The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

DL then wrote to the individuals demanding several hundred pounds to make the threat of a lawsuit disappear. Some paid up, but many did not, and the only cases DL took to court were against those who didn’t defend themselves.

Generating revenue from porn proves controversial

Then the law firm overplayed its hand and got into bed with DigiProtect, the German piracy exploitation outfit with a catalog of hardcore porn titles to its name. The rights were signed over to the company by the copyright holders so that DigiProtect could use them to generate revenue – lots and lots of revenue.

After mountains of bad publicity, DL withdrew from this business model. In May this year, the exact same scheme reappeared with UK lawyers ACS:Law. TorrentFreak asked company owner Andrew Crossley about the connections between ACS and DL – his reply: “NONE”. However, it was crystal clear that there were many links, not least that staff from DL were now working at ACS:Law directly on these cases – known cyber-squatter Terence Tsang as one example.

We’ve known all along that if those threatened put up a spirited defense and refused to be cowed they were never taken to court, but we had no proof as to the mechanism employed. Then, out of nowhere, months ago someone from inside either Davenport Lyons or DigiProtect leaked lots of sensitive documents to German news outlet Gulli.

Having remained secret until now, the documents made very interesting reading and along with a helping hand from TorrentFreak and armed with the leaked personal details and email addresses of some of the letter recipients, Firebird77 at Gulli was able to confirm the authenticity of the documents.

Document 1 – Ranking alleged infringers in order to decide who to pursue

The first document reveals how the targets are ranked based on an estimation of how likely it is that they will pay up. Each alleged infringer has their details filled in on a form (download here from WikiLeaks). The document shows that despite the claims that an IP address alone is irrefutable evidence of an infringement and will lead to being taken to court, the reality is rather different.

Letter recipients are given a ranking based on many parameters. Does the law firm want to continue to pursue the person? What are the chances of success? A zero would mean “no action” up to ten which would mean the respondent is ripe for maximum pressure. One letter recipient hired Michael Coyle at Lawdit Solicitors to defend him and this earned him a “three”.

One part of the form is entitled “Circumstances” and this is a very surprising section indeed. Despite the “fact” that the law firms supposedly already have solid evidence of infringement that they say will lead to court action if recipients don’t comply, the section seems to show that they make their decisions on who to pursue based on the recipients’ personal circumstances.

One circumstance is labeled “impecuniosity”, i.e the letter recipient is flat broke. Another is whether the recipient is on state benefits – this is expected to be proven by way of copies of benefit books and/or letters. TorrentFreak has evidence that one gentleman was asked to prove that he was indeed disabled in order to make the claims go away. Other circumstances include whether the recipient is a pensioner, a student or a child.

One other circumstance is an eyebrow-raising “out of jurisdiction” (no rightful claim could be made the against the recipient) along with whether or not the individual was aware of that fact.

The form also lists possible defenses that recipients rely on, including the breach of their wireless router, a virus infected PC, not being at home when the infringement occurred, no knowledge of infringement or the possibility that someone else in the location carried out the infringement.

Document 2 – Letter from lawyer Dr Kornmeier from Kornmeier & Partner to Brian Miller at Davenport Lyons

The 14 page document (download from WikiLeaks) details the agreement DigiProtect enters into with rights holders in order to exploit their copyrights for profit.

Included is a section which confirms that the original rights holders sign over the rights to DigiProtect so that they are legally allowed to make the works (hardcore porn movies) publicly available on P2P networks such as BitTorrent. Dr Kornmeier asks: “Does this constitute any problem under UK law?”

According to page 2 of the letter, when the recipient of these letters pay up, the spoils are divided up as follows – 51% to DigiProtect, 37.5% to Davenport Lyons and 11% to DigiRights Solutions. The remaining pages detail the exact business arrangement along with a list of the hundreds of porn movies covered by the agreement.

TorrentFreak discussed the documents with staff at the excellent BeingThreatened.com, a site set up to support and inform those targeted by Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law in the UK.

