Apple is known for the stringent guidelines it applies when deciding which software it allows in their App Store – BitTorrent is one of the things on their ban list. Apple argues that BitTorrent is often used to infringe copyrights and that such applications are a no go for the App Store, forcing developers to go underground.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Bruno’ tops the chart again this week followed by ‘Inglourious Basterds’. ‘District 9′ completes the top three.
September 1st will see the start of a new anti-filesharing initiative. The petition called “Share – Do Not Steal” is currently supported by 1,750 copyright holders and 36 groups including record, movie, TV and games companies. It will be publicized in Norway’s press tomorrow morning.
Copyright laws were once written to allow content creators to protect their work, but at an increasing rate copyright is used to carefully extract money from file-sharers. Some tracking companies go as far as leasing copyrights, with the sole intent of setting up a ‘honey pot’ for pirates.
There are many bands around the world who would rather not see their material getting exposure on file-sharing networks. Canadian band Great Lake Swimmers take a different view. File-sharing is “global word of mouth” they say, and are happy this so-called piracy has enabled them to become familiar to a wider audience.
As if his financial issues couldn’t get any worse, the CEO of Global Gaming Factory suffered yet another humiliating setback yesterday. After a tax debt of more of $110,000 went unpaid, enforcement officers swooped last night, repossessing Hans Pandeya’s car and a motorcycle.
Peerialism, the company set to provide the revolutionary P2P technology behind the new Pirate Bay, has announced that it is doubtful that it will do any business with Global Gaming Factory. GGF are supposed to buy Peerialism, but CEO Johan Ljungberg said that’s doubtful since the company has no money.
Herbert Rusche, the co-founder of the German Green Party and former member of the German Parliament, has joined the Pirate Party. Rusche praises the party for its open structure and its efforts to protect people’s privacy and fundamental rights. Those issues, he says, are the ones established parties fail to address.
Henrik Pontén, lawyer for Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Bureau (Antipiratbyrån), is celebrating following the seizure of a server containing around 10,000 movies. He is describing the haul as the biggest ever in Sweden’s history, probably the largest in Europe, and set to disrupt supplies to The Pirate Bay.
In a press conference a few minutes ago, GGF CEO Hans Pandeya confirmed that the Pirate Bay acquisition will go through. Earlier today the financing and legalization plan was presented to the shareholders, who unanimously decided to give the acquisition the green light.
Just hours before Global Gaming Factory (GGF) is scheduled to acquire The Pirate Bay, the company says it has lost several investors due to all the media controversy surrounding the deal. Meanwhile the equity marketplace Aktietorget suspended trading in GGF’s stock until further notice.
This week the latest news in the Digital Britain debate caused a wave of protests as it was revealed the government is considering disconnecting Internet users on allegations of copyright infringement. TorrentFreak caught up with a British independent film company to gauge their response to the news.
Last week, following the availability of a torrent carrying a large backup of The Pirate Bay, the admin of BTArena became the first to turn it back into a working website. Now, a representative of Romania’s answer to the RIAA has contacted TorrentFreak informing us that they have begun legal action against the site.
Mininova has lost its civil dispute with Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringement, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.
The latest turn of events with the Digital Britain report isn’t encouraging. Lord Mandelson has reportedly prodded through a proposal to disconnect alleged file sharers, without judicial process, and without waiting for OFCOM to see if such a measure is even needed.
No matter where you go it’s Pirate Bay this, Global Gaming Factory that and to be honest, it’s all wearing a little bit thin. While you’re probably sick of reading about it, spare a thought for us – we don’t have much choice, we can’t pretend nothing is happening. So why has the BitTorrent community lost all interest in The Pirate Bay sale?
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘District 9’ tops the chart again this week followed by ‘State of Play’. ‘The Hangover’ completes the top three.
After initially being taken offline by Swedish authorities, and after its first escape route failed, The Pirate Bay has returned with all guns blazing. With a modified copy of one of Churchill’s most famous speeches, The Pirate Bay team tells the public that they will defend the Internet, with or without the site.
The ISP that supplied much of The Pirate Bay’s bandwidth before cutting them off yesterday, is reporting that it has been sabotaged. Calling in experts and the police, Black Internet says the attack on them is intentional and has caused substantial damage.
After failing to keep up with royalty payments, Warner Music has been forced to honor a clause in a rapper’s contract which said the music giant would pay for her education for life. Congratulations go out to the now Dr. Roxanne Shanté, the hip-hop talent behind the 1984 groundbreaker, Roxanne’s Revenge.
