Today, exactly two years have passed since The Pirate Bay was raided by the Swedish police. Unlike Hollywood would have wanted, the worlds largest BitTorrent tracker now more popular than ever, and they are here to stay.
Researchers from several Universities are currently working on a search technology that could make BitTorrent sites obsolete. While the idea of a completely decentralized filesharing network is not new, there are some downsides that are often overlooked.
TorrentFreak has received information which suggests that British police have made good on their claim that they would go after ex-users of OiNK. Last week, several officers arrested at least one individual for the seeding of a single album. It is believed police are in the process of arresting and questioning others.
The popular Internet television network Revision3 suffered from a severe DDoS attack, launched by the infamous anti-piracy organization MediaDefender. After targeting The Pirate Bay’s trackers, MediaDefender apparently thought it was a good idea to spread their fake torrents through Revision3.
It has become apparent during the last few hours that Comcast, everyone’s favorite ISP (especially in the BitTorrent world) has been hacked. The message on the homepage read: “KRYOGENIKS EBK and DEFIANT RoXed COMCAST.”
Newzbin, considered by many to be the internet’s premier indexer and .nzb provider, is under legal threat from the MPAA. The site, which was the creator of Usenet’s answer to the .torrent file, will likely have to undergo significant changes in order to appease the movie studios.
A company which hosts many BitTorrent trackers has been ordered by the CRIA to close at least four major sites. Moxie Colo was issued with cease and desist notices and ordered to hand over the owners data and site logs of What.cd, SumoTracker, BTMon and FullDls. They are told to simply close many other sites they host.
The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “Street Kings” tops the chart this week.
Today, one of Mininova’s users will will have the honor to download the 5 billionth torrent, an impressive figure for a site that has only been around for little over three years. If Mininova continues to grow at this rate, we might see the 10 billionth download before the year ends.
The RIAA has declared victory over Russian music download store AllofMP3, which it accused of the illegal distribution of millions of copyright tracks. The site, which was declared legal by a court last October, no longer offers music – but has spawned dozens of fully operational spin-offs. Victory for RIAA? Not quite.
Anti-piracy oufits have gained access to private BitTorrent trackers before, but the opposite has never happened, until now. Over the past few weeks, Unnar Geir, spokesperson of “The Viking Bay”, successfully infiltrated the Icelandic equivalent of the MPAA (SMÃÃS), and gathered some valuable information that the tracker can use in its defense.
Leaked documents are one of the banes of modern western politics. They reveal exercises and actions being proposed that are generally objectionable to the public. Such a leak occurred with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which seeks to turn the internet into a virtual police state.
Bell, one of the Canadian ISPs known for its BitTorrent throttling practices, launched its very own video download store this week. So, efficient BitTorrent is throttled for being a bandwidth hog, but customers are still able to download movies at full speed – as long as they use Bell’s service, that is.
aPOCALYPSE pRODUCTION cREW (aPC) was a pioneering music piracy group, thought by many to be the first such outfit to leak pre-release mp3 files to the Internet in an organized manner. In his role as server administrator for the group, ‘Dextro’ is facing 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.
A recently launched Facebook application for uTorrent makes it easy to manage your torrents when you’re away from your desktop computer. In addition, the application can also search your favorite BitTorrent sites from Facebook, and allows you to add new torrents remotely.
One of the most exclusive private torrent trackers, SceneAccess, has found itself hounded out of the Netherlands by anti-piracy outfit, BREIN. The site was hosted by NFOrce who handed over the owners details to BREIN who discovered them to be false. Worryingly, there are many other torrent sites hosted at NFOrce.
A site specializing in creating video subtitling for the benefit of foreign and deaf Internet users has been closed due to the threat of legal action. WikiSubtitles received a cease and desist from the Anti-Piracy Federation (FAP) and is now offline pending legal advice.
The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “The Forbidden Kingdom” tops the chart this week.
No torrent site on earth is more popular than Mininova. Surprisingly, however, all the legal pressure seems to have been focused on sites such as The Pirate Bay. Mininova – against all the odds – appears to have stayed under the radar. All that changed today as Mininova is now facing legal action by Dutch anti-piracy agency, BREIN.
The Pirate Bay is growing bigger and bigger, much to the displeasure of anti-piracy outfits such as the MPAA and IFPI. The BitTorrent tracker even managed to slip into the list of 100 most visited websites on the Internet, and it doesn’t seem to stop there.
In February a Danish court forced ISP Tele2 to block its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay, following a similar order late last year to block allofmp3.com. A new proposal before the Danish government would mean that such actions would be quick and easy to do, without the need for a single court hearing.
Micheal Jackson and several other artists plan to take on The Pirate Bay. The king of pop hired the infamous ‘Web Sheriff’ to protect his rights. “Hey Michael – do you want us to pay you in small kids maybe?” was the first response of Pirate Bay admin Brokep.
The chief investigating officer in the Pirate Bay case who was revealed as recently working for Warner Bros, has been reported to the police. Yesterday the Pirate Bay crew filed “at least” three complaints, and further people have been reported for bribing the police.