“These documents confirm what we have long suspected,” they told us. “This scheme is not about getting justice for the rightsholders at all; it is there to fill the pockets of companies like DigiProtect by exploiting many innocent people. Everyone with an IP address has reason to be worried about becoming a victim of these exploitative practices, whether they use P2P networks or not.”

Indeed, John Stagliano, boss of porn company Evil Angel which also worked with DigiProtect, admitted to earning less than £50 from each infringement and told the BBC the scheme “…was completely misrepresented” to him.

Uk consumer magazine Which? earlier reported Davenport Lyons to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority for alleged “bullying”. It will be interesting to see how these documents develop that case.

Thus far just two documents have been made public. Stay tuned for further updates.

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

The case continued in the Federal Court, with iiNet barrister Richard Cobden beginning his closing submissions.

Referring to the allegations by AFACT that it detected around 97,000 instances of copyright infringement carried out by iiNet subscribers, Cobden said that there was actually only sufficient evidence to prove that a single subscriber had carried out any. That individual was the mole planted by AFACT and DtecNet to carry out deliberate ‘infringements’ on behalf of the plaintiffs.

iiNet’s protection under Safe Harbor provisions which limit a carrier’s liability under the Copyright Act remained intact, since no infringer had been identified other than AFACT’s own investigator. Since he was authorized by the plaintiffs, he committed no offenses and could not even be accurately categorized as an infringer. On this basis, iiNet did not disconnect him.

Cobden admitted that AFACT’s method of counting infringements indicated that it’s possible that from a sample of 20 iiNet users, on average they could have downloaded two to three movies each in the reported monitoring period of 59 weeks.

“It’s clear from the accounts that ultimately the [infringing] activity is likely to account for a very modest percentage of that user’s activity [and] a very modest percentage of their quota,” said Cobden as reported by ITNews.

Cobden went on to say that this didn’t amount to the “dramatic” amounts of infringement alleged by AFACT, so there was no evidence that this activity drove the uptake of iiNet high-bandwidth accounts from which the ISP profited.

Disconnecting users on such limited numbers of infringements shown on the sample accounts would have been a disproportionate response, he added.

The iiNet barrister also spoke in detail on iiNet’s privacy responsibilities under Section 112E of Australia’s Telecommunications Act, which he said undermined AFACT’s claims that by not complying with its requests it authorized the infringing activities of its subscribers. Detailed information on this key aspect of iiNet’s defense can be found here.

iiNet was never legally obliged to deal with AFACT infringement notices, Cobden told the court, noting that the law concerning copyright “authorization” does not require any ISP to suspend or terminate a customer’s account.

Cobden attacked allegations by AFACT that iiNet’s business model relies on illegal file-sharing, saying that the anti-piracy outfit had a distorted view of the world.

“In many ways the applicants look at everything that iiNet does entirely through the prism of their own concern for copyright infringement,” he said, noting that the company had been in business for many years and had simply kept up with offerings from its rivals Telstra and Optus.

“Once you take that prism away and look at it in terms of business and keeping up-to-date with technologies, and keeping its customers happy, almost every document, internal document, takes on an entirely different reflection,” he added, as quoted by ZDNet.

Cobden said there was zero evidence to back up AFACT allegations that iiNet users burned downloaded material onto CDs and DVDs and distributed them. This, he said, significantly decreased the number of copyright infringements claimed by AFACT.

iiNet’s legal team will continue with their closing submissions next week.

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.

In this short time span it was downloaded by more than 400,000 people on BitTorrent alone, earning it a spot in TorrentFreak’s chart of top 10 most pirated movies this week.

For most Hollywood bosses this is usually a trigger to start complaining about lost revenue, but the makers of Ink are welcoming their new pirate audience.

