After years of trouble-free operation as the MPAA focused on shutting down the growing ‘threat’ of the snowballing BitTorrent scene, in May 2008 the operator of Newzbin made an announcement.

The company which owns Newzbin had received a threatening letter from the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the MPAA’s big brother. In the letter the MPA claimed that some of the site’s editors (users who report on the location of material uploaded to the worldwide Usenet system) were listing NZBs which linked to movies on Usenet which infringed their member’s copyright.

“Newzbin has recently received two serious complaints regarding the indexing we perform, and raising doubts as to its legality. It is likely that we will in the coming weeks be presented with a court case and have to defend our rights,” said ‘Caesium’, the owner of Newzbin.

Caesium added that the site had never condoned the distribution or indexing of copyright works and insisted that site staff would act immediately to remove any items found to be infringing copyright.

Noting that Newzbin would defend itself vigorously against the complainants, Caesium said he believed that linking to content on Usenet is entirely legal and that the site’s procedures for dealing with unlawful content were appropriate.

“We believe that, or we wouldn’t still be here,” he added.

In December 2008, Newzbin confirmed that it had been removing NZB files which allegedly linked to copyright works stored on Usenet. The MPA still chose to file an injunction against the site.

Now, well over a year later, the showdown of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & ors v Newzbin Ltd is set to begin next week before Mr Justice Kitchin in London’s High Court.

According to an announcement yesterday by Newzbin’s legal team, the case should last around a week but it’s unknown when any verdict will be handed down following its conclusion.

As we all know, the recent trial of Alan Ellis ended in an acquittal for the ex-OiNK admin and, just like Newzbin, his site hosted no copyright works and provided only meta data which linked to material hosted elsewhere.

However, Ellis’s charge was one of fraud, allegedly conducted by an individual and dealt with under criminal law, while that leveled against Newzbin is one of allowing and inducing illegal copying, i.e copyright infringement, but carried out by a bona fide company under civil law.

After Ellis’s acquittal, John Kennedy of the IFPI expressed disappointment at the “spectacular failure” of the criminal action and suggested that these type of complex cases should not be held in a crown court, but in the Chancery Division of the High Court.

This is exactly where the Newzbin case is being heard, so this is certainly one to watch. Unlike Ellis who faced possible jail time, Newzbin faces a claim for damages should it lose its case.

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

The jury at Teesside Crown Court took just a couple of hours to return a unanimous verdict of “Not Guilty” – Ellis walked away a free man.

Ellis kept a low profile as he left court, refusing to comment to waiting reporters. The recording industry, fronted by the BPI, didn’t hide their feelings.

“This is a hugely disappointing verdict which is out of line with decisions made in similar cases around the world,” the group said in a statement.

“The defendant made nearly £200,000 by exploiting other people’s work without permission. The case shows that artists and music companies need better protection.”

Behind the scenes, some observers felt that while this defeat for the music industry was welcome, there were still concerns that things wouldn’t end with Ellis’s acquittal. And they appear to have been right.

Speaking at a press conference to launch the annual Digital Music Report, IFPI spokesman John Kennedy said that the ‘not guilty’ verdict was not the end of the road. The recording industry would “find other ways” to punish Ellis, and is now seriously considering taking action against him through the civil courts.

Kennedy said there is a commitment by the industry to retrieve the money the users of OiNK donated to the site, and give it to the artists whose music was shared there.

He also attacked the decision to charge Ellis with fraud instead of copyright infringement, and criticized UK legislation for being out of date.

Ellis confirmed earlier that his acquittal did not mean that OiNK was set for a revival. “Absolutely not,” he said, while adding that he would just like to get on with his life now.

It seems that IFPI have other plans.

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

From the very beginning, the music industry has pictured the site’s founder as someone who charges users for access to the site, claiming that it was set up to make profits from infringing on the rights of the major record labels.

Its users were criminals who conspired to steal from the music industry for reasons other than the enjoyment of music, music industry groups claimed. “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure,” Jeremy Banks of the IFPI said shortly after the site fell, insinuating that profits were made behind the scenes.

Last week the prosecution in the OiNK trial continued down the same path, pointing out that Ellis had gathered nearly $300,000 from voluntary donations over the years. They made it seem like Ellis was running a profitable business but failed to mention that a large chunk of this money was continuously invested back into the site and its running costs.

No proof was provided that Ellis used any of the donation money to enrich himself. He had the equivalent of $32,500 in several savings accounts at the time of his arrest. Ellis planned to use this money to buy servers for the tracker.

This week Ellis has the chance to start telling the Court his side of the story, and has been detailing how he initially hosted the tracker in his own bedroom when he was studying at Teesside University.

Ellis explained how OiNK began as a pet project with the sole purpose of improving his “outdated” UK honours degree in software engineering. “I didn’t have an intention, I was furthering my skills as a programmer, as a software engineer,” Ellis told Teesside Crown Court today.

Ellis, who was working on the backend of the site to make sure that everything kept running, was merely providing a platform for OiNK’s users to share whatever they wanted. He denied the charges of conspiracy to defraud the music industry.

The case continues.

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

LokiTorrent

Born in early 2004, LokiTorrent grew from comparative humble beginnings, especially when compared to the mighty Suprnova. However, as a recipient of one of the growing number of cease and desist letters sent out by the MPAA, LokiTorrent found its fame.

