TorrentFreak

An increasing number of musicians are experimenting with giving away their music for free on BitTorrent. This trend has led to the formation of a new Netlabel, CXCR6, which specifically targets the BitTorrent community with new album releases. We got in touch with its founder about his motivation to promote free music.

Netgear has just announced its Internet TV Player, a set-top box that allows users to play content from video streaming sites like YouTube, directly on their TV. Perhaps of more interest is the device’s built-in BitTorrent client, which makes it an ideal TV-torrent player as well.

The developer of an iPhone game had a nice surprise when it suddenly saw a surge in users. The game had around ten downloads a day from iTunes, which inexplicably transformed into more than 400 users in a single day. The reason - the game got cracked. Read what happened when the developer confronted the cracker.

Entertainment industry lobbyists are desperately pushing to get tougher anti-piracy legislation implemented worldwide. The Pirate Prisons Project followed these developments closely and sees it as a business opportunity. It has now opened up their prison construction project to investors, while pirates are given the chance to book a cell in advance.

A few days we reported on a new service which claimed to offer lifetime anonymous BitTorrent for a $50.00 one-off payment. As the service ‘launched’ we had our doubts, but understandably some people decided to give it a try since it was so cheap. It turns out that the offer was indeed too good to be true.

TV shows are by far the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?

The BitTorrent popularity surge is still underway, with more users discovering that it’s the fastest way to transfer large files online. One of the most frequently visited torrent sites, Mininova, has seen the number of torrent downloads double from 3.5 billion to 7 billion during 2008, and this download rate is still increasing.

Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides ‘Guilt Upon Accusation’, which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement, they are immediately guilty. The punishment - summary Internet disconnection.

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” tops the chart this week, followed by “Appaloosa”.

A new trojan popped up at several torrent sites a few weeks ago, one that blocks access to The Pirate Bay and Mininova, while informing its victims that “downloading is wrong.” The trojan edits the hosts file on Windows machines, and redirects the BitTorrent sites to localhost, making them impossible to load.

Hustler Europe, part of the world’s largest adult entertainment company, has hired anti-piracy company Media Protector to start chasing down file-sharers. The partnership will have a familiar aim - to find alleged infringers on P2P networks and send them threats to pay up - or else.