In an email to the followers of their newsletter, Jamin and Kiowa Winans say that they have “embraced the piracy” and are “just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.” Thanks to the pirated copy their movie jumped to 16th place on IMDb’s movie meter, and according to the makers this increased popularity also boosted DVD and Blu-ray sales.

Who needs a hefty marketing budget to promote a movie (and merchandise) when they have BitTorrent? Sent out a few hours ago, here’s the mailing in full plus a follow up response from Kiowa.

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn’t expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it, we’ve embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb’s movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world.

This all started as a result of the completely underground buzz that you’ve each helped us create. We’ve had no distributor, no real advertising and yet the word of mouth that you’ve generated has made the film blow up as soon as it became available worldwide. So many of you came to see the movie multiple times, bringing friends and family and many of you have bought the DVD and Blu-ray from us. All of this built up and built up and suddenly it exploded.

We don’t know exactly where this will all lead, but the exposure is unquestionably a positive thing.

Ink hits Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes and many more tomorrow! Remember to get your signed copies, t-shirts and posters at the Ink Store.

Thank you so much for the constant love and support.

Jamin and Kiowa
Double Edge Films

And the follow up response we got from Kiowa, in reply to this article.

Dear Ernesto,

To say we are shocked by all this news and are digesting it rapidly is an understatement. We made this film in Denver, CO on a budget of $250,000 and have fought to bring it to 15 cities ourselves over the past ten months. Hollywood has claimed that they don’t know how to market the film or that it doesn’t have an audience, and what BitTorrent has done in the last four days is prove, unequivocally, that Hollywood is wrong.

So is this the best thing that could happen to our little film? Absolutely! There is no way this many people would know about the film otherwise, or that our IMDb MovieMeter would have shot up an astounding 81,000% from a few days of activity over the torrent sites. What Hollywood would calculate as lost dollars, we calculate as fans earned. Due to many suggestions from downloaders over the past few days we have established a Donate button on our Store page for people to contribute what they can. Thank you for posting that info.

We’re not looking to get rich, but would like to pay back our investors and the enormous amount of personal debt we’ve gone into making the film. We’re also not looking to make Hollywood films (Jamin has had several opportunities) and plan on continuing the march of making fiercely independent films. In order to do that we have to count on the power of the people, eyeballs all over the world and torrenters to throw our film a few bucks apiece. It’s the indie film model of the future and we appreciate each and every person who takes the time to watch our film. It appears we’re all rebels here… so let’s wave that flag proud.

Again, we are really floored that all of this is happening and that you’ve opened up the conversation!

All the best,

Kiowa K. Winans

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. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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.

“As the law is today, you can not have a media center without breaking the law,” he told TorrentFreak.

“When I think of a media center it is a place where you have all your movies, pictures and music together. You can only do that by having a digital copy of the movie.”

Henrik told us that he had taken this action to draw attention to laws which allow him to copy DVDs for his own personal use, but forbid him to remove the DRM in order to do so. In his confession he asked Antipiratgruppen for a response by December 1st, indicating if they are prepared to take action against him.

The group has announced that Henrik will indeed get a response, but didn’t tell him directly, instead preferring to comment via the press.

“It is a political matter, and we have sent it to the Association of Danish Videodistributors so they can consider it. But Henrik Andersen will get a reply by 1st December,” said Antipiratgruppen lawyer Thomas Schlüter to Comon.

Schlüter went on to say that proving this type of infringement is usually impossible.

“Unless people confess, then it’s impossible to prove that they have broken copy protection. We can not break down the door to people’s homes and explore what they have available on their media server,” he said.

Poul Dylov, director for Warner Bros Denmark and chairman at the Association of Danish Videodistributors, said they will have a meeting next week to decide whether to report the matter to the police.

Dylov added they have not previously encountered a similar event, and consider the confession to be a media event, an assessment with which Henrik agrees.

“Of course, until now the film industry has not met the intentions of the law and as the culture minister will not force the film industry [to allow copying by removing DRM] by changing the law, then there must indeed be an awareness of the problem through the media,” he explains.

