TorrentFreak published 688 articles during the last year, a record for us. We’d like to end 2008 with our latest chart which uniquely, is determined by you, our readers. Additionally, our three regular writers reveal their personal favorites from an eventful year.
Opentracker, the BitTorrent tracker software utilized by The Pirate Bay, is released under a beerware license, meaning that anyone who uses it and meets the developer should buy him or her a beer. To fulfill the license, the German Pirate Party donated 50 liters of beer to the main developer at the Chaos Communcation Congress.
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?
In November, the Spanish government launched a media campaign which heavily criticized file-sharers. Now, Spain’s Association of Internet Users has issued a complaint, claiming the content “recklessly offers information that lacks all legal basis, with the exclusive aim of re-educating public opinion.” Sounds familiar.
2008 will be remembered as the year when BitTorrent went mainstream, with an increasing number of artists discovering that it is an excellent tool to promote music. Today, in a sign of the times, Open Your Eyes Records and the popular music tracker What.cd have announced an exclusive partnership.
BitTorrent and porn go hand in hand, so to speak. When Bram Cohen, the inventor of the protocol wanted to test his application in the wild, he used adult content to do so. In the years that followed, many BitTorrent sites specializing in adult content gained millions of visitors, but in the past year, usage has dropped.
While “Disaster Movie” appears in all the worst films lists of 2008, it is leading the top 10 of most downloaded movies on BitTorrent this week. Let’s hope this says more about the popularity of aXXo than the overall taste of movie pirates.
With millions of potential targets, BitTorrent sites are a great arena for scammers and spammers. Vertor is a new BitTorrent site that aims to eliminate these threats. Every torrent on the site is checked for viruses, DRM and password protected archives by Vertor’s software, and users are able to preview the contents of torrents before they download them.
2008 is nearing its end, time to make a list of the top 10 BitTorrent sites that got the most traffic this year. The Pirate Bay is out in the lead followed by Mininova and isoHunt. TorrentSpy shut down earlier this year and is the most notable absentee.
Back in 2004, George Michael announced that he was turning his back on the music industry, vowing that he would never make another album for sale in record shops. Instead, in future he would give his music away for free online. On Christmas Day he gave away a brand new track, but how many people noticed?
Things are looking really good for the Swedish Pirate Party. Running up to the 2009 European Parliament elections more than half of all Swedish men under 30 are considering voting for them. Thanks to the Internet, its membership has grown 50% during the last quarter, surpassing that of the well established Green Party.
The proposed Australian Internet filter is causing controversy before it even gets off the ground. The trial, which is to include attempted BitTorrent blocking, was due to start two days ago but generating further embarrassment for the government and surprising no-one, it failed to launch.
uTorrent – the client of choice for most BitTorrent users – has gathered a steady userbase since it was first released three years ago, one which continues to expand. Last year the number of uTorrent users had doubled, and in 2008 it continued to grow, up to 28 million monthly users.
Yesterday, a few hours before we posted about the RIAA’s holidays eCard, we received a real card from the Mininova team. True to the Christmas spirit, we’re sharing it here.
A Spanish performing rights organisation has already fallen foul of the courts for the way it has collected evidence in royalties disputes. Yet, despite being punished for breaking the law in the past, it is unrepentant and says it will continue to do business in that way.
Most people will never hear anything from the RIAA, unless the anti-piracy outfit demands money from them for allegedly downloading copyrighted music, of course. But even the RIAA has a warm and fuzzy side, but unfortunately it’s limited to music industry insiders.
Australia has been the focus of much tech news recently, as the country struggles with its Internet piracy ‘problem’. Thanks to the infinite wisdom of ABC, Aussie Doctor Who fans are left with a tough decision – wait until mid-January to watch the show’s pivotal ‘Christmas Special’ – or pirate it with BitTorrent.
As the year moves toward its conclusion we have been taking a a look at the most pirated titles in various categories in 2008. Following our Top 10 games and movies posts, we now take a look at the most downloaded TV-shows. Lost is without a doubt the most downloaded TV-show, with over 5 million downloads for one single episode.
The banking industry has received billions of dollars recently and the US auto industry had its share as well. Both have a history of bad decision making, with the auto industry in the US resisting advances in technology. The music and movie industries have also made bad decisions, and rejected technology, so it has to be asked – are they next in line with the begging bowl?
Sony claims that there is a downward trend for pirated PSP games, and that more people are handing over money for games, to join what the company calls “the good side”. It is unclear where Sony sourced this data, but statistics gathered from BitTorrent trackers show an increase in PSP piracy.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent. “Transporter 3″ tops the chart this week, could it be because a BitTorrent client was used in the film used to hack military satellites?
Previously thought to be limited to HTTP and HTTPs web traffic, the touted Australian Internet filter will also target P2P traffic. In response to a comment posted by a user on his department’s blog, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has admitted that BitTorrent filtering will be attempted during upcoming trials.
