James Burt, a 24 year-old manager at games retailer Electronics Boutique, admitted uploading the game on November 6th, a week before its commercial release in Australia.

In a statement the Japanese games giant said it used a range of forensic techniques to track down the uploader and on 23rd November obtained a Federal Court search order. This was used to locate and seize items from Burt’s property in Sinnamon Park, Queensland, to be used in evidence in the case against him.

As part of the investigation, Burt was also ordered to allow access using his passwords to social networking sites, email accounts and other websites he had used.

Australia traditionally lags behind the United States and Japan when it comes to media releases, but with the release of New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii the reverse was true, leading Nintendo to refer to the leak as a “global issue”.

“This legal proceeding was commenced to protect the creative rights and innovation of game developers, and to combat the growing international problem of Internet piracy,” the company said in a statement.

The game was a sure fire hit on BitTorrent. Data collected by TorrentFreak indicated that by December 27th 2009, the game had been downloaded 1,150,000 times.

Nevertheless, the game was still a huge commercial success. The game sold in excess of 10 million units in its first 2 months on sale – that’s 1 in 6 of all Wii gamers buying a copy – making it the fastest-selling single-platform game ever.

It’s unclear how Mr Burt will be able to pay this huge amount in damages. His salary at Electronics Boutique is unlikely to cover it – if he still has a job there.

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

An NBC representative explained that the network will only cover the highlights because people “are not dying to watch lots of long-form content on a 13-inch screen.” However, at the same time NBC contradicts itself by announcing that it will do all it can to prevent people from accessing unauthorized live feeds or downloads of Olympic broadcasts.

While NBC doesn’t believe there is much demand for live coverage, it will do all it can to prevent the ‘few’ people who do from downloading or streaming the events online. “Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find,” said Rick Cotton, NBC’s Executive Vice President commenting on their Olympic mission.

Once again one of the major entertainment industry outfits has got it entirely wrong. If NBC really wants to prevent piracy they have to offer at least some sort of alternative. Cutting 2,200 hours of live web coverage back to just a few hundred is certainly not going to help in stopping piracy.

NBC reportedly has teamed up with Ustream and Justin.tv, two popular live streaming sites, to use filtering schemes in order to prevent illegal broadcasts. However, it is inevitable that they won’t be able to stop them all since there are dozens of live streaming sites. Preventing torrents from being uploaded will turn out to be even more problematic for the network.

During the Beijing Olympics two years ago, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) asked for “assistance” from the Swedish government with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing being shared via The Pirate Bay. This didn’t help much and during the weeks that followed millions of people continued to download broadcasts of Olympic events.

We assume that in the coming weeks most events will again appear online, despite NBC’s efforts to prevent the Olympics from being pirated.

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

Shortly after the movie’s 19th December release date an illicit copy of the movie appeared on the Internet. According to producer John M. Jacobsen the recording was made in an empty theater, prompting suspicions that a projectionist was involved.

“I think this is totally reprehensible, and I wish we knew who is behind it,” Jacobsen told Norwegian media. “Anyway we will go after those who have done this quite mercilessly. There are ways to track these things down.”

An investigation was immediately launched by the Filmkameratene studio, to be handled by the Simonsen law firm with notorious pirate hunter Espen Tøndel at the helm. Technicians went to work, systematically going through every copy of the movie sent out to find a match – that meant checking 103 analog and 20 digital copies.

Their detective work paid off. Simonsen said they had not only tracked the correct copy but also identified the IP-address from where the movie was first uploaded to the Internet. They took the information to the police but were notified that the case would not be a priority for them. Simonsen responded by taking the case to the courts.

Simonsen, a law firm which since 2006 had held a license to monitor alleged pirates and collect their IP-addresses, demanded that the ISP connected with the IP-address hand over the identity of the subscriber, something it had thus far refused to do. The request had the support of the Norwegian telecoms authorities which in this case made a special exception to the country’s Privacy Act, enabling the person’s identity to be handed to a group other than the police – if the court agreed.

On May 5th 2009, Simonsen received the decision from the court but the verdict was kept a secret from the public. Espen Tøndel said this was to prevent the possibility of evidence being spoiled. This lack of transparency caused an uproar, with thousands of Internet citizens demanding to know the verdict in this important case. Many argued that if there was evidence to be spoiled, it would’ve been spoiled by now.

Today in 2010, the verdict is still a mystery to the public, but at least one of the parties is disappointed with the court’s decision.

“I can confirm that the case is being appealed to the Supreme Court, but I can not confirm which of the parties has submitted the appeal, as that may indicate what the results were in the previous hearing,” said movie industry lawyer Rune Ljøstad.

The Supreme Court will now have to decide if it’s acceptable for privately owned companies with financial interests in the outcome of a case to be given the power to obtain the identity of an Internet subscriber behind an IP-address, whether or not they committed the alleged offense.