“But the whole problem lies in a sense with the Minster of Culture who does not follow its own interpretation of the law and the intentions of it. This gives the film industry an easy ride to the detriment of consumers,” he added.

All will be revealed here, on or before December 1st.

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

The case continued Wednesday in the Federal Court, with iiNet CEO Michael Malone taking the stand for the third consecutive day.

Again AFACT barrister Tony Bannon tried to portray iiNet as an encourager of copyright infringement on its network, by referring to iiNet marketing where the ISP measures bandwidth in terms of how much music or TV episodes people can download. Malone said the company did this simply to give a customer an easier barometer by which to measure their consumption.

When questioned on the music aspect, Malone said the company referred to legal downloads, such as those from iTunes. Bannon countered by saying this could not be the case, since iiNet did not count downloads from iTunes towards a customer’s bandwidth quota.

According to iTWire, a welcome email from iiNet to new customers ended with, “Thanks for choosing iiNet. Happy downloading.”

By drawing attention to the above ponts, AFACT hopes to show that iiNet encouraged infringements, thereby losing its safe habor protection as a carrier.

CW reports that AFACT presented press articles regarding the levels of BitTorrent transfers on the Internet, in the context of actions taken by ISPs in order to limit P2P traffic.

In one article, Malone had said that BitTorrent transfers accounted for around 50% of all Internet traffic and admitted in court that BitTorrent had been used on iiNet’s network since it became available. He went on to agree that while much of this traffic involved the transfer of movies and TV shows, he didn’t feel that “..every young person in Australia is downloading illegally using BitTorrent.”

One exchange apparently raised a laugh in the courtroom when Bannon accused Malone of attracting heavy-usage customers in order to boost iiNet profits.

“I would prefer [those customers] go to someone else and let someone else be sued,” said Malone.

“And you’re happy to take their money in the meantime?” Bannon asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

Yet again, Bannon raised the issue of iiNet’s failure to forward AFACT copyright infringement allegations to its customers. However, an email presented from the Internet Industry Association’s Peter Coroneos, indicated that he was concerned that doing so could lead to an assumption that ISPs are responsible for the actions of their customers.

In the email exchange with Malone, Coroneos said it would be preferable and advantageous for all involved if the content owners could provide some legal alternatives.

After Bannon showed the court documentation showing policies in place at rival ISPs to deal with allegations of copyright infringement, Malone again confirmed that iiNet has no formal policy on how to deal with these type of allegations, noting that the company had yet to be presented with evidence of what he described as a “repeat infringer”.

Earlier in the case, Malone had defined a repeat infringer as one who had been proven as such by a court, but Bannon mocked Malone, asking if the iiNet CEO had just heard what he’d said and would he like to think about the question again for a moment.

Malone said he didn’t and Bannon accused him of treating the proceedings as a game.

The case continues tomorrow.

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

“I’ve started this because i don’t want to be a criminal,” Henrik told TorrentFreak.

“As the law is today, you can not have a media center without breaking the law. When I think of a media center it is a place where you have all your movies, pictures and music together. You can only do that by having a digital copy of the movie.”

“In my media center I have digital copies of my legally purchased DVD movies,” he writes in his confession. “Overall, I suppose I’ve made digital copies of approx. 100 films and 10 seasons of TV series,” he added.

On the surface this should be fine, since Danish copyright law allows for the private, non-commercial copying of purchased DVDs.

12.–(1) Anyone is entitled to make or have made, for private purposes, single copies of works which have been made public if this is not done for commercial purposes. Such copies must not be used for any other purpose.

Unfortunately the law does not allow for the circumvention of the DRM on the disks in order to do so.

75.c –(1) It is not permitted to circumvent effective technological measures without the consent of the rights holder.

“Since the above copying is a violation of Danish law, I would therefore like to declare myself in violation of section 75 of the copyright law,” Henrik told Antipiratgruppen.

