Tag: piracy

Surging Somali Pirates Seize Another Cargo Ship off the Coast of Yemen, in the Sixth Vessel Hijacking Since April

This latest attack is the second in just four days.

In the game of ‘proxy groups in the Middle East’, Iran arms and equips the Yemeni Houthis, who in turn arm and equip the Somali pirates.

This has transformed the crude attacks of a decade ago into much more dangerous affairs, with pirates much better armed and reportedly using satellite tracking intel to chase their prey.

In this latest incident, they hijacked an oil products tanker in their usual hunting ground, the Gulf of Arden off Yemen.

Associated Press reported:

“Six armed pirates hijacked the Eritrean-flagged M.T. Sibu 1 on Thursday about 136 nautical miles (252 kilometers) east of al-Mukalla, Yemen, and took it toward Somalia’s Puntland coast.

[…] The Sibu 1, managed by the UAE-based Qatrat Alnada Almasi Ship Management, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department last year for allegedly belonging to an Iranian ‘shadow fleet’ used to transport petroleum products seeking to evade U.S. sanctions.”

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Somali Piracy Surges Amid Hormuz Blockade

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced hundreds of commercial ships onto longer routes around Africa, and Somali pirates are moving quickly to exploit the sudden increase in traffic off the continent’s eastern coast. Oil tankers MT Honour 25, MT Eureka and MT Asana were hijacked in the Gulf of Aden and off Puntland between April and July 2026, the largest attacks by Somali pirates in years. The Iran war has now delivered these groups more targets, spread across thousands of miles of ocean, while diverting naval resources to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.

Somali piracy peaked in 2011 before an international crackdown reduced attacks to a fraction of their former levels. The first major revival came in late 2023, when Houthi attacks in the Red Sea forced hundreds of vessels away from the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope. And with U.S. forces all diverted to the war against Iran in the Persian Gulf, it’s largely a free-for-all for Somali pirates.  Unlike the disorganized bands of the early 2000s, today’s Somali pirates are ranging much farther from shore, and their operations have become much more sophisticated. And perhaps even more concerning, according to reports from a UN panel of experts, there is now direct coordination between Yemeni militants and Somali networks.

In exchange for creating maritime chaos to keep Western navies distracted, the Houthis have supplied Somali pirate cells with advanced weaponry, military training and precision GPS tracking devices to pinpoint commercial hulls. Al-Shabaab–one of the most lethal terrorist groups in Africa–provides onshore logistical backing along parts of the Somali coast where pirate gangs launch operations or hold hijacked vessels. Intelligence reports indicate the group receives a generous cut of up to 30% from successful maritime ransom payouts.

According to a joint study by Interpol, the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Horn of Africa piracy generated over $400 million in ransom payments from 179 hijacked ships between 2005 and 2012, averaging roughly $2.23 million per ship. The money follows a structured economy, with pirate crews receiving a standard 10% to 15% fee, local financiers claim 30% to 50% for funding food, fuel and weapons, while the rest is laundered into legitimate businesses, according to the study. And it’s only becoming more lucrative with time. 

A June 30, 2026, analysis by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) reports that ransom demands have been made for all three commercial vessels hijacked in the current wave.

The demand for Eureka was reportedly $10 million.

Separately, the pirates holding Honour 25 have demanded $3 million for the tanker, cargo and crew. 

GI-TOC says pirates received $1.2 million-$1.5 million for the release of the Chinese fishing vessel Liao Dong Yu 578 in March this year. The same vessel had reportedly generated another $2 million ransom in 2024. GI-TOC says counter-piracy officials believe the latest payment helped catalyze the current wave of attacks.

The Gulf of Guinea is yet another piracy hotspot in Africa thanks to the region’s riches in oil and gas as well as a well-trained militia due the Delta’s secessionist movement. While local law enforcement and naval forces have managed to curb attacks in shallower waters, pirates are highly adaptable to new environments. Now, they are using heavily armed mother ships to strike targets well outside state jurisdictions and exclusive economic zones. The region’s pirate networks now operate with military-grade weapons, an intricate shipping intelligence network and complicated financial backing.

War-risk insurance premiums for commercial shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf spiked by over 1,000%–surging from pre-conflict levels of roughly 0.15%–0.25% of a vessel’s value up to 7.5% and 10% per voyage shortly after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz in March.

With African maritime zones highly vulnerable due to a lack of equipment and manpower, and with American forces diverted to the Persian Gulf indefinitely, piracy sees its biggest opportunity yet. It means an African diversion isn’t necessarily going to avoid risk premiums.

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Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot

A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.

About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.

Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was “the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued the preliminary approval in San Francisco federal court last September and has since retired. Alsup had dealt the case a mixed ruling last summer, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites.

Bestselling thriller novelist Andrea Bartz first brought the suit with two other authors in 2024.

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SEA DANGER: Somali Pirates Hijack Another Oil Tanker, This Time off the Coast of Yemen

An alliance of Somali pirates and Houthi militias?