Despite the leak, Max Manus did incredibly well in Norway, breaking all records. Its 2009 theater run yielded almost NOK 200 million across 1.16 million tickets and the DVD sold 400,000 copies in the same year. From recording a loss in 2008, movie company Filmkameratene made a profit in 2009.

“There is a dramatic change for the better for us in 2009,” said producer Sveinung Golimo. “So we are not now concerned about the future.”

Privacy campaigners will look toward the forthcoming Supreme Court decision before sharing in his optimism.

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.

The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and eventually won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted temporarily as the case was appealed once again.

A few weeks ago the Supreme Court reviewed the case and ruled that ISPs can be forced to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. According to the decision by the Supreme Court, sites offering torrent files that link to copyrighted material are engaging in criminal activity.

This week the case once again appeared before the Court of Bergamo where it was decided that all Italian ISPs will have to deny their customers access to The Pirate Bay.

Pirate Bay lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus, Giuseppe Campanelli and Francesco Micozzi told TorrentFreak that the Court followed the same reasoning as the Supreme Court, and deemed it unnecessary to bring the case before the European Court of Justice.

According to the two lawyers The Pirate Bay is still considering whether to appeal this decision or not, but that will not prevent or delay the block. “We don’t know when Italian ISPs will begin to re-apply the Pirate Bay filters, but we think that this will happen very soon,” Micozzi commented.

Aside from appealing to the Supreme Court, the Pirate Bay’s legal team is also considering bringing the case before the European Court of Justice.

It is doubtful that the verdict will have a strong impact on the piracy rate in Italy. The proposed DNS-filtering scheme can be easily bypassed by Pirate Bay users and there are hundreds of alternative torrent sites that can replace The Pirate Bay.

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

A ruling by a court in Frankfurt on January 29th could now have put DigiProtect’s “Turn Piracy Into Profit” mass-warning business model into jeopardy.

An individual was sent a letter by the lawyer Udo Kornmeier on behalf of DigiProtect. The letter contained accusations of illicit file-sharing including a customary cash payment demand of around 651 euros to cover legal costs based on an infringement claim of 10,000 euros. It was accompanied by a demand to pay a further 150 euros in order to acquire a license from the copyright holder for the material downloaded.

While the file-sharer didn’t contest the 150 euro license fee, he refused to pay the 651 euros legal bill. DigiProtect’s lawyers countered with an offer for him to pay 450 euros plus the 150 euros license fee. Again the file-sharer rejected the offer.

DigiProtect then went on to sue the man for 651.80 euros and the case went to court.

In court the judge asked DigiProtect and its lawyers to open up their books to show what legal costs were actually incurred (and paid) to perform legal actions against the file-sharer and send him the letters. Both DigiProtect and their lawyer refused to submit the information.

During the hearing the judge discovered that the relationship between DigiProtect and its lawyers was covered by an agreement similar to the one it had previously with lawyers Davenport Lyons for their UK operations. The details of that arrangement were leaked out last year by a disgruntled insider and revealed some embarrassing truths about the operation.

DigiProtect and its German lawyer refused to allow the agreement between them to be shown in court which meant that the true costs of pursuing the file-sharer remained unproven.

The judge said that even if DigiProtect had paid 651.80 euros to its lawyers to pursue the file-sharer, these cannot be considered as involuntary damages since DigiProtect paid this fee to its lawyer voluntarily. Therefore the only involuntary damages in this case was the 150 euros rights holder licensing fee.

Due to this lack of transparency, the judge decided that the file-sharer did not have to pay DigiProtect the claimed 651.80 euros legal action costs, only the 150 euros licensing fee.

Clearly, if the lawyers can’t get their sizable share of the spoils in this “Turn Piracy Into Profit” operation, the whole business plan falls down. There was certainly no profit to be made from this file-sharer – time will tell if this effect ripples on to other cases.

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

As with most DRM, Ubisoft’s new anti-piracy solution needlessly hurts legitimate customers. Pirates will always find a way around the access restrictions and will be able to play the game offline without running into trouble. Because of this, Ubisoft’s plans were welcomed with skepticism among fellow game developers.

Gaming magazine Develop has asked several gaming industry figures what they think about Ubisoft’s new DRM. While some are against it and others showed support, the overall sentiment is that DRM itself is not going to stop piracy.

Gusto Games’ Luke Maskell is the most outspoken of them all. “I’m firmly against Ubisoft’s announcement, I think it’s a huge violation of privacy and is only punishing the legitimate customer; the pirates won’t have to worry about being online as they’ll find a way around pretty sharpish,” he commented.