While previously acknowledging this catch 22 situation, Denmark’s Ministry of Culture felt that the situation would shortly rectify itself.

“…it is expected that in future copy protection will be designed in such a way that it will be possible to take one or more copies for personal use, and this is certainly the intention of the law,” they wrote.

However, as Henrik points out, while this might be the government’s plan, the movie industry has failed to live up to this vision, hence his intended piracy martyrdom to draw attention to the issue.

“As the culture minister sees no reason to change the law, she must, in my opinion, not understand the problem, therefore I choose to confess to you, to see whether you are prepared to get the legislation tested in court,” says Henrik as he concludes his confession.

Henrik has given Antipiratgruppen until December 1st to respond. Even given a prosecution on a plate, it’s extremely unlikely they will take him up on his offer.

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

What bothered us the most is that the item conveniently mixed file-sharing with commercial piracy, while linking it to organized crime, human trafficking and child prostitution. This setup is a bit misleading to say the least. That aside, the claimed role that piracy plays in organized crime is based on an MPAA-funded study we have previously debunked.

The MPAA’s stance didn’t really surprise us that much though. Their job is to manipulate public opinion in the hope that less people will engage in illicit file-sharing. But it was disappointing to see that CBS didn’t care to bring someone in to counter the arguments of the anti-piracy lobbyists.

No, instead they managed to get director Steven Soderbergh on, who joined the movie industry trade group by providing more twisted facts. Reciting the MPAA’s propaganda, Soderbergh said he wished the Internet was never invented. “Piracy is costing Hollywood $6 billion a year at the box office,” he told the reporter, adding that “as the margins of profit shrink, fewer projects get made, which means fewer people go to work.”

These statements are both inaccurate, or at least highly doubtful. The $6 billion statistic Soderbergh is referring to actually comes from an MPAA-funded report for which the sources were never revealed. In fact, the MPAA itself had to release a statement saying that they “made a mistake” with one of the figures, but they continue to use the report nonetheless.

Similarly, Soderbergh’s claim that “fewer projects get made” was debunked only last week after Sony boss Michael Lynton made a similar statement. The opposite seems to be true. Hollywood is far from bankrupt. In the past decade box office earnings actually increased significantly.

The only piece of the entire item that was pretty accurate and worth watching was the explanation of how BitTorrent works. John Malcolm, a former Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA shows that his work for the trade group paid off, as it turned him into a BitTorrent expert (video below).

The entire piece is disappointing nevertheless. It fails to ask the questions about why people download movies illegally and acts as if the movie industry is a powerless victim. Perhaps Hollywood should start to see the millions of illegal downloaders as potential customers instead of thieves. There’s a huge demand for online entertainment, so why not compete with piracy instead of spending millions of dollars fighting it?

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. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

Today, iiNet CEO Michael Malone was questioned at length over dealings he had with Westnet, another ISP which was acquired by his company for AUS $81 million in May 2008.

Westnet had developed an automated system to pass on infringement notices from copyright holders to its customers, a process which Malone earlier described as “making more work for no benefit,” and was said to be scathing in defense of due process and consumer rights.

“Taking the opposing argument, a random third party is lodging an unsubstantiated accusation against a customer and you’re passing it on?” wrote Malone in an email to Westnet, continuing, “Your current approach is doing damage to the industry and iiNet’s position on this matter.”

According to itNews, today Malone admitted he had “hit the roof” when he had discovered Westnet’s policy on infringement notices.

When any company acquires another there is often a need to standardize procedures and policies, and with iiNet and Westnet the position was no different. Malone said that whenever he found differences in policies between the two companies he took steps to bring those of Westnet into line with those at iiNet. He also stated that he was unaware that Westnet had failed to follow his instructions and adopt iiNet group policy following the acquisition.

One of the reasons he sought to change the Westnet policy, he said, was to bring the company into line with the position held by the Internet Industry Association on the issue.

