The photojournalist Patricia de Melo Moreira examines the fishing industry and local traditions in Peniche and Lisbon. Sardines account for two-thirds of Portugal’s fishing catch and sustain a major canning industry

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Six Portuguese young people claim inadequate policies to tackle global heating breach their human rights

• Europe live – latest updates

A key plank of the UK government’s defence against the biggest climate legal action in the world next week has fallen away as a result of the U-turn by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on green policies.

The UK is one of 32 countries being taken to the European court of human rights on Wednesday by a group of Portuguese young people . They will argue in the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court that the nations’ policies to tackle global heating are inadequate and in breach of their human rights obligations.

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Claimants to argue lack of adequate action is breach of human rights, in largest climate legal action to date

Six young people are preparing to appear at the European court of human rights to try to compel 32 nations to rapidly escalate their emissions reductions in the world’s largest climate legal action to date.

Aged from 11 to 24, the six Portuguese claimants, say they were driven to act by their experiences in the wildfires that ripped through the Leiria region in 2017, killing 66 people and destroying 20,000 hectares of forest.

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The Destilaria Levira in Anadia said it took full responsibility for the incident, which saw 2.2 million litres of wine gush down streets

Alcohol flowed freely in the Portuguese town of Levira over the weekend, after two vats holding about 2.2m litres of wine at a local distillery burst and flooded the streets.

Images and videos posted online showed red wine – almost enough to fill an Olympic size swimming pool – gushing down the streets of Levira in Anadia, central Portugal.

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A trip to Portugal, Britain’s oldest ally, was a painful reminder of the benefits of EU membership

The media has been replete this summer with reports of British holidaymakers returning from EU countries proclaiming – and complaining – that our neighbours enjoy a better way of life than is now the case in Brexit Britain.

In years gone by a popular English phrase was “mustn’t grumble”. These days it has been superseded by “ nothing works ” and “things are falling apart”.

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Fire has scorched thousands of hectares of land and forced precautionary evacuation of about 1,400 people

Hundreds of firefighters are scrambling to put out a blaze raging in southern Portugal that has scorched thousands of hectares of land and forced the precautionary evacuation of about 1,400 people.

The wildfire, which is being tackled by more than 800 firefighters, started on Saturday in the municipality of Odemira in the Alentejo region but has since spread south towards the Algarve, one of Portugal’s top tourist destinations.

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La transition vers la 5G n'est pas un long fleuve tranquille pour Huawei. Le géant chinois des télécommunications, et un des plus grands équipementiers pour les réseaux 5G dans le monde, est progressivement banni de plusieurs nombreux pays pour des raisons de sécurité nationale. C'est le cas en France et tout récemment, du Portugal.

Au tour du Portugal d’interdire les équipements 5G de Huawei

Two years ago, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) reported the Portuguese streaming site MrPiracy to the U.S. Trade Representative.

The Hollywood anti-piracy group described the site as a notorious pirate operation that should be dealt with accordingly.

Whether this diplomatic lobbying effort had a direct effect is not clear, but MrPiracy.top shut down a few weeks later. Interestingly, however, it didn’t take long for another site to step up and take its place.

Pobre.tv Rises

The successor was Pobre.tv, where Pobre is Portuguese for ‘poor’. The site offered many thousands of movies and TV shows free of charge and quickly became the go-to entertainment portal for millions of people.

This meteoric rise was in part facilitated by the old MrPiracy domains, which were redirected to Pobre without an official explanation. Perhaps the old behemoth willingly ‘handed over’ the reigns to this ‘newcomer’, or there might have been some kind of deal behind the scenes.

In part due to these redirects, the popularity of Pobre.tv and Pobre.wtf in Portugal was massive from the get-go. Up until last month, it was ranked among the top 25 most visited sites in the country, beating the web traffic numbers of legitimate platforms such as Netflix, HBO, and Disney.

Enforcement Efforts Begin

PobreTV’s status didn’t go unnoticed by rightsholders. Over the last year, the MPA-led Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment ( ACE ) tried its best to identify the operators through a series of DMCA subpoenas, targeted at Cloudflare.

The first DMCA subpoena, through which Cloudflare was asked to share identifying information of the domain name’s owner, was filed early last year , with another one following in November .

Whether these legal requests resulted in usable intelligence is unknown but PobreTV did eventually move away from Cloudflare. Most recently, it was hosted at AlexHost but, over the past few days, it became completely unreachable.

Pobre TV Vanishes

When a site of this size disappears, people start looking for explanations. Thus far, however, the operators have yet to comment in public and they seem to have disappeared from the official Discord channel too.

Pobre hasn’t been mentioned officially in any recent enforcement waves either. In theory, it could have been (indirectly) caught up in a recent anime crackdown that also hit several other Portuguese language sites, but here’s no concrete evidence for that.