Maskell was not the only one with reservations though. Adrian Hirst, Managing Director at Weaseltron, also stressed that the danger of DRM is that the pirated copy turns into a more desirable product than the retail version.

“Previous draconian attempts at copy protection have only served to outrage our very customers. Copy protection that makes the cracked copy of the game more appealing to the customer than the genuine one threatens to turn them away from purchasing at all,” he said.

Most of the other gaming insiders that were interviewed agreed with this assessment. DRM will only hurt the game if legitimate customers have to face more restrictions than those who choose to download a copy illegally.

“I don’t believe that online DRM on it’s own will ever stop piracy – your game will simply have that functionality stripped out by various hacking groups,” Ben Ward of Bizarre Creations said. “The only way that DRM will be accepted by consumers is if it is delivered inside a service which brings tangible, real-world benefits with it.”

Others were less outspoken against Ubisoft’s new DRM but everyone noted that it will be counter-effective if it’s too obtrusive or cumbersome. To us at TorrentFreak, these different opinions clearly suggest that for a long time the digital entertainment industry has chosen the wrong path to counter piracy.

Instead of trying to add more restrictions to the products they sell to customers, they should add in extra features for those who pay for the product. UbiSoft actually made it half way already by adding several advantages for players who play online, but they’re not quite there yet.

Logged in customers who play Ubisoft’s new games online will be able to save it remotely, so they can continue playing the game on other PCs. Continuing along these lines the company could easily include other benefits and extra features for online players. If they then drop the requirement to play online, they might actually have a superior product compared to the pirated version.

In the end it’s all about finding a way to frame or sell DRM as an advantage instead of a restriction.

The music streaming application Spotify is a great example of how ‘DRM’ can be an advantage. Spotify users can only access music when they’re logged in, which is the ultimate DRM. Still, no one has even brought this issue up because the service offers so many advantages over most other legitimate and illegitimate ways of enjoying music.

If those in the gaming and other digital entertainment industries start thinking in terms of adding benefits for paying customers instead of useless restrictions to keep pirates out, they would have a lot more satisfied customers. Perhaps even more importantly, they could sell a lot more products.

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

In these previous cases the pirated films were only on display in the stores, but the multinational electronics company LG takes it a step further. The company is selling TVs that have the functionality to accept a connection from an external USB device. This allows customers to enjoy pictures, music and videos directly on their TVs, all with a piracy endorsement from the manufacturer.

In the packaged English language manual, LG does not try to obfuscate the true purpose of this nifty USB feature – playing pirated movies. In the picture below, LG included pirated versions of The Incredibles and The Aviator, while explaining how easy it is to play the films directly on a TV.

LG seems to understand perfectly what customers want, but we doubt that the movie studios will be very excited about this piracy endorsement from the Koreans. Whether the pirated films were included intentionally is unknown, we expect that a company employee simply downloaded the movies off a file-sharing service out of habit or convenience.

Life’s Good isn’t it?

(via Fefe)

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

Just over a week after becoming available online in early November 2009, Ink pushed into TorrentFreak’s chart of top 10 most pirated movies with an incredible 400,000 downloads.

Unlike the majority of Hollywood movie bosses, the creators of Ink – Jamin and Kiowa Winans – decided to embrace their new-found pirate fans after the extra publicity pushed the movie to 16th place on IMDb’s movie meter and boosted DVD and Blu-ray sales. Kiowa wrote to TorrentFreak and said that the movie ending up on BitTorrent was “absolutely” the best thing that could’ve happened to it.

Now, Lars Sobiraj from German news outlet Gulli has interviewed Kiowa to see how things have progressed a couple of months on from the initial excitement.

As previously reported, Ink has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, so just how many of those translated into real-world sales? Kiowa says that is really hard to put an exact figure on that – they haven’t sold a DVD or Blu-ray for every download but sales have unquestionably gone up.

Money also came in from other routes too. As the movie gained popularity on BitTorrent, many Ink downloaders suggested that there should be a ‘donate’ button on the movie’s website so that fans could give money freely.

“We put that [donation link] up at the urging of some of the downloaders with the message ‘if you have watched Ink online for free and would like to contribute what you can, click here’,” Kiowa explains.

“Guess what country has been the most generous? Germany! Germans have been twice as generous as Americans so… thank you Germany. We have also shipped a lot of Deluxe Bundle fan packs to Germany so Ink seems to be a big hit there.”

Gulli asked Kiowa if she felt the movie had fallen victim to piracy, a notion she strongly denies.

“I think to say victim is to characterize piracy as an all-together awful thing. The piracy of Ink is unquestionably responsible for its popularity around the world. Sure our trailers have been out for over a year and have had plenty of views outside the US, but we think that 70% of the illegal downloads are coming from outside of the US and we do get a good number of international buyers at our online store every day,” she explained.