In mid-December 2004, as the MPAA was yet to formally identify the site’s owner, a ‘John Doe’ lawsuit was filed against the operators of LokiTorrent. Rather than caving into the threats as other BitTorrent and eDonkey services already had, the site’s operator, the then 28 year-old Ed Webber (aka ‘Lowkee’), took a rather more aggressive stance.

Webber refused to comply with the MPAA’s demands, which went down an absolute storm with many in the BitTorrent community, who believed that their very existence was under threat. If Lowkee was prepared to fight, so were they. The battle lines were drawn.

This rallying of support reached fever pitch, with the site’s membership swelling to almost 700,000 users and Webber receiving donations in record time and in record amounts. Within a short period of time around $43,000 was collected to go to war with the MPAA.

Then something something suspicious came to light. Webber was trying to sell the LokiTorrent domain name on Sedo. The community was not pleased – in fact it went absolutely nuts.

Under huge pressure, on January 27th Webber made an announcement saying that he put the domain up for sale because he was curious as to its worth, noting that for $75k he’d sell it and simply move to a new domain. Selling the entire site, he said, would never happen. The Sedo listing suggested otherwise, with Webber offering the full source code and email addresses of the members.

So what about the donations thus far? Were they safe?

“As for the legal fund.. if I were going to run off, I would have already. That money is for the lawsuit, as stated. Only those who would run off with the money thought we would,” said Webber in an announcement.

Around two weeks later the site disappeared, replaced by the MPAA’s infamous ‘You Can Click But You Can’t Hide’ campaign artwork. None of the donated money was handed back and although the existence of a lawsuit was later confirmed, there was no fight.

Webber’s attorney, Charles S. Baker, said parts of LokiTorrent’s operations were defensible in court, particular since Webber had already offered to remove links to pirated movies. But it wasn’t to be.

According to court documents, Webber was eventually ordered to pay the MPAA $1m in damages and hand over all of the user data held on the LokiTorrent servers. There is no evidence he paid a cent. Webber also claimed that all of the donations were swallowed up by legal fees, few believed him, and it would be a long time before BitTorrent users dug deep again.

EliteTorrents

Despite the misery surrounding the LokiTorrent closure, other sites continued to blossom, although the emphasis switched to the relatively more underground scene of invitation-only trackers.

With around 130,000 members, EliteTorrents was one of the most prominent torrent sites in the growing, but still fairly undeveloped, private tracker scene. With its good staff and strong community, for many Elite was the site to be seen at.

On June 25th 2005, it all came crashing down in a huge and unprecedented fireball.

Despite many thousands of torrents being uploaded during the site’s lifetime, a single release – a pre-release version of Star Wars: Episode 3 – attracted the interest of the FBI, who shut down the site and arrested the admins and uploaders.

Several of them served substantial jail sentences, a punishment previously unheard of in BitTorrent history.

In 2006, Scott McCausland pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and one count of criminal copyright infringement for his uploading of Star Wars: Episode III. He received jail time and home confinement.

Fellow site admin Grant Stanley, then aged 23, pleaded guilty to the same offenses as Scott and received the same sentence with the addition of a $3,000 fine. Other admins and uploaders who were found guilty included Sam Kuonen, then aged 24, 22 year old Scott D. Harvanek, An Duc Do, aged 25, and Daniel Dove.

Before the EliteTorrents shutdown, while many BitTorrent trackers were hosted in the United States most had been pressured to leave, largely due to MPAA pressure. Right up until the introduction of the Family Entertainment Act – the criminal legislation used to justify FBI involvement and shutter the site – action against torrent sites would have taken place in the civil domain. The law governing the distribution of pre-release movies changed that perception forever.

The aggressive action against both LokiTorrent and EliteTorrents ensured that no-one, especially a US citizen, would ever openly place a big movie BitTorrent tracker on US soil again. Only search engines such as isoHunt and TorrentSpy would dare to stay, but eventually, even they would have to leave.

While United States-based BitTorrent trackers had plenty of drama in 2005, during the next two years Europe would become the next theater in the ever-increasing war on copyright infringement.

More dramatic shutdowns will follow later this week in Part 2

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

Nerrot, a new torrent site launching today in early beta, somehow manages to make even Google look cluttered. Nicholas, the programmer behind Nerrot, told TorrentFreak that his motto is “Simply, simplify, simplistically!” This philosophy is evident in the site’s interface and operation.

Nerrot bills itself as an “instant torrent downloader” and is very easy to use. Simply type in the name of the material you’re looking for as accurately as possible into the search field and the appropriate torrent is immediately delivered.

Behind the scenes, Nerrot does all the boring stuff automatically. The torrent file it delivers to you aims to be the most relevant to your search and should also be one that connect you to the healthiest available swarm. In TorrentFreak’s tests Nerrot delivered on its promises most of the time.

Nicholas told us that the site is currently in “0.5 beta” and new features such as filtering results based on the amount of seeds or leeches, an XML or database-driven auto-complete, and an option to select which trackers Nerrot should search for torrents. These will be realized with “…juicy javascript, modals and ajax goodness,” and will remain optional and hidden.

Although Nerrot is quite good at picking the right torrents, some users might feel like they are no longer in control when the torrent files are served automatically. In some cases this might even lead to downloading ‘fake’ torrents as the site offers no option to check for comments or inflated peer ratios. Tread with caution.

