BitTorrent’s user base is growing month by month and has reached a level where reputable marketing research companies have started to look into the phenomenon. Over the years Nielsen Media has optimized their ratings system for television, radio and films – but on the other hand their BitTorrent traffic estimates are far from accurate.
A Canadian court has ordered a cinema to pay $10,000 damages after staff searched a family’s bags looking for camming equipment, but ended up breaching their privacy. The search by staff also turned up something embarrassing in older daughter’s bag. Mom had no idea. Not impressed.
For reasons unknown, TorrentFreak is filtered by many organizations, schools and WiFi hotspots spread across various countries. We assume that those who maintain the web filtering databases have grown wary of anything related to BitTorrent, but in some cases it’s even worse than that.
Soulseek is one the greatest music sharing networks that most people have never heard of, with a particular specialty in electronic music. Unfortunately, for nearly a year those using versions of the official client have been exposed to a highly critical vulnerability which can leave them open to remote takeover.
In Spain, a judge has dismissed a case against a man who downloaded and shared 3322 copyrighted movies on the Internet. Despite efforts from local anti-piracy outfits, the legal system in Spain continues to stand firmly behind those who share music and movies without financial gain.
Lawyers ACS:Law have entered the anti-piracy revenue generation scheme previously inhabited by Davenport Lyons. They write to alleged file-sharers demanding payment of hundreds of pounds or face legal action. However, those same individuals can point the finger straight back, since ACS:Law are copyright infringers themselves.
In the aftermath of the Pirate Bay verdict the controversy surrounding judge Tomas Norström grows bigger and bigger. Most recently, defense lawyer Per E Samuelsson sent a letter to the Appeal Court in which he explains that the younger generation has lost faith in the legal system because of the shady selection procedure.
Ever since it became clear that running a P2P links site is not a crime in Spain, music anti-piracy group SGAE have threatened civil action. Yesterday the admin of two P2P sites had a home visit by members of SGAE, who took advantage of the admin’s legal naivety and conducted a search of his property without a suitable warrant.
In their race for one or more seats in the European Parliament, the Swedish Pirate Party has gathered support from all layers of society, including some well known public figures. One of them is Lars Gustafsson, one of Sweden’s most prolific writers, who openly expressed his support for the Pirate Party today.
In Italy artists and musicians made a charity song to raise money for victims of the recent earthquake. Like most music these days the song found its way onto P2P networks before its official release. Italy’s answer to the RIAA reported the situation to the police, who are now reporting they have tracked down and arrested the leakers.
This month, FeedMyTorrents finally closed down after legal threats got too much for the owners. Determined to make the shows go on, some individuals have developed a new site to fill the hole FMT left behind, and they have told TorrentFreak that they will never succumb to legal threats.
In an unexpected move, the Swedish Minister of Culture said in a speech that she’s happy with the sentences handed out to the defendants in the Pirate Bay trial. Her comments on an ongoing court case go too far, and are probably unconstitutional according to critics. Music industry insiders, on the other hand, cheered during her speech.
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 sharing?
The request from four major record labels to fine the Pirate Bay operators for every day the site remains up and running was declined by the Swedish District Court today. Contrary to what the labels had requested, the court said it wants to hear the defendants before it will take any action.
In a recent court battle, among other things L’Oreal argued that eBay could prevent the sale of counterfeit items through its site and was therefore jointly liable for offenses committed by its users. The UK High Court disagreed and ruled in eBay’s favor. We take a look at the case through a BitTorrent prism.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent. A new R5 release of ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ tops the chart this week followed by ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’.
The chief of Lithuania’s main anti-piracy outfit has a mountain to climb in dealing with piracy – online penetration is at almost 100% and closing torrent sites is no cakewalk. After announcing plans for a crackdown, people suggested collecting money to have him killed but this hatred is nothing new. An earlier plot aimed to blow him up.
In February TechCrunch rumored that Last.fm had ratted out its users to the RIAA. Now they have another source claiming data was shared with the music industry group, including IP addresses. Without going into the validity of these allegations, we’d like to point out that this data is completely useless to the RIAA, from a legal point of view.
With millions of page views a day, torrent sites are a great outlet for spammers and scammers. Most recently, The Pirate Bay suffered from a spam flood. Thousands of spam comments posted on the site promised to speed up BitTorrent downloads to unrealistic heights, while installing an aggressive adware bundle.
