Copyright, Piracy & Counterfeit News

Cox Not Contributorily Liable for Copyright Infringement

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that internet service provider Cox Communications is not contributorily liable for copyright infringement carried out by its subscribers. This unanimous landmark decision is a significant victory for ISPs nationwide. Copyright Infringement Claims Mostly Ignored Sony Music and other rights holders sued Cox after the ISP received over 163,000 infringement […]

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Copyright Infringement: The Dictionary Sues OpenAI

Joining an army of other plaintiffs suing OpenAI for alleged copyright infringement, the dictionary has now filed a complaint. Two of the world’s most recognized reference institutions, Encyclopedia Britannica and its subsidiary Merriam-Webster, have filed a federal copyright lawsuit against OpenAI in Manhattan. It alleges the unauthorized use of their human-researched, fact-checked content to train

OpenAI Sued by Gracenote for Copyright Infringement

Nielsen’s metadata subsidiary Gracenote has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI in the Southern District of New York. This marks a potentially groundbreaking case in the fight over copyrighted works between data providers and AI companies. Why is This Case Unique? Most AI copyright suits focused on written content. Gracenote’s complaint targets not just

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Copyright Infringement: Publishers Sue Anna’s Archive

Book Piracy, Copyright Infringement / March 9, 2026

Thirteen major book publishers, including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Elsevier, have filed a federal lawsuit in New York against shadow library Anna’s Archive. The lawsuit is being coordinated by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). They allege massive copyright infringement on a scale they describe as “staggering.” What is Anna’s Archive? The notorious website,

Seedance 2.0 Debuts to Copyright Infringement Trouble

ByteDance’s newly released AI video generator Seedance 2.0 has ignited a firestorm of copyright controversy. This came after popular viral deepfake-style videos depicting Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. There were also deepfake riffs on Spider-Man, Titanic, and other protected franchises, all occurring within 24 hours of launch. The Motion Picture Association swiftly condemned the tool

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Illegal Streaming Networks Busted in Italy and the UK

TV & Film Piracy / February 2, 2026

Italy ‘Switches Off’ Illegal Streaming Servers Just days before the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, Italy launched “Operation Switch Off,” a sweeping multinational crackdown on illegal IPTV networks. It was coordinated by Italian prosecutors and cybercrime police alongside Eurojust, Europol, and Interpol. The operation spanned 29 raids across 11 Italian cities and 14 countries. Authorities dismantled

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Anthropic’s Copyright Infringement of 20,000 Songs, UMG Sues

A coalition of major music publishers, led by Universal Music Publishing Group alongside Concord Music Group and ABKCO Music, has filed a sweeping second copyright lawsuit against AI giant Anthropic, seeking over $3 billion in statutory damages for the alleged infringement of more than 20,000 songs. The filing, submitted January 28 in the Northern District

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Anna’s Archive Sued for Data Scraping Copyright Infringement

Anna’s Archive, a decentralized piracy collective formerly known as the “Pirate Library Mirror,” made waves when it announced it had scraped roughly 86 million music files and metadata for 256 million tracks directly from Spotify. The open-source search engine described it as the largest publicly available music metadata database ever assembled. The group planned to

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Whole Lotta Scraping Goin’ On: Google and Spotify Sue

Google has filed a lawsuit against Texas-based SerpApi. They accuse the company of using hundreds of millions of fraudulent search requests to scrape and steal copyrighted content from Google’s search results on a massive scale. Meanwhile, Spotify grapples with unlawful scraping of its data, which was released on file-sharing sites. The music platform blames a

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The AI Conundrum: Disney Sues Google, Partners with OpenAI

In the confusing, rapidly expanding AI landscape, content creation and entertainment companies are filing massive copyright infringement lawsuits while simultaneously negotiating licensing agreements and striking deals. On December 11, Disney announced a deal with OpenAI. On the same day, it was reported that they accused Google of using its AI technology to engage in massive

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