In the past we’ve given plenty of examples of how DRM hurts paying customers instead of the people it is meant for. Still, many software companies prefer to see their customers as potential ‘thieves’ but what they don’t realize, however, is that they are actually breeding pirates instead of stopping them.
Two vulnerabilities have been discovered in the web interface plugin for the KDE BitTorrent client, KTorrent. A malicious attacker sending specially crafted parameters to the interface could enable both remote code execution and arbitrary torrent uploads.
When Professor and media researcher Roger Wallis left the stand yesterday, the court asked whether he wanted to be reimbursed for his appearance. “You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife,” he responded. In the hours that followed, many Pirate Bay supporters took this suggestion to hand.
During The Pirate Bay trial, the music industry placed the blame for the decline in their revenues squarely on the shoulders of file-sharers. Their logic is clearly flawed, but it could sway the verdict if no alternative explanation is presented. So, if piracy isn’t to blame, then what is *actually* killing the music industry?
TV-shows are some of the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
Yesterday several entertainment industry insiders explained how piracy was responsible for the downfall of their industries. Today, Kristoffer Schollin from Gothenburg University explains that BitTorrent is not evil, while media professor Roger Wallis informs the court that the file-sharing is actually beneficial to the entertainment industry.
The Pirate Bay has just released their manifesto in English. The book, titled ‘POwr, Broccoli and Kopimi’ is filled with 100 inspiring principles for everyone who aims to live the Kopimi lifestyle. “The Internet is right,” is the ultimate wisdom.
It’s Day 8 of The Pirate Bay trial and several entertainment industry CEOs take the stand. IFPI’s CEO John Kennedy said that TPB was an extremely damaging force on the global music industry and what the site offers is just too tempting for people to resist. He also admitted to not understanding how TPB or even uTorrent works.
Latvia continues its clamp down on BitTorrent trackers, as two more sites have been pulled offline by the local police. Whether the attempts will prove effective is doubtful. File.lv, Latvia’s largest BitTorrent tracker was taken down last summer but has since returned, despite an ongoing lawsuit.
After a long weekend break, both sides have returned to the Stockholm court room. Day 6 of the trial was a rest day, so we skip to Day 7 where the IFPI’s evidence collector relies only on screenshots and admits he’s not a BitTorrent expert. Furthermore, the Prosecution don’t know where policeman Jim Keyzer is.
In a desperate move to amp up her case against The Pirate Bay, prosecuting lawyer Monique Wadsted has asked authors for quotes and support in preparation for her closing arguments next Monday. Unfortunately for her, the friendly request backfired as a befriended author turned out to be a fanatical Pirate Bay supporter.
On Day 4 of The Pirate Bay trial, the Prosecutor referred to legal action taken against the admins of another BitTorrent tracker, Finreactor, who together received huge fines and currently have their case before the Supreme Court. Since Sweden and Finland’s laws are similar, what does the Finreactor case mean for the TPB defendants?
Throughout Europe, music industry lobbyists have tried to convince ISPs to block file-sharing sites, and not without success. The Irish ISP Eircom is the first to cave in to the pressure of the music industry, and without any argument will block all file-sharing related websites – starting with The Pirate Bay.
There has been plenty of comment around the net about the ‘guilty-on-accusation’ law in New Zealand. Now after a week of online protests that got some ‘Quite Interesting’ support, the law has been delayed for another month.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Role models’ tops the chart this week. ‘Punisher War Zone’ is the first BluRay rip to make it into our weekly download list.
The trial of The Pirate Bay has not gone by unnoticed in Sweden’s neighbor country, Norway. The IFPI has ordered the largest ISP in the country to block the site, while on the other hand Norway’s Minister of Education is critical of the music industry, and wants to legalize (illegal) file-sharing
As the first week of the trial came to an end, hundreds of supporters gathered Friday evening for a Spectrial Kopimi Party at a night club in central Stockholm. The party was thrown by the Swedish Pirate Bureau and saw live performances by several artists, a DJ set from Brokep and video art made from the movies featured in the trial.
The FBI has tracked down two individuals who uploaded Oscar screeners to BitTorrent trackers. The pair are accused of uploading screeners of Australia, Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire to The Pirate Bay, Demonoid and Movie Hogs. They face harsh punishment of three years in jail.
The Pirate Bay trial has opened a whole new world for the Stockholm Court. When Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm (Anakata) was questioned about the upload habits of the site’s users, the prosecution was baffled to hear that “The Scene” doesn’t like The Pirate Bay either, and that they are actually on their side.
TV-shows are some of the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
It’s Day 5 at The Pirate Bay trial. Will colorful site spokesman Peter Sunde stand up to the pressure? There seems little doubt of that, but the Prosecution are trying to make it as difficult as possible by introducing yet more uncleared evidence. Peter demands of the Prosecution, “Is this a political trial?”
Mininova, one of the largest BitTorrent sites on the Internet has relocated to a new office in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Besides the new office Mininova has also made some changes to the site itself, while adding two more servers to cope with the growing demand from its visitors.
