cox and Sony are both seeking a Supreme Court review. Cox wants to overturn the finding of willful contributory infringement, while Sony wants to reinstate the $1 billion verdict.

The Supreme Court asking for US input on Sony v. Cox could be a precursor to the high court taking up the case. For example, the court last year asked the solicitor general to weigh in on Texas and Florida laws that restricted how social media companies can moderate their platforms. The court subsequently took up the case and vacated lower-court rulings, making it clear that content moderation is protected by the First Amendment.

On November 24th, 1971 — 53 years ago today — a mysterious man jumped out of an airplane clutching $200,000 in ransom money. (He'd extorted it from the airline by claiming he had a bomb, and it's still "the only unsolved case of air piracy in the history of commercial aviation," according to Wikipedia.) Will modern technology finally let us solve the case — or just turn it into a miniseries on Netflix? And have online researchers finally discovered the definitive clue?

The FBI vetted more than 800 suspects, according to the Wyoming news site Cowboy State Daily, but in 2016 announced they were suspending their active investigation.

So it's newsworthy that the FBI now appears to be investigating new evidence, according to an amateur D.B. Cooper researcher on YouTube: the discovery of what's believed to be D.B. Cooper's uniquely-modified parachute: Retired pilot, skydiver and YouTuber, Dan Gryder told Cowboy State Daily that he may have found the missing link after uncovering the modified military surplus bailout rig he believes was used by D.B. Cooper in the heist. It belonged to Richard Floyd McCoy II, and was carefully stored in his deceased mother's storage stash until very recently... McCoy's children, Chanté and Richard III, or "Rick," agree with Gryder that they believe their father was D.B. Cooper, a secret that shrouded the family but wasn't overtly discussed. For years, they said, the family stayed mum out of fear of implicating their mother, Karen, whom they believe was complicit in both hijackings. Upon her death in 2020, they broke their silence to Gryder after being contacted by him off and on for years.

Gryder, who has been researching the case for more than 20 years, documented his investigation in a lengthy two-part series on his YouTube channel, "Probable Cause," in 2021 and 2022, where he connects the dots and shows actual footage of him finding the parachute in an outbuilding on the McCoy family property in North Carolina in July 2022. On Monday, Gryder released a third video, "D.B. Cooper: Deep FBI Update," where he announced the FBI's new and very recent efforts in his discoveries. After watching his first two videos, Gryder said FBI agents contacted Rick and Gryder to see the parachute. It was the first investigative move by the agency since issuing the 2016 public statement, declaring the case closed pending new evidence. Gryder and Rick McCoy traveled to Richmond, Virginia, in September 2023, where they met with FBI agents, who took the harness and parachute into evidence along with a skydiving logbook found by Chanté that aligned with the timeline for both hijackings, providing another vital piece in the puzzle, Gryder said....

During the meeting, Gryder said the agents called it a first step. If the evidence proved fruitless, they would have promptly returned the skydiving rig, he said, but that didn't happen. Instead, an FBI agent called Rick a month later to ask to search the family property in Cove City, North Carolina, which McCoy's mother owned and where Gryder had found the parachute and canopy... [Gryder says he watched] at least seven vehicles descend on the property with more than a dozen agents who scoured the property for about four hours... Rick said he has provided a DNA sample and was told by the FBI agents that the next step might be exhuming his father's body, but no formal terms and conditions for that process have been established thus far, he said.
A retired commercial airline pilot who was present in the Virginia FBI meeting said "It was clear they were taking it seriously" — noting it was the FBI who'd requested that meeting. The article cites two FBI agents who'd earlier already believed D.B. Cooper was McCoy. And the article points out that the FBI "has never ruled McCoy out, stating in a 2006 statement that he was 'still a favorite suspect among many.'"

A second article notes that Gryder supports the FBI's recent request to exhume McCoy's body. As he sees it, "The existing DNA marker comparisons studied so far only validate the need for this final extreme step and should close the mystery once and for all."

And the article adds that McCoy's children are "eager for closure and hope that the FBI finds the evidence agents need to close the D.B. Cooper case once and for all."

An anonymous reader shares a report: People are using Spotify playlist and podcast descriptions to distribute spam, malware, pirated software and cheat codes for video games. Cybersecurity researcher Karol Paciorek posted an example of this: A Spotify playlist titled "*Sony Vegas Pro*13 C-r-a-c-k Free Download 2024 m-y-s-o-f-t-w-a-r-e-f-r-e-e.com" acts as a free advertisement for piracy website m-y-s-o-f-t-w-a-r-e-f-r-e-e[dot]com, which hosts malicious software.

"Cybercriminals exploit Spotify for #malware distribution," Paciorek posted on X. "Why? Spotify has a strong reputation and its pages are easily indexed by search engines, making it an effective platform to promote malicious links."

"The playlist title in question has been removed," a spokesperson for Spotify told 404 Media in a statement. "Spotify's Platform Rules prohibit posting, sharing, or providing instructions on implementing malware or related malicious practices that seek to harm or gain unauthorized access to computers, networks, systems, or other technologies."