The oceans have become increasingly more dangerous, with military conflicts targeting cargo ships in the Black Sea, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, the Strait of Hormuz… and around the Horn of Africa, where there’s an ongoing resurgence of activity by Somali Pirates.

Yesterday (2), an oil tanker was hijacked off the coast of Yemen and diverted toward Somalia’s waters.

The attack was reportedly carried out by armed Somali pirates, but some Yemenis with ties to armed groups – and even to the Houthi militia – were also suspected of participating in the attack.

The New York Times reported:

“Since April, at least three vessels have been hijacked by Somali pirates off the country’s coast. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, run by the British Navy, recently raised the threat level around the coast of Somalia to ‘substantial’ and urged ships to proceed with caution.

Yemen’s Coast Guard said that the tanker, the Togo-flagged Eureka, was subjected to an armed robbery by ‘unidentified’ people, who boarded the ship and directed it through Yemen’s Gulf of Aden toward Somalia’s coast. Efforts to monitor and recover the vessel were underway, it said.”

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Supreme Court Limits ISPs’ Liability For Online Piracy

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sharply curtailed when internet service providers can be held liable for copyright infringement committed by their subscribers, handing a major victory to broadband companies and dealing a setback to Sony Music Entertainment and other major labels seeking to combat online piracy.

In a 7-2 decision (with Justices Sotomayor and Jackson concurring only in the judgment), the justices ruled that Cox Communications Inc. cannot be held liable for the actions of customers who illegally downloaded and shared songs using its network, even after the company received more than 163,000 infringement notices from copyright holders. The ruling reverses a $1 billion jury verdict against the Atlanta-based cable and internet giant and clarifies long-standing uncertainties about secondary liability under U.S. copyright law.

The case stemmed from a 2018 lawsuit in which the labels accused Cox of willful contributory and vicarious infringement for failing to terminate repeat offenders. A federal jury in Virginia sided with the labels on both theories and awarded $1 billion in statutory damages. The Fourth Circuit upheld the contributory-liability finding but tossed the vicarious-liability verdict, leading to the Supreme Court appeal on the contributory issue alone.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said a service provider is liable for a user’s infringement only if it intended its service to be used for that purpose. “The provider of a service is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement, which can be shown only if the party induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to that infringement,” he wrote.

Such intent exists only when the provider actively induces infringement – such as by marketing a product as a tool for piracy – or offers a service that is “not capable of ‘substantial’ or ‘commercially significant’ noninfringing uses,” the opinion stated, citing the court’s landmark 1984 decision in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios Inc. and the 2005 ruling in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster Ltd. 

“Mere knowledge that a service will be used to infringe is insufficient to establish the required intent to infringe,” Thomas emphasized, rejecting the broader “material contribution” standard applied by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

The decision rejects the Fourth Circuit’s holding that Cox could be liable simply by continuing to provide internet service to subscribers whose accounts were linked to repeated violations. “The Fourth Circuit’s holding went beyond the two forms of liability recognized in Grokster and Sony,” the opinion states.

Cox, which serves about six million subscribers, had argued it took reasonable steps to address piracy, including sending warnings, suspending service and terminating accounts after multiple notices. The company contractually prohibits subscribers from using its network for infringing activity. Sony Music Entertainment and other major labels countered that Cox’s efforts were insufficient.

Tuesday’s ruling is expected to have ripple effects across the telecom and entertainment industries – with industry executives long warning that expansive secondary-liability rules could force providers to monitor and police all user activity, raising costs and privacy concerns. Copyright owners have argued that without stronger accountability for intermediaries, online piracy remains rampant.

For Cox, the ruling caps years of litigation. The company has said it will continue to cooperate with copyright holders through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice-and-takedown process, though the court noted that the statute creates defenses rather than new causes of action.

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Dodgy Fire Stick crackdown: Eight new targeted areas named as police plan to swoop on illegal streamers

Police have launched a fresh crackdown on dodgy Amazon Fire TV sticks, with eight new areas across the UK being targeted.

Illegal Amazon Fire Sticks and ‘dodgy boxes’ are streaming devices that have third-party software installed in them, allowing users to watch premium content from providers such as TNT Sports, Sky Sports and Disney+ for free. 

The use of these devices is deemed a ‘serious crime‘, and police forces across the UK and Ireland, alongside the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), have been targeting individuals who continue to watch unauthorised content. Sky, who pay billions to the Premier League to show matches, also have their own in-house piracy team.

The latest swoop is part of ‘Operation Eider’, a campaign led by FACT, with 14 more cases identified on November 14, 2025.

The eight areas targeted were: London, South West, North West, North East, Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire and Humber, West Midlands.

Of the 14 cases, 12 individuals received cease-and-desist (C&D) notices, while two were served with C&Ds via knock-and-talk enforcement. 

