Despite all the efforts from the movie industry to prevent “Australia” from being cammed in theaters, it was an insider who got it out in DVD quality.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

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

The film, produced by Hiroyuki Kobayashi, is set for a Sony Pictures DVD release in the USA on December 30. A few days ago it leaked onto the Internet and since then it has already been downloaded a million times via BitTorrent.

This is not the first time that a movie quickly became popular online due to the release of a pirated copy. “The Man from Earth” is another example of a film that became immensely popular due to its distribution on BitTorrent. Contrary to the opinion of the big studios, many independent filmmakers see piracy as free promotion instead of a threat.

We doubt that Sony Pictures will respond similarly to the leak of ‘Resident Evil: Degeneration’, which tops our weekly download chart. Below is the full list of this week’s most downloaded movies on BitTorrent. The Dark Knight, which led the chart three weeks in a row, has dropped to third place. Later this week and following on from our top 10 most downloaded games chart, we will publish the top 10 most downloaded movies in 2008.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

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

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

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

One of the main drawbacks of using P2P software such as Limewire, is that the content on the network (Gnutella) is unmoderated – anyone is free to put up whatever they like, be it music, movies or TV shows. Of course, others use this lack of moderation as a green light to upload viruses, spyware and other malicious software. Equally, one of the great strengths of BitTorrent (at least from a harm-reduction point of view), is that .torrent files are uploaded to torrent sites where staff work hard to filter out as much of the malicious software as they can, making BitTorrent relatively malware-free.

Of course, this great system falls apart if you can’t trust the people running the site. People expect anti-pirates like MiiVi to be ‘the enemy within’, but who needs those when you have ‘friends’ like the guys at new torrent site, TrafficLoader.com.

TrafficLoader.com (and its forum, pdls.info) hasn’t been setup for the benefit of BitTorrent users, it will be used by spammers, scammers and virus peddlers to spread their malicious software among the community (and make money off it). One of the admins called ‘Satty’ says that no registration is needed to upload torrents to the site and none will ever be removed. The site does have a notice – ‘Viruses, spyware, affiliate links and everything related is strictly prohibited’ but don’t believe it – Satty says these rules don’t apply to his friends in the PPI (Pay Per Install) community.

A few days ago the site was pretty bare with relatively few torrents and it was clear that most of them contained malware. It was suggested to Satty that it might be a good idea to have some genuine torrents too, to help disguise the bad torrents. Now things are starting to ‘improve’ on the site with many more torrents added recently which don’t immediately appear to be malware.

In the last few days, TrafficLoader cosmetically ‘cleaned up’ the site to remove porn adverts in order to appear more genuine but unfortunately, someone as well as TorrentFreak noticed that they made a big mistake:

“Why would you [Satty, admin] put a forum for ppi on a publicly scraped site, a.k.a here?? Do you just want ppl to find out shit is full of malware?”

Just in case they did want people to find out, hopefully this post will help them get the word out.

For those that want advice on how to avoid bad torrents in the future, try one of our guides.

Update: The site was taken offline a few hours after this article was posted, that’s our good deed for the weekend.

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

This is why Tape It Off The Internet seemed like such a good idea until you actually started trying to use it. There are just not enough good shows being made to justify something as complicated and involved as TIOTI. Enter all your favorites and share them with strangers ‘just like you’ and discover… what? That there are only seven good shows in the world at any one time, you were already watching six of them, and they’re all in the Pirate Bay’s Top 100 anyway. When you strip away the hours of dross and advertising, the truth is that the world’s mighty entertainment infrastructure is only capable of producing half a dozen hours of passable content a week. Maybe it’s because they spend the rest of their time on lawsuits.

One of these rare hours is The Wire. If by some small chance you’re not mainlining it already, think yourself lucky. You have four back seasons to enjoy, of what is quite possibly the last great show television will produce before it’s entirely superseded by — well, by whatever is coming around the way.

I’m not sure anyone has ever attempted to make a show of this scope: The Wire’s by-all-accounts-not-very-nice creator David Simon (Homicide, The Corner) has said his theme over the series’ five years has been ‘the decline of the American empire’ — which means decay of its cities through poverty, of traditional jobs, of the education system, of the police force and of the media. For those getting restless at the back, the show’s also got the slickest, nastiest drug slingers you’ll see on screen and is so realistic that the Baltimore Police have apparently complained it reveals too much about how crimes are — or are not — solved; apparently real thugs love it as well.

