Two years ago it was discovered that a so-called 'topsite', an operation at the top of the piracy food-chain, was being run by men working for Finnish Internet companies who had hidden the site within a leading ISP's infrastructure. The men were sentenced to prison and ordered to pay compensation…

Every month tens of thousands of new torrent files are added to The Pirate Bay, but what content do these files point to? New data shows that with 44%, most of these uploads point to copies of TV-shows and movies. Porn comes in second place with roughly a third of…

YIFY-Torrents, one of the most visible movie release groups on the Internet, has announced the retirement of its founder. The guy known as YIFY - the person who the site and all releases are named after - has decided to step down. While the group's torrent site will continue business…

For more than a decade Internet providers have slowed down BitTorrent transfers for traffic management purposes. Today we look at fresh data from the Google-backed Measurement Lab, which provides new insight into the BitTorrent throttling practices of ISPs all over the world. The data show that many ISPs still interfere…

During a debate on the UK's Intellectual Property Bill, the Prime Minister's Intellectual Property Adviser has again called for a tougher approach to online file-sharing. In addition to recommending "withdrawing Internet rights from lawbreakers", Mike Weatherley MP significantly raised the bar by stating that the government must now consider "some…

Several countries including the US and France have implemented so-called “strikes” systems to warn and punish P2P file-sharers. The goal of these programs is to reduce piracy, but do they have any effect on people’s downloading habits? New findings published by U.S. and French researchers show that these anti-piracy measures…

BitTorrent Inc. is one of a dozen U.S.-based tech companies charged by the Federal Trade Commission with falsely claiming compliance with a treaty on European Union data-sharing. The companies, which also include ISP Level 3, all wrongly indicated current membership of the U.S.- E.U. Safe Harbor Framework, which allows U.S.…

A federal judge in Washington has issued a key order in one of the many ongoing mass-BitTorrent piracy lawsuits in the United States. The judge ruled that a complaint from the "Elf-Man" movie studio is insufficient because the IP address evidence does not prove that an account holder is guilty…