Following the earlier court defeat for Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter and the pending civil action taken by several Hollywood studios, the Swedish authorities have now ordered The Pirate Bay to be disconnected from the Internet. The site’s bandwidth suppliers have been threatened with a large fine. The site is completely offline.
A new Open Source BitTorrent tracker set to be released in September promises to boost download speeds by up to 150% and decrease the load BitTorrent users put on ISP networks by 20 to 50 percent. Based on the widely used OpenTracker software, the new BitTorrent tracker aims to overcome many of BitTorrent’s current limitations.
There have been many P2P-related dramas during the last decade but measured by intensity and media coverage, few have got anywhere near the proposed sale of The Pirate Bay to Global Gaming Factory. So, after everything you’ve heard and everything you’ve read – do you think the sale to GGF will go ahead in a few days time?
The end of the Pirate Bay is nearing. Even if the deal with GGF doesn’t go through the current owners are likely to sell to one of the other interested parties. For many BitTorrent fans this means that they have to find an alternative. Luckily there are plenty of good ones out there.
From the moment it was announced, the Pirate Bay acquisition by Global Factory Gaming (GGF) has been surrounded by controversy. Now, less than a week before the deal is supposed to go through, GGF’s CEO is accused of not paying a former director and one of its potential partners. As a result, the equity marketplace shut down trading of GGF’s stock.
A working group at Finland’s Ministry of Education believes that it can reduce piracy by sending warnings to alleged file-sharers. This week saw the official registration of Finland’s Pirate Party, so TorrentFreak caught up with their spokesman Kaj Sotala for a more detailed look at the proposals and file-sharing in general in the country.
In an attempt to convert The Pirate Bay into a site with a seal of approval from the entertainment industry, Global Gaming Factory (GGF) said it will install a torrent removal/approval system. However, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN said today that GGF has to come up with a better plan if they want to avoid legal issues.
Previously Eircom worked out an agreement with the Irish equivalent of the RIAA to disconnect customers suspected of repeated copyright infringements. Today, Ireland’s largest ISP announced another deal with music industry lobbyists in which they agree to prevent their customers from accessing The Pirate Bay, starting next month.
A few days ago TorrentFreak reported that an anonymous user of The Pirate Bay had managed to copy the entire site and upload it as a torrent. Now the inevitable has happened – a working copy of the world’s most infamous torrent site is already up and running, created from the files downloaded from the backup torrent.
Mininova, isoHunt, The Pirate Bay and other P2P sites are fighting out legal battles with the entertainment industry. Courts zealously document their contribution to copyright infringement. But copyright holders and courts ignore P2P’s vital role in fostering innovation. Professor of Law Michael Carrier explains why this has to change.
A week before the Pirate Bay acquisition is set to take place the board of Global Gaming Factory (GGF) has presented plans for the site to its shareholders. If the deal goes through, GGF plans to install a torrent management system for the rights holders, which will allow them to remove infringing files or ‘authorize’ them.
A police investigation is underway after an unreleased track, believed to be from Leona Lewis’s new album, leaked onto the Internet. Hackers allegedly managed to gain access to computers at Simon Cowell’s Syco – part of Sony BMG – and get their hands on the track, which sees Lewis team up with Justin Timberlake. IFPI are helping with the investigation.
After kicking out founders Randy Saaf and Octavio Herrera earlier this year, MediaDefender’s parent company ARTISTDirect acquired one of RIAA’s former partners, the anti-piracy tracking company MediaSentry. Now the spoofers and the spies have been combined and are trading under a new name – Peer Media.
According to reports coming in to TorrentFreak and tests carried out by us, we can report that Demonoid has been inaccessible to Russian users for at least a day. It appears that for many other countries it is business as usual – Demonoid works just fine.
In 2007 the admin of the eDonkey link site ‘ShareConnector’ was found not guilty in a criminal trial that was built around a lead from the dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. Now, nearly five years after the case started and two years after the initial court ruling, the Department of Justice announced that it will appeal the verdict.
Roughly a week before it acquires The Pirate Bay, Global Gaming Factory (GGF) outed its first entertainment industry partner. The Swedish Performing Rights Society confirmed negotiations with the company and sees a legal Pirate Bay as a “window of opportunity” to make up for the “heavy losses” it suffers from file-sharing.
Last week, the Portuguese Ministry of Culture decided to shut down or block 28 file-sharing sites. The original complaint came from local anti-piracy outfit MAPiNET. In what appears to be a revenge attack, hackers targeted their website and diverted it to some of the world’s biggest torrent sites.
