TorrentFreak

The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide

LatestNews

  • RIAA: 20 Million Piracy Takedowns Sent to Google, Still No End in Sight

    To mark the occasion of 20 million DMCA takedown notices sent to Google by RIAA member companies, the organization has complained that search engines still aren’t doing enough to reduce the piracy problem. The RIAA says it is using a bucket to deal with “an ocean of illegal downloading”, one in which content is replaced and re-indexed in a never-ending loop. Notice and takedown procedures aren’t fit for today’s reality and must be revised, the music group argues.

  • RIAA Makes Drastic Employee Cuts as Revenue Plummets

    New tax records reveal that the RIAA has made heavy employee cuts after revenue dropped to a new low. Over the past two years the major record labels have cut back their membership dues from $33.6 to $23.6 million. RIAA staff plunged from 107 to 60 workers in the same period. The IRS filing further shows that the music industry group paid $250,000 to the six strikes anti-piracy system.

  • Pirate Bay User Downloads Visualized in Real-Time Art Installation

    The file-sharing activities of BitTorrent users have become the input mechanism powering an art installation currently underway in Canada. The Pirate Cinema, a control room featuring three large screens and viewing area, is displaying a mashup of content pulled from the top 100 torrent swarms indexed by The Pirate Bay. Its creators inform TorrentFreak that with a little help from an encrypted connection to Sweden, some intriguing images are being realized.

  • uTorrent Serves Over 5 Billion Ads Per Month

    uTorrent parent company BitTorrent Inc. reports that the new advertising option in the popular BitTorrent client generates billions of ad impressions per month. Although users initially revolted against the idea of making uTorrent ad-supported, the new stats show that not too many of them turned the feature off. The next challenge for BitTorrent Inc. is to attract premium advertisers in addition to the lower tier poker and PC performance ads that are showing up now.

  • Parent Punishes Kid for Triggering a “Six Strikes” Piracy Alert

    The “six strikes” copyright alert system has claimed its first victory today. Tipped off by a copyright alert, a father found out that his kid was secretly sharing pirated material. The deviant behavior did not go unpunished and the parent in question ordered the teen to write a “note of apology” to the copyright holder, or else.

  • UK ISPs Block Huge Movie Site Movie2K, Proxy Immediately Unblocks

    Internet service providers in the UK have today begun blocking one of the world’s largest streaming movie portals. In a follow up to similar actions, the MPAA obtained a High Court order which compels all major ISPs to begin blocking Movie2K, a massive site with millions of visitors each month. However, in a ridiculously fast show of defiance, one of the largest Pirate Bay proxy operators has already deployed a brand new site to beat the censorship.

  • Police Raid School Teacher for Uploading History Book for Students

    A teacher received a huge shock last week after uploading a copy of a book to his website that offers free educational resources for students. The Latvian publisher behind the work, a $4.00 history book, complained to the authorities which resulted in the teacher being raided by the police. During interrogation the teacher learned that his mistake could cost him dearly – two years in jail, forced labor, or a fine.

123456Last »
  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

NewsBits

Even more news...

MostDiscussed

Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.

CopyQuote

Left Quote

“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.

Peter Sunde Left Quote

PopularArticles

A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.