Find it and download it — though probably David Simon doesn’t want you to and neither does HBO, which has been actively poisoning Torrents of its other shows. Tell everyone you know about it. Maybe those of them still rocking TVs will raise the show’s increasingly dismal viewing figures.

Or maybe that’s no longer the point. While I sympathise with the plight of the David Simons, David Milchs (Deadwood, John from Cincinnati) and Joss Whedons (Firefly) of this world, and would like to help them in future endeavors, I specifically do not sympathise with the plights of the craven, dim-witted, played-out producers that surround them on all sides. And by ‘playing fair’ and buying the DVD or the cable package, besides the fact that most of our money is not going to the creators and their families, aren’t we really saying we accept the meshwork of shit in order to get the two or three gems that occasionally sift through it? Aren’t we signalling the industry that there’s something we still find acceptable about their way of doing business?

Now I suppose this could seem a bit extreme to some. But again and again in blogs and comments about shows like The Wire you hear ‘I’d pay for this if…’ — if it wasn’t DRM’ed all to hell like HBO’s own online offering, if it was freely shareable, good to be watched whenever, wherever, on whatever, without constant interruption by adverts. The kicker is that we’re not only unable legally to liberate and re-distribute shows from the broken, corrupt mechanisms of television and DVD distribution: we also have no way of supporting creators like David Simon and crew outside of it.

This means that right now, people still stupid or unfortunate enough to sit in front of TVs watching months-old shows or paying massive cash-or-attention premiums for the new ones are heavily subsidising us P2Pers. This is genuinely immoral, because we’re really exploiting people less fortunate than ourselves. Instead, we should be helping them out of the wasteland, and thinking of new ways to get the creators we like creating outside the prison of mass distribution. It cannot be that we are able to figure out how to make GNU-Linux – a world-class operating system — together, but not to make a dozen decent shows a year.

The irony is that TV series really feel like they’re coming into their own, just as the media that spawned them is dying. From the ‘high art’ of Deadwood and John From Cincinnati to the epic modern-day myth of Lost to the (dare I call it) Beckettian dark comedy of Trailer Park Boys, the drawn out tales of our series (often consumed a ’season’ at a time: I know at least three people waiting for The Wire to finish before downloading it) are an undeniable core of our emerging P2P culture.

We are the most passionate viewers ever, talking and writing profusely about the media we love, analysing, promoting, hosting free screenings… And they need us as much as we need them — all of these shows, without exception, enjoy their primary life on the networks, through our blogs, comments, reviews, remixes and fan fiction. Lost in particular has learned that incorporating online feedback can make a great (if utterly Shaggy Dog) story.

Can we find a way to get the shows we want made without buying the goddamn DVD? I remember this guy talking really sensibly a couple years ago about how Joss Whedon could get to make another season of Firefly, and we got this project back up his musings. Why didn’t Whedon try it? Because someone else owned his ideas? Perhaps it could have worked otherwise, and maybe it could work for the future. If you’ve got ideas, throw them in the comments box below. And if you have time in between catching up on The Wire, read this by the venerable guru of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly — I’m going to try to get him into the next installment of STEAL THIS FILM. See you around. I’ll be back in two weeks to pick up the pieces.

TorrentFreak welcomes Jamie King as our new bi-weekly columnist. Jamie is the Director of STEAL THIS FILM I & II and a member of the League of Noble Peers. He is currently working on a cinema release of STEAL THIS FILM and prototyping an experimental, post-P2P remuneration system for creators.

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

Following the revelations that ‘Big Media’ hired MediaDefender to illegally sabotage The Pirate Bay’s activities in Sweden, we reported that complaints have been filed with the police. The porn industry – already in the early stages of its own personal war against BitTorrent – could’ve been expected to demonstrate a united front in support of MediaDefender and its actions against The Pirate Bay. This is not the case. They are hugely divided with many openly supporting the world’s most famous pirates, with some even making it public that they are donating hard cash to help their cause.

Using language as filthy as their movies (mostly without spell-checkers), those of a sensitive nature should proceed with caution when reading these quotes from some of the longest-standing senior members on the porn industry’s GFY forums:

It all started in quite a civil manner, with Madrox quite correctly pointing out: “well what they are trying to do to PirateBay is illegal, so i guess they are trying to fight fire with fire, i hope PB wins…” to which a disbelieving 34,000-post count “tony404″ responded angrily: “Your fucking kidding right?”

Jace goes on to demonstrate the reality of the situation: “the fucked up part is that what the thepiratebay is doing in their country is legal, and what the movie companies are doing in the country of thepiratebat is ILLEGAL, so there is a good chance this will be a pretty damn good fight” to which GhostCash Rush responded: “I agree. This is the one shot Gottfrid has been waiting for.”