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

Private sites commonly operate a ratio-based system where users are expected to upload around the same amount of data as they download, to ensure that the tracker’s ‘economy’ stays healthy. Some sites experiment with different methods of achieving the same ends, but whatever the technique the result is often more users ’seeding’ than can be commonly found on similar torrents on public trackers, resulting in higher speeds and shorter download times.

For many in the BitTorrent community, private sites are where the real action can be found, but they also face some serious problems of their own. FileShareFreak has recently come up with a list of more than 300 private trackers launched in 2009 – of these only 179 remain online today. So what is causing the death of these sites before they even reach infancy?

In many cases sites are started by people who have no idea of the scale of the task that lies ahead of them and simply give up. Some sites are started by people who break off from other trackers after a dispute and believe they can do better and find out they can’t. While some thrive, others simply can’t carve themselves an audience or a big enough niche to satisfy their world-beating ambitions, while being hamstrung by their own invitation policy in an attempt to stay attractively exclusive.

Increasingly, however, more and more sites are simply running out of money, which is a fairly curious situation. After all, wasn’t BitTorrent created to make it really cheap to shift data around?

In themselves, the average private tracker and forum don’t cost that much to run, with many decent sized sites managing to operate for less than $150 each month – an amount easily covered by a generous sysop and a handful of small donations. But in recent years many private trackers have become very competitive – particularly with each other – as they literally race to bring content to their sites as quickly as possible and offering their demanding users the fastest download speeds.

What they are trying to achieve are great ‘pre-times.’ ‘Pre-time’ is a term used to describe how long it takes for a private tracker to make available a Scene release after it has been released (pre’d) on Scene topsites. The shorter the pre-time, the bigger the bragging rights, with the ultimate aim of the site winning the ‘race.’

Participating in these ‘races’ costs a lot of money, as the roles traditionally fulfilled by users (providing content and bandwidth) are increasingly taken on by the site itself. For many, this is becoming a crippling burden. So how much does this all cost?

Thanks to a smallish private site (6,000 users) known as StN (StoreTheNet) which chose to make its bills public as it tried and failed to justify turning their previously free site to a subscription model, we have an idea. (Please note: All the following information is already in the public domain, many private sites make no secret that they engage in this activity and StN will shutdown tomorrow.)

Around $200 per month goes to pay for site and IRC hosting and additional features to increase site security. For a ‘traditional’ torrent site setup (users provide all content and content bandwidth), that’s where the costs would end.

But of course, since this site and many others feel they have to become involved in ‘racing’ content to their site and providing ultimate download speeds, from here the costs start to skyrocket.

Around $330 is being paid every month to operators of so-called ‘topsites’ where the latest releases are ‘raced’ from, and while users of the site do contribute bandwidth via their normal sharing, these releases are initially seeded directly to the members via an unmetered bandwidth seedbox which StN says is approx $630 per month.

All these bills add up to approaching $1,200 in costs every month for what is essentially a pretty small site, so what’s the solution to bring costs down and avoid the death of yet more trackers during their first few months?

Well, first of all, many sites can achieve this amount through voluntary member donations, but a lot of private site members are also members of other trackers and they can’t possibly donate to them all. So inevitably, some are favored and others aren’t.

Another option for struggling sites (and many private site users will be stamping their feet with reddened faces at the mere suggestion) is to get out of racing altogether, instead letting users bring content and allowing BitTorrent and its users to propagate it naturally with their own home bandwidth and if they’re lucky, their own seedboxes. This will be much slower admittedly, but probably preferable to a site closing altogether. It also drastically reduces the security risk for the site itself.

Something that proves very successful for many sites is to find a niche. While all the latest movies may be a major attraction, they are also what cause the biggest burdens on a site in a myriad different ways. Niche material sites usually have great communities, great speeds and usually fly easily under the radar. Expect to see many more of these in the future.

There are hundreds of private sites out there that don’t operate in the fashion outlined above and don’t have the accompanying financial burdens, yet still achieve good times and speeds. Time will tell if the craze of the ‘race’ dies down in favor of lower running costs, or if the need for Blu-ray rips at lightning speeds prove simply too irresistible.

If the latter is true, in the end someone is going to have to pay for it.

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

Following the announcement came a two month investigation to ensure that sites were complying with the new rules – inevitably some fell foul. In March the authorities announced that dozens of websites would face penalties or be shut down for broadcasting material described as obscene, violent or fear-inspiring, or that could be detrimental to national security. Many were punished for simply not having the appropriate government certification.

Around a year later the government flexed its muscles again, shutting down more than 150 more video sites, bringing the total to more than 400 since the new regulations were announced.

In early November 2009, SARFT said it would continue cracking down on what it described as “unlicensed” video websites.

Continuing with its earlier justification, the government said it wished to provide a healthy environment for the country’s 200 million online video consumers, to eradicate what it described as lewd, obscene and violent content which had “severely undermined” the health of the country’s children. Although they weren’t initially mentioned, this time round authorities did included copyright issues as one of the reasons that the sites were to be closed.

Included in this swoop were several BitTorrent sites, including the very popular BT @ China. A notice on the site’s homepage explains that in the absence of an appropriate audio/visual license, the site has been ordered to shut down.

Another site, UUbird, which lists dozens of US shows such as Desperate Housewives, Prison Break, Heroes and Lost, said it would delete all links to TV shows and movies by mid-February.

