The Life and Times of a TV Show Piracy Release Group

They're some of the most popular torrents around, but how do they get on the Internet and who puts them there? Today TorrentFreak catches up with the founder of a TV show release group responsible for releasing hundreds of TV shows online. Jaded by the super-organized and hard to reach…

UK Government ‘Wastes’ £200k on New Anti-Piracy Tech

In ever-more futile efforts to ‘fix’ piracy, lots of methods have been tried, and it’s doubtful there are very many left, except the obvious one of giving consumers what they want. Now the UK Intellectual Property Office has given almost £200,000 to two new projects that will almost certainly fail.

The Pirate Bay Becomes #1 File-Sharing Site as Cyberlockers Collapse

The Pirate Bay is now the most-visited file-sharing site on the Internet, taking over the lead from prominent one-click hosting sites such as 4Shared and Mediafire. After a spectacular rise in the early years of this decade cyberlockers are quickly losing ground, while BitTorrent sites continue to grow. This shift…

BitFetch Debuts BitCoin-Powered Anonymous BitTorrent Downloads

A new privacy-conscious file-sharing service is aiming to bring the power of BitCoin and BitTorrent together in one neat package, with some added extras. Offering high-speed remote transfers, BitFetch keeps BitTorrent users anonymous and helps them cut through ISP-imposed throttling measures with secure HTTPs downloads. Usually powered by BitCoin, there's…

MPAA: “Red Flags” Make Hotfile Liable for Pirate Users

The MPAA and file-hosting service Hotfile are gearing up for their trial in a U.S. court later this year. This week the movie studios told the court that Hotfile does not qualify for safe harbor protection as it knew about the "massive infringing use" of its service, citing last week's…

KickassTorrents Circumvents Censors With New Ka.tt Domain

In a surprise move the popular BitTorrent site KickassTorrents moved to a new domain today. The immediate effect of the switch is that after the ISP blockade last week, some UK users are once again able to access the site. This is the second domain change in two years for…

‘Pirate’ Site Ad Transparency Report Loses Credibility

The third edition of the Annenberg Innovation Lab's Ad Transparency Report is now unofficially doing the rounds. Google, Quantcast and Open X are praised for making "strong moves" to block sites that receive a lot of DMCA notices but the government and some major companies are in for criticism for…