Madrox steps in again: “and thats exactly the reason why im rooting for PB, sure its illegal over here for what they are doing, but they aren’t doing anything illegal in their own country, so im not gonna hate them for breaking laws in another country… premarital sex is illegal in a lot of 3rd world countries, but oh wait, not in America, but you don’t see them trying to sue us do ya?”

…..which provoked several “fuck you” and “asshole” comments from people who are clearly hugely frustrated by their limited legal and geographical knowledge. According to will76, Sweden is a 3rd world country “where hacking is legal you dumb fucks” and while pointing out their ‘legal’ page claims TPB staff are “cocky mother fuckers asking for trouble”.

At this point, in steps ‘RawAlex’ who has more to say on this matter than anyone else on the porn industry forum and has some really ‘interesting’ ideas about the legality of TPB and copyright law: “The funny part is that piratebay would have to first admit what is on those trackers. So they would have to admit to sharing copyright material in the first place before they could move forward.”

TPB host only .torrent files and never distribute copyright works, that’s why they are legal in Sweden and are still operating. So we can all ‘move forward’ now…with some common sense from ‘hungry hungry hippy’:

“usa law stops at the borders, tpb does nothing illegal in their country, period. because you can’t come to grips with that does not mean you can go vigilante and hack them – that is illegal in both countries. sorry to interrupt the whine fest, someone want to pass the cheese?”

…to which RawAlex responds: “Sorry moron, but you forget that piratebay doesn’t limit themselves to distributing stuff in Sweden – they distribute worldwide.” Sorry to correct you again Alex – they don’t distribute anything but .torrent files – which are totally legal.

‘Amputate Your Head’, a member since 2001 supports Pirate Bay “fully” while ‘Dirty Franck’ explains that he “just donated 200 bucks to PB for their case” along with ‘Bang.TV‘. Pryda exclaims: “Go Pirate Bay! I always loved them, but now I’m rooting for them even more, since I read the MediaDefender story.”

Matt 26z makes an interesting point when he refers to legal issues faced by many adult webmasters: “If you support ThePirateBay being brought to justice in other countries for doing what is perfectly legal in their own country, then you MUST support the extradition of adult webmasters to China to face trial. This is the WORLD wide web. With that comes severely conflicting beliefs and laws that clash online.”

After the industry claimed to have taken down the ijsklontje.nl site recently, one has to wonder how on earth this was possible. The only people who have a grasp of the law on GFY are the ones coming out in favor of The Pirate Bay, which leaves the ill-informed to make hollow threats and blow hot air. This all adds credence to the claims that ijsklontje.nl was taken down by its owners own choice and actually had nothing to do with porn industry action.

I’ll leave the last comment with RawAlex: “If they want to steal from others and profit from it, they should get fucked up the ass with a broomstick without lube” – an idea he probably pirated from TPB’s legal page as they corresponded with the lawyers from Dreamworks, although substituting ‘retractable batons‘ with ‘broomsticks’ probably keeps him safe from copyright police persecution.

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

Media Defender, a notorious anti piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, just launched their very own video upload service called “miivi.com”. The sole purpose of the site is to trap people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so.

However, in comments made to Ars technica, Media Defender’s Randy Saaf chose to rubbish our claims, calling it an ‘accidentally un-secured internal project’.

From the emails we cannot be sure that it’s an entrapment site or that it is related to the MPAA (perhaps it’s a legit a P2P video client?), but it does look suspicious.

Unfortunately for Media Defender – a company dedicated to mitigating the effects of internet leaks – they can do nothing about being the subject of the biggest BitTorrent leak of all time. Over 700mb of their own internal emails, dating back over 6 months have been leaked to the internet in what will be a devastating blow to the company. Many are very recent, having September 2007 dates and the majority involve the most senior people in the company. Apparently this is not the first time that a MediaDefender email leaked onto the Internet.

According to the .nfo file posted with the Mbox file the emails were obtained by a group called “MediaDefender-Defenders”. It states: “By releasing these emails we hope to secure the privacy and personal integrity of all peer-to-peer users. The emails contains information about the various tactics and technical solutions for tracking p2p users, and disrupt p2p services,” and “A special thanks to Jay Maris, for circumventing there entire email-security by forwarding all your emails to your gmail account”

Note: The mbox formatted file is circulating publicly on BitTorrent, completely unedited. However, for publication here we have removed the username and password logins for Media Defender’s servers, and replaced them with asterisks and avoided publishing emails of a personal nature, e.g pay negotiations etc. We believe that the emails are the real deal and all the info posted here serves the public interest.

