Last year the movie industry anti-piracy group ACAPOR delivered boxes full of IP-addresses that they alleged had engaged in illegal file-sharing to the Attorney General’s Office of Portugal. The group wanted the AG's office to act against these 2,000 alleged pirates, saying that they were doing anything they could to "alert the government to the very serious situation in the entertainment industry." Fast-forward to the present day and the AG has a decision that the group is not too pleased with..

The latest firmware update to Nintendo's 3DS hand-held gaming system has blocked the use of flash carts on the system, according to this Destructoid report. A firmware update, which was released last week for Nintendo's handheld has blocked flash carts on the system, according to a forum post on a device manufacturer's website.

On Monday New Zealand prime minister John Key revealed that he has ordered an investigation into what he calls "unlawful interception of certain individuals by the Government Communications Security Bureau" related to illegal bugging of Kim Dotcom. Some of that surveillance led to Kim Dotcom’s arrest in January. The investigation throws another monkey wrench in the U.S. government's attempt to extradite the Megaupload file-sharing site to face various charges.

Manchester is the "piracy capitol" of the United Kingdom, according to a new study released exclusively by the BBC. The research found that there were more illegal downloads per person in that city than any other in the country. Manchester was followed by Nottingham and Southampton.

The data comes from monitoring service Musicmetric, who came to the conclusion that UK users illegally shared over 40 million albums and singles in the first half of this year.

Watch the full BBC report to your left.

The battle over returning legitimate files and data stored on Megaupload's servers has hit a brick wall leaving anyone who made the mistake of storing important data there uncertain about whether they will ever get it back. Megaupload’s 1103 servers are gathering dust at Carpathia Hosting in the United States and Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken tells TorrentFreak that, despite best efforts, efforts are stalled.

It looks like it might be hard for rights holders in various entertainment industries to sue individuals who have open Wi-Fi networks for copyright infringement done by guests, if the following court case is any indication. A California man whose open network was allegedly used to download a copyrighted video cannot be sued, according to a ruling by a federal judge.

The complaint filed in April of this year alleged that Hatfield was negligent because he didn't secure his network, and therefore liable.

Google has completely removed the infamous file-sharing site The Pirate Bay from its autocomplete results, meaning that users who type the search in will have to implicitly type "The Pirate Bay" without any suggestions from Google.

The change is meant to quell complaints from rightsholders who have long held that Google is an accomplice in directing users to domains strongly associated with illegal filesharing and copyright infringement. Google began the process of suppressing and censoring links to pirated material in its instant and auto-complete tools last year.

While the agency running Hadopi (the three-strikes copyright infringement enforcement system that disconnects repeat offenders from the Internet) is defending itself in the face of threats to drastically cut its funding by the French government, some new data shows that Hadopi produces plenty of notices but very few disconnections or court cases. While we have no idea how much it costs to send out millions of notices, the system seems to be effective in making people stop sharing illegal files - even if it might be only temporary.

You may remember that the newly elected French president said recently that it might not fund the country's Hadopi agency. Hadopi, in case you'd forgotten is a copyright protection enforcement regime that uses a "three-strikes" policy that disconnects repeat offenders from the internet. President Francois Hollande hinted during his campaign that he might reform the agency to make it less repressive and more cooperative. Later in August he said that he would be scaling back funding for it. Now Hadopi is fighting back against the notion of having its resources clipped.

While the three-strikes-rule may be considered a good idea by most rightsholders, ISP's say that they end up paying the lion's share of the costs associated with such systems. According to this TorrentFreak report, ISPs in New Zealand claim that they end up paying upwards of 76 percent of the costs.

The Cambodian government will cooperate in the deportation of Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, who was arrested in the country last week for not showing up to serve his jail sentence for copyright infringement in Sweden.

At the beginning of this year as law enforcement agencies in New Zealand, the U.S., and Hong Kong worked together to shut down Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's file-sharing empire, it seized just about every asset the charismatic NZ resident owned - including all of his money. This naturally made it tough for Dotcom to pay his legal fees.

But a judgment today by the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand will give Dotcom some relief.

The FBI is cracking down on several sites this week that it says have engaged in facilitating Android app piracy. The Department of Justice has seized and locked down the applanet.net, appbucket.net, and snappzmarket.com domains and placed a warning on the sites in question.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot says that the percentage of paying customers is about the same for free to play as it is for PC boxed product: around five to seven percent. Guillemot tells GamesIndustry International that using a free to play model in countries where piracy is a huge problem has proven to be an effective strategy.

In Episode 16 of the Super Podcast Action Committee, Andrew Eisen and James Fudge (filling in for E. Zachary Knight, who had to take a well-deserved time-out to fawn over a new addition to his family this week) talk about Mugen Souls, Resident Evil 5, the chaos of OnLive, the irony of Ubisoft turning Uplay into a digital distribution platform, and the controversy over "girlfriends" and Borderlands 2. Download Episode 16 here: SuperPAC Episode 16 (1 Hour, 12 Minutes).