Before Ink was pirated, the movie’s IMDb rating was a lowly 12,991. As reported in our earlier article, it reached 16 and even moved up to the 14th position at one stage. Incredibly it has stayed as one of the top 200 movies in the world for the last two months, a feat that would have been impossible without the extra exposure.

Looking forward to future distribution models, Kiowa feels that everything will change during the next 10 years as people demand instant and simple access to media and their TVs and computers merge together into one device.

“That said, I’m not sure what the revenue model will be for films,” she notes. “Hollywood producers are quickly finding out that the instant films start circulating on DVD they will wind up on torrent sites.”

Kiowa broadly puts BitTorrent users into two camps – those who want media in an instant and those who want it for free. Noting that there are those who fall into both categories, she acknowledges the challenges that lie ahead in figuring out a way to make this situation bring revenue to the filmmakers.

“I think a reasonably-priced instant download the moment the movie becomes available would largely cure the piracy issue so we will see how it all shakes out over the next several years,” she adds.

As most observers are aware, many music and movie companies consider torrent sites as entities to be crushed and in recent years have set about a strategy to achieve that. Gulli asked Kiowa if she believes that is the correct strategy to deal with the problem.

While one could argue that non-physical digital formats such as MP3 are part of the reason that piracy has flourished in recent years, Kiowa feels that the invention of the iPod has helped to reduce piracy, largely through the existence of competition from one service – iTunes. The movie industry needs to catch up.

“Until the equivalent of the iPod is invented for film or long-format video files I think that piracy is going to be a huge battle ground, one in which I doubt Hollywood will win,” Kiowa predicts.

“There is always a smarter programmer out there that can move faster than bureaucracy. The film industry really needs to set its sights on overhauling its distribution system. Right now there are horrible things like region-coded DVDs that tie up a film’s rights in various countries and this is what has made the film business plenty of money over the years.”

The industry needs to move its thinking to encompass global distribution, says Kiowa, not concentrate on pushing movies out to dozens of separate territories.

“We are going to keep all the rights to Ink and not give them away country-by-country so that when that iPod-for-movies emerges Ink can be the first film that debuts to the whole world,” she says, adding: “That is the hope anyway.”

Looking to the future, partner Jamin is currently working on scripts for two new films, one a sci-fi psychological thriller called ‘The Frame’ and another a sci-fi fantasy called ‘Myth of Man’.

“For the time being we’re just really happy that Ink is rolling along and gaining fans around the world. How ever people come to the film, we’re just happy that they are watching it, Kiowa concludes.

“As Jamin likes to say, the battle of independent films is not piracy, it’s obscurity. Hey – at least we’re winning that one!”

The full interview conducted by Lars Sobiraj, is available here.

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

The statistics for all 2010 nominees, except documentary and foreign films, show that 27 of the 34 films were available on BitTorrent in DVD quality last night. Nearly half of the films have leaked as a screener and 10 of those are estimated to be leaked by Academy members.

Although the majority of the Oscar nominees are available online, the movie industry has certainly scored a small victory. Last year all films leaked in one format or another. On another positive note for the MPAA, the median time for films to leak after their US-release date has nearly doubled to 21 days. In 2003 it took only one day for most films to leak onto the Internet.

On the negative side, there were still 4 films that were available online before they they premiered in US movie theaters. In The Loop, The Hurt Locker, The White Ribbon and The Young Victoria all leaked in advance of their official premiere.

The graph below further shows that there are less retail DVD rips available compared to previous years, 44% versus 100% in 2008 and the years before. As Andy also mentions, this figure may go up a little before the official Oscar award ceremony broadcast.

Although this data suggests that the movie industry is becoming more effective in preventing screeners from leaking online, we have to emphasize that more than a third of the leaks originated from deviant Academy members who like to share the work of their colleagues.

The Oscar screener of Avatar was sent out relatively late, only a few weeks ago. It leaked onto the Internet today and is not included in the graphs above.

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

James Cameron and the rest of the Avatar crew probably cracked open a few bottles of Champagne to celebrate, but today they will wake up with a serious hangover.

Only a few days after the nominations were announced, a DVD screener of Avatar (2D) appeared online. Before today, only a lower quality Telesync copy of the film has been available on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks.

Ironically, the DVD screener that is now widely available online most likely leaked through one of the Academy Awards voters.

There is no doubt that Avatar will also score big in the list of most downloaded movies this year. The Telesync copy of the film that has been available for over a month was already downloaded by more than two million people.

It is expected that the DVD leak will easily double or even triple these figures. Avatar has been among the most searched for keywords on nearly every torrent site for more than a month already.

Twentieth Century Fox has been extra careful with sending out the DVD-screener of Avatar, as more Academy members received it mid January, just a few days before they had to vote. Although this did delay the leak, it couldn’t be prