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RIAA targets 40 piracy sites via Cloudflare and Namecheap subpoenas
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 2 November 2020
The Recording Industry Association Of America has secured subpoenas against internet services company Cloudflare and domain registrar Namecheap seeking information about 40 websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement. And that includes Y2Mate.com, the stream-ripping site that was identifying as being particularly problematic in a recent report by UK collecting society PRS.
Companies like Cloudflare and Namecheap are reluctant to voluntarily police their client base for copyright infringers and piracy operations, but they generally comply with court orders that force them to reveal the identities of the people or companies behind such websites.
When the RIAA seeks court orders of this kind, it usually gives us a good idea about what websites are currently on the US record industry trade group’s piracy target list.
Once Cloudflare et al have been forced to provide contact information for their allegedly copyright-infringing clients, those clients often receive legal letters from the RIAA. Some of the targeted sites will ignore those letters or seek to fight any legal action in court. But usually some voluntarily go offline when faced with the prospect of an expensive legal battle.
Torrentfreak spotted the latest subpoenas, with BitTorrent and streaming portals also appearing on the list of 40 targeted sites, alongside some stream-ripping operations. You can check the full list of targeted sites on the Torrentfreak website here.
