The IFPI has announced that it demands $2.5 million from the Pirate Bay in the upcoming court case, to cover the damages they suffered from 24 music albums that were made available on the popular BitTorrent tracker.
Virgin Media in the UK has announced that it is working with the music industry to chase down its file-sharing customers and disconnect them from the internet. At the same time, it will offer an enhanced service which will see its customers get free Usenet binaries access, untraceable by the music industry.
It is a bit of an awkward, and perhaps even a suggestive name, but LegalTorrents.com reopens today as a community driven BitTorrent site where users and publishers are able to share Creative Commons licensed content.
We have sifted through gargantuan lists of requests from torrent ‘Invite’ swapping forums and have come up with a generous helping of the most sought-after Private BitTorrent accounts.
Every now and again, a software release comes out for BitTorrent that is truly revolutionary and revered. And other times, the source code should just be reduced back down to those ones and zeroes as quickly as possible. Here is a rundown of some of the world’s most useless BitTorrent apps.
When Robb Topolski made the initial discovery that Comcast was interfering with BitTorrent traffic, he couldn’t have imagined that it would lead to an FCC hearing or, more importantly, to apparent reconciliation this week between Comcast and the rest of the world. Thing is, Robb doesn’t believe a word of it.
After being blown off by the Norwegian police, MPAA lawyer Espen Tondel is now demanding that ISPs disconnect Norwegian file-sharers from the Internet. According to IKT Norway, an interest group for ISPs, the lawyer has sent a letter to Norwegian ISPs on behalf of The Norwegian branch of the MPAA.
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is said to be planning a BitTorrent clampdown. The trade association, previously heavily involved in the shutdown of OiNK, says that BitTorrent has become “too easy” and is taking aim at what it refers to as ‘larger networks’.
Whilst one site may have closed its doors thanks to the MPAA, after continuous legal pressure, another has prevailed today in court. Torrent.is has won in court over the Association of film rights-holder in Iceland (SMÃÃS)
After forcing a single ISP in Denmark to block The Pirate Bay, it now appears that the IFPI has a plan to sue all of the major Swedish ISPs to force them to do the same. Telia Sonera, a large Swedish ISP is refusing to be bullied, stating that such blocking and filtering actions are illegal under EU law.
Comcast has announced that it will lift the ban on BitTorrent traffic, which prevented its users from sharing files using the popular protocol. The ISP and BitTorrent Inc. will work together on finding customer friendly solutions for the congestion allegedly caused by BitTorrent traffic.
A little over a year ago, TorrentSpy.com was still the most visited BitTorrent site, but times have changed. After an expensive two year battle with the MPAA, TorrentSpy decided to throw in the towel and the site has now shut down permanently.
Due to server complications, CBC decided to team up with mininova and let them seed the torrent files for “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.” It is great to see that mainstream broadcasters use BitTorrent to share their content online, and even better, that they use mininova’s content distribution platform to do so.
The best way to deal with piracy is to go in hard – real hard. It doesn’t matter if you upset non-pirates or alienate your customers, it doesn’t matter if you make children cry. Pirates are evil and they need to be dealt with severely – this documentary shows how it’s best done, using intimidation and violence.
ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for years now, but only recently has this turned into a political issue. The BitTorrent client Azureus has now developed a plugin through which you can help distinguishing the good from the bad ISPs, data they will use to strengthen their argument in the ongoing Comcast debate.
The sale of Bebo.com to AOL for $850 million last week sparked a fresh wave of opining about music piracy, with Billy Bragg and Michael Arrington both stepping into the ring. The problem is, they are both wrong.
The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “There Will Be Blood” tops the chart this week.
If you are downloading stuff you wouldn’t have bought in the first place, according to economist Karen Croxson, you are probably doing the company that created the product a big favor. You, Mr ‘Good’ Pirate, are telling your friends, adding to the media ‘buzz’ and driving up sales.
The first thing to notice when you join a private BitTorrent site is the eye-popping quality of the torrents. Each one is carefully culled, hand-picked through a strict moderation process. However, before you start hammering away on that download link – here are a few things you need to know.
BitTorrent’s popularity is growing every day. Despite efforts from anti-piracy outfits such as the MPAA and IFPI, torrent sites continue to grow traffic wise, and there is no sign that this trend will be brought to a halt anytime soon.
