Last weekend, the Sacred Symbols podcast claimed to have obtained a leaked script for the next major Tomb Raider game, sharing some details about what we can expect from Lara Croft's next adventure. We weren't sure how legitimate the leak was at the time, but a recent DMCA takedown request …
Read More »Destiny YouTuber sued by Bungie for over $7M due to false DMCA strikes
Earlier this year, Bungie found itself in hot water with the Destiny content creator community after a number of music channels began getting spammed with DMCA strikes. Bungie swiftly confirmed it was not behind this and worked with YouTube to get things reversed. So who was behind the false bans? …
Read More »Konami sends out DMCA claims over new Silent Hill concept art leak
For months now, there have been persistent rumours that a new Silent Hill game is in development, possibly multiple. Now, new leaks have come to light showing concept art for a new Silent Hill game, and thanks to a swift DMCA claim from Konami, we know the leak was likely …
Read More »Bungie files lawsuit following fraudulent YouTube DMCA takedowns
Bungie found itself in the hotseat recently when a wave of copyright takedown requests were sent out against Destiny 2 content creators on YouTube. Bungie quickly admitted that it was just as confused about the situation as the rest of us and now, the studio is suing a number of …
Read More »Nintendo begins taking down clips of viral fan made Pokemon shooter
Recently across Reddit, one lone developer has been posting clips of a private Pokemon first-person shooter fan game. These short videos showcased a Pokemon game built in Unreal Engine, where the player runs around the map and shoots at Pokemon with various guns. Some of these clips ended up going …
Read More »Ubisoft confirms GeForce Now leak with DMCA filing
Earlier this month, a GeForce Now database vulnerability revealed a massive list of unannounced games from many major developers and publishers. Nvidia tried to cover for publishers by stating that the entries were “speculative” and not indicative of any privileged information. However, it seems Ubisoft didn't get the memo and …
Read More »Twitch strikes deal with music industry as part of crackdown on unlicensed audio
YouTubers are well aware of the issues that the DMCA system imposes and recently, Twitch streamers have been dealing with similar headaches, in large part due to music licenses. After months of lengthy discussions, Twitch appears to have now reached a deal with the music industry, but details on how …
Read More »Unofficial Diablo 2: Resurrected offline patch removed from GitHub
Earlier this year, Blizzard began closed playtests for Diablo II: Resurrected and sure enough, some people took those files and modified the game to be playable offline. These offline patches were hosted on GitHub, but a DMCA wave has taken them all down. As reported by TorrentFreak, Activision Blizzard has …
Read More »Cyberpunk 2077 includes an option to disable copyrighted music
While YouTubers have been dealing with music-related copyright strikes on gaming content for years, the issue is fairly new to live streamers on Twitch. Recently, thousands of Twitch streamers had to wipe content from their channels due to a mass wave of DMCA claims from the music industry. Fortunately, some …
Read More »The Verge retracts copyright claims against YouTubers, says videos were still not Fair Use
Yesterday, Vox Media and The Verge were found to be sending out copyright strikes against two specific channels for reacting to a PC build guide video from several months ago. At the time, the two channels affected disputed the claims and were able to get them retracted fairly swiftly. At …
Read More »The ESA is opposing a petition to allow preservationists to restore multiplayer to defunct games
Every three years, the US Copyright Office opens itself up to hearing out petitions on changes it can make to the DMCA system. Back in 2015, this opened the door for MADE to argue for exemptions to be made to allow libraries, archives and museums to emulate, jailbreak or circumvent …
Read More »NBC Universal and others caught faking takedown links
One of the tactics that movie studios, music labels and copyright trolls use in taking down sites, having them blocked or attempting to extort money, is to find links to infringing content and either use them as court evidence, for DMCA takedowns. It turns out though that some groups manufacture …
Read More »Warner Bros flags its own site for piracy in new takedown requests
We often hear about the ridiculous number of DMCA Takedown requests Google has to process each day in an effort to clean search pages from links to pirated content. Unfortunately, copyright holders aren't particularly good at double-checking who they are going after, which led amusingly enough has led to Warner Bros …
Read More »Orion: Prelude developer admits to ripping off Call of Duty assets
Trek Industries hasn't had the best week, the Steam Summer Sale is well under way but the studio found its game ‘Orion: Prelude' abruptly taken off of Steam due to a DMCA request from Activision, who claimed that the game ripped off gun models from Call of Duty: Black Ops …
Read More »World’s most successful musicians want DMCA to have more power
Some of the world's most successful musicians, including the likes of Elton John, Bon Jovi, Taylor Swift and U2 have sent a petition to the United States congress, demanding the DMCA takedown system be given more power. As it stands, they claim to be concerned about the ability for musicians …
