Piracy Site Blocking and Copyright Enforcement: What Works Now
By
Ceartas Team
When your films, series, music, games, books or courses are copied onto pirate sites, the usual tools are blocking orders, search delisting, lawsuits and takedown notices. They are often described as the same thing. They are not, and the difference decides whether your content actually stops being available. This hits studios, publishers, labels, game companies, agencies and creators who sell their own work.
This page tracks the court rulings, new laws, criminal cases and enforcement operations that change your options on piracy site blocking and copyright enforcement. We add each new development as it happens, newest first, and keep the summary at the top current.
The short version
Blocking moves the address, not the content. Blocking orders and domain suspensions make a site harder to reach in one country, but the files stay on the server, and audiences move to a new name within days.
Courts are putting the follow up work on rights holders. A French ruling found that blocking must be reasonable, not effective, leaving the rights holder to chase each new mirror and provider.
Lawmakers cannot agree where blocking should stop. Two US bills disagree on whether VPNs can be ordered to block. Neither is law.
Anonymous operators can be identified, slowly. Subpoenas and investigations are putting names to pirate operators, but the process takes months and often returns little.
The money trail is traceable. Prosecutors followed advertising revenue from one pirate site through an ad network to crypto wallets.
Your own records decide the size of your case. Cases are being won or argued on what each side can document, with dates.
What you can do today
These routes are open to most rights holders now. None of them guarantees an outcome or a speed, because each depends on a third party acting on a valid request.
Find where your content actually lives. Check pirate sites, file hosts, link aggregators and the messaging channels that share the links, not only what ranks in search.
Report to the platform. Where your work is on a mainstream platform, use its copyright reporting route.
Send a legal notice to the host. Send a copyright notice (such as a DMCA notice) to the company hosting the file. This is the route that takes content down at the source, rather than hiding it.
Ask search engines to delist. Delisting reduces how many people find a pirate page. The page still works for anyone with the link, so count it separately from removals.
Use blocking where it is available, and know its limits. Blocking orders exist in some countries and not in others, and they cover one country's internet providers only.
Go to the police where the operation is criminal. Large pirate operations are being investigated and charged in several countries.
Keep a dated record. Log every copy you find, every request you send, and every response. That record is what a lawyer will ask for later.
If you want infringing copies found and reported at the host, and reported again when they come back, see our DMCA takedown service.
What changed, newest first
30 October 2026: Vietnam indicts seven alleged operators of an anime piracy site
Vietnamese prosecutors have indicted seven people alleged to have run a large anime piracy site and related sites. According to the indictment, as reported by Vietnamese outlets and translated in an English language report, the group received 12.85 million units of a dollar pegged stablecoin in advertising revenue through one ad network into crypto wallets. Nothing has been tried and nobody has been convicted. The sites had already shut in March 2026, before the complaint was filed in May. The money trail shows where piracy revenue comes from, and how far behind the legal clock runs.
Source: read the report.
20 October 2026: A US judge orders a major social media company to name staff behind its torrent downloads
A US magistrate judge ordered a major social media company to identify the people who took part in or approved its decisions to download pirated book archives by BitTorrent, in a case brought by a business magazine publisher. This is a discovery order in live litigation. The company has not been found liable, and the case concerns acquisition for AI training rather than public distribution. For publishers, the point is that a dated record of who took what and when is what courts ask for, so keep your own.
Source: read the report. Read our analysis: why your records matter.
9 October 2026: A Spanish blocking order hits a pirate portal, and its community moves within days
A Madrid court approved measures against a pirate streaming portal on 28 September 2026: search delisting by two major search engines, and blocking by the larger Spanish internet providers. The domain was suspended. Within days its channels on a messaging app and a chat platform renamed themselves and a similar site appeared. It is not established that the order covers the new site. Nobody has been arrested or charged. For rights holders, it shows that blocking changes the address while the audience keeps its links.
Source: read the report.
8 October 2026: A Paris court says blocking must be reasonable, not effective
On 17 September 2026 the Paris Judicial Court refused a French pay TV broadcaster's request for daily penalties against a CDN and DNS provider over pirate sports streaming sites. It found the provider's blocking through its CDN was enough and did not extend blocking to its public DNS resolver. The provider was not penalised and is not accused of wrongdoing. The court held that the broadcaster must approach any new provider and report new mirrors itself. The broadcaster can appeal. For rights holders, winning a blocking order means taking on the ongoing work.
Source: read the report. Read our analysis: reasonable, not effective.
3 October 2026: Two rival US site blocking bills disagree on VPNs
Congress now has two competing site blocking bills: the American Copyright Protection Act (H.R. 10364) and the DEFEND IP Act (S. 5529 and H.R. 10575). One would let blocking orders reach VPNs; the other excludes them. They also differ on which internet providers are covered and on liability protection. Both are introduced bills, not law, and neither has passed. Even if one does, a blocking order acts on the route to a site, not on the file on the server.
Source: read the report. Read our analysis: the new US site blocking bills.
25 September 2026: A Japanese games company wins a $4.5m default judgment over pirate game shops
A US District Court in Washington entered a $4.5m default judgment against a former moderator of a piracy forum who ran shops distributing copied games for the company's console, at $150,000 per title across 30 titles, with a permanent injunction. The defendant never answered, so this is not a trial win or a precedent, and it is a civil case. The number worth noting is 30: the titles the company could evidence well enough to claim. Your case is limited by the record you already keep.
Source: read the report.
23 September 2026: Five countries block 317 music piracy sites in one operation
Peru's IP authority INDECOPI led Operation LUMEN with agencies in Paraguay, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, blocking 317 music piracy and malware sites. The sites drew around 15 million visits a month, and 44 were linked to malware affecting 4.7 million users. The sites were blocked by internet providers in those countries, not taken down worldwide, and no arrests are reported. Site blocking of this kind is not equally available in the US or Ireland.
Source: read the report.
4 September 2026: An adult film producer identifies an anonymous torrent defendant
An adult film producer used a court authorised subpoena to identify a previously anonymous BitTorrent defendant who, it alleges, downloaded around 20,000 files. Everything is an allegation and no liability has been found. The lesson is the method: anonymity online is rarely absolute, but identifying someone takes a consistent evidence trail, a court and months of waiting. During that time the files stay available unless removal runs in parallel.
Source: read the report.
30 August 2026: An anti piracy coalition seeks to unmask the operators behind 49 pirate domains
An anti piracy coalition obtained two DMCA subpoenas: one covering 49 pirate domains fronted by a CDN provider, by the coalition's own count, and one covering two servers on a chat platform. The aim is to identify the operators rather than remove pages. A subpoena is a request for identity, not a finding, and no named site has been ruled on. The original report notes operators often register false details, so results may be limited. Removal cannot wait for identification.
Source: read the report.
Related topics
Live sports and IPTV piracy: restreams, illegal IPTV services and the suppliers behind pirate sports sites.
Leaked and stolen content: the legal routes for getting stolen or leaked content taken down.
Deepfakes: the laws, cases and removal routes for deepfake abuse.
Blocking orders, bills and court cases will keep taking months, and the cases above show content moving to a new address within days. If you want infringing copies found, reported at the host and reported again when they return, see how our DMCA takedown service works.