Day 4 of The Pirate Bay trial has seen the focus on Fredrik who was questioned at length. When it was movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted’s turn, she wasted no time in unexpectedly introducing new evidence. Both the defense and the court complained at this point, with Wadsted choosing to shout down the judge.
Indicating support for The Pirate Bay team, hackers have attacked several of the IFPI’s websites, defacing one of them with a message for the trial prosecution. However, Peter Sunde feels the attack is misguided and says such actions don’t help their cause. He is pleading with the hackers to stop.
A few months ago, four tracks from the upcoming U2 album ‘No Line on the Horizon’ leaked onto the Internet. In order to prevent the full album from leaking before launch, U2 organized “private hearings” for the press, but these failed. Today, ten hours after the album leaked, downloads on BitTorrent are 100K – and counting.
A recent analysis of the latest P2P trends wordwide shows that BitTorrent is still the most popular filesharing protocol. P2P traffic in general shows a slight decline, but BitTorrent traffic is still on the rise. It is responsible for more than 45-78% of all P2P traffic, roughly 27-55% of all Internet traffic depending on geographical location.
The Pirate Bay trial is moving forward rapidly and again the day in court has ended early. On the third day the prosecution presented the amended charges. The defendants all called for acquittal while Carl Lundström’s lawyer scored points with the already legendary ‘King Kong’ defense.
The League of Noble Peers just released a ‘trial edition’ of their Steal This Film documentary series. It features Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij preparing for their trial. In addition, the two reenact the police interrogations that took place after the raid.
Australian officials desperate to reduce film ‘camming’ have arrested and charged a man in Sydney with 18 counts of copyright infringement. Unusually, he wasn’t caught in the act, and the cinema was a drive-in. The man is allegedly a member of the well known scene group PreVail.
There has been high drama on the second day of the Pirate Bay trial. Due to serious shortcomings in the prosecution evidence, around 50% of the charges in the case are going to have to be withdrawn. The defense describes it as a ‘sensation’, seeing half of the charges being dropped on the second day.
As The Pirate Bay trial got underway, dozens of supporters gathered around the Court waving skull-and-crossbone flags as the parties entered the court house. Pro-piracy forces in Sweden had vowed to play along in the theater of the trial. The opening act was a spectacle; in court, on the streets and online.
This morning the trial of The Pirate Bay started. Without doubt, it will be the most important case the file-sharing community has ever witnessed. Here are the key parts of Day 1, distilled from the hundreds of ongoing reports.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Underworld: Rise of the Lycans” tops the chart this week. Two other newcomers, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “Thick as Thieves” are in second and third place respectively.
Just hours ago The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån held a joint press conference at the Museum of Technology in Stockholm. It was broadcasted live on the web and Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Gottfrid Svartholm spoke at length. Here is a breakdown of some of the key points.
uTorrent – the client of choice for most BitTorrent users – has added a Google powered torrent search engine to its website. This added search capability uses Google’s custom search program and prioritizes BitTorrent sites in the results. With millions of visitors a month, this is likely to bring in some additional revenue for BitTorrent Inc.
The extension of copyright on audio recordings from 50 to 95 years in the EU has moved another step closer to realization, with its passage through the legal affairs committee. The action, ostensibly to provide a pension for session musicians, is in reality a multi-million euro windfall for the Big Four record companies.
Six individuals accused of leaking a DVD screener of a movie to the Internet have been handed suspended jail sentences and fines of 15,000 euros. Three of the sentenced are employees of a major European TV channel. None of the six made any money from their actions.
BitTorrent is often praised as an indestructible force moving petabytes of data around every day. It does have an Achilles’ heel though, and prominent p2p researchers warn that millions of downloads will come to a halt if eight servers hosted in Sweden happen to go offline.
At least on the surface, most in the mainstream music industry agree: illicit file-sharing is evil. However, when you aren’t getting paid to have a certain opinion, things can change. No longer taking a salary from his former company, Ex-IFPI chairman and EMI director Per Eirik Johansen speaks freely.
In just a few days time, the largest court case in file-sharing history will start in Stockholm, Sweden. The Pirate Bay will try to keep the public updated every day, with help from the community and through Twitter.
Following calls from the crew of The Pirate Bay earlier this week, it has been confirmed that the audio of the upcoming trial will be streamed live on the Internet. Swedish public broadcaster SVT will be in charge of the operation, set to begin next Monday.
Piracy of iPhone applications has become quite a hot topic recently, particularly since ‘one-click’ cracking apps such as Crackulous have become available to the public. The Kali Anti-Piracy system from Ripdev believes it has the answer, putting pirates on notice that the easy ride to free software is over.
Miro, the Internet TV player with a built in BitTorrent client released a new version today. LegalTorrents is now added as a default site, but users are of course free to add more sites or RSS feeds to get those latest TV-episodes on your computer seamlessly.
Some say he can encode a stack of DVDs in seconds using only his teeth, and that he can command an army of millions with just one NFO. All that we know is he’s called aXXo and he/she/they have some security advice for the worshippers.
TV-shows are some of the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
For the first time in its four year existence, Mininova now has a million torrent files stored on its servers. These meta-data files are spread out over 10 categories on this BitTorrent giant, with movies and music representing more than half of all the torrents.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Body of Lies” tops the chart this week. “Sex Drive” and “Changeling” remain in second and third place respectively.
The entertainment industry is furious about its treatment at the hands of pirates. Last year, even the creator of iPhone cracking-app Crackulous got pretty annoyed when his work leaked. But it’s not just content creators that get angry at pirates – and this is where it starts to get a little confusing.
Set to start in just a few days time, the trial of The Pirate Bay will be one of the most important cases the file-sharing community has ever witnessed. However, due to restrictions, the number of people viewing it first hand could be very limited indeed. “Time to make demands,” says Peter Sunde.
The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has managed to take another 19 torrent sites down, all of them operated by the same person. Last December, the 45 year old man behind the so-called torrent site franchise was already forced to close 75 of his other sites.
The Get a Mac campaign is famous for comparing the troublesome PC with the much hipper Mac. In a series of commercials the Mac displays its superiority over the Windows based PC. Unsurprisingly, the ads never covered BitTorrent etiquette, because Windows users are better ‘pirates’ compared to their Mac counterparts.
Earlier this week a Danish court decided that an ISPs have to block access to The Pirate Bay. In response to the judgment, three ISPs have already announced that they will take the case to the Supreme Court. In addition, The Pirate Bay itself now says it will sue the anti-piracy outfit IFPI if the ISPs fail to overturn the ruling.
Nearly three years ago, we mentioned Linuxtracker in a short post on BitTorrent sites that list ‘legal’ software downloads. Now, the site is celebrating its 4th anniversary, and with over 1400 torrents it is one of the best places to get your Linux fix.
After their beloved subtitle site was taken down by an anti-piracy outfit working on behalf of US media companies, hackers responded rapidly – they defaced the anti-piracy site and inserted links to torrents hosted on Mininova. The subtitle site is already back in business – the anti-piracy site is not.
A Danish court has ruled that all Danish ISPs have to deny their users access to The Pirate Bay. Most broadband providers are not too happy with this unbalanced decision, and three of them have already announced that they will take it to the Supreme Court.
TorrentSpy, once the most frequently visited BitTorrent site, has appealed the ruling in their case against the MPAA. Last year, they were ordered to pay a $110 million fine after the court terminated the case, but TorrentSpy’s lawyer Ira Rothken believes that the issues at stake warrant an appeal.
The Pirate Bay has just released a Google-powered map of the tracker connections per country. The map is only the start of a much larger project that will cover more detailed statistics on the tracker’s users. However, it already reveals some interesting data.
The Telecommunications Carriers Forum (TCF) which represents ISPs and telecoms companies in New Zealand has drafted a code of practice which outlines the manner in which the new Section 92 “3 Strikes” regime should be handled by its members. It aims to dampen the many fears of Internet users.
A recently published survey found that one third of all broadband Internet subscribers worldwide admits to having downloaded movies or TV-shows illegally. The majority of these downloaders are well aware that their habits are illegal, but it doesn’t play on their conscience.
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?
Getting an account at a good private BitTorrent tracker can be quite a challenge. Some people make a habit out of it, checking dozens of torrent sites every day. Others prefer more automated ways, such as using trackerchecker.org, a website that monitors over 500 private BitTorrent trackers.
Eircom, the Irish ISP that agreed to disconnect alleged file-sharers at the behest of the music industry, has thousands of customers still exposed to a serious security hole. The flaw, which affects up to 250,000 subscribers, could mean they are wrongly accused of something they didn’t do. Thanks to Eircom, they may now lose their Internet connection.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Outlander” tops the chart this week, followed by “Sex Drive” and “Changeling”.
In a few weeks time, members of the European Parliament will vote on the Medina report, which proposes a wide range of anti-piracy measures and regulations. The report specifically mentions The Pirate Bay, and it approves actions by national courts against the popular BitTorrent tracker.
Crackulous, the one-click cracking application for software purchased from Apple’s AppStore, was previously only available to a select few. Now anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch can start cracking software purchased from Apple so that they can share them with their friends, since Crackulous has just gone public.
Even more news...
Freedom of speech is a highly valued commodity, but should people be allowed to say whatever...
An anti-piracy system present in all official Blu-ray players since 2012 has received a fresh update...
One of the main reasons why people turn to piracy is the lack of legal alternatives....
Last year an Internet user known as El Nomeo leaked version 3.70 of Sony’s Playstation3 SDK...
Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation is a network mechanism through which many Internet subscribers can share the...
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
A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.
More than a year ago TorrentFreak took a look at a selection of the web’s VPN...
Continuing a long-standing New Year's tradition, today we present an up-to-date list of the world's most-visited...
Last month it became apparent that not all VPN providers live up to their marketing after...
Privacy is important on the Internet, and BitTorrent users are certainly not excluded. Already, hundreds of...
With the entertainment industries lobbying for increased powers to spy on BitTorrent users, many downloaders are...
BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current...