Fed up with the growing power of the anti-piracy lobby, a group of free-culture supporters gathered in front of the headquarters of the socialist party with their laptops, and started trading copyrighted files. The goal was to show that sharing copyrighted files is legal in Spain, something they appear to have achieved.
At the end of August 2008, the Araditracker BitTorrent tracker disappeared. At the time, sources close to the case said that legal action had been taken against the site, but the exact events were surrounded in mystery. Here is the inside story of the police raids in August and another just three weeks ago.
The Pirate Bay has established itself as the largest BitTorrent tracker, and helps to distribute millions of files a day. Today, the Pirate Bay team adds yet another service to its arsenal, a free video converter that allows users to put their favorite movies and TV shows on almost every mobile device.
When you want to get a precious cargo moved in a cool way in a Hollywood movie, look no further than Frank Martin, aka The Transporter. When you want to get precious stuff from A to B over the Internet, the ‘cool’ way is by using BitTorrent. But did you know you can hack a military satellite with it in seconds?
For years the RIAA has been filing lawsuits against thousands of individuals who allegedly shared copyrighted music. Following recent court setbacks, the lobby group has announced it will stop mass lawsuits. Instead, it will focus on cutting deals with ISPs to disconnect ‘IP-addresses’ that repeatedly share copyrighted music.
In this episode we talk about BitTorrent Inc’s search engine, Resident Evil CG animation, the Pirates of the Amazon add-on, the most downloaded games & movies of 2008, and we explain how to control uTorrent with an iPhone,
Firefox is the web browser of choice for many people, but unlike Opera, it can’t download .torrent files natively. With FireTorrent you can now add BitTorrent support to Firefox. The add-on makes it possible to download .torrent files in the browser, and integrates BitTorrent downloads into the existing download manager.
A man who added custom subtitles to a pirated copy of the movie ‘Wanted’ and uploaded it to a file-sharing network has been sentenced. Kazushi Hirata, who uploaded the movie in advance of its Japanese theatrical release, received a 2 year suspended jail sentence.
ShareReactor was one of the world’s biggest and most popular eDonkey indexing sites with over a quarter million members. The Swiss police shut down the site in 2004 but now, four years later, the file-sharing giant is set to make a full return. Supported by The Pirate Bay team, it’s adding BitTorrent to its arsenal.
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?
Last month we reported how seven major Hollywood studios teamed up to sue iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP. The studios monitored iiNet’s customers using BitTorrent – including a ‘copyright infringing’ subscriber they planted there themselves – and on whose shoulders the case appears balanced.
In contrast to the US, net neutrality does not seem to be an issue in the UK as one after the other, British ISPs start to throttle BitTorrent users. Most recently, Virgin Media announced that it will target BitTorrent, which will render their newly released 50Mbit/s plan unusable for the people who really need it.
A group of British actors, directors and producers have written an open letter to The Times newspaper. Their concern – downloads of TV episodes and films. What is needed, they claim, is for the government to force the ISPs to do something about it.
Following the banks and the car companies, the movie industry might be the next to be hit by the economic downturn. No bail-out plan has been suggested as of yet, but MPAA chairman Dan Glickman is worried that piracy will grow to a new high during the current financial crisis – and he might just have a point there.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Eagle Eye” tops the chart this week, and there are five other newcomers.
Back in the 60′s, archive space at the BBC was hard to come by, forcing the broadcaster to delete some of its own material. Now, a TV show that fell victim to this regime has been resurrected, with the BBC using a pirate recording of the show’s audio to bring it back to life.
Canadian users again face an increase in the cost of blank CDs, as the Copyright Board has increased levies on them by 38%. The raise was authorized in response to rises in music compression and increases in songwriter royalties. With this rise, the Copyright Board is simply ignoring all technological advances since 1999, while the music industry enriches itself.
Yesterday, well over a year since the initial raids, Alan Ellis the ex-admin of OiNK, appeared in crown court along with five users accused of uploading music via the now-defunct BitTorrent tracker. Ellis appeared charged with conspiracy to defraud, while the others faced copyright charges.
The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN claims to have taken down 75 BitTorrent trackers today. Although most of the sites were relatively small and private communities, together they had more than half a million registered users. This is the first time that so many sites have been taken offline at once.
Earlier this year we reported that Ubisoft faced with problems with the DRM on Rainbox 6: Vegas 2, and released a fix – in the form of a no-CD crack actually created by warez group. Following on from this bad experience, Ubisoft has just released the PC version of Prince of Persia without DRM, but expect piracy to be high.
As 2008 moves toward its end, we have been taking a a look at the most pirated titles in various categories. Following our Top 10 games post where ‘Spore’ headlined, we now take a look at movies. Unsurprisingly, The Dark Knight comes out on top, with the rest of the chart featuring a few surprising entries, and some unexpected absentees.
PiratPartiet, the Swedish Pirate Party, has started its march on Brussels with a bang. The party hopes to make a strong showing in June at the European Parliament elections, and has been bolstered in its aims by comments in major Swedish newspapers, which have termed the party “a classic civil rights movement.”