Pro-copyright lobbyists and anti-piracy outfits have a clear idea of what is needed to manipulate the minds of the younger generations. The MPAA most famously handed out a “merit patch in respecting copyright” to LA Boy Scouts, and now the Copyright Alliance has entered US classrooms in an attempt to educate today’s youth about the benefits of copyright.
FeedMyTorrents, a site which published handy RSS feeds for downloading TV-shows using BitTorrent, has closed its doors for the last time. The site went down earlier this year due to financial difficulties but following legal threats, has now closed down for good.
The European elections are only two weeks away, and Pirate Party candidates vie for seats in different countries. We speak with some of them, starting with Andreas Popp, lead candidate for the German Piraten Partei.
A recent survey conducted by a Dutch current affairs TV program looked into the downloading habits of the local youngsters – with some noteworthy results. While the legalization of marijuana in The Netherlands results in less usage compared to neighboring countries, the liberal download climate has quite the opposite outcome.
EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner have many years experience of trying to sue people away from P2P networks. In Spain they have turned their attentions to Pablo Soto, the 30 year old creator of the Blubster, Piolet and Manolito file-sharing applications. They say his software is “unfair competition” for them, and are in court this week, suing him for $17.8m.
It is very common indeed for anti-piracy groups to go after sites linked to file-sharing. However, in The Netherlands the tables have recently been turned as the FTD Usenet community is taking legal action against anti-piracy group BREIN. TorrentFreak spoke with FTD’s lawyer to discover exactly why this worm has turned.
Another brand new episode of TorrentFreak TV. This week’s episode covers the Pirate Bay anthem, Apple banning BitTorrent related applications, BREIN being sued by a Usenet group and a whole lot more.
To determine if the verdict in the Pirate Bay case was biased, the connections of Judge Tomas Norström to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups will be reviewed by another judge. However, the judge that was initially appointed has already been replaced because she was linked to the same organizations as Norström, and her replacement is not exactly unbiased either.
As everyone is now aware, defeat in the Spectrial did not lead to the closure of The Pirate Bay. Now, after being able to download hundreds of their own albums via the site, the record company plaintiffs from the case want action, and have applied to the court to issue fines to the defendants for every day they continue to infringe copyright.
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 sharing?
Last week, a group of music and other entertainment industry representatives urged the UK government to consider drafting legislation that would force ISPs to disconnect alleged pirates. This proposal now faces opposition from an unexpected corner as a coalition of top artists has spoken out against it, saying that disconnecting their fans is the wrong path to take.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Fired Up’ tops the chart this week followed by ‘The Horsemen’. The Telecine release of ‘Star Trek’ completes this week’s top three.
The trial against Mininova that was scheduled for this Wednesday has been postponed until June. The outcome of the civil dispute between the anti-piracy group BREIN and Mininova will decide if the BitTorrent indexer has to actively filter torrents from the site.
Several studios are currently engaged in legal action against Australian ISP iiNet. They accuse iiNet of failing to take steps to stop its subscribers from sharing files by disconnecting them from the Internet. Now anti-piracy group AFACT says iiNet should just admit its customers are pirates, and stop wasting the court’s time.
Anti-piracy group BREIN is well known in the BitTorrent community, having already managed to shut down hundreds of small sites. The Dutch outfit is currently being sued by a group of Usenet enthusiasts after it called their site illegal. Undeterred, it’s now flexing its muscles to get NZB sites closed down too.
With an estimated 50 million users at any given time of the day, BitTorrent has established itself as the leading way to share large files online. As a consequence, BitTorrent applications are among the most installed and most frequently used applications on today’s computers. So, what BitTorrent client are you using?
A few years ago The Pirate Bay crew toyed with the idea of founding a pirate state, preferably in the micronation of Sealand or another suitable island. An island was never bought, but The Pirate Bay does have an official anthem now.
In a bid to increase their revenue, among other things, Vuze has added a catalog of HD adult videos to their BitTorrent client. For a few dollars a month Vuze users can subscribe to the latest hotness. Of course, all torrents on the erotica network are well seeded.