Today Google began a new initiative that basically buries the search results of websites that have a substantial amount of "valid claims" of copyright infringement filed against it. But, as the BBC reports, two major file-sharing sites are saying that the new way in which Google is organizing the search results will likely drive even more traffic directly to their domains. So just who are the two sites making these claims? The Pirate Bay and Isohunt. Both sites also claim that Google search results are not their main source of traffic.

If the U.S. government thought they were going to skate right through the New Zealand Courts to bring Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom to America to face charges, they might have figured out that there are a few cracks in their plans.

On Monday we reported that the MPAA and the RIAA recommended to Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel that the United States government do more to combat online piracy like they did with Megaupload. Today Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom offers his two cents on the MPAA's and RIAA's recommendations and goes so far as to say that these trade groups have "corrupted the government."

Major UK Internet service provider Virgin Media has finally been ordered by the courts to block subscriber access to file-sharing site, Newzbin2. The company had rejected earlier calls by rights groups such as the Motion Picture Association to block the site voluntarily. The company issued the following statement yesterday:

Google has decided to play ball with rights holders, according to this Politico report. The world's biggest search engine revealed that it will now make search results from sites with "frequent copyright removal notices" appear lower in Google search rankings. Google announced late Friday that web sites with high numbers of "valid" removal notices would be affected by this new policy.

When the Obama Administration's Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel sent out a request for comments on future strategies related to copyright enforcement, it came as no shock when trade groups representing the interests of the movie and music industry asked that a major P2P site be taken down.

After the Ukrainian Government took down the BitTorrent site Demonoid (at the request of Interpol, apparently), hacktivist group Anonymous attacked several government websites and vowed more actions in the future as a form of protest. The Kyiv Post is reporting that the web pages for the Ukrainian Anti-Piracy Association, the Ukrainian Agency for Copyright and Related Rights, and the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine were unavailable for a short amount of time.

According to the BBC, one of the world's largest BitTorrent sites in the world has been shut down. Ukraine-based BitTorrent site Demonoid has been shut down by Ukrainian authorities. Officials from the Ukraine's Ministry of Internal Affairs raided the data center that was hosting website's servers.

You can't fight city hall, and apparently you can't fight piracy online either - at least according to Dead Trigger developer Madfinger Games. The company made news earlier this month when it turned the Andorid version of its zombie shooting game "freemium," claiming that the Android version of the game had such a high piracy rate that the game needed to be free with micro-transactions.

France's new culture minister has indicated that she will drastically cut the budget from the internet copyright infringement agency Hadopi. She will also encourage the agency to lay off on kicking people off the Internet, much to the delight of internet advocates. Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti has appointed former Canal+ pay-TV CEO Pierre Lescure to conduct a review of France's Act II, a set of rules for protecting culture in the digital age - which includes the use of the Hadopi agency for enforcement.

Dead Trigger developer Madfinger Games has made the iOS version of the game free, following reports earlier this month that it would make the Android version of its zombie shooter a free downloaded due to "unbelievably high" levels of piracy. Today the company has taken the same action for the iPad and iPhone version of the game, though its claims about piracy on this platform seem to be slightly more subdued.

Update: The BBC is reporting that Ubisoft has rushed to patch the exploit unearthed by a Google engineer in its Uplay DRM. The company also issued instructions for Uplay users:

"We recommend that all Uplay users update their Uplay PC application without a Web browser open," Ubisoft said. "This will allow the plug-in to update correctly. An updated version of the Uplay PC installer with the patch also is available from Uplay.com."

Wired's Game | Life is reporting that the South Korean Customs Service has taken down a criminal piracy ring comprised of 25 suspects. They are accused of allegedly selling over 90,000 illegally copied games and copying devices for the Nintendo DS worth over 100 billion won ($87 million). The South Korean agency turned over information on the suspects to prosecutors on Monday, according to the Korea Herald.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has launched a song online attacking U.S. President Barack Obama and urging supporters not to vote for him in November. The song and video on YouTube is called "Mr President" and offers dire warnings to U.S. voters about the President such as "don't vote for those who would take us back in time."

In another line from the song he says"what about free speech Mr President, what happened to change Mr President." 

In a statement on Facebook, game developer Madfinger Games claims that the piracy rate for its Android zombie shooting game was "unbelievably high." The game had been priced at a mere 99 cents, but the developers say that the low price point didn’t stop pirates from stealing the game and using it for free.

As a result the company has announced that the Android version of the game is now completely free to play and enjoy. When we say free, we do not mean "free-to-play," for the record.