At first we couldn’t believe that it was real, but after we scanned through the e-mails it became clear that it was indeed the real deal. Hundreds of IPs and logins to their servers, lists of their decoy/entrapment trackers, decoy strategies, the effectiveness of their fake torrents (in many cases with a breakdown of success, title specific), high and low priority sites, .torrent watchlists, information on their monitoring of competitors, pictures of their weekend trips and even the anti-piracy strategy for dealing with The Simpsons Movie leak:

# REMINDER: “The Simpson’s Movie” premieres this Friday (to Torrents).

* Decoy files are available in torrents MDfile server.
* Use Public Trackers for pre-Leak releases.
* Create two new trackers for this project.
o Ebert to inform Torrents of these new machines.
* Send a list of 5 release names from each torrent team member to Ebert.
* REMEMBER to input torrent file into interdiction if a real Leak is available this weekend.

It’s impossible to sum up all the juicy details in one post as the amount of information is staggering, so as much as we’d like to tell you about the custom Media Defender software (called ProxyMaster) included in the leak, we’ll focus mainly on the MiiVi case.

Let’s start off with their response to our story about MiiVi.com.

From: Ben Grodsky
Sent: Tue 03-Jul-07 20:19
To: MIIVI; Randy Saaf; Octavio Herrera; Steve Lyons
Subject: MiiVi got Dugg

Looks like the domain transfer has screwed us over:
http://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-gang-launches-their-own
-video-download-site-to-trap-people/
http://digg.com/users/AcePup/news/dugg

-Ben

And the response from Randy Saaf himself.

This is really fucked.
Let’s pull miivi offline.

Apparently our reports about MiiVi made them really paranoid. They are worried that reporters will apply for jobs just to find out more about their secret project.

From Ben Grodsky, Media Defender

Subject: care in interviewing

Given all the recent Digg, SlashDot and derivative online articles about MD, be careful what you say in job interviews. Specifically, I’m concerned about giving any information BEYOND what’s already on the mediadefender.com website. I’m worried about someone interviewing for a position just for the purpose of getting more info to post online. For example, if anyone asks anything about MiiVi, just reiterate what Randy has said online (it was an internal video project that we probably should have password protected; we were in no way directed to, or working with, the MPAA on that project; NO part of the project was a honeypot designed to trap downloaders).

Seemingly every last detail of the MiiVi preparations are laid bare for all to see, such as these attempts to deal with some unexpected content. Interestingly, if MiiVi was only an internal operation, where on earth did this content come from?:

From Ben Grodsky, Media Defender

Dylan,

I wouldn’t normally e-mail you directly about MiiVi stuff, because a lot of what I say about this is total crap (so keep that in mind) and Jay filters the crap from the important stuff for you. Is there a way to add this hash/title to the porn filter explicitly?

hash=30755326A4E4B28E678BFF8CB2AF5FC4A4FBF710&i=3 (the title is Celebrity deathmatch: Korn vs slipknot and the exact URL is http://129.47.9.160/zonie/media.php?hash=30755326A)

I just flagged it as Other Terms of Use violation. It’s a warthog (or maybe it’s a big bushy dog, I can’t tell) having sex with a woman and NOT a Korn vs. Slipknot mash-up video.

If this is a big deal, don’t worry about it for now.

And, If MiiVi was an internal project only, how does that sit with these attempts to generate lots of traffic?

Dylan,

Another thing we can do to increase Google and other search engine traffic is to get more link-ins. At the next MiiVi meeting, I’m going to ask Randy for permission to incentivize people to link-in a MiiVi video on their MySpace. Colin is already doing this and it helps the word-of-mouth spread, even if the link-ins are nominal. I’m not sure what we could do in the link-in regard early on, but getting the cumulative ~1000+ MySpace friends of MediaDefender employees to see MiiVi link-ins can’t hurt….

Colin — start coming up with a list the list of keywords and descriptors for hidden metadata entries, per Dylan’s e-mail below.

Thanks,
Ben

One can only speculate what the MiiVi client might’ve been capable of, should it have gotten off the ground:

From: Ben Grodsky
To: Jay Mairs
Cc: Randy Saaf
Sent: Wed Jun 20 23:36:54 2007
Subject: miivi emule spoof

Jay,

Do you think it would break a lot and take more time than its worth for the MiiVi application/installer also to act like Serge’s Proxy client and spoof on eMule?