As reported here on TorrentFreak a few days ago, BitTorrent is very popular China, with its main torrent client usage even surpassing that of uTorrent.

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

A few hours ago ScT put up a sad and unexpected announcement for its 20,000 members, as the site’s operators have decided to close the site for good tomorrow. Thus far the staff refuses to comment on the reason for the shutdown, which has resulted in widespread rumors among the site’s users.

Some rumors say that the end of ScT may be related to the raid of a topsite in The Netherlands earlier this week. According to the Dutch news site Tweakers, the ‘ranked’ topsite LOOP had its servers raided in Amsterdam, where 40 terabytes of data was stored. LOOP was (supposedly) one of SceneTorrent’s main content provider according to insiders.

According to other rumors, the shutdown could be a planned operation instead of a response to the raided topsite. In the last weeks the site has encouraged its members to donate, offering double rewards for those who pay up, allegedly raking in as much as $10,000.

Thus far both rumors remain unconfirmed, and the same is true for an eBay auction of the site that went up a few hours ago. Since the staff of the site is not talking, it will probably remain unknown why the site will close its doors now, or what their underlying motivation is.

Update: FSF published a short chat with ScT owner ‘Feeling’ who confirmed that the shutdown is not a hoax.

Update: A new staff message claims that the shutdown is due to legal issues.

By now most of you already know that ScT will be going offline permanently.

However, due to pending legal issues, we are not at liberty to speak freely about why we’ve chosen to take down the site.
Members of our staff were arrested and will be undergoing the entire length of the judicial process.
Obviously, in the case of criminal proceedings, it would be downright foolish to comment any further on the situation;

Please bear this in mind and wish them the best of luck.

There have been several theories as to where the donation money (of the recent months) has gone. We’d like to take this opportunity to put all skepticism to rest.
The money was used to purchase new hardware that would ensure our spot as the fastest tracker on the net.
You are free to perform whatever calculations you feel necessary, but in doing so it should become very clear that running a site of this stature costs money.
We feel the overwhelming cynicism is just a product of bad timing compounded with general frustration caused by the current situation.

We sincerely hope that you’ve enjoyed being a part of our wonderful community over the past 4 1/2 years.
We’ve certainly enjoyed our members letting us be of service. We’ve always felt our user base played an equally important role in making SceneTorrents.org a model environment in the torrent world.

The staff would also like to express their gratitude to fellow trackers for their support in such a chaotic time. Several well known communities have voluntarily opened their doors, and have offered our former users a new home. We appreciate the courtesy and acknowledge the steps being taken to move forward collectively as a community. Your assistance does not go unrecognized.

//ScT Staff

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

“This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak at the time.

In March 2009, isoHunt and the CRIA appeared in court where the judge ruled that the issues in question were too complex and consequences too far-reaching not to move to a full trial. This decision was appealed by isoHunt, but without result, meaning that isoHunt has to go through the costly process of a full trial.

This week, isoHunt’s founder continued his crusade and filed the statement of claim (pdf) with the Supreme Court. The document describes the functionality of the search engines he operates (isoHunt and sister sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis) and asks the court to declare that these do not violate Canadian copyright law.

Despite the worsening copyright climate in other parts of the world, Fung remains confident that Canadian law is on his side. “I have high hopes for Canadian copyright laws and its courts to not make the mistakes that have been made elsewhere in the world. We must fight the increasing noise we are drowned in, that file sharing is stealing,” he said.

“As for CRIA and member record labels, if you come to your sense of reason, I would love to talk to you outside of court. The ball you’ve dropped on us is back to you,” Fung concludes.

After the partial shutdown of Mininova yesterday, isoHunt is now the second largest torrent site around in terms of traffic, trailing only behind The Pirate Bay. However, all of Fung’s torrent sites combined draw more traffic than any other torrent site around. Aside from the three torrent sites mentioned in the case and despite the legal troubles, Fung recently launched Hexagon, a new ‘social‘ BitTorrent site.

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

The site has grown steadily over the years and continues to do so, despite a setback in court this summer. In fact, today the 10 billionth torrent file was downloaded from Mininova, an impressive achievement to say the least.

Although the site is still going strong, with the increasing visitor numbers month after month, things have definitely changed behind the scenes.

When asked for a comment on whether they had predicted the site would grow this rapidly, Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer told TorrentFreak: “We never really expected anything. We don’t really tend to focus on these numbers, we are just trying to run the site the best way we can.”

Previously the Mininova team welcomed these download records with more enthusiasm, but times have changed. In common with their counterparts at the Pirate Bay, we get the impression that the torrent site is not their core business anymore, which is not really that surprising considering the legal troubles Mininova faces.

In August, Mininova lost in court against Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The judge ruled that the world’s largest BitTorrent indexer had to clean up its site and remove all torrents that link to infringing content. Mininova has yet to decide whether or not they will appeal the case.

Possibly related to this uncertain future, Erik said that they are not going to release any new features or major upgrades to the site anytime soon. “At the moment we are mainly focusing on other projects besides Mininova,” he informed us.

This year has undoubtedly been a turbulent one for Mininova. Nevertheless, we want to congratulate the Mininova team for reaching this new milestone, whether they like it or not.

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

Despite this success, The Pirate Bay operators today decided to pull the plug and close down the tracker permanently. The evolution of the BitTorrent protocol has made trackers redundant they say, as BitTorrent downloads work well with trackerless solutions such as DHT and PEX.

“Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well,” the Pirate Bay crew write on their blog.

Aside from this shutdown, there is also another major development quietly under discussion.

TorrentFreak has learned that behind the scenes the Pirate Bay operators are talking to other BitTorrent site owners to encourage them to follow suit and completely ditch torrents in the future. BitTorrent has reached a point where trackers and torrents are no longer needed to download files successfully. Supported by all of the major BitTorrent clients, DHT and PEX can handle the transfers and Magnet links can largely replace traditional torrent files.

“We’re talking to the other torrent admins on doing magnet links and DHT+PEX for all sites. Moving away from torrents and trackers totally – like pick a date and all agree ‘from this date, we’ll not support torrents anymore’,” a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak.

Switching to trackerless and torrentless downloading on public BitTorrent sites does indeed seem to be an option. Previously, many people thought that BitTorrent would collapse if a dominant tracker like the Pirate Bay went down, but this doomsday scenario never unfolded. In fact, the recent downtime of the tracker did not slow down or stop many transfers, as DHT and PEX seamlessly took over.

Those BitTorrent users who don’t want to go trackerless just yet can of course still use OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent, or indeed one of the many other alternative trackers currently available.

Whether or not The Pirate Bay and others will move away from torrent files in the future, the closure of the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker is nevertheless a milestone in the history of the Internet. Starting today, the Pirate Bay has changed its tagline from “The world’s largest BitTorrent tracker” to “The world’s most resilient (magnetic) BitTorrent site.”

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

A BPI investigation led to a police swoop on members of the group. They were subjected to searches, seizure of their computers and other assorted items, and later questioned at length.

The suspects were charged with Conspiracy to Defraud (the music industry), released on bail and ordered to reappear at later dates. One was later released with a police warning and told that charges would not be pressed against him.

In the meantime the alleged leader of DV8 had his bail pushed back to mid November pending further investigations. TorrentFreak’s previously-reliable sources positioned close to the case have now informed us that the individual answered his bail a few days ago and was subjected to another day of questioning. He has allegedly been charged with ‘defrauding the music industry’, although the conspiracy element appears to have been dropped.

Earlier we reported that two more arrests were made of suspected pre-release music suppliers to DV8. One of those individuals was an executive at a record label. Our information is that this executive has now lost his job, but no charges have been brought against him.

It was believed that the delay in charging the alleged leader of the group was due to the police needing more time to track down additional suppliers, one of which we were told works for a major media outlet. Indeed, we are now being informed that during the last few weeks there have been further raids on people linked to the group.

One is reportedly a writer at a music publication, who allegedly supplied music to the leader of the group. We are told he was raided 2 weeks ago.

Another is a US member of DV8 who left months before the first raid. He was arrested several weeks ago but is understood to have been released without charge.

Court dates are pending for those charged, but could arrive as quickly as early 2010.

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

Just over a month has passed since the first stable public release of the software and PeerBlock has now managed to clock up more than 100,000 downloads. To mark this milestone, TorrentFreak caught up with Mark from the project for the lowdown.

Mark told us that the creation of PeerBlock was inspired by him upgrading his PC from 32 to 64 bit in order to utilize 6gb of RAM. Everything worked fine – until he tried to get PeerGuardian (another IP blocker) to work.

Having hacked away and jumped through hoops to get around driver-signing it would still only work half the time and often crashed without warning. As a software engineer who has worked in the commercial sector for more than 13 years, Mark – who admits to being “an arrogant bastard who truly believes he can do just about anything better than just about anybody,” decided he could find a solution. It was “put up or shut up time,” he told TorrentFreak.

Noticing that the PeerGuardian code was open-source but hadn’t been touched for a couple of years, Mark contacted another developer who had the same thing in mind, but having heard nothing back, he went at it alone.

“I started setting up a Sourceforge.net project for it so we could get free source-control, but they took too long to set it up for me so I instead created a project over at Google Code where it was ready within minutes,” he told us.

Having heard from a few people who were interested in helping out with the development side – “night_stalker_z” who’d earlier started trying to hack the PG2 code into shape, “DarC” / “DisCoStu” who wanted to help out with fixing up the installer, XhmikosR who rewrote the installer, and some testers, things moved forward.

After facing troubles due to the lack of a “signed driver” for 64-bit versions of Vista (which resulted in Mark having to set up a registered company before they were allowed to buy a $230 code-signing certificate), a couple of blogs wrote articles on PeerBlock which attracted some much-needed publicity to the project. This resulted in 10,000 downloads in just one weekend.

“We’re still getting donations from people and we now have enough to pay for next year’s annual code-signing certificate, and we’re saving up to be able to rent our own VPS with full root access etc, upon which we’ll be able to build a ‘real’ online-update system, a custom web-app to tie our forums/issue-tracker/website all together, and some other neat things,” Mark explains.

The first stable release of PeerBlock came out on September 27th, and as of November 5th had clocked up an impressive 100,000 downloads. The site now receives up to 7,000 visitors each day.

Aside from fixing one or two bugs, the team has lots of new features planned for PeerBlock. Anyone that has tried to surf the web with a blocklist in place will know how painful that can be, so PeerBlock will have some new features which allow the “whitelisting” of certain apps, such as a browser, the creation of a proxy server to let users configure PeerBlock to listen on certain ports, possibly an integral “AdMuncher” style ad-blocking feature on a per URL basis (as opposed to just an IP-address), and an encrypted chat feature.

TorrentFreak asked Mark why users should choose PeerBlock over the competition.

“Well, first off we need to ask ‘Who IS the competition?’ The only ones I’m really aware of are: Protowall by the folks over at Bluetack which is closed-source and I don’t believe was ever updated for Vista, and Outpost Firewall, which is closed-source and basically just a hack add-on to a more professional firewall product,” he responded, while noting that uTorrent’s built-in IP-filtering feature only handles one manually-updated list.

“We protect your entire machine, and give you the option to try out any P2P app you want – this freedom of choice is a very important thing, I think. And since it does everything automatically, including list-updates, it’s one less thing to think about,” he added.

Another important question relates to the blocklists that have to be used in conjunction with PeerBlock in order for it to block anything.

He told TorrentFreak that he’s a big fan of iblocklist, who serve up a staggering 10TB of blocklists every month for free. The site doesn’t create the lists, but does offer those from Bluetack, including the Level1 list (renamed to ‘P2P’ in PG2/PeerBlock, which contains both Gov and Anti-P2P IP-addresses) and others.

Mark admits that even in a best case scenario, the available blocklists aren’t 100% effective. That said, there have been studies which show that using blocklists along with software such as PeerBlock can help speed up downloads, but no-one knows how many of the potential “bad IPs” are covered by currently available blocklists.

P2P aside, Mark says there has been feedback to suggest that PeerBlock discovered a Conficker infection on a user’s machine that their anti-virus programs missed, and can also stop ads appearing in browsers that lack in-built blocking.

One other exciting thing for the future of PeerBlock is porting it to the Mac. Mark says they’re saving all the donations for additional development and this is the most-requested request right now.

Users of PeerBlock are encouraged to give as much feedback as possible to Mark’s team, via their forums, IRC (#peerblock on freenode.net) or email.

PeerBlock can be downloaded here.

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

Ink was downloaded more than 400,000 times last week and ended up in fourth place in our weekly chart of most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, where Zombieland occupied the top spot.

Zombieland co-writer Rhett Reese has been following our most pirated movies chart as well, and thus the online success of his film. “Zombieland currently the most pirated movie on bit torrent. Over one million downloads and counting,” he tweeted a few hours ago.

However, unlike the makers of Ink, Reese is not pleased with this achievement, claiming that this piracy disaster may very well prevent a Zombieland sequel from being shot. “Beyond depressing. This greatly affects the likelihood of a Zombieland 2,” he wrote.

Reese’s comments are the classic Hollywood response we wrote about yesterday. Piracy is causing billions of dollars in lost revenue and prevents new movies from being funded, is the doomsday scenario they often paint. But is there any truth in this hunch, or is it just another Hollywood performance? Facts seem to support the latter.

More piracy is not necessarily linked with a drop in box office grosses or DVD sales. ‘The Dark Knight’, which was the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent in 2008 sold millions of DVDs, and grossed a record breaking billion dollars in cinemas worldwide. But what about Zombieland?

The Hollywood Insider wrote that the movie is “alive and kicking” at the box office, putting its success down in part to “strong word-of-mouth”. The release also marks the most successful debut of Woody Harrelson’s career, hitting the No.1 spot and taking $9.4m on its first day and a worldwide $84m to date – all this on a production budget of less than $24m.

Zombieland grossed more than $60.8 million in 17 days, even surpassing the remake of the Dawn of the Dead to become the top-grossing zombie film in history. That does not really sound like something that will prevent a sequel to us.

On the contrary, if anything success on BitTorrent has a direct relation with success at the box office. Since unauthorized ripped versions of virtually all movies appear on the Internet nowadays, it would be a really bad sign if no pirate would want to download it.

But of course, Reese and others could still argue that they would have made even more money if there was no piracy. There are no hard facts to refute this, but with the box office revenue steadily increasing since P2P file-sharing became mainstream, it has to be doubted as well. The same can be said for the claim that less films receive funding.

As many independent filmmakers have already experienced, BitTorrent and the Internet in general can be a boon to the film industry. Instead of seeing it as a threat Hollywood might want to embrace it before it’s too late.

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

“They must capture important evidence on a computer at the scene of an investigation before it is powered down and removed for later analysis. ‘Live’ evidence, such as active system processes and network data, is volatile and may be lost in the process of turning off a computer. How does an officer on the scene effectively do this if he or she is not a trained computer forensics expert?”

Using COFEE, of course.

The Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) is a piece of software designed for the use of law enforcement agencies, and provided to the same free of charge by Microsoft. And, largely because of its mystique, has been a much sought-after piece of code.

Indeed, on the private tracker What.cd, users had offered a huge bounty (a reward for finding and sharing something) of 1.6 terabytes.

During the last day or so, a user – who had only been a member for a matter of weeks – uploaded COFEE.

However, What.cd then took the unusual step of removing the torrent. Not just an unusual step but, in my opinion, a very sensible step indeed.

“Suddenly, we were forced to take a real look at the program, its source, and the potential impact on the site and security of our users and staff,” said What.cd management in a statement.

“And when we did, we didn’t like what came of it. So, a decision was made. The torrent was removed (and it is not to be uploaded here again),” they added.

According to the site’s staff, neither them or their host was threatened by Microsoft or law enforcement. The decision was taken purely on the issue of site and member security.