During the last few days a new Radiohead song was mysteriously released onto the Internet. The track is called “These Are My Twisted Words” and until today it was unclear where it had come from. Now, thanks to a post on the band’s blog, it seems the boys could’ve had it planned all along, as they are now linking to the song on Mininova.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘State of Play’ tops the chart again this week followed by ‘The Hangover’. ’17 Again’ completes the top three.
In just a few days The Pirate Bay will be passed onto its new owners, marking the end of an era but not the end of BitTorrent. The nostalgic torrenters among us might want to download a copy of the site for archival purposes. It never hurts to have a backup of important data in place, especially when it’s free.
Tim Kuik, head of Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, had a brief encounter with Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm (Anakata) on Friday. The two met at Hacking at Random, an outdoor hacker conference that currently takes place in The Netherlands, where Kuik took part in one of the panel discussions.
A politician being touted as Britain’s next Prime Minister has been persuaded to take action to criminalize 7 million citizens following intensive industry lobbying over file-sharing. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson is in favor of introducing tough laws including Internet restrictions and fines of up to £50,000 ($83,000).
In this second part of our look at the ‘fairness’ of P2P trials, we step away from the antics inside the courtroom to look at the overall effect that media perceptions and propaganda might have on a case. From the judge and juries attempting to enforce the law, to those that make the laws.
Billed as “the first virtual universe with a real cash economy” Entropia Universe, one of the most successful massively multiplayer online role-playing games around, will go offline in two days time. When it returns with its Version Update 10.0 and updated CryEngine2 engine, users will be able to get it with BitTorrent.
An objective sample of more than 165,000 unique IPs shows that uTorrent remains the client of choice for more than half of all BitTorrent users. Vuze is in second place with its market share growing to 18%. BitComet on the other hand is losing ground as the client’s market share has dropped 38% in two months.
A women received a demand for 700 euros after an anti-piracy company claimed she had shared pornographic material on the Internet. However, she was using a so-called ‘leecher mod’, which means her P2P client never uploaded anything. Now a court is calling for an expert witness to dissect the supposed evidence against her.
Most Pirate Bay users were genuinely upset when they found out that their favorite torrent site would be acquired by Global Gaming Factory (GGF) at the end of August. For a small subset of these fans, this move is more than an inked deal, as the coolness and even the credibility of their tattoos is in jeopardy.
Swedish artist and composer Magnus Uggla has launched a scathing attack on the owners of Spotify. After discovering that Sony BMG is a shareholder and after receiving virtually no payment from his music being played there, he has withdrawn his tracks from the service declaring, “I’d rather be raped by The Pirate Bay.”
Canada is planning to reform its copyright law and if the entertainment industries have their way, the rights and privacy of consumers will be thrown overboard. It’s time for all Canadian BitTorrent users to stand up against the increasing power of the anti-piracy lobby, before it’s too late.
As New Zealand mulls its options for dealing with alleged pirates under its proposed Section 92A legislation, FACT, a division of the MPAA, says it’s not happy with the current proposals of giving those wrongly accused a chance to go to arbitration since it would be too time consuming.
The UK Pirate Party has been officially registered at the Electoral Commission and is hoping to follow in the footsteps of its successful counterpart in Sweden. With all the recent controversy surrounding anti-piracy legislation and lawyers going after alleged file-sharers, the party has become necessity.
ISPs and their trade association have refused to block a pair of websites on demands from the music industry. RISA, South Africa’s answer to the RIAA, demanded ISPs block the Russian sites because they sell music for as little as 9 cents per track – or less for full albums.
There has been a lot of court cases in the last week or two involving P2P, but there is something to be pondered, “Is a fair trial even possible?” Given the disparity between the sides in these sorts of cases, the resources, and the history, is the result a foregone conclusion before it’s even started?
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs’ tops the chart again this week followed by ‘The Hangover’. ‘I Love You Man’ completes the top three.
Last month ISP Karoo in the north of England found itself in the middle of a storm when it said it would disconnect its subscribers upon an allegation of copyright infringement. Under pressure it quickly backtracked to a “3 strikes” regime but now they have told TorrentFreak that no-one will be disconnected without a court order.
New research carried out by the University of Hertfordshire reveals some shocking and some surprising statistics. The survey, carried out on behalf of UK Music, reveals that 61% of 14 to 24 year-olds use file-sharing networks, with each amassing an average of 8,000 tracks on their computers.