-Ben

Just about every aspect of the company’s operations on every file sharing network is revealed in the emails, including their fake eDonkey server and Soulseek activities, not to mention payroll issues and discussions about what to eat for lunch.

Of course, Mr Saaf was always very keen to distance MediaDefender from MiiVi, as this email shows:

From: Randy Saaf
Sent: Wed 6/13/2007 12:54 AM
To: Colin Keller
Cc: Ben Grodsky; Steve Lyons; Jay Mairs
Subject: miivi emails

Colin:

Set up your email so that you always reply with a ckeller@miivi.com, dmca@miivi.com, or an info@miivi.com address respectively. I don’t want MediaDefender anywhere in your email replies to people contacting Miivi. Steve and Ben can help you set up your email for this. Make sure MediaDefender can not be seen in any of the hidden email data crap that smart people can look in.

I am setting up ckeller@miivi.com to forward to ckeller@mediadefender.com.

R

They made up fake company (MiiVi Inc.), edited their own Wikipedia entries and hosted Miivi on IPs that couldn’t be traced back to MediaDefender.

Ben E:

Can you please do what you can to eliminate this entry? Let me know if you have any success.

R

From: Jay Mairs
Sent: Tue 7/3/2007 9:59 PM
To: Steve Lyons; Randy Saaf; Octavio Herrera
Cc: Ty Heath; Dylan Douglas; Ben Grodsky; Ivan Kwok (gmail)
Subject: Re: MiiVi got Dugg

Steve, please redirect miivi.com to point to an ip that’s not one of ours (random ip or whatever).

Dylan, if there’s nothing critical running on the miivi server, please shut the computer down. If there is something critical on there, please let us know ASAP.

MediaDefender took down MiiVi.com but it seems they aren’t ditching the project but instead looking for a new name because domain names are really important for internal projects:

From: Randy Saaf
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 4:44 PM
To: Jay Mairs; Colin Keller
Subject: FW: New miivi name.

Do you like vidber.com or bivvid.com or vidorama.com?
——————————————————-
Reply from: Colin Keller

Vidorama would be my first choice (though it is a bit 70’s, kind of like a bad video rental store). Vidber doesn’t spark much interest (kind of ends too abruptly), and bivvid I’m not really feeling.

Or maybe they’ll just change the domain name to something similar, and move things round a little?

Subject: MiiVi (currently on www.viide.com)
From: grodsky@mediadefender.com
Date: 23/07/2007 18:05
To: michael.potts@artistdirect.com

Michael,

When you get a chance, we would love you to start taking a look at www.viide.com. That is the current home of our MiiVi site. We have totally locked-down the site, while we improve the look and feel from the blogosphere saw. Accordingly, to access the site you will need to login using the following login/password *****/**** (we have also made a login/password for Bobby, in case you think we could use some help with our graphics :) — *****/*****).

Once you log on the site, surf over to www.viide.com/download.php to get our application. The website currently acts a GUI for the application. When we go live with the site for the general public, there will also be a java applet that also minimal/one-off type use of MiiVi (but this feature is inaccessible with the current locked-down version of the site).

From: tabish@mediadefender.com
Date: 27/07/2007 23:56
To: MIIVI@mediadefender.com

I’m not sure if you guys are planning on going live with the Viide domain name….but in case you are….you might want to remove all references of Miivi on the homepage of viide.com before it gets Googled or someone public comes across it. For example, at the bottom under terms of service and on the HTML Title where it says “MiiVi, Inc”, and probably the default image of the skyscrapers (which are the same as Miivi).

Also, the WHOIS information is still linked to MediaDefender, Inc.

-TH

Yes, they need to get on top of the WHOIS situation before someone sees it.

After the MiiVi incident, we later reported that Media Defender owned the p2p.net domain name. A little later, our claims were proven correct when they made the p2p.net domain link back to our own article, which it still does to this day. We took this as a compliment and this is what the guys had to say about it:

From: Ben Grodsky
To: Jay Mairs; Ben Ebert; Octavio Herrera
Sent: Fri Jul 13 12:18:02 2007
Subject: FW: p2p.net on digg and torrentfreak

this is too funny. torrentfreak accused us of buying p2p.net on ebay earlier this year. Randy found out and redirected it to that vary article on torrentfreak. now there’s an article about the redirected p2p.net!

We admit it, it was quite funny at the time and proved that even anti-piracy guys have a sense of humor but sadly, it’s doubtful that the comedy will extend through this latest episode, as it’s expected that thousands of file-sharers will dissect and disseminate their commercially sensitive data into every corner of internet.