Cross-examining Malone on iiNet’s role in providing a broadband service which enabled users to share movies using BitTorrent, senior counsel Tony Bannon for the movie industry referred to infringement notices sent to iiNet for the Sony movie, Pineapple Express.

According to CW, Malone responded that as a mere service provider, iiNet had no way of knowing if any of its customers were engaged in copyright infringement, but could confirm that the individual who allegedly committed the breaches was still an iiNet customer.

The company was not aware, however, if the customer continued to breach copyright.

The case continues tomorrow.

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

What’s most interesting about the site is that its users can also browse torrents based on an actor or director, a feature that other torrent sites lack. With just a single click users can list all the films where Patrick Swayze made an appearance, or all the films directed by Quentin Tarantino.

“The actors and directors can be added by the users when they upload a torrent file,” Files24 founder Oleg told TorrentFreak. “Also if we recognize the movie, we automatically check and fill in any missing data,” he added.

Although the site also lists music and games, thus far these advanced searches only work for movies. TV-shows are oddly enough listed in the movies section but Oleg told TorrentFreak that a TV and software section will be added in the near future.

The navigational structure and design of the site is not the only thing that’s unique to Files24 though. According to one of the site’s founders, Files24 also has a dedicated tracker that is optimized to facilitate the highest download speeds.

“We track which country users come from and the tracker then gives priority to peers from their own country. As a result users can download at much higher speeds,” Files24’s Oleg told TorrentFreak.

One of the downsides of the site is that users are only permitted to upload torrents with a Files24 tracker, so this may severely limit the number of torrents that will be added to the site. On the other hand this is also one of the upsides, since this will stop a great deal of spam and fake files from being uploaded.

Files24 went live yesterday and currently lists some 40,000 torrents. It is clear that the site is still work in progress but the new features the site has to offer will be welcomed by many BitTorrent users. Of course they will also be frowned upon by Hollywood. Nothing new there.

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

However, those who thought that these landmark cases would change public opinion towards file-sharing are wrong. In fact, not even the draconian anti-piracy legislation that went into effect in Sweden this spring could change social norms towards downloading movies and music without the permission of copyright holders.

These findings are the result of the Cyber Norms sociological research project carried out by Swedish researchers. They conducted survey interviews among 1,000 people between the ages of 15 and 25 to measure the strength of the social norms towards illegal file sharing. The aim was to find out whether the newly implemented anti-piracy legislation (IPRED) had been successful in reducing the gap between legal and social standards.

The findings of the surveys show that despite stronger anti-piracy legislation, the attitudes of young Swedes towards piracy haven’t changed.

“Despite the intensive efforts of the government during the six-month performance period, social support for copyright law in relation to file sharing is still at a record low. Young people in the survey do not feel any social pressure to refrain from interchange, whether from adults or peers,” researcher Måns Svensson comments.

Interestingly, the new law does seem to have an effect on the file-sharing habits of the younger Swedes. The percentage of people who say they don’t download any files illegally has increased from 22 percent in February to 39 percent in September. However, as the norms do not reflect the letter of the law it will be hard to maintain compliance, which could result in an increase in piracy in the months to come if people feel less threatened by possible punishments.

“In cases where the law is not supported by the social norms, it makes it extremely difficult to maintain compliance. Humans tend to follow social pressure rather than the letter of the law. With regard to intellectual property and copyright provisions, the Internet and file sharing technologies have created new conditions. In a short time, the social norms have developed in a direction that gives very little support of the law,” Svensson explained.

The study emphasizes that the law does not reflect what the general public considers to be legal, fair use, or even moral. Most people don’t feel that they’re doing anything wrong when they download an MP3 or share a movie, often because the legal alternatives are hard to find, full of DRM or simply overpriced.

So, as long as the entertainment industries fail to innovate and offer some real competition to piracy, the social norms wont change.