Of course, the tool is now widely available from other sources and while some are saying that the tool is useless to regular Internet users, there are others who disagree. It certainly won’t take long for a detailed analysis to appear.

There will doubtless be lots of finger-wagging and complaints that this tool has become available in this way, but as with unexpected leaks of anything from software, to movies, to music, rarely is the finger pointed at the initial supplier of the material. That is usually way too embarrassing to reveal.

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

Svenne-Redcross is a movie release group who have been active for nearly ten years, a long time to remain undetected and uninfiltrated. Their first serious release was a DVDRip (converted to SVCD) of ‘Richard Gere’s Dr T and the Women’ in December 2000. Its last appears to be Swedish movie ‘Johan Falk – GSI ‘ released just over two weeks ago.

But, as they say, all good things come to an end.

Scene release groups use NFOs, which are small text files commonly used to provide information about pirate releases. The NFO’s can also be used as a so-called ‘Scene Notice’, a type of message which can be passed around Scene groups to inform them of important information – even if half the time they are simply used to flame other groups or individuals.

This weekend Svenne released an NFO/Scene notice themselves, but the content was highly unusual, even if it started off with bad, if unremarkable news;

“After ten years on the Scene we’re stepping down and leaving it forever,” the group wrote. “We have been exposed by the Swedish Antipiracy Bureau whom have identified all of our members and sites.”

The Swedish Antipiracy Bureau – Antipiratbyrån (APB) – is home to the infamous Henrik Pontén who has taken many actions against pirates, including a raid earlier this year against a large Swedish topsite.

At the time Pontén said that APB had managed to identify the people running the server and noted that it was now up to the police to investigate. But strangely, even though APB appear to know a lot about Svenne, it seems that the police won’t be getting involved.

“The good thing is that we have had the possibility to make a settlement. Our activity is immediately ceased,” Svenne announced.

Why APB have offered Svenne a deal is unclear, and there is currently little public knowledge of its nature or the terms imposed. However, what is clear is that APB required Svenne to do some public grovelling – it’s hard to imagine that they would make this kind of statement voluntarily, especially since just 2 weeks ago they said how proud they were of their achievements;

“We apologies to all Swedish and foreign movie producers for the damage we have caused,” wrote the group. But they didn’t stop there – APB also required some valuable FUD to be spread, to scare others in The Scene;

“Those of you who are still involved in the Scene – close down. None of you are safe out there,” warns Svenne in their apparent neck-saving statement.

Of course, while this announcement seems designed to spread fear, the threat may not be entirely hollow. Svenne has connections to lots of other groups, so the strong possibility remains that some of those could be compromised too.

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

In 2002 he launched TuckerMax.com, a site where millions read about his real-life drunken and sexual antics, including one article about his earlier relationship with Katy Johnson, Miss Vermont 1999, which led to a lawsuit which fortunately for him, was later withdrawn.

Of course, Tucker Max had plenty more outrageous alcohol-fueled exploits to blog about, in fact so much so that in 2006 he released his book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell which became a NY Times Bestseller in the same year.

Tomorrow, Max will bring his unique blend of entertainment to the big screen with the movie release of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. It will be a ‘limited’ release, which means that initially the movie will be available on a small number of screens then increasing as (hopefully) the movie grows in popularity.

However, at the moment the movie will only be available in the US, and initially only in Chicago. A Canadian release will take place in two weeks, which Max described as “stupid” while stressing that he has zero control over foreign distribution, “In ANY country.”

So what if you’d like to see the movie and it’s not available in your country?

Pirate it on the Internet.

“If you live outside the US and are desperate to see the movie and can’t find the release date in your country, then just pirate the movie and watch it online. I am serious. I have no issue with that,” says Max on the movie’s website. He also says the way to market a great movie is through word of mouth.

“Put it in front of people, let them see it, and have them tell their friends how much they liked it. That’s why we did the premiere tour. There is no better way to market quality, and by starting with a smaller release, it allows word of mouth to build and develop. This strategy has worked great with movies like ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and ‘Juno’,” says Max.

Of course, there’s no reason why the same can’t be true with BitTorrent. But there are plenty of other movies around, why watch this one?

“Go see this movie,” says Max. “At the very least, you will laugh a lot and you will definitely see the most epic shit scene in movie history.”

I’m there.

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

However, the Pirate Bay ’spirit’ doesn’t end at the borders of the Internet. To prove this, the people behind the Kiosk of Piracy installed a copy of the site on a local WiFi network that is open to the public but not actually connected to the Internet.

“The Kiosk is not connected to the Internet in any way, but the interested public is invited to use the service in a WiFi-radius around it,” the people behind the project write on their weblog.

Even in a worst case scenario where anti-piracy outfits manage to shut down the Internet because it assists in copyright infringement, people will still be able to trade files. As the Kiosk of Piracy people explain:

“With our newest project, we are joining the work of the dear people and groups which managed to duplicate the contents of The Pirate Bay on other places in the Net. We want to show in a very physical way that the Internet is neither a machine nor controllable in any way – it is just a system of agreements which work in any circumstances. We don’t need the Internet – the magic can happen anywhere.”

The downside is that this old fashioned file-sharing network will cause some logistical problems, unless you live in Weimar, Germany. But then again, everyone can setup a similar system in his or her backyard by using some old hardware.

For those interested in visiting the Kiosk of Piracy, a map of the exact location is available below. Detailed download instructions are available on the spot.