A seedbox supplier is warning of a serious bug just discovered in TorrentFlux-b4rt. The exploit, found by one of their customers, allows a user on a shared server to obtain torrents uploaded by other users. This enables the attacker to obtain another user’s unique passkey and masquerade as them on private trackers
Almost four years since uTorrent had its debut, the development team has now released a version 2.0 Beta of their BitTorrent client with significant improvements and updates. BitTorrent tracker owners in particular have been looking forward to this release as it finally implements support for UDP trackers, turning it into a ‘good citizen’.
This month Ireland’s largest ISP will assist with an anti-piracy campaign against its own customers. After making a deal with IRMA, Ireland’s answer to the RIAA, Eircom will first warn alleged copyright infringers before ultimately disconnecting them. Now, in what appears to be a leaked document, the entire groundbreaking deal is outlined.
Two weeks ago the Amsterdam Court ruled that The Pirate Bay must cease all operations in The Netherlands. The case, brought by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, will be appealed by the defendants. Their newly found lawyer has already got BREIN to agree that the site will remain accessible to Dutch users for the time being.
When the popular DVD ripper aXXo stopped releasing new torrents earlier this year many loyal fans were left disappointed. After nearly five months of absence early indications seemed to indicate that he’s back in business. However, those who look closer will notice that something is amiss.
This week the world’s first torrent hosting service was born. Named Torrage, the sole purpose of the site is to provide a platform where both individual users and large torrent indexers can host their torrents. It is currently in use by EZTV as well as the former BitTorrent giant Suprnova and the makers hope that others will follow.
Torrent.kg, the biggest torrent site in the Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, has been shut down on allegations of copyright infringement. The police seized the site’s servers pending an investigation, but in the meantime the country now has its own version of OpenBitTorrent to keep the torrents flowing.
After being jailed for his part in uploading a pre-released Star Wars Episode III in 2005, the admin of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker is finally a free man. Around 3 weeks ago Scott was removed from the US government’s monitor list and he now shares his thoughts with TorrentFreak.
Global Gaming Factory (GGF) is set to acquire The Pirate Bay by the end of August, but once the deal is closed they will set their sights on other torrent sites, in the hope of expanding their business even further. In time, GFF hopes to buy as many torrent sites as possible and turn them into ‘legit’ businesses.
The future Pirate Bay owners have big plans for the site and according to the CEO there is no doubt that the sale will go through. Since most interest thus far has come from the US, the company plans to get a listing at the NASDAQ, making it easier for people to trade stock in addition to files.
One of, if not the oldest BitTorrent communities still around today has been targeted by police and anti-piracy officers. The owner of FileSoup, one the most enduring sites since the introduction of the BitTorrent protocol, was arrested by police and denied his phone call and legal representation for more than seven hours.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘I Love You Man’ tops the chart again this week followed by ‘The Hangover’. ‘Road Trip: Beer Pong’ completes the top three.
Last week the Amsterdam Court issued a default judgment in favor of BREIN versus The Pirate Bay, ordering the site to be blocked in The Netherlands because the defendants didn’t show up. In a response to this verdict, The Dutch Consumers Union says it is disappointed that the judge ruled in favor of the anti-piracy outfit without looking into the content of their demands.
After nearly six weeks of downtime, the leading TV-torrent release group EZTV has made a comeback with a completely revamped website. The EZTV team has implemented many new features, including detailed information on every released episode and support for customized RSS feeds to replace the now defunct TVRSS website.
After many drama-filled turbulent years, Peter Sunde, the infamous Pirate Bay spokesman, has resigned. Citing a complete lack of time, Peter says he wants to concentrate on new things, including several projects and a book. “I am leaving a role in order to be a person instead,” he said.
Hackers have taken revenge on the music industry after Romania’s first convicted file-sharer was given a heavy fine. The industry said they had selected the individual at random, but hackers responded rather less randomly by causing the music industry website to blocked as malicious by both Google and Firefox.
In a late submission to the Canadian network management hearings of the CRTC, BitTorrent Inc. debunked some P2P myths and asked the committee to decide in favor of a neutral net. ISPs should look for other methods to deal with network congestion rather than discriminating against BitTorrent users, they say.
Last year the isoHunt BitTorrent search engine launched preemptive legal action in an attempt to have their operations declared legal in Canada. The court decided that the case should go to a full trial instead, a decision which isoHunt appealed but has now been denied.
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Peter Sunde Left Quote
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