3 Count: Pirate Watch

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1: LaLiga Wants Major VPNs on EU Piracy Watch List Over Affiliate Marketing

First off, today Ernesto Van der Sar at TorrentFreak writes that the Spanish football (soccer) league LaLiga is asking the European Commission to add major VPN providers to its 2027 piracy watch list.

The move comes months after a Spanish court declined to fine NordVPN, one of the largest VPN providers, for its failure to block access to pirated content. Because of that, they are taking their case to the European Commission. In addition to NordVPN, the league is also targeting ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark.

According to the filing, these services not only declined to block access to pirated content, but they also enabled users to bypass geo‑restrictions, which are common for many sporting events. The previous list, which was released in 2025, did not include any VPN providers.

2: Anthropic Pushes for Opt-Out Model for Australian Content as ABC Warns of ‘Cannibalization’ of News

Next up today, Josh Butler at The Guardian reports that the AI company Anthropic is pushing for Australia to adopt an “opt‑out” for AI training. Such a model would make AI scraping and training legal by default, unless the company or rights holder opts out.

The country has been weighing new copyright regulations connected to the AI industry. Rights holders, in particular news organisations, have been pushing for greater control over their work and larger restrictions on how AI companies can use their content.

However, rights holders countered this, saying that such opt‑outs may not work. That’s because tools such as robots.txt are often ignored, resulting in content being spread across the web, where AI companies can grab it even if the original site objects.

3: In Japan, Free BitTorrent Porn Downloads Bring Legal Trouble and Fines

Finally today, the South China Morning Post reports that in Japan, BitTorrent users are facing stiff penalties for downloading pirated content, in particular adult material.

Though the practice of sending settlement‑demand letters to suspected copyright infringers is a long‑running practice and controversial practice in the United States, it has been much rarer in Japan. However, the practice has been growing in the country, up from just 814 cases in 2023 to over 5,300 in 2025.

The vast majority of those requests are coming from creators of adult content. According to an unnamed user interviewed for the article, the demand letter he received demanded 500,000 yen ($3,200) and threatened him with both criminal and civil penalties if he did not comply.

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