New data on Comcast’s interference with BitTorrent traffic shows that the company misinformed the FCC this February. Comcast has always argued that BitTorrent upstream traffic was only blocked during periods of heavy network traffic, this turns out to be a lie.
Those lucky enough to own a ‘jail-broken’ iPhone got a rather pleasant surprise last evening. When refreshing the installer, a brand new application appeared. iSlsk brings the Soulseek file-sharing network directly to iPhone. Download music for free, and listen to it on your iPhone. For most, it’s very nearly that simple.
There is a great deal of confusion on the net, as to just how people get warning letters and notices from ISPs and copyright holders. In an attempt to clear the murk, we’ve produced this guide to help clarify what actions are taken, by whom, and how to respond to it.
The Internet connection belonging to the Provincial Government of Ã…land in Finland has been disconnected following action by the anti-piracy outfit CIAPC. This disconnection, ordered by a court, may mark the first time an Internet connection has been severed in Europe for anti-piracy reasons.
The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” (again) tops the chart this week.
Last month, TorrentFreak had the pleasure of interviewing Merrin, the founder of the 150,000 member MVGroup tracker. It is with great sadness that we bring the news that after a long struggle against increasing health problems, Merrin has passed away, aged just 31.
Paulo Coelho, author of books such as “The Alchemist” and “The Witch of Portobello”, sold over 100 million books last year. In part, he puts this success down to BitTorrent, as he saw a huge increase in sales when his books appeared on sites such as The Pirate Bay. We talked to Coelho to find out more about this remarkable story.
Together with the charity Childnet, IFPI recently launched a campaign to educate kids, teachers and parents about the dangers of filesharing. Ironically, the legal alternatives they suggest direct the kids to LimeWire, Kazaa and sites that sell hardcore adult movies.
After falling victim to a domain and brand hijacking, Shareaza is fighting back at the scammers, assisted by the Software Freedom Law Centre, the EFF and Richard Stallman. In further great news for BitTorrent fans, Shareaza will introduce improved BitTorrent support into version 3 of the application.
Rounding off a series of court decisions and actions regarding BitTorrent sites, torrent.is users will have something to celebrate. The BitTorrent tracker favored by Icelandic downloaders, has won yet again in Court, and the site will reopen May 16th.
Described as “One of the most prevalent pieces of malware in the last three years,” the Downloader-UA.h trojan is running wild on P2P networks. But thanks to its system strength – and the work of torrent site moderators – such outbreaks are shrugged off by BitTorrent.
The MPA(A) has announced that it is demanding $15.4 million from the Pirate Bay in the upcoming court case, to cover the damages they suffered from 4 movies and 13 TV-episodes that were made available via the popular BitTorrent tracker.
TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay a $110 million fine by a federal judge in Los Angeles. The BitTorrent site was found guilty on the charges of copyright infringement of several movie studios represented by the MPAA.
Hundreds of larger and smaller ISPs all over the world try to limit BitTorrent traffic on their networks. Unfortunately, most companies are not very open about their network management solutions, with Comcast as the prime example. Thanks to the Glasnost project, you can now test wheter your ISP is one of the bad guys.
A new anti-piracy law, proposed yesterday by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been criticized as pointless pandering to lobby groups, and ‘cronyism’. Worse, the bill is based on date from the widely discredited LEK study of 2006.
The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” tops the chart this week in a row.
A 31 year old file-sharer escaped prison this morning when he received a heavy fine and a suspended sentence for uploading music and movies. The court refrained from putting the defendant in prison, saying that the music industry needs to take some responsibility for the current situation.
The legality of BitTorrent sites has always been highly debated. As of today, no court has ever ruled that a website offering .torrent links is legal or not. This might change soon, as isoHunt and the MPAA once again clash in court.
After experimenting with free BitTorrent distribution on their last album, ‘Ghosts’, The Nine Inch Nails are today releasing their latest single ‘Echoplex’ for free, to tens of millions of Facebook users. Also, everyone should check out NIN.com tomorrow – apparently a “surprise” awaits.
In 2005, DVDr-core was the first BitTorrent site that was targeted by the MPAA outside the US. A classic story: Man runs site, man gets sued over site, nothing more is ever heard. Whilst in most cases, this means that the defendant bowed to pressure, paid an out of court settlement, and promised not to do it again, that is not the case here.
This week, a 30 year old man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his involvement in the so-called pirate ‘warez scene’. In what appears to be some sort of bizarre parallel universe, it’s been revealed that another notorious pirate has an interesting job – he’s chairman of the San Diego Republican Party.
Over six months have passed since the popular private BitTorrent tracker OiNK was raided in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement. Today, the bail date for OiNK admin Alan Ellis has been extended for the third time, now until the 1st of July.
The last year has seen the IFPI shift its focus from the individual filesharer, to their ISPs. After Denmark, Norway and Ireland, the anti-piracy lobbyists have now announced that they will go after a Swedish ISP, claiming that the company facilitates copyright infringement.
An anti-piracy documentary created by the music industry and supposedly supported by artists has been grabbing headlines during recent days. However, one of the artists isn’t happy as he claims he was conned by the music industry into appearing in the video, which he says is part of a “witch hunt”.
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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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