For a business model that gets its life-blood from piracy, in a twisted way this leak is likely to help generate even more business and develop the market. Funny old world.

Update: MediaDefender Phone Call and Gnutella Tracking Database Leaked

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

However, there are companies out there who give you ‘free’ software (like a torrent client) but at the same time install some of that extra stuff you don’t want too. We have regularly reported on BitTorrent clients which also install this malware such as Torrent101, BitRoll, TorrentQ and GetTorrent. These are just a handful of bad clients currently available online.

It didn’t take much research to discover that a Swedish company called Wakenet is behind the enterprise, a company that made news on lots of spyware sites due to its Anti-Leech plugin.

Wakenet has a new domain called uvTorrent.com (currently diverting to their Cash4Downloads site) – no prizes for guessing the planned confusion with novices and the official ‘uTorrent’ client. They also have a new (fake) ‘compression’ utility called Winzix, obviously named to be confused with Winzip. Unfortunate downloaders will download something from BitTorrent, only to learn that it needs to ‘decompressed’ with Winzix in order to work. Installing Winzix again results in malware getting onto the host PC.

Our investigations revealed two major servers carrying the malware-ridden clients, media players, compression utilities and other sites supporting the enterprise:

IP: 69.72.144.122

1. netpumper.com (there’s even a link to this from Wakenet’s homepage)
2. bitgrabber.com
3. bitroll.com
4. c4dl.com
5. cash4downloads.com
6. download.play3w.com
7. get-torrent.com
8. playon.play3w.com
9. winzix.com (additional information from Symantec)
10. bitdownload.org
11. divoplayer.com
12. plugindl.com
13. torrent101.com
14. torrentq.com
15. torrentsoftware.org

IP: 207.44.244.86

1. bitroll.com
2. c4dl.com
3. cash4downloads.com (Click here for removal instructions)
4. download.netpumper.com
5. Uvtorrent.com
6. playon.play3w.com
7. wakenet.se (WakeNet’s own homepage is on the same server)
8. bitsofporn.com
9. domplayer.com
10. gamingtorrent.com
11. kitplayer.com
12. torrentmusic.org
13. torrentgamers.com
14. Torrentspeeder.com (different server currently)

We suggest that everyone stays well away from every site on the above lists. Use uTorrent or Azureus to download and if you ever download anything that requires anything other than a standard media player or WinRAR in order to play, be a little suspicious. Checking the comments to the torrent you plan to download is always a good idea.

For the little more adventurous reader, it’s possible to use the Windows HOSTS file to block the activity caused not only by the malware listed above but also that from hundreds of other sources. We recommend the excellent guide from MVPS, “Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts File”

UPDATE: Reports suggest that software is now available to play 3WPlayer (and possibly DomPlayer) files without getting either player. This software is untested by TorrentFreak.

UPDATE 2: Software to crack 3WPlayer, WinZix can also be found here. Click here for the .torrent.

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

Dear All,

Following receipt of a number of copyright infringement notices, Information Services is taking steps to protect the University.

The principle source of these copyright infringements is inappropriate use of peer-to-peer file sharing, for example Bit Torrent.

A number of web sites have been identified which primarily provide access to a high proportion of copyrighted, pornographic or offensive material. Access to these sites, listed below, will be prohibited.

This policy is not aimed at restricting legitimate academic investigation. Should access be required please contact insrvAssist.

Sites with prohibited access:
http://www.torrentsearch.com/
http://isohunt.com/
http://torrentscan.com/
http://www.torrentspy.com/
http://torrent-finder.com/
http://thepiratebay.org/
http://www.torrentreactor.to/
http://www.torrentportal.com/
http://www.mininova.org/
http://skflan.nl.tp
http://www.onlytorrents.com/
http://www.mybittorrent.com/
http://www.torrentz.com/
http://www.torrentradar.org/
http://www.demonoid.com/
http://www.smaragdtorrent.org/
http://www.fulldls.com/
http://www.torrents.to/
http://www.torrentvalley.com/
http://www.torrentshub.com/
http://fenopy.com/
http://extratorrent.com/
http://btjunkie.org/
http://www.bittorrent.am/
http://www.astatorrents.com/
http://www.meganova.org/
http://www.bitdig.com/
http://torrentattack.org/

Your insrvAssist contact for this message is XXX XXXXX.

