3 Count: Target VPN

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1: Movie Companies Sue VPN Provider for ‘Encouraging’ and ‘Facilitating’ Piracy

First off today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that Voltage Pictures and Millennium Finding have filed a pair of lawsuits against the suspected owners of the VPN company Liquid VPN alleging that the service is both encouraging and facilitating piracy.

According to the lawsuits, which are largely identical other than targeting different parties, the service openly advertises itself as a tool for piracy promising “risk-free” streaming of pirate content and “DMCA free zone” for accessing content.

The lawsuit further claims that the company failed to register a DMCA agent and failed to block ports commonly used for file sharing. As such, the movie companies are seeking damages as well as an order to block the ports in question in addition to blocking various pirate-related sites as well as terminate repeat infringers.

2: Rosetta May Be Removed From M1 Macs in Some Regions on macOS 11.3

Next up today, Joe Rossignol at MacRumors reports that an upcoming to update to MacOS will see Apple removing the Rosetta app in various regions even though the app is crucial for running certain applications on the latest Macbooks.

The Rosetta app is used to run software coded for Intel chips, which make up the bulk of Macs in service, on the new M1 Macbooks. However, the terms of service for an upcoming update hints that Apple may be pulling the tool in certain regions though it does not explain why.

This has led to heavy speculation that the issue is copyright or otherwise legal-related. However, the copyright issue seems unlikely as it will only be a handful of small regions, not globally. Others have speculated it has to do with export limitations and the technology not being legal to export to certain countries.

3: Nacon Argues The Sinking City ‘Piracy’ is Within its Contractual Rights

Finally today, Alissa McAloon at Gamastura reports that the video game publisher Nacon has released a statement saying that it was fully within its rights to pirate The Sinking City and making it available on Steam, even though the game has since been removed.

Nacon has been in a long running dispute with developer Frogwares over various contractual issues. This led to Frogwares not making the game available on Steam and only selling it on specific platforms. According to Frogwares, Nacon downloaded the game from one of those platforms, edited the code to swap out various logos, and then uploaded it to Steam to make it available for sale there.

The game has since been re-removed from Steam due to a DMCA takedown filed by Frogwares but Nacon says that the actions were fully legal and in line with a recent court decision. Frogwares, however, says that while the court did order it to make a Steam version, that is a process that could take years and the ruling is already under appeal.

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