Read More »HBO uses copyright to take down Game of Thrones predictions
Be careful with how clever your predictions of upcoming Game of Thrones episodes are, as if you're spot on, HBO might use copyright law to take your content down, even if you don't use official show footage or audio. With episodes of the show being pirated as much as ever, …
Read More »HBO sends out letters to suspected Game of Thrones pirates
Most people know that Game of Thrones is the most pirated TV show around at the moment, including HBO, who have sometimes seemed proud of the amount of downloads its hit show generates. However, it looks like the network is now looking to dissuade those possibly downloading its TV show …
Read More »More YouTubers are getting silently dropped from monetisation
Since Google's acquisition of it back in 2006, Youtube has always been a bit of an opaque organisation. Getting through to support has never been easy and often changes are made without much consultation with the content creators. Lately that lack of transparency is causing real problems for some video …
Read More »Google asked to take down 1500 links per minute
Media companies have lumped Google with a lot of responsibility when it comes to fighting piracy, so much so that Google now handles two million takedown requests every single day. According to Google's own transparency report, the company received 65 million takedown requests in the last month alone. The math …
Read More »Google is finally willing to protect Fair Use on YouTube
Over the years, YouTube has become a huge platform for content creators. Over the years, it has seemed like the copyright system on YouTube was stacked against creators, with no real fair use protection against bogus copyright claims. Now, YouTube is finally doing something about it with a new fair …
Read More »Single player games with dead DRM servers ruled DMCA exempt
Earlier this year, a Harvard Law School student launched a petition to the US Copyright Office to allow for abandoned online games to become exempt to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This would mean that games abandoned by publishers with dead DRM servers could legally be cracked and played again. …
Read More »Popcorn Time for the web removed, then brought back instantly
Popcorn Time for the web brought the torrent streaming service to web browsers, removing the need to download and use the app. However, following legal threats, the service went down. Then 24 hours later, new developers picked up the project and brought the service straight back to life. The original …
Read More »Konami DMCA’d MGS fan art on Twitter
Konami is something of an enigma, sometimes it almost seems as if the company doesn't want to sell games at all. This week is an exciting time for Metal Gear Solid fans, after the final chapter in the long-running series released on Monday. So as with any big game launch, …
Read More »Twitter goes after site network that saved politicians’ deleted tweets
Twitter has gone ahead and shut down a network of sites that were dedicated to preserving and archiving deleted tweets from politicians. The network was run by the Open State Foundation, which has revealed that Twitter suspended their API access last Friday. The social network stated that the suspension was …
Read More »TV networks sued for pirating a 31 second YouTube video
More often than not, we see media companies throwing DMCA claims all over the web, quite a few of which turn out to be bogus. However, what happens when a network uses someone else's content without their permission? Well apparently CNN and CBC Canada are about to find out as …
Read More »Columbia Pictures DMCAs official Pixels trailer
Pixels launched earlier this month and the movie is not off to a good start with critics, with an abysmal score of 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. However, it seems that Columbia Pictures is still pretty worried about piracy as the company has been sending out mass amounts of DMCA claims, one …
Read More »Sky News live stream shut down by DMCA from Fox News
TV and movie companies are constantly throwing around bogus DMCA notices and copyright claims around, though they are usually placed with the intention of combating piracy, rather than shutting down the competition. This week, the official YouTube live-stream of Sky News was pulled thanks to a copyright claim from Fox …
Read More »Reddit to clarify removed content with new reports
Reddit, “the front page of the internet,” has been going through some changes in the past few months, in an effort to open up some of its decision making and staff dealings. It released a transparency report earlier this year, which gave users an idea of how often it complied …
Read More »YouTuber attempts to sue Google over Content ID takedowns
It is no secret that many serious YouTube content creators are often frustrated with YouTube and how its Content ID system works. More often than not, completely legitimate videos are taken down over false DMCA claims and it can really mess with a channel and its standing on YouTube. One …
Read More »BBC DMCA notice demands Top Gear IMDB take down
The BBC appears to have fallen foul of the drag-net effects of automated DMCA takedown tools, as in an effort to curb piracy of the on-hiatus motoring show, Top Gear, it's demanded that the show's own IMDB page be removed, along with other bizarre URL's like the DailyMotion home page. …
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