A new study reveals that many users, particularly students and Redditors, view Z-Library as a vital resource for overcoming economic barriers to education, reflecting a "Robin Hood" mentality that prioritizes access to knowledge over copyright concerns. TorrentFreak reports: The research looks at the motivations of two groups; Reddit users and Chinese postgraduate students. Despite the vast differences between these groups, their views on Z-Library are quite similar. The 134 Reddit responses were sampled from the Zlibrary subreddit, which is obviously biased in favor of the site. However, the reasoning goes well beyond a simple "I want free stuff" arguments. Many commenters highlighted that they were drawn to the site out of poverty, for example, or they highlighted that Z-Library was an essential tool to fulfill their academic goals.

"Living in a 3rd world country, 1 book would cost like 50%- 80% already of my daily wage," one Redditor wrote. The idea that Z-Library is a 'necessary evil' was also highlighted by other commenters. This includes a student who can barely make ends meet, and a homeless person, who has neither the money nor the space for physical books. The lack of free access to all study materials, including academic journal subscriptions at university libraries, was also a key motivator. Paired with the notion that journal publishers make billions of dollars, without compensating authors, justification is found for 'pirate' alternatives. "They make massive profits. So stealing from them doesn't hurt the authors nor reviewers, just the rich greedy publishers who make millions just to design a cover and click 'publish'," one Redditor wrote.

The second part of the study is conducted in a more structured format among 103 postgraduate students in China. This group joined a seminar where Z-Library and the crackdown were discussed. In addition, the students participated in follow-up focus group discussions, while also completing a survey. Despite not all being users of the shadow library, 41% of the students agreed that the site's (temporary) shutdown affected their ability to study and find resources for degree learning. In general, the students have a favorable view toward Z-Library and similar sites, and 71% admit that they have used a shadow library in the past. In line with China's socialist values, the overwhelming majority of the students agreed that access to knowledge should be free for everyone. While the students are aware of copyright law, they believe that the need to access knowledge outweighs rightsholders' concerns. This is also reflected in the following responses, among others. All in all, Z-Library and other shadow libraries are seen as a viable option for expensive or inaccessible books, despite potential copyright concerns. The paper has been published in the Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice.

Half of young Norwegians find online piracy acceptable when streaming services are too expensive, according to a new government survey released this week. The Ipsos poll of 1,411 respondents found that 32% of all Norwegians justify using pirate sites to save money, with acceptance rising to 50% among those under 30.

The rates increase further when specifically asked about pirating due to high streaming costs. Despite concerns about piracy, 61% of Norwegians paid for streaming services in the past year, including 64% of those under 30. Among active pirates, 41% said they would stop if legal services were more affordable, while 35% wanted broader content per service. Only 47% of respondents believed piracy supports organized crime, with 24% expressing uncertainty about this connection.

With the debut of the Pirate Bay TV series in Sweden, international viewers are finding it surprisingly difficult to pirate. TorrentFreak reports: The series premiered at the on-demand platform of the Swedish national broadcaster SVT a few hours ago. International deals haven't been announced, but pirates can generally get access anyway. Soon after the first two episodes of The Pirate Bay series came out, scene release copies started circulating online. As one would expect.

The Scene group OLLONBORRE, which specializes in Swedish content, was the first to pick the show up. Within minutes, the first 1080p WEB-rips were posted on private scene servers and 720p copies followed a few hours later. Interestingly, pirate releases have yet to make their way to The Pirate Bay. We haven't seen any other copies on other public pirate sites either, which is surprising given the topic of the series.

It's common knowledge that The Scene -- a secretive network of release groups -- prefers to keep its releases private. Therefore, it wasn't happy with The Pirate Bay's public nature and rise to prominence in the early 2003s, which is highlighted in the first episodes of the TV series. However, we expected non-scene release groups would be eager to pick up the show. Apparently that's not the case, yet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Rightsholders have asked Google to remove more than 10 billion 'copyright infringing' URLs from its search results. The search engine doesn't celebrate the milestone in any way, but the takedown notices document intriguing shifts in volume over time, as well as shifting takedown interests. [...] The path to 10 billion was turbulent. When Google first made DMCA details public it was processing a few million DMCA takedown requests in a year. That number swiftly increased to hundreds of millions and eventually reached a billion DMCA requests in 2016.

The exponential growth curve eventually flattened out and around 2017, the takedown volume started to decline. The decrease was in part due to various anti-piracy algorithms making pirated content less visible in search results. By downranking pirate sites, infringing content became harder to find. As a result, Google processed fewer takedown notices, a welcome change for both rightsholders and the search engine. Today, Google continues to make pirate sites less visible in search, but the reduction in takedown notices didn't last. On the contrary, over the past several months, Google search processed a record number of DMCA notices.

