The anti-piracy lobby has been putting pressure on ISPs to act against customers who download copyright infringing content. Thus far, most ISPs have simply forwarded the takedown requests they receive, but Cox Communications is taking it one step further, by disconnecting alleged copyright infringers.
TV shows are by far the most wanted files via BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s fast becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
Two brothers who made millions from an empire of scam file-sharing sites have had their identities revealed. Matt and Jake Dylewski mis-sold subscriptions to FullReleases.com and dozens of similar sites, misleading customers and motivating them to take action. Most of the sites have been taken offline.
Swedish book publishers have presented a study in which they show how widespread book piracy is in Sweden. The publishers think that this copyright infringement has a disastrous effect on their income, while The Pirate Bay is surprised to see that the publishers used their torrent database illegally.
Georgia had been in the headlines recently for its military confrontation with Russia. Before hostilities engulfed the country, however, it was celebrating 100 years of film-making. But, with no laws protecting the movie industry from piracy, how does Georgia cope with the Internet pirates?
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Righteous Kill” tops the chart.
There is a continuing battle surrounding Digital Rights Management (DRM). While most rights holders see it as a way of maximizing their profits, users see it as a way to reduce their ability to actually use the products they bought, the way they want to. Ironically, one of the books that spells out what is wrong with DRM, is now available with DRM.
It has been almost a year since a coalition of anti-piracy organizations forced Torrent.is, the largest BitTorrent site in Iceland, to go offline. In the months that followed, the BitTorrent site has won in court more than once, but it has not returned yet, as the anti-piracy groups continue to come up with new claims.
A Florida man was sentenced to three years probation on Thursday for his part in running a ‘warez’ server. The 55 year old, known online as ‘kidzap’, would’ve most likely been sent to jail, but avoided incarceration by pleading guilty to conspiring to commit copyright infringement. He collects a $2,000 fine.
It’s been a bad week for the RIAA. First their headline campaign victory over Jammie Thomas was thrown out, and then the government said it ‘strongly opposes’ a bill lobbied for by the entertainment industries.
If you believe the anti-piracy lobbies, Audible Magic’s CopySense system is the absolute best system you can buy, protecting Universities, and more importantly, their students, from copyright violation accusations. However, the question has to be asked, “Does it really work?”
The Pirate Bay has successfully appealed the decision of an Italian judge who had ordered ISPs to block access to the popular BitTorrent tracker last month. The Court of Bergamo decided that this block was unlawful, and that Italian users should regain access to the site.
The European Parliament has voted in favor of an amendment that will prevent member states from implementing three-stikes laws. Disconnecting alleged file-sharers based on evidence from anti-piracy lobby groups restricts the rights and freedoms of Internet users, according to the amendment.
Two fresh episodes of the US hit series ‘Heroes’ were released Monday night. In the day that followed each episode was downloaded well over a million times by BitTorrent users all over the world, making it the busiest day ever on many torrent sites.
Today, Alan Ellis the admin of OiNK, will appear in court along with five users accused of uploading music via the BitTorrent tracker. The six will appear before magistrates to learn if their cases will be sent on to a Crown Court. They are joined by Cleveland police, who face a copyright infringement crisis of their own.
Michael Moore’s new film about the run up to the 2004 US election was released online today, only for US and Canada residents. In order to maximize capacity, they’ve even embraced BitTorrent, and the official download is using the Pirate Bay tracker. To the dismay of their lawyers, however, this also lifts the geographical restrictions.
Mininova, the most visited BitTorrent site, broke two download records today. Since its inception, the site has served 6 billion torrent downloads and today reached an all time record of more than 10 million downloads served in a single day. Has today been BitTorrent’s busiest day ever?
An ISP which was ordered by a court to stop illegal file-sharing on its network, says it simply can not. The Belgian ISP Scarlet says the court’s verdict is unworkable and after trying to slow traffic and also filter it, it says it’s not possible to stop the flow of illicit files since Audible Magic doesn’t work.
An early Alpha release of the long awaited Mac version of the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent has leaked to the public. The application is still in development, but most features seem to work just fine. As expected, the application looks very Mac-like, and better than its Windows counterpart.
The Ugandan government has been sued by the 83 year old composer of its national anthem “Oh Uganda, Land of Beauty.” Prof. George Wilberforce Kakoma seeks compensation for the continuous infringement of his work on national festivities, for which he received no royalties.
In their infinite wisdom, customs officials in Hong Kong have arrested a child for sharing music on the Internet. The 14 year old boy, who is too young to be named, is alleged to have uploaded Chinese language pop songs, known as Cantopop, for others to download for free.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “The Incredible Hulk” tops the chart.
