MAME Devs Spent 628 Years Cracking Protection on 712 Retro Games
Updated: 2025-01-18 13:12:33
Those capable of quickly bypassing video game copy protection are revered by impatient pirate players. On average, games protected by anti-tamper tech Denuvo enjoy 68 days crack-free before succumbing to piracy. Yet new research focused on MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and video game preservation, reveals that a sample of 712 protected games, released as far back as 1979, took an average of 10.6 months each to crack. Total cracking time: 628 years.
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In 2024, legal action taken by Spain's top-tier football league led to telecoms giant Telefonica disclosing the identities of alleged pirates among its own subscribers. Telefonica's cooperation was to be expected, as it just obtained the rights to broadcast LaLiga matches for 1.2 billion euros. In contrast, details of an anti-piracy agreement between the two companies, one that seems to operate in the opposite direction, wasn't expected at all.
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This week, several domain names of the Japanese adult pirate website MissAV were redirected to seizure banners. The legal basis for these confiscations wasn't initially clear, but new information ties the action to a U.S. court order. In addition to losing their domain names, the MissAV defendants must pay $4.5 million in damages.
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Poppy Playtime is a massively popular horror game released by the indie studio Mob Entertainment. The game is available across various platforms, including the Google Play Store, where copyright-infringing versions are also available. Despite several complaints, Google allegedly failed to remove these unauthorized apps, which prompted the game developers to take legal action.
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Telegram is one of the most popular messaging tools, chosen by many online services to stay connected with their audiences. Major shadow libraries Z-Library and Anna's Archive used Telegram until this week, when both accounts were terminated for copyright infringement. While these websites offer infringing content, both were cautious to avoid copyright troubles on Telegram.
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With considerable encouragement from Hollywood and affiliated anti-piracy groups, in 2021 the Malaysian government stepped up its site blocking measures. An official statement published this week reveals that between 2021 and November 2024, a total of 3,682 pirate sites were blocked to prevent exploitation of local content. Interesting, perhaps, but after 15 years of effort, did site-blocking actually work and, if so, who benefited, and how?
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In its annual report published last week, the U.S. Government listed MagisTV as one of the most notorious piracy services. The mention comes after the IPTV provider, which is mainly popular in Latin America, boldly applied for a U.S. trademark. This trademark is unlikely to be granted without protest, but that doesn't seem to be a major issue; the service has already rebranded itself as FlujoTV.
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Making use of free Wi-Fi offered by pubs, bars, cafés, and other businesses, is now an everyday event for millions of people. For the owner of the 3 Little Piggies café in Cork, Ireland, providing free Wi-Fi led to an allegation of music piracy from his ISP and advance notice of potential disconnection. What followed was an extremely rare apology, for reasons deserving of a much closer look.
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With billions of annual visits, MissAV ranks among the 60 most-visited websites on the internet. The porn site mostly caters to an Asian audience where rightsholders see the 'pirate' site as a major threat to their business. Through a legal procedure, adult entertainment company FANZA 'confiscated' the MissAV.com domain, as well as ThisAV.com. However, MissAV swiftly bounced back on a new domain.
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Nhentai.net, a popular adult site with dozens of millions of monthly visits, has asked a California federal court to dismiss a piracy lawsuit filed last year by publisher PCR Distributing. Among other things, the site argues that PCR lack sufficient ownership of the copyrights in question and has previously granted permission for the use of the content.
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Adult entertainment company Strike 3 Holdings is once again the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States. The company tracks down individual pirates and holds them responsible via copyright infringement lawsuits. The company is linked to over 3,900 lawsuits filed in 2024 alone, breaking its own record once again.
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According to the MPA, in 2023 video hosting platform DoodStream received 2.69 billion visits, largely driven by pirated content. So when the High Court of Delhi gave the site's operators 24 hours to end infringement in March 2024, that looked promising. Yet the site remains online, despite subsequent High Court orders. According to site's Indian operators, it is not possible to comply with High Court orders because a major DoodStream investor comes from Russia.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has got involved in a lawsuit between several movie companies and ISP Cox, who disagree over the use of DMCA subpoenas to identify alleged pirates. The EFF argues this could be abused by "copyright trolls" to target innocent users. They urge the court to require a full lawsuit with judicial oversight.
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The Office of the United States Trade Representative has published its annual list of problematic piracy websites and other "notorious markets." This year's overview includes the usual suspects operating in the torrent and streaming sectors, as well as some intermediaries, including various hosting companies. The USTR hopes that by highlighting the threats, platform operators or foreign authorities will take action.
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In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the EU banned a number of Russian news outlets from broadcasting to any member state, including via websites and IPTV. Following a recent move by Lithuania, Google has reportedly deindexed over 200 websites offering EU-sanctioned content. The list includes the websites of specific broadcasters but also many portals offering pirated movies, TV shows, and unlicensed live TV streams, including some from Ukraine.
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In the live sports broadcasting arena, dynamic blocking of pirate IPTV streams is seen as increasingly useful to tackle a prevalent and highly resilient form of illicit content delivery. Yet as the highly-publicized blunders of 2024 showed, getting blocking wrong benefits nobody. To that background, a blocking specialist at anti-piracy company Friend MTS is encouraging restraint.
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Italy's 'Piracy Shield' blocking system was originally invented to protect time-sensitive live sports streams from pirates. A year later, rightsholders are pushing for an update to cover a wider range of content, including films. This move, which is expected to be discussed in a forthcoming consultation, aims to gradually expand the 'next-gen' blocking system.
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