One of the btjunkie admins has found a unique way to identify trackers that host these fake files, which makes it easy to efficiently remove them.

Virtually all the servers that spread these fake files are located in Southern California and Las Vegas. The administrators of these servers follow patterns that make it easy to identify them. The content of the trackers and seed amounts make them stand out. There are more unique characteristics, but we wont reveal all the tricks because they could take counter measures. Here are some examples of servers that host and track fake torrents:

Tracker 1, Tracker 2, Tracker 3 & Tracker 4. (Screenshots: One & Two)

All the information was provided to me by one of the admins of btjunkie, who works together on this with other torrent site admins. He says that the MPAA and friends use a variety of tactics. The tracker will either stall everyone at around 90% or the content will just be a blank monochrome screen.

“I really think this is being done by professionals with a budget, that’s a lot of servers to setup and it takes some expertise to setup in the manner that they did it,” says the btjunkie admin. “I don’t think I really need to say who would spend money on something like this.”

Here are some good examples of how these fake torrents clutter up the search results. Virtually all of those X marked torrents are coming from the ip-ranges we mentioned, and are fake files. The good thing is that Torrentportal’s report system is well used by their users.

The server boxes that host these torrents fall in serveral ip-ranges. Here are a few of the ranges that were discovered recently. You can easily add these to the blocklist of your torrent client (if it supports one), filewall, or blocklist manager.

The anti-piracy servers use hostnames like 101tracker.dhcp.biz, aplustorrents.qhigh.com, bitnova.squirly.info, bittorment.ocry.com, and pirate-trakkrz.leet.la. All these hostnames can be traced back to the same IP Ranges, these ranges contain possibly hundreds of fake trackers, so feel free to block them:

A list of infohashes of fake torrents can be found over here.

Note that it’s not only MPAA material that is hosted on these fake trackers. It is more likely that the servers are owned and operated by an organization that logs IP addresses for several copyright owners and or anti-piracy organizations.

Update: according to one of out readers these ip-ranges belong to “Media Defender“, a company that is hired by copyright owners, to log IP-addresses. This reader, who worked for Media Defender until recently, confirmed that some of the torrents that were mentioned, are indeed on the MPAA’s list.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

As we write this, “The eDonkey2000 Network is no longer available,” says the site.

If you steal music or movies, you are breaking the law. Courts around the world – including the United States Supreme Court – have ruled that businesses and individuals can be prosecuted for illegal downloading.

You are not anonymous when you illegally download copyrighted material. Your IP address is xx.xx.xx.xxx and has been logged.

Respect the music, download legally.

Goodbye Everyone.

Sam Yagan, MetaMachine president and developer of eDonkey, all but spelled it out in September last year when he told a US Senate Judiciary Committee Protecting Copyright and Innovation in a Post-Grokster World hearing he was “throwing in the towel”.

Now MetaMachine will pay the cartel, “$30 million to avoid potential copyright infringement lawsuits from the recording industry, according to court documents quoted by the Associated Press.

BearShare, i2Hub, WinMX, iMex and Grokster are already down the tubes and, “With this new settlement, another domino falls, and we have further strengthened the footing of the legal marketplace,” AP has RIAA boss Mitch ‘The Don’ Bainwol saying.

Kazaa, now also officially on the other side of the fence, was in a league of its own, purporting to support the p2p community, at the same time trying to cozy up to the entertainment cartels.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is owned by Warner Music (US), Vivendi Universal (France), EMI (Britain) and Sony BMG (Japan, Germany) and, “Under terms of the latest agreement, MetaMachine and its top executives, Sam Yagan and Jed McCaleb, agreed to immediately cease distributing eDonkey, eDonkey 2000, Overnet and other software versions,” says the story, adding ominously, “The company also agreed to take measures to prevent file-sharing by people using previously downloaded versions of the eDonkey software.”

“Your IP address is xx.xx.xx.xxx and has been logged” is intended to con visitors into thinking their personal details have been revealed which is, of course, pure RIAA bullshit.

Far more seriously, what are the chances of the ‘confidential’ information relating to people who registered with eDonkey and the others remaining confidential?

Meanwhile, “In August, the recording companies filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the firm behind LimeWire,” says AP. “That case is pending.”

Warez P2P, Morpheus and Soulseek are still out there, as is Blubster, and as Drake Zamanov points out, “Older versions of eDonkey should still connect without a problem. eMule is free and is the most used application on the edonkey2000 network. Surprisingly, this development barely impacted the network as there are still 4.3 million users connected to legitimate edonkey servers.”

Stay tuned.

p2pnet

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.