Today, The Pirate Bay reached a new milestone, as they now have more than 3 million registered users. On top of that, they track close to 15 million unique peers. The largest BitTorrent tracker just keeps growing and growing, and there is no sign that this will be put to a halt anytime soon.
TorrentIt is far from a newcomer in the BitTorrent community. The tracker has been around since 2004, but since it ran into the Duch anti-piracy lobbyists from BREIN, it has been offline. This weekend, however, the site officially relaunched, with help from their friends over at DigitalHive.
MediaDefender is widely known for their anti-piracy operations, spoofing and decoying on file-sharing networks for the entertainment industry. The company is doing more than that though, as we recently found out that adult affiliate programs were a significant source of income for them too.
A member of the pioneering warez group aPOCALYPSE pRODUCTION cREW (aPC) has been jailed for 18 months. Barry Gitarts, also known as ‘Dextro’, was sentenced after he was convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Copyright Infringement. Thus far, there have been 15 convictions of aPC members.
A court has ruled that a site providing links to P2P downloads is operating legally. The Provincial Court of Madrid ruled that Sharemula.com, a site offering eDonkey links to movies, music, software and games does not break the law. The court’s decision is final and cannot be appealed.
Cyber-crime police have arrested a man who uploaded the movie ‘Wanted’ to a file-sharing network. The man, Kazushi Hirata, was detained after he added custom subtitles to a pirated copy of the movie and uploaded it to the Internet, in advance of its Japanese theatrical release. He faces up to 10 years in jail.
Norbits, the largest Norwegian BitTorrent tracker is going through some rough times. For several days now, the site has been offline due to a DDoS attack. The site has allegedly been hacked by a group called MORRADi, which is threatening to publish all IPs and more information on the users, unless the tracker is closed.
The spokesperson of the German Pirate Party saw his house raided after the party published a leaked document which showed that the government uses a homemade “trojan” to wiretap Skype conversations. In addition, a server from another party member was seized.
Danish ISPs have rejected proposals from the IFPI for a “3-strikes and you’re out” policy to deal with illicit file-sharers. In a joint statement, the telecoms companies said that they would not be a part of “detection and monitoring” activities and that the solution to piracy should come from elsewhere.
Another member of EliteTorrents has been sentenced. An Duc Do, an uploader on the site and former student of Drexel University, yesterday escaped jail but was sentenced to 3 years probation, a $15,000 fine and 400 hours of community service instead. As a result he loses his job at Lockheed Martin.
TV shows are by far the most wanted files via BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s fast becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
Last week, football fans in the UK were disappointed after satellite broadcaster Setanta failed to reach a deal with free-to-air terrestrial channels to show England’s World Cup qualifier against Croatia. Of course, availability isn’t something that affects those wishing to view the match via unauthorized sources.
Exactly a year ago, the anti-piracy company MediaDefender was put to shame after a hacker gained access to their systems. Many of the deepest secrets of the company were published online, and now, twelve months on, the company is walking the plank to bankruptcy as its shares are worth less than one cent each.
BitTorrent Inc. has partnered with two major online game providers, providing technology to accelerate the downloads of clients and patches. BitTorrent Inc. sees the online games space as one of their target markets, as there is a lot of bandwidth to be saved.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Iron Man” tops the chart again.
Metallica’s label Universal stepped in and canceled an interview with a Swedish newspaper last week after one of its writer reviewers said he got his copy of the album via BitTorrent. The writer, Jonn Jeppsson, who actually reviewed an edited version of ‘Death Magnetic’, admitted he downloaded it from The Pirate Bay.
Most site admins go about their business in secret, which makes it difficult for enthusiastic outsiders to make the leap from user to site owner, since they can’t get the benefit of the accrued knowledge of others. Now that has changed with TorrentFries – a unique website demystifying the running of a tracker.
When a story appears in the media involving piracy, it inevitably mentions how lobby groups like the RIAA get involved in helping establish evidence. Is this really needed, or does this compromise the cases? Should representatives for the victims really be used to form the basis of a criminal case, or should evidence be gathered by the police?
Spore was without doubt the most anticipated game of the year. The game itself has blown away the people who have played it, but the DRM encouraged thousands to get their copy illegally. Already Spore has been downloaded more than 500,000 times on BitTorrent, and this number is increasing rapidly.
Following a turbulent week where The Pirate Bay was smeared by the mainstream media for linking to publicly available autopsy photos of two murdered kids, The Pirate Bay has decided to boycott all press for the time being.