From what we can see, the domain names haven’t been seized so it’s possible that the operators decided to shut down voluntarily, perhaps after being pressured by enforcement actions. That could include the ongoing ACE actions, for example.

ACE Kept the Pressure On

ACE boss Jan van Voorn informs TorrentFreak that, as the largest illegal streaming site in Portugal, Pobre TV has been on the ACE radar for a while. This dates back to the DMCA subpoenas we mentioned earlier but there were more recent activities as well.

“Over the recent weeks, ACE obtained several disclosure orders requesting intermediaries connected to the operation of Pobre TV to hand over their customer details,” Van Voorn tells us.

“Due to the confidential nature of these legal actions, we cannot disclose further details at this stage,” he adds.

The anti-piracy alliance doesn’t mention which intermediaries were targeted. There are a few options, including the hosting company, domain registrar Namecheap, Discord, or any payment companies that were used to pay for these services.

ACE comments suggest that it is not directly involved in Pobre’s disappearance in the sense that it negotiated a settlement. However, it is possible that ACE managed to identify the operators, who then chose to abandon ship.

Not Taken Lightly

Across the web, there is plenty of speculation about what may have happened. Also, the news site Noticias e Tecnologia quotes a ‘reliable’ but anonymous source which states that the site is closed for good. No explanation is provided, however.

What we do know is that decisions like this aren’t taken lightly. Pobre was a highly successful streaming operation that, in addition to running ads, also monetized its service through premium subscriptions paid in Bitcoin.

These subscriptions provided access to exclusive features such as Chromecast support and an Android app, and were selling for €24 per year. This must have been quite a lucrative revenue source that most pirate site operators would not give up easily.

Whatever the reason for the shutdown, it can’t be ruled out that the database and site assets will reappear one way or another. If that’s the case, ACE will probably continue its enforcement efforts too.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

EVO, short for EVOLUTiON, was a high-profile P2P group whose activities stood out in recent years.

The group released a steady stream of new movie and TV show titles and gained pirates’ admiration by leaking many screeners way ahead of their official premieres.

For several years in a row, EVO opened the “screener season” by releasing leaked copies of upcoming films. This included Oscar contenders , but also several Netflix titles that originated from festival screenings.

EVO was also the first to release an early Blu-Ray copy of ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ last year, and a high-quality copy of the blockbuster “Dune” in 2021, ahead of its official U.S. premiere.

Like many other groups, EVO posted new releases on a regular schedule but that came to an abrupt halt last November when the group suddenly went quiet . While no explanation was given at the time, many pirates feared that the group had been busted.

National Criminal Investigation Police Take Credit

A few weeks ago TorrentFreak was able to confirm that this was indeed the case. Anti-piracy coalition ACE informed us that it had been working with Portuguese authorities to shut the group down and arrest its alleged leader.

This week Portual’s Polícia Judiciária publicly confirmed that enforcement action Operation “EVO 1.2” had been carried out through UNC3T, the national cybercrime unit.

The criminal investigation into EVO started early last year, following a complaint from Disney Enterprises, Paramount Pictures, Universal City Studios, Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros., Netflix, and Amazon. These are all members of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and related anti-piracy coalition ACE.

Polícia Judiciária reports that EVO’s movie and TV show leaks caused significant losses, exceeding €1,000,000. The group operated internationally, but its home base was in Portugal.

FBI Involvement

After documenting how the group operated, several home searches were carried out in Portugal. The authorities also located EVO’s servers in the United States. These were taken down with help from the FBI, Portugeuse police confirm.

“In Portugal, house searches were carried out and various computer equipment was seized. Three defendants were held under suspicion of belonging to the criminal group.

“In collaboration with the FBI, the inactivation of the criminal group’s servers was also achieved,” Polícia Judiciária adds.

The authorities used these initial investigations to pinpoint the alleged leader of EVO, who was arrested and had his house searched in Portugal. This presumably took place last fall, around the time when the group stopped releasing new content.

Various Criminal Charges

According to the press release , the criminal charges include unauthorized access to the victims’ servers, computer fraud, money laundering, tax fraud, copyright infringement, and taking part in a criminal organization.

The first interrogation of the main suspect was concluded earlier and EVO’s alleged leader was subjected to restrictive measures. Among other things, he is not allowed to communicate with the other defendants or use any computer equipment.

The status of the other three defendants is unclear and details on the progress of the prosecution are scarce. TorrentFreak contacted the authorities to request further information, but we have yet to hear back.

When EVO disappeared in 2022, another prominent release group called iFT also went quiet. Whether this is connected to the EVO prosecution remains unknown for now.

Finally, it is worth noting that for the first time in decades, perhaps ever, no awards screeners leaked online before the most recent Oscars. Given EVO’s prominent role in these leaks in recent years, that’s likely no coincidence.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.