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

Following a BPI investigation, police (without fanfare or media reports) swooped on members of the group, the earliest back in May. Another seemingly significant arrest took place in June.

In early morning raids, as many as a dozen officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Hi-Tech Crime Unit and BPI investigators conducted searches on the addresses and took the suspects away for questioning, along with seized computers, cell phones, CDs and MP3 players, bank statements and sundry other items.

After extended questioning the police charged the suspects with Conspiracy to Defraud (the music industry). They were released on bail and ordered to reappear at later dates.

Around a week after our article, IFPI issued their own press release (which was used as the basis of dozens of other news articles) which largely confirmed our earlier report but in much lower detail, instead preferring to include quotes from David Lammy MP, Minister of State for Intellectual Property, and the heads of the IFPI and BPI’s anti-piracy operations.

DV8, like many release groups, specialized in pre-release piracy – in this case the publication of music on the Internet before official release dates. No-one needs to be reminded of the hatred the music industry holds for these type of leaks, after all when OiNK was raided it was the availability of pre-release material that dominated the news and was often provided as the justification for taking the site down.

In order to put the material on to the Internet in this way, Scene groups and individual uploaders need contacts somewhere in the supply chain, so-called industry insiders who act as suppliers for pre-release material. In the case of the OiNK uploaders, they had simply purchased CDs legitimately from online retailers who shipped products a day or two early, possibly in error. But to have the really juicy leaks, people more deeply involved in the supply chain can prove invaluable.

Based on information provided by our previously-reliable sources in this investigation, today we are able to reveal that during late August two more arrests were made of individuals the police believe acted as suppliers to DV8. One of those individuals is an executive at a record label.

In the meantime the alleged leader of DV8 has seen his bail pushed back to mid November pending further investigations. Our sources believe that this delay is due to the police needing more time to track down additional suppliers, one of which we are told works for a major media outlet.

Another member of DV8 who was initially arrested back in June and was the subject of the one and only triumphant IFPI press release mentioned earlier, has been rather more fortunate. He has been released with a police warning and told that charges would not be pressed against him. IFPI are unlikely to issue an updated press release about this release of a suspect though – they have also never mentioned the earliest and most important arrest made by the police in this investigation.

After word spread of the initial raids, the remaining members of the DV8 team went into hiding, taking their servers down and removing their topsite accounts. However, these type of groups can be remarkably resilient and can be quick to reform.

Indeed, while DV8 may be ‘dead’, some of its members live on and the releases have continued under a new group name – around one hundred of them so far, including some very big releases indeed.

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

The next phase was to write to the individuals and threaten them with legal action, unless they paid several hundred pounds. Some panicked and paid up, most did not. Only a handful of these cases actually went to court and DL won them all, because the individuals didn’t defend themselves.

After masses of bad publicity peaking in a controversy over gay porn, Davenport Lyons appeared to have had enough, and withdrew from this business model to limit the damage to their brand and reputation.

In May, new kid on the block ACS:Law appeared and promptly took over where DL left off, and again, hundreds – maybe thousands – of threatening letters went out, demanding cash payment from alleged file-sharers. But this time things wouldn’t be quite so easy for the lawyers and their clients.

The scheme wasn’t new anymore and various support structures for letter recipients flourished, including forums and dedicated sites such as the excellent BeingThreatened.com. Due to the increased knowledge and awareness brought about through news articles such as those read here on TorrentFreak and on the aforementioned platforms, pay-up rates from those accused fell to as little as 15%, as it became clear that the chances of actually being taken to court were minimal.

But now, after months of being told to “put up or shut up”, it seems that ACS:Law are, if they are to be believed, about to flex their legal muscles and actually litigate against certain individuals. They need their symbolic “head on a pike” to ensure the overall pay up rates make the scheme worthwhile.

“The first batch [of] claims have been prepared and were filed at court on Friday, 4 September 2009. Service of the proceedings will be made by first class post and will be with defendants by Tuesday, 8 September 2009 at the very latest,” the company said in a statement, adding, “The second batch of defendants will be selected on Monday, 14 September 2009.”

While many recipients may have ignored previous correspondence from ACS:Law or DL, individuals receiving documents in the post today or tomorrow (presuming the threats actually come to something) are strongly advised not to ignore them, especially if they are court documents.

Failure to respond to court documents could result in a default judgment being issued in the future and this could prove very costly indeed – possibly mounting to several thousand pounds.

So what should recipients of court documents do? Firstly it would be prudent to seek legal advice – Lawdit Solicitors can offer advice and guidance since they have been assisting people against these claims for some time now, but any lawyer with a sound knowledge of copyright issues will prove invaluable.

For those individuals who maintain they are innocent, a vigorous defense can be mounted against any allegations. In the majority of cases, all ACS:Law will have as evidence is an IP address harvested by an untested system in a foreign country, and that may not be enough to prove their case.

Indeed, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) recently told Which?, “We’re not convinced of the efficacy of the software and not confident in its ability to identify users.”

However, ACS:Law will select potential defendants very carefully and will likely focus on individuals with the weakest cases, have compromised or damaged their defense in some way, or have chosen not to respond to previous letters.

If you receive court documents in connection with an ACS:Law case during the next few days, do not panic. Please feel free to get in touch with us here at TorrentFreak in complete confidence. Your privacy will not be breached and we will point you in the right direction.

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