Last summer, the search giant recorded the 7 billionth takedown request and after that the numbers shot up, adding billions more in the year that followed. The company is now handling removal requests at a rate of roughly 2.5 billion per year; a new record. This represents more than 50 million takedown requests per week and roughly 5,000 every minute. [...] While the 10 billionth reported URL is undoubtedly a milestone, this number is largely driven by a few rightsholders, reporting outfits, and domain names. The aforementioned takedown outfit Link-Busters, for example, accounts for roughly 15% of all reported links, nearly 1.5 billion. Similarly, the ten most prolific rightsholders, including the BPI, HarperCollins, and VIZ Media, are responsible for 40% of all reported links. These ten companies are only a tiny fraction of the 600,000 rightsholders that reported pirated links, however. A small group of domains also receives a disproportionate amount of attention. In total, 5,400,061 domains have been reported, with the top domains having dozens of millions of flagged URLs each. However, most domains have only a few flagged links, some of which are erroneous.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this year, we reported on the video game archivists asking for a legal DMCA exemption to share Internet-accessible emulated versions of their physical game collections with researchers. Today, the US Copyright Office announced once again that it was denying that request, forcing researchers to travel to far-flung collections for access to the often-rare physical copies of the games they're seeking.

In announcing its decision, the Register of Copyrights for the Library of Congress sided with the Entertainment Software Association and others who argued that the proposed remote access could serve as a legal loophole for a free-to-access "online arcade" that could harm the market for classic gaming re-releases. This argument resonated with the Copyright Office despite a VGHF study that found 87 percent of those older game titles are currently out of print. "While proponents are correct that some older games will not have a reissue market, they concede there is a 'healthy' market for other reissued games and that the industry has been making 'greater concerted efforts' to reissue games," the Register writes in her decision. "Further, while the Register appreciates that proponents have suggested broad safeguards that could deter recreational uses of video games in some cases, she believes that such requirements are not specific enough to conclude that they would prevent market harms."

A DMCA exemption for remote sharing already exists for non-video-game computer software that is merely "functional," as the Register notes. But the same fair use arguments that allow for that sharing don't apply to video games because they are "often highly expressive in nature," the Register writes. In an odd footnote, the Register also notes that emulation of classic game consoles, while not infringing in its own right, has been "historically associated with piracy," thus "rais[ing] a potential concern" for any emulated remote access to library game catalogs. That footnote paradoxically cites Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) founder and director Frank Cifaldi's 2016 Game Developers Conference talk on the demonization of emulation and its importance to video game preservation. "The moment I became the Joker is when someone in charge of copyright law watched my GDC talk about how it's wrong to associate emulation with piracy and their takeaway was 'emulation is associated with piracy,'" Cifaldi quipped in a social media post.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Korean game publisher Nexon is using the U.S. legal system to address online copyright infringement. The company obtained a DMCA subpoena that requires Discord to hand over the personal details of suspected pirates. While Discord has shared information in the past, it doesn't plan to cooperate any longer, refusing to play the role of 'anti-piracy police'. [...] The messaging platform wrote that it is prepared to file a motion to quash the subpoena, if needed. It further urged Nexon to withdraw their demands, and cease sending any similar 'defective' subpoenas going forward. To support its stance, Discord made a list of twenty-two general objections and reservations. Among other things, the company wants to protect user privacy and their first amendment right to anonymous speech.

"Discord objects to the Requests as infringing its users' decisions to remain anonymous, an aspect of their freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Requests improperly seek to unmask anonymous speakers and consequently compel disclosure of material protected by the First Amendment," it reads. This strongly-worded letter didn't have the desired result, however. Instead of backing off, Nexon doubled down, filing a motion to compel (PDF) at a Texas federal court late last week. The game company refutes Discord's objections and asks the court to enter an order requiring Discord to produce the requested user data. Nexon says that it needs this information to protect its copyrights. "Discord's failure to cooperate discovery has impeded Nexon's ability to discover relevant, non-privileged information that will support its potential claims against the users who have provided access to the infringing material," Nexon writes. While the court has yet to rule on the matter, Discord is expected to file a formal motion to quash the subpoena in response, as indicated in its earlier communications.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a copyright infringement verdict against Internet provider Grande, which failed to take action against allegedly pirating subscribers. The jury's $47 million damages award in favor of the major music label plaintiffs is vacated. According to the Court (PDF), individual tracks that are part of an album, should not be counted as separate works. TorrentFreak reports: After hearing both sides, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury verdict yesterday. Grande's arguments, suggesting that the district court mistakenly upheld the verdict earlier, were rejected. "The district court did not err in upholding the jury's unanimous liability verdict because Plaintiffs satisfied each element legally and factually," the decision reads. "The court correctly interpreted the law and instructed the jury on the relevant legal standards in light of the factual issues disputed by the parties, and Plaintiffs introduced ample evidence from which a reasonable jury could find in Plaintiffs' favor." [...]

In addition to the material contribution challenge, Grande and its supporters also pointed out that terminating Internet access isn't a "simple measure," as the jury concluded. Instead, it is drastic and overbroad, which could also impact innocent subscribers. The Court of Appeals rejects this reasoning. Instead, it states that the jury could and did conclude that terminations are a simple measure. There is no evidence to reach a different conclusion. All in all, the Court sees no reason to reverse the jury's verdict that Grande is liable for contributory infringement. This means that the jury verdict is affirmed.