Regional coding and access restriction systems have long operated as technical protection measures in copyright law. They are designed to control where, when and by whom copyrighted works may be accessed. At their core, these systems combine technology with legal enforcement: the technology limits access, while copyright law prohibits circumvention. Early examples were CDs and, more significantly, DVDs, where media companies used region codes to divide the global market into

Japanese police have arrested the alleged "first uploader" of a pirated NHK drama on Nyaa, the torrent index that has sat near the top of the anime piracy ecosystem for the better part of a decade. On 28 July 2026, the Cyber Investigation Division of the Kyoto Prefectural Police, working with Fushimi Police Station, detained a man resident in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, on suspicion of violating Japan’s Copyright Act.1,2,4 The allegation is that he posted the torre

AI-generated short dramas are becoming increasingly popular online. As more and more people are using AI to create short dramas and the revenue prize increases, an important legal issue has come up: can AI short drama be protected under copyright law, and if someone copied this short drama, what can the creator do to protect their copyright?

By Oliver Walsh, Head of Evidence Services, Rouse In 2020, a legal research startup called ROSS Intelligence went to Thomson Reuters and asked to license Westlaw. It was told no. Westlaw's owner was not about to hand its editorial content to a company building a rival product. On the district court's findings, ROSS took another route. It paid a third party for tens of thousands of lawyer-written legal memos which had been compiled with reference to Westlaw's headnotes, the sh

Attribution: 中华民国总统府 Taiwan's Criminal Investigation Bureau has opened an investigation into a video that allegedly used an AI-generated voice clone of President Lai Ching-te, in a case that is now testing how far existing forgery law can stretch to cover synthetic political speech. The video, titled "Oil Cannot Defeat You," was published by a creator known as "Principal Lai'er," identified as Wei Chun-you, a former director of the opposition Kuomintang's New Media Department

Following the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) decision on April 30 to designate Vietnam as a Priority Foreign Country in its Special 301 Report, Hanoi responded with a high-priority enforcement push aimed at curbing persistent IP violations. The Vietnamese government issued Official Dispatch No. 38/CĐ-TTg from the Prime Minister as its Action Plan. Key components affecting copyright piracy are: Cross-Agency Enforcement Mandate: Orders coordinated, immediate

Artificial intelligence developer Anthropic has received final court approval for a landmark US$1.5 billion settlement resolving copyright claims brought by a class of authors whose books were allegedly copied without permission to build a digital library used in connection with training its Claude AI models. The settlement, approved by a U.S. federal judge, is the largest copyright agreement of its kind in U.S. history and marks another significant development in the growing

In the earlier articles in this series, we covered how, for decades, the fight against piracy has turned on one simple question: was the content copied? It is the foundation on which much of copyright enforcement has been built. A film is copied. A television programme is rebroadcast. A football match is streamed without permission. In each case the infringement is visible, because the work itself has been reproduced. The scale of that problem is enormous and still growing: d

South Korea has announced an expansion of its international anti-piracy efforts, signalling a growing recognition that digital piracy is no longer a domestic issue but a transnational criminal challenge requiring coordinated cross-border enforcement. The initiative strengthens cooperation between the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Korea Copyright Protection Agency (KCOPA), and international law enforcement partners, including Interpol and the United States Homel

By Oliver Walsh, Head of Evidence Services, Rouse In the autumn of 2025, a new actress began doing the rounds. She had a name, Tilly Norwood, a headshot, a showreel and, before long, talent agencies reportedly taking an interest. She had never drawn breath. Tilly was generated entirely by software, and when the actors' union SAG-AFTRA responded, its objection doubled as a definition of the problem. She was, it said, "a character generated by a computer program that was traine

In late June 2026, the Indonesian Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DGIP), executed several enforcement actions targeting digital content piracy. The DGIP’s Directorate of Law Enforcement issued blocking orders against 29 illegal webtoon platforms and 50 illicit Korean drama (K-drama) streaming networks. Indonesia’s Copyright Content Blocking Framework The DGIP’s mechanism governing content blocking runs as follows: [Foreign IP holder or Copyright Associatio

By Oliver Walsh, Head of Evidence Services, Rouse Someone stole the musician. For more than a century, copyright law has focused on protecting creative works. A song, a film, a photograph, a book. Digital piracy simply changed the method of copying. CDs became MP3s. DVDs became torrents. Streaming platforms replaced peer-to-peer networks. The infringement evolved, but the underlying act remained the same. Someone copied the work. Artificial intelligence changes something far

The Indonesian government has formally tabled a draft bill to overhaul its 2014 Copyright Law (Law No. 28 of 2014). Aimed at modernizing copyright rules for the digital economy, the proposed 2026 amendments focus on 4 major areas: 1. Regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) The draft introduces a tiered "human-involvement" test for AI-generated output. Works created using AI with sufficient human creative direction will qualify for standard copyright protection. Conversely,

The Bac Ninh Provincial Police in Vietnam have launched criminal proceedings against 10 individuals linked to illicit sports streaming network "Bun Cha TV." Operating as a, remote "underground digital company," the network illegally broadcasted high-profile copyrighted events like the English Premier League and UEFA Champions League, drawing hundreds of thousands of daily viewers with professional, Vietnamese-narrated feeds. The ring functioned via structured teams handling

Authorities in Thailand cracked down on a digital piracy illicit streaming platform. A cross-border operation led by Thailand’s Central Investigation Bureau resulted in multiple charges filed against key individuals tied to MyIPTV4K, a widely accessed grey-market Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) service. Among those apprehended were a 33-year-old Thai national, Akkharawat, from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, and a Malaysian couple located in Selangor state in central Malaysia.

In its response to the USTR's categorization Vietnam as a Priority Foreign Country, the country is breaking away from past enforcement methods to launch a modern offensive against digital piracy. Initiated by a mandate from the Prime Minister on May 5, 2026, in response to the treat of US sanctions, this new initiative is a shift in how the country protects copyright, moving from slow, manual monitoring to a more aggressive, tech-driven, and criminal-focused strategy. Two wel

A legal dispute in Indonesia has arisen between PT Agung Pratama Wibawa and PT Sony Music Entertainment Indonesia and producer Fadli Hasan (known professionally as F4dli) over the hit song "Aku Dah Lupa." The Plaintiff alleges that the Defendants engaged in the unauthorized commercial use of the song, which became a massive viral phenomenon in 2025 and early 2026. Originally released in February 2025, "Aku Dah Lupa" performed by the TikToker duo Zia & Mikky gained traction

Vietnamese authorities are intensifying their enforcement against online piracy and wider intellectual property (IP) violations, following the country's disastrous showing as a Priority Foreign Country on the April 30th USTR report. For background see here. Vietnam's campaign is an attempt to show a shift from sporadic takedowns to more co-ordinated compliance action. Steps are being taken to disrupt pirate distribution channels, strengthen deterrence, and improve general a

In a landmark case for the digital age, a court in Guangzhou delivered China’s first criminal verdict involving copyright infringement for AI-generated short dramas. The Huangpu District People’s Court sentenced two individuals to eight months’ imprisonment (suspended for a year) and issued fines after they were found guilty of illegally recording and reselling more than 1,700 Audiovisual works. The dramas were created using AI tools developed by a gaming company. But the cou

Summary Vietnam has launched a nationwide enforcement campaign from 7 to 30 May 2026, targeting intellectual property (IP) infringement with strict, coordinated actions across all ministries and local authorities. The campaign, prompted by the United States Trade Representative (USTR)’s designation of Vietnam as a Priority Foreign Country for IP deficiencies, aims to increase enforcement efficiency, especially against online piracy and counterfeiting. These efforts, supported