Until recently, if you’ve wanted to play videos you’ve downloaded on your TV, you either needed to hook it to your PC, buy an AppleTV, or use an Xbox. Now, one company aims to add another option – one which can get the videos itself, via BitTorrent.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany has ruled that the identities of file-sharers must remain private and can no longer be revealed to media companies who accuse them of copyright infringement. In future, only those accused of ‘heavy’ crimes such as murder, child pornography or kidnapping will be revealed.
No Starch Press and Wired’s news editor Leander Kahney have released free copies of “The Cult of Mac” and “The Cult of iPod” on the Pirate Bay. Publishing music, movies and books on BitTorrent seems to be becoming a trend, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The popular BitTorrent site Mininova is currently Beta testing BitTorrent powered video streaming. The new streaming feature allows users to watch videos instantly, streamed from .torrent files.
The BBC has published a podcast which takes a look at piracy through the ages, also covering the modern concept of ‘intellectual property’. Of course, no story of piracy would be complete without discussing The Pirate Bay so Peter Sunde also plays a significant part in this 20 minute program.
CBC, Canada’s public television broadcaster has plans to release the upcoming TV-show “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” for free via BitTorrent. This makes CBC the first North-American broadcaster to embrace the popular filesharing protocol.
VLC Player, one of the best and most widely used media players has found to be vulnerable to a remote hijack. The reported vulnerability makes it possible for a malicious user to run arbitrary code, potentially taking remote control of the host machine.
The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “The Mist” tops the chart (again) this week.
The legendary Ron Jeremy has had enough of video streaming sites such as YouPorn and PornTube, that host pirated versions of his epic movies for free. Jeremy says adult content deserves the same respect as Hollywood’s majors do, and is happy that Vivid Entertainment is going after these sites.
The organization responsible for privacy protection in Italy has declared that Logistep has been operating illegally. The Garante della Privacy says that the anti-piracy company breached the privacy of thousands of P2P users when it tracked and reported them to media companies. It has 14 days to cease and desist.
LimeWire has just launched a beta version of its online store, requiring no additional software and offering DRM-free MP3 music downloads for as little as $0.27 per track.
Torrent.is went to court this week and the site now faces a permanent shutdown and the possibility that they will have to compensate copyright owners. Since nearly 10% of Iceland’s population were members, Torrent.is was by far the most popular BitTorrent tracker in the country.
Demonoid, once one of the most popular BitTorrent trackers, has reappeared again, this time hosted in Ukraine. The website is still down but the trackers are now fully operational again, perhaps a sign that Demonoid is crawling back up to speed?
Following a huge increase in complaints from the music, movie and software industries, the four major Japanese ISP organizations have agreed that they will work with copyright holders to track down copyright infringing file-sharers and disconnect them from the internet.
It’s hard for large organizations that move at glacial speeds to compete with individuals taking their content and creating new distribution systems, revenue streams and business models, but the fall of the major record labels taught the rest of the corporate world a lesson. In many cases, piracy it is helping people to innovate and create new legitimate market spaces.
TMF, a popular Dutch music channel which is part of MTV said it will use data from BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks as a resource for their playlist selection. The data from these sources gives a more accurate picture of what people actually listen to, rather than counting single sales alone.
The hijacking of Shareaza.com is a complex story with many twists and turns. Here is the story of Shareaza from its open source GPL roots, to the hostile takeover and where the project is today, directly from those at the heart of the news – the real Shareaza community. The fight for Shareaza has only just begun.
Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij from The Pirate Bay recently did a video interview which resulted in some great quotes. One such quote comes from Fredrik, he suggests that the movie and music industry should set up their own torrent site, and monetize it through advertisements. “We would be out of business.” he added.
Last week a court ruled that Israel’s largest ISPs should block access to HttpShare, a BitTorrent and http hyperlink site. Thanks to what the owners call “IFPI advertising”, the site is now so busy they’ve had to upgrade their hardware. TorrentFreak caught up with them as they cracked open the champagne.
With over 150,000 users, TorrentLeech is without doubt one of the most popular private BitTorrent communities. Sadly, during the last few weeks the site suffered annoying setbacks in the form of hacking attempts, and most recently, a denial-of-service attack which has rendered the site unusable.