Earlier this year a Danish court ordered the ISP ‘Tele2′ to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. The appeal of this initial ruling was lost two weeks ago, but the case is far from over. Tele2 has decided to appeal the decision before the Supreme Court, supported by Denmark’s telecommunications industry association.
In these credit-crunching times, many people are trying to raise extra money. Some people clear out the garage and have a sale, while others drop their unwanted items on eBay. If your purchases are digital in nature, don’t worry. A new site has appeared where you can sell your unwanted MP3s.
A common criticism leveled at most p2p clients is that they just ‘help people steal’, but they are actually a great tool to help promote undiscovered artists. This is exactly what FrostWire is trying to accomplish with their new FrostClick service. The results from their first featured artist are very promising.
Yesterday we reported on the plight of RARBG, a large tracker forced to close by anti-piracy outfit, BREIN. Now it appears that this is just the tip of the iceberg. A whole raft of trackers are being forced to close or relocate following police action, including ArenaBG and several other large sites.
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?
DNA sequencing is complex, and teaching students how it works can be quite a challenge. It often helps to use analogies, and give real life examples people are familiar with. At the University of Toronto they have found the perfect analogy to explain how DNA sequencing works: BitTorrent.
RARBG, probably one of the biggest BitTorrent trackers you’ve never heard of, has been ordered to close by anti-piracy outfit, BREIN. The 100,000 member site, which is particularly popular with Bulgarians, doesn’t intend to comply but simply move to a different host, outside of BREIN’s jurisdiction.
‘Resident Evil: Degeneration’ is the first CG animation film inspired by the popular video game. Although it skips most US theaters and is scheduled to be released on DVD no sooner than late December, it has been downloaded on BitTorrent close to a million times already – in just four days.
Visitors to the world’s largest adult BitTorrent tracker were met with a surprise this morning. According to Google and Firefox, users accessing Empornium.us are exposed to four trojan horses and three exploits. The malware doesn’t appear to be hosted by the site itself, but it is coming from outside sources.
February 2007, BitTorrent Inc. launched its ‘Torrent Entertainment Network’ where users could download movies and TV-shows legally, via BitTorrent. Despite the ever increasing popularity of BitTorrent as a download tool, the store never became profitable and has now closed. The store is replaced by a BitTorrent search portal.
Anti-piracy organizations are known for their excellent lobbying skills. However, knowledge of the Internet and technology doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite. Recently the Lithuanian anti-piracy outfit changed its name, but forgot to register the new domain. It now belongs to the owner of one of the largest BitTorrent sites in the country.
Lawyers in the UK are obtaining the personal details of over 25,000 alleged file-sharers for the purposes of sending them a £500+ bill accompanied by threats of being sued. Read why the government’s Information Commissioner has let down every single one of them and why each disclosure could be a serious breach of the Data Protection Act.
Just over a day since the MovieX BitTorrent tracker disappeared following the arrest of two admins, the 400,000 member site has returned. A remaining admin is adamant that TorrentFreak completely fabricated the story and that the brothers who ran the site weren’t arrested. All the indications point to the opposite being true.
As 2008 is slowly moving toward its end, we start taking a look at the most pirated titles in various categories. First up are games. As expected, Spore is by far the most downloaded game on BitTorrent, in part thanks to the DRM that came with the game.
MovieX, a very large BitTorrent site which made the headlines last year for its controversial tracker policy, has been shut down by Australian police. The site, thought to have as many as 400,000 users, is being blamed for the ‘transfer’ of 14 million movies and TV shows. So far, two people have been arrested.
Touted as the biggest ever anti-piracy collaboration, the MPA and several major anti-piracy groups have announced that by the time the 2012 Olympics begin, they will have made London “a fake-free zone”. This impossible mission to stamp out DVD piracy was launched by Intellectual Property Minister, David Lammy.
Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, is under attack by online pirates. An add-on for the Firefox browser called ‘Pirates of the Amazon’ makes it possible to shop at the Amazon store but leave without paying a dime. Instead, on Amazon product pages the add-on integrates links to ‘free’ copies on The Pirate Bay.
US President-Elect Barack Obama is a man with a message, and according to the speeches made during his campaign, that message is ‘Change’. One of those changes has been somewhat of a snub to the creative industries and their lobby groups – the embracing of Creative Commons licensing.
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?
An inflammatory article published by Richard Bennett in The Register makes the claim ‘BitTorrent will kill the Internet’, or at least VoIP and games. However, are Bennett’s claims based in reality, or is it just another round in the FUD war that envelops the Internet?
When TorrentFreak broke the news that lawyers had started going after alleged downloaders of gay porn, we knew that this time the anti-piracy dynamic would be different. Named in Forbes’ Web Celeb 25, Violet Blue, a sex columnist and educator has surprisingly added her dissenting voice into the mix, unwittingly highlighting similarities to a story put to paper years ago by writer Roald Dahl.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “The Dark Knight” tops the chart for the third week in a row already.
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Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
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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