Thank you,
Security Team

Previously, students using P2P applications Aimster, LimeWire, KaZaA, Mactella, Morpheus, Phex, iMesh, Qtella, Audiogalaxy, SwapNut, NeoModus, XoLoX , BitTorrent, WinMX, Gnutella, Gnotella, BearShare, Gnucleus and GTK-Gnutella had been told: “IMMEDIATELY ensure that your system is set to prevent the application from acting as a provider of unlicensed materials to other users.”

Its quite obvious that this message did not stop students from continuing to share files and the banning of the above sites is unlikely to stop them either. New sites appear all the time and although the blocklist takes out some major torrent sources, there are many hundreds more – e.g TorrentReactor.to is blocked but not TorrentReactor.net.

The excellent Yotoshi gets no mention and even President Bush’s torrent site is unbanned and fully available. Interested students will find the Linux stuff here.

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

This film tries to simplify its drug abuse message with an analogy of kids putting together a contraption out of Lego blocks. Although the metaphors often don’t make sense, the visual impact of the film is stunning and could easily be quite popular with individuals consuming illicit drugs. Also, like most anti-drug films, this could be a tempting introduction to drugs for some youths yearning to escape their “boring” lives or to rebel against their parents.

Perversion for Profit I (Ca. 1965)

Anti-pornography film produced by financier Charles Keating, linking pornography to the Communist conspiracy and the decline of Western civilization. Keating is pretty serious about it. Here’s a quote: “We must seek to deliver ourselves from this twisted, torturing evil. We must save our nation from decay, and deliver our children from the horrors of perversion.”

Perversion for Profit II (Ca. 1965)

Another quote form this anti-pornography film: “Now, you might ask yourself, why this sudden concern? Pornography and sex deviation have always been with mankind. This is true. But now, consider another fact. Never in the history of the world have the merchants of obscenity, the teachers of unnatural sex acts, had available to them the modern facilities for disseminating this filth. High-speed presses, rapid transportation, mass distribution. All have combined to put the vilest obscenity within reach of every man, woman and child in the country.”

Alcohol Is Dynamite (1958)

Teens Bud and Jack, eager to get some alcohol from the liquor store, ask the adult to buy it for them. Instead, the adult tells them a story of three teenagers who learn the hard way that “alcohol is a violent narcotic.” In true Sid Davis form, the story ends with one innocent teen being killed and one who becomes an alcoholic bum, leaving the others to deal with guilt from their night of reckless abandon.

Last Prom (1980)

A near epidemic of alcohol-related deaths on prom night spurred this film’s release. While alcohol does play a role in the graphic, yet fake carnage we see on the screen, you gotta wonder about that dangerous tunnel. Filmmakers realized that teens would fail to identify with even a slightly dated message; this film was later remade to update the fashions, although the story stayed the same. The school chorus soundtrack makes this film even creepier

Human Reproduction (1947)

Though this sex education film concentrates on presenting the anatomy and physiology of human reproduction in sober medical terms, its release kicked off a controversy in many American cities and towns over the legitimacy of sex education in the public schools. The film is narrated from the point of view of an adult who tries to decide how to answer his son’s natural questions about sex and reproduction. With excellent diagrams of the reproductive process.

As Boys Grow (1957)

Sex education film aimed at teenage boys, with the coach of a freshman track team as authority figure and teacher. How does the male reproduction system work, why does it work that way, and what can we do with that thing.

How Much Affection? (1957)

How far can young people go in petting and still stay within the bounds of personal standards and social mores? You like someone, he or she likes you, everything seems to be fun, but suddenly you find yourself in a position where your physical urges fight against your reason.

A Case For Beer (Ca. 1970)

An educational film about the dangers of selling beer to underage youth. The film is intended for convenience store owners, very informational indeed. Don’t be tricked, or you will lose your license and never sell anything again.

Thanks Archive.org and BEN

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

TorrentFreak: When did you first learn about BitTorrent?

Niek: I guess that was somewhere back in 2003. Rob, one of the other Mininova staff members, pointed me to a new kind of P2P protocol, named BitTorrent, and soon thereafter I became a regular visitor of websites like Torrentse.cx, Lokitorrents.com, Bytemonsoon.com and of course Suprnova.org. Those websites are all dead now (the first two disappeared suddenly after running a successful donation round…), but they have to be credited for setting the first steps in building a torrent search engine.

TorrentFreak: When and why did you decide to start mininova?