During October 2007, the popular BitTorrent tracker OiNK was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement. Four users of the popular BitTorrent tracker have already been sentenced to community service, fines and payment of court costs, but the trial of admin Alan Ellis has now been moved to 2010.
A Usenet discussion community is taking notorious anti-piracy outfit BREIN to court. BREIN, which has taken action against many Usenet and BitTorrent sites including Demonoid and Mininova, has declared the activities of FTD illegal. Angered by these claims, FTD is now taking BREIN to court to force it to eat its words.
Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity has already been called into doubt because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. Now, one of the defense lawyers says he has uncovered another scandal and claims to have evidence that Norström wasn’t assigned to the case randomly, as should be the case according to court procedure.
A study conducted by PRS, the British music royalty collection agency, looked into the downloading habits of the average user of file-sharing networks. They found that the most downloaded tracks mimic the music charts. That is, people tend to download music that’s already popular.
When a filmmaker first discovered that his new movie had leaked to the Internet, he was pretty upset. However, this creator has some hacker friends who persuaded him to feel more relaxed about reaching a whole new audience. Right now, he is embracing file-sharing and even the uploader who released his work via BitTorrent sites.
In a bid to educate pirates, copyright holders hire companies such as BayTSP to track down people who share their titles on P2P networks. The alleged infringers then receive a warning and are given the opportunity to resolve the issue. However, this system is vulnerable to abuse and therefore completely useless.
Spanish copyright group SGAE has taken legal action in order to close down a site which offers links to copyrighted music hosted elsewhere. In seeking an injunction to close the site, SGAE said it was not necessary for the court to hear the site’s defense. The court disagreed.
In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology.
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 sharing?
College students have always been prime targets for anti-piracy outfits such as the RIAA. Despite inundating students with mountains of threats and legal action, the number of copyright infringements committed by them have not declined. What did change though is the positioning of various universities in the list of most infringing establishments.
While anti-piracy company MediaDefender only got involved in hindering downloaders, BayTSP is the outfit that tracks file-sharers and sends infringement notices to ISPs. Using cumulative data from its entertainment industry clients, the company reveals which nation’s sharers get caught infringing the most.
The controversial French HADOPI anti-piracy law was passed by the National Assembly today, one step closer to being signed into action. The new law introduces draconian measures to combat piracy including a “three strikes” regime for persistent offenders.
Today the French will probably pass their HADOPI ’3 strikes’ legislation, which will be heralded as a major victory in the war against illicit file-sharing. Just across the water in the UK, elements of the entertainment industry are simultaneously making renewed efforts to convince their government to do the same.
Those hunting for the latest episodes of Lost, Heroes and Prison Break on Mininova may have already noticed that they are hard to find. With the recently implemented copyright filter, many of the popular TV-show releases and blockbuster movies have been removed and put on a ban list.
An iPhone application designed to remotely-control the Transmission BitTorrent client has been rejected by the Apple App Store. Apple told the developer that this type of application is often used to infringe copyrights, so therefore the company has decided not to allow such software on the App store.
The connections of Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups are even more far reaching than initially reported. Consequently, many leading figures within the Swedish judicial system are now convinced that a retrial is necessary so the defendants can have an unbiased trial.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Push’ tops the chart this week followed by ‘Crank: High Voltage’. A Telecine release of ‘Star Trek’ enters the chart in sixth place.
Ever since the the Pirate Bay verdict was announced, the poor record labels have been waiting to collect their share of the damages. The law firm representing several record labels has now filed a request at the Swedish Enforcement Authority, to claim anything of value from the Pirate Bay defendants. However, their involvement in the case might backfire.
In Italy artists and musicians have made a charity song to raise money for victims of the recent earthquake and over in Spain, artists have performed to raise funds for a seriously ill boy. Both events, thanks to the involvement of music industry lobby groups, have been touched by copyright controversy.
This week motor manufacturer Mitsubishi used the mainstream nature of file-sharing and P2P in order to promote its new Colt model. Now, in what appears to be an upcoming marketing campaign by fast food giant Burger King, the famous beef grillers say that cheeseburgers are just like downloading free music from the Internet – but legal.
Vuze, the BitTorrent client formerly known as Azureus, has just been released in a portable version. Unlike the regular Vuze client, Vuze to Go is closed source and costs $9.99. No doubt a pirated version will end up on torrent sites sooner or later.