All the media reports about cracking down on file-sharers in the UK are starting to annoy me. I’m sick of hearing about Topware, their 2nd rate pinball game and their hired-gun lawyers. This needs sorting out, once and for all. Is it time to make file-sharing a police issue in future, one for the criminal courts?
A recently released study has claims that the current ‘Intellectual Property’ situation in the world is not working well. Driven by a fear of losing out, and bolstered by an attitude that profit is the aim of IP, progress is hampered. Not only by the entertainment industry, also in biotechnology where medicines are sometimes restricted or withheld, causing deaths.
Pioneer recently announced a prototype set-top box that supports BitTorrent streaming. The device already caught the attention of the BBC, as it opens up the possibility for TV-networks to offer their content via the Internet without having to spend millions of dollars on bandwidth bills.
Today, after almost a year, the OiNK investigation came to an end. Earlier today we reported that OiNK administrator Alan Ellis was charged with “conspiracy to defraud”. Now, just hours later the alleged uploaders are charged with copyright infringement for uploading one CD.
During October 2007, the popular BitTorrent tracker OiNK was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement. Today, OiNK admin Alan Ellis has been charged with conspiracy to defraud. Charges against four OiNK uploaders will follow later today.
Slipknot vocalist and frontman Corey Taylor says it’s time for the music industry to stop taking legal action against downloaders. He feels it is the labels themselves who are to blame for online piracy, since the quality of released music is so bad, no-one wants to buy it.
The fallout from the FBI raid on EliteTorrents in 2005 continues. Today, 26 year-old Daniel Dove has been sentenced to 18 months in prison and a $20,000 fine for the work he put in on the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents.
Last week the fourth season of Prison Break aired in the US with over 6 million viewers on TV. On BitTorrent the season premiere was downloaded more than 2 million times this week. The majority of the downloads go to Europe though. Poland alone is responsible for 12%, compared to only 4% US downloads.
A site dedicated to the sharing of all kinds of media, from blogs, through photos and video, has embraced BitTorrent. Ipernity.com has been in operation since 2007 and has just finished work on a ‘secret project’ – to implement the sharing of bulky media on the site via BitTorrent and their own tracker.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, superhero week, as “Iron Man” and “Batman” top the chart.
A new trend is surfacing, as spammers have sent out millions of emails targeting BitTorrent users. The emails, that claim to come from MediaDefender, warn the receiver that he or she has been logged using BitTorrent and points them to an attachment supposedly containing evidence, but which is in fact infected with a virus.
Two Danish women taken to court by IFPI affiliates for sharing music were found to be innocent. The two claimed they were the victim of WiFi theft, had no knowledge of the alleged infringements and therefore shouldn’t have to pay the damages. The court agreed and acquitted them of all charges.
Following Demonoid and QuebecTorrent, the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) has threatened isoHunt with legal action. However, isoHunt has decided to launch a preemptive strike, as it turns the tables and sues the CRIA instead.
Instant-Torrents is a new service that allows people to download, find, and share torrents on a private network. Users can download torrents via the site, and direct downloads are available when others have downloaded the torrent before.
Writer Stephanie Meyer isn’t too happy with the Internet. The first 12 chapters of her eagerly awaited book, a counter-view novel to Twilight, has hit file sharing sites. Despite knowing who was responsible, Meyer’s anger seems only to be for her Internet fans, while she plans to cancel the book.
Two major UK ISPs have been ordered by the High Court to hand over the identities of several thousand alleged file-sharers. BT has confirmed it is involved while Virgin Media was less direct in admitting that lawyers Davenport Lyons, working with Topwear Inc., are about to start threatening thousands more people.
A city in the north of the UK has taken drastic action to beat pirates. From today, not only will sellers of pirate DVDs and CDs be stopped from selling their goods at Hull’s biggest street market, but legitimate businesses selling audio visual products will be banned from selling their products there too.
Less than a day after the first two episodes of Prison Break’s fourth season aired on TV, close to a million people have already downloaded the episodes on BitTorrent. This is an impressive number and in the days to come it might even come close to the 6.5 million TV viewers on FOX.
Following on from the IFPI-inspired Italian blockade of The Pirate Bay, the MPAA’s President has been in Italy offering ideas on how to deal with the ‘problem’ of unauthorized file-sharing. Not wanting to flirt too much with originality, Robert Pisano is backing a 3 strikes-and-you’re-out policy. Just how far will the Italian government go in its currently tough anti-piracy mood?
The Pirate Bay, Mininova and isoHunt all have millions of visitors every day, searching for music, movies, software and especially TV-shows. Together, the three BitTorrent sites serve an impressive 500 million searches each month, and this number is going up every month.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “The X Files: I Want to Believe” tops the chart this week.
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