Niek: That was back in December 2004. Andrej decided to take Suprnova down, which was a very popular torrent website at that time (although not as popular as the top-3 BitTorrent sites individually nowadays). As one of the regular visitors of Suprnova (and a programmer myself), I decided to code a new torrent search engine. Erik, Jos, Matthijs and Rob joined me, and we released the first public version of Mininova on January 15, 2005. My poor DSL line couldn’t handle the bandwidth the site was generating, but luckily Gottfrid of ThePirateBay offered us a hosting account. Well, the site got way too popular, so we had to look for a new hosting place. We temporarily moved to Gary of isoHunt, but it didn’t took long before we got our own set of servers. Since that time, Mininova have seen continuous growth in both popularity and content.

TorrentFreak: Did you ever expected that the site would be such a great success?

Niek: No, definitely not. Of course we hoped that Mininova would become a success, but not of this magnitude. Who would have thought that Mininova would become more than two times as popular as Suprnova was on its peak days?

TorrentFreak: What do you think the future will bring for BitTorrent, and BitTorrent sites?

Niek: In the previous years we’ve seen additions like DHT, encryption and other enhancements to the BitTorrent protocol. I think we’ll see some other nice enhancements in the future (maybe TCP/UDP hole punching?). Also, BitTorrent sites keep innovating new features, and I’m happy to see we’re (one of) the leader(s) in this area.

TorrentFreak: Are there any future plans or developments you want to share with our readers?

Niek: We just released our new site with many new features, but we’re already planning and prototyping new features for the next version. Of course we’re always open for feature requests, so in case anybody got a great idea: please mail us :)

TorrentFreak: What keeps mininova in the air?

Niek: This is our current server setup:

Our staff consists of 5 administrators: Erik, Jos, Matthijs, Rob and I. And of course we couldn’t be anywhere without our dedicated group of moderators!

TorrentFreak: Do you get a lot of DMCA takedown notices? And how do you handle these?

Niek: I think we get on average 2 or 3 removal requests per day. We handle these with care according to our copyright policy. I’m happy to say we’ve never had any problems in this area.

TorrentFreak: What makes mininova stand out compared to other BitTorrent sites?

Niek: The simplicity, the speed, the no-nonsense design and functionality. And of course the new features, which we keep inventing, to improve usability. I guess we also have quite a few users due to our family safe policy, we don’t allow any pornographic torrents on our site.

TorrentFreak: What are you doing when you’re not working on mininova?

Niek: Keeping a website of this size running requires quite some time. But in my spare time I’m socializing with friends, studying, hanging out in the pub, and all the other kind of things guys of my age tend to do ;)

TorrentFreak: Anything to add?

Niek: Thanks for the interview; I really appreciate the time you take to run TorrentFreak. I think it’s a good addition to the (not always very objective) journalism on torrent sites.

TorrentFreak: Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions.

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

Futuristic Sex Robotz was founded by Coaxke and PC Speaker during a Keystone Ice induced drunken haze in late 2004. They dish out the cold, hard truth with skill and creativity unlike anything the internet has seen before. Gangsta style…

The album “hotel coral essex” covers topics like the MPAA, the BitTorrent site Empornium (cheggit!), and World of Warcraft.

Rating: 4/5

Featured track: Fuck The MPAA

[audio:http://www.TorrentFreak.com/music/05_Fuck_The_MPAA.mp3]

website: futuristicsexrobotz.com
Download album: torrent

Track List:

01. Van On Fire
02. Welcome To The Internet
03. Back In The Day
04. Law & Order
05. Fuck The MPAA
06. The Positronic Pimp
07. Hey, Ladies
08. WoW
09. Dishwater
10. LiveJournal
11. Back To The Future
12. Don’t Make Us Kick Your Ass
13. Empornium
14. If I Ruled The World
15. Checking Out

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

TorrentFreak asked Meganova owner Bogaa if these rumors are true. And indeed, Bogaa confirmed the story:

Yes, Targetpoint made an offer to buy Meganova. They offered $20.000, 30% of the ad revenues and an additional $1000 per month. We do however prefer to continue working with Targetpoint on a pay per click basis.

Meganova is not the only BitTorrent site that Targetpoint is interested in. They are currently working with sites like Isohunt, The Piratebay and Mininova. And according to a our source they even have a 37% share in The Piratebay .

It started a couple of months ago when Targetpoint contracted two major adult content BitTorrent sites Empornium and PureTna. Empornium has approximately 650,000 active users; they moved their servers from the US to The Netherlands after the acquisition by Targetpoint in August 2005.

So it seems that Targetpoint is willing to invest in sites that have trouble getting advertisers through other channels such as Google’s Adsense because these sites are (assumed to be) associated with copyright infringement.

Targetpoint was founded in 2004 and is an Israeli company, with servers located in the Netherlands. In these countries offering .torrent files is not considered to be act of copyright infringement.

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