A few months back, project Gazelle was announced by What.cd, a new tracker suite for private BitTorrent sites. The first trials of it in Alpha have now started, and the big question is: How does it shape up?
The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “The Mist” tops the chart this week.
The ‘Big Four’ record labels – EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner have started legal proceedings to force an ISP to end piracy on its network. The action, brought against Irish ISP, Eircom, is the first of its kind.
After originally threatening to leave, London-based EMI Records has confirmed it will remain a member of the IFPI. With its self-imposed deadline of March 31st 2008 looming, the company has struck a deal so that EMI – together with other members – will now contribute less to anti-piracy activities.
During November last year we reported that the popular DVD ripper aXXo had decided to take a break and stop releasing new material for a while. It now seems that he is back in business. A few hours ago aXXo uploaded his first movie in months. He chose “I Am Legend”.
BTGuard is an easy to use proxy service that adds an extra layer of privacy to your BitTorrent transfers. The service is designed for BitTorrent users who don’t want their ISPs or any third party to log or throttle their IPs or traffic.
So DivX Corporation’s Stage6 has croaked. The service’s ‘goodbye, cruel word’ note says it was a victim of its own success, but that it proved ‘it’s possible to distribute true high definition video on the Internet’. What it really showed is how deliriously inefficient streaming video is, whether it’s high def or otherwise.
Setting up a (private or public) BitTorrent tracker may sound hard to some, but it isn’t. With Diferior, you are only a few clicks away from being the proud owner of a torrent site, private or public. That’s not all, the content management system also supports FTP and http downloads and comes with a blog and forums.
At a preview of his new ‘Change Congress’ project, the Stanford professor took a swipe at the Pirate Party of the United States. Whilst expressing skepticism about it’s utility, his main criticism seemed to be the name.
Sandvine, manufacturers of BitTorrent throttling technology has seen its first quarter sales drop 88% in a year. After achieving 42,000% growth in 5 years, the company – best known for providing the technology which put Comcast into the spotlight recently – has seen its value plummet 42% in a single day.
In the US, several universities have banned filesharing applications such as BitTorrent, mostly under pressure from the RIAA. A university in the Netherlands has taken a different approach. They use uTorrent to distribute software and OS updates across 6500 workstations, and end up saving a lot of time, money and resources by doing so.
Following pressure from the IFPI, a court has ruled that ISPs should be forced to block access to a file-sharing link site. The Haifa District Court in Israel has ordered that the country’s three largest ISPs should block access to HttpShare.com, a BitTorrent and http hyperlink-only website.
According to a new study just released in the UK, one of the biggest causes of copyright infringement is a lack of choice. The study further shows that one third of the Brits have downloaded copyright infringing content, or plans to do so in the future.
The acceptability of P2P took another big step forward over the weekend, as accounts claiming to be ‘the official profile for NIN’ appeared on a number of torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay and the private trackers What.cd and Waffles.fm. NIN has now confirmed that these accounts indeed belong to the band.
The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “Enchanted” tops the chart this week.
BitLet is a web-based client which allows BitTorrent sharing without a torrent client being installed on your machine. Now, in recognition of this innovative system, the editors at CNET Webware.com have nominated BitLet as a finalist in the Webware 100 Awards, 2008.
The popular BitTorrent site IsoHunt just reached a new milestone, as they now index over 1 million torrents. In total, the torrents on IsoHunt point to 22 million files that all add up to a dazzling 743TB in data.
Nine Inch Nails has just released the first volume of their new album “Ghosts” on BitTorrent sites as a free download. The band encourages its fans to share the album with friends, post it on websites and play it on podcasts
After taking control of Shareaza.com, imposters trying to pass themselves off as an open-source dev team have stepped up their action to destroy the GNU GPL licensed project. In an audacious move, lawyers representing Discordia Ltd have filed to register the “Shareaza” trademark at the US Patent Office.
BitTorrent is supposed to be hassle free, that’s why it’s so attractive right? Sadly, it is also used by by scammers to generate money, often through trickery and deception. Recently, a new ring of BitTorrent rip off sites has sprung up, this time related to movie codecs.
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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
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