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Spanish Court Orders NordVPN and Proton VPN to Block Piracy Streams

Spain’s soccer league has found a new target in its fight against pirate streams: the VPNs people use to protect their privacy online.

A court in Córdoba has ordered NordVPN and Proton VPN to block specific IP addresses broadcasting illegal LaLiga matches, requiring both companies to alter their “internal systems” to make those addresses “inaccessible from Spain.”

The ruling was issued without notifying either provider. Neither could challenge it before it took effect. The court says it cannot be appealed at all.

LaLiga and Telefónica Audiovisual Digital brought the case to Commercial Court No. 1 of Córdoba, framing the measures as “precautionary” and taken in “defense of [LaLiga] clubs’ audiovisual rights.”

The court’s theory of liability is that VPNs are “contributing” to piracy simply by doing what VPNs do, letting users change their IP address and location. The order also notes that VPNs “acknowledge and advertise” their effectiveness at evading internet restrictions. Offering a privacy tool that works, in other words, is now evidence of wrongdoing.

Both companies found out about the ruling the same way everyone else did. NordVPN and Proton have said that they have received no notice of this.

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Tensions flare as Russian lawmaker accuses US of PIRACY after Trump’s forces seize two ships in daring raids

The United States has seized a tanker linked to Russia off the coast of Europe and a second vessel in the Caribbean in an escalation of the enforcement of the Venezuela oil blockade.

Dramatic footage showed American special forces boarding the M/V Bella 1 in the Northern Atlantic after pursuing it for weeks in an operation inflaming tensions with Moscow.

The Coast Guard also captured a second vessel – the Motor Tanker Sophia – off the coast of the Caribbean in the coordinated operation on Wednesday morning.

In response to the interceptions, Andrei Klishas, a member of the upper house of Russia’s parliament said the US actions were ‘outright piracy.’ 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put the world on notice by saying that the blockade of Venezuelan oil is in full effect, and said no ship is safe anywhere in the world.

The Russian Transport Ministry then responded by saying: ‘no state has the right to use force against vessels properly registered in other countries’ jurisdictions.’ It added that US forces boarded the Marinera at 3pm Moscow time, where communications were shortly lost with the vessel after.

Donald Trump appears to have dismissed the threat of Vladimir Putin‘s forces lurking nearby, including reports of a submarine.

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Aargh! Letters of marque would unleash Blackbeard on the cartels

Just saying the words, “Letters of Marque” is to conjure the myth and romance of the pirate: Namely, that species of corsair also known as Blackbeard or Long John Silver, stalking the fabled Spanish Main, memorialized in glorious Technicolor by Robert Newton, hallooing the unwary with “Aye, me hearties!”

Perhaps it is no surprise that the legendary patois has been resurrected today in Congress. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has introduced the Cartel Marque and Reprisal Reauthorization Act on the Senate floor, thundering that it “will revive this historic practice to defend our shores and seize cartel assets.” If enacted into law, Congress, in accordance with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, would license private American citizens “to employ all reasonably necessary means to seize outside the geographic boundaries of the United States and its territories the person and property of any cartel or conspirator of a cartel or cartel-linked organization.”

Although still enshrined in Constitutional canon, the fact that American citizens can be empowered to make war in a wholly private capacity skirts centuries-long understanding over “the laws of war.” At best, a letter of marque is to be issued only in the circumstance of a legally issued state declaration of war. Hence, a licensed corsair or privateer is akin to a sheriff’s deputy, who even as a private armed person is sworn to abide by the order and laws of the state.

History, however, does not support this best case. The plain truth — again, over centuries — tells the story of private naval enterprise practically unfettered. These are no Old West deputies under direct command of a U.S. Marshal. These are licensed raiders, serving autonomously, as flag-waving freebooters.

A letter of marque, the King’s signature notwithstanding, is simply licensed predation at sea — and this is under the most favorable aegis, when said letter is actually granted to a private person when the nation is at war. Yet most often, for the last 700 years, a letter of marque is really no more or less legal piracy.

But why would states want to create such a legal justification for attacking rivals and competitors, pesky inconvenient minor states, or in this case, drug traffickers?

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Putin accuses France of piracy

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced France’s detention of an oil tanker that it claims carried Russian cargo as “piracy,” noting the seizure took place in neutral waters without justification.

Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on Thursday, Putin argued that investigators were searching for “military cargo, drones, or something of that kind,” but insisted “none of that is there, never was, and never could be.”

Media reports have suggested the investigation may be linked to unidentified drones spotted near Danish airports and military sites last month. There have been suggestions that the UAVs may have been Russian, an accusation Moscow has denied.

Putin also noted that the tanker was sailing under a foreign flag with an international crew, questioning whether it had any connection to Russia at all.

The vessel in question, the Boracay, is sanctioned by the EU and was sailing under a Benin flag when French naval forces boarded it last week. It remains anchored near Saint-Nazaire, with its captain and first mate in custody as prosecutors investigate “serious irregularities.”

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