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. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

After receiving a complaint from Microsoft, GoDaddy temporary hijacked the myBittorrent domain, but after emails back and forth the owners managed to regain control. In the years that followed the two founders continued business as usual, frequently changing the look and layout of the site.

In fact, the two changed plans so often that they never really managed to add new features to the site. “Instead of adding new things we were always spending time on fixing features that used to work just fine,” Rex, one of the site’s founders told TorrentFreak.

Nevertheless, myBittorrent grew out to become one of the largest torrent sites, serving torrents to millions of visitors every month. This popularity, together with the increased legal pressure against fellow torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova, raised doubts with Rex’s partner, who wanted to scale down.

Eventually this led to a rift between the two owners. Rex wanted to continue with the site, but his partner opted to close down the operation permanently. To resolve the dispute the two decided to go their separate ways. This summer myBittorrent was shut down for good, but not before a replacement was in place.

To fill the gap left by myBitTorrent, Rex launched a new site under a new name – yourBittorrent.

“The biggest difference between both sites is that yourBittorrent has verified and adult torrents,” Rex told TorrentFreak, adding that he plans to include many new features in the near future, including an integrated subtitle search engine.

“YourBittorrent will soon have a few million subtitles and IMDB-links linked to all movies and TV-shows. The advanced search will also be extended to allow people to look for subtitles. YourBittorrent is going to be the first site where you can do that,” Rex said.

Another key feature is that the site will verify torrents to prevent the appearance of fake files and spam. “YourBittorrent has its own verification system with 60,000 verified torrents, and unlike some other torrent sites, we do take measures against fake files,” Rex told TorrentFreak.

Thus far 2009 has not been the best year for BitTorrent. Many sites have gone down or received negative verdicts in court, so it’s good to see that yourBittorrent continues where myBittorrent left off.

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. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

Today’s report is based on data from over 17,221 unique users in a few dozen public BitTorrent swarms, collected by the Tribler P2P research team at Delft University of Technology.

The results in the table below show the market share for each individual client. In common with our previous reports, only 5 clients reached the 1% threshold, the remaining 14 that were encountered are grouped in the ‘other’ category. Some clients were not identified by libTorrent (rakshasa) and those ended up in the unknown ‘category’.

The changes in market share compared to our September report are also included, and these show some interesting trends. First of all, uTorrent extended its user base and now has a massive 60 percent market share. Vuze, BitComet and BitTorrent’s Mainline client all lost market share.

Transmission, on the other hand, keeps on growing. Its market share increased 23 percent and might take over BitComet’s fourth place soon. More on this in our December report.

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

However, Glickman is not the only one to be critiqued by Hollywood’s bosses. Cnet reports that the MPAA has already fired three leaders of its anti-piracy operations. The MPAA’s general counsel Greg Goeckner has been told to leave at the end of the year, and their director of worldwide anti-piracy operations and the deputy director of Internet anti-piracy have also been fired.

Sources in the film industry said that the three were thrown out because the anti-piracy operations of the MPAA were unsatisfactory, and “lacked aggressiveness.” The MPAA’s anti-piracy division will not cease its activities though, but in addition to the layoffs it will remove the term ‘anti-piracy’ from its name and replace it with ‘content protection’.

Under their new name they will continue to go after the BitTorrent site isoHunt – whose owner they promised to hunt down for life – and other sites they believe are a cause of movie industry losses. Unlike the RIAA, the MPAA has refrained from going after individual downloaders, and thus far there has been no indication that this will change anytime soon.

Legal battles aside, the main task of the MPAA will be to lobby for tougher anti-piracy legislation, a role that is now mostly fulfilled by music industry trade groups such as the BPI and IFPI.

The current layoffs are most likely the result of the rapidly increasing piracy rate of movies. However, instead of changing their name and replacing a few heads, the movie studio bosses have to consider whether legislating and lobbying is the right move to beat piracy. Maybe they should consider adapting to the digital era by making it easy for consumers to download legally at reasonable prices.

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