Over the last couple of years everyone has got used to hearing about UK lawyers Davenport Lyons and their campaigns against those it accuses of illicit file-sharing. Now everyone will have to get used to a new player – they’re called ACS Law and the similarities to Davenport are raising more than a few eyebrows.
Even before it’s officially adopted, France’s controversial anti-piracy law has already claimed its first victim. Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, head of web innovation at one of the largest TV-networks in France was fired recently because he criticized the law in a letter to his MP.
Every year the United States releases the Special 301 Report, which examines the intellectual property laws of important trading partners. One of the countries heavily criticized in the 2009 edition is Spain – largely because it views file-sharing for personal use and non-commercial BitTorrent and file-sharing sites as legal. Obama wants to change all that.
The European Parliament has cast its final vote in favor of an amendment that will prevent member states from implementing three-strikes 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.
Support for the Swedish Pirate Party surged following the Pirate Bay verdict and today it became the third largest political party in the country. When they are elected for the European Parliament next month, the party hopes to end the abuse of copyright by multi-billion dollar corporations.
Just a few days before their court appearance, Mininova, the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, has started to filter content. The site is using a third party content recognition system that will detect and remove torrent files that link to copyright infringing files.
Just a few years ago downloading from the Internet was a relatively niche activity but now all kinds of big names are getting in on the action. In a new promotion about to launch, motor manufacturer Mitsubishi has hidden parts of its new Colt car on BitTorrent sites and other P2P-networks. First to find and assemble them all gets a free car.
In the aftermath of the Pirate Bay verdict, Sweden has witnessed the demise of many other BitTorrent trackers. But not quite enough according to music industry lobby group IFPI, who are now threatening the hosting providers of torrent sites. The host of private BitTorrent tracker TorrentBytes appears to be one of the first targets.
A site thought to be the source of up to 60% of cracked iPhone apps added to the Appulous app database has ceased its operations. The site, home to well known cracker ‘kidmoneys’, is believed to have made use of hacked iTunes gift cards to maintain the supply of apps, but now says it will stop its operations.
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 sharing?
Bitlet, the first web-based BitTorrent client, is known for its innovative services and ease of use. Bitlet’s latest new feature allows users to stream video torrents directly in a web-browser – no additional software required.
Just a couple of days ago we reported that the MPAA’s website was vulnerable to an XSS attack, which left it displaying torrents from The Pirate Bay. This time a flaw has been discovered in the RIAA’s site, which now allows it to display TorrentFreak’s latest articles.
Another brand new episode of TorrentFreak TV. This week’s episode covers Pirate Bay supporters venting their frustration, Canada being blacklisted by United States, uTorrent’s advertising troubles and a whole lot more.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Fast & Furious 4’ tops the chart this week followed by ‘Crank: High Voltage’. The leaked workprint of ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ reappears in sixth place.
As the clampdown on the large public BitTorrent sites continues, private trackers could play an increasingly important role in the file-sharing community. While some people firmly believe that a good public site is all you need, private trackers have their fanatical supporters too. So, as it stands today, where do you get your BitTorrent fix?
At a time when BitTorrent sites are increasingly at odds with the music industry and file-sharing continues to flourish despite legal action, new thinking is called for. Instead of joining the conflict with BitTorrent sites, Honor Roll Music has decided to sponsor isoHunt instead, one of the leading torrent search engines.
If it was up to the MPAA, every website with links to copyright infringing files would be banned from the Internet. Perhaps they should take a closer look at their own website first though, since it’s vulnerable to an XSS attack, making it possible to browse The Pirate Bay directly from the MPAA website.
Following the Swedish verdict, Italy is now considering starting its own trial against the people involved with The Pirate Bay. This would be the first criminal prosecution against the Pirate Bay ‘founders’ outside their home country.
StudiVZ is a Facebook-style operation and is Germany’s largest web-based social networking site. With the European Parliament elections in sight, the website recently opened up to established political parties for election campaigning. Not for all parties though, as they chose to ban the Pirate Party.
Copyright holders in Spain want ISPs to help offset the cost of piracy by imposing a surcharge on customers’ accounts. They also want ISPs to disconnect copyright infringers from the Internet. After many months in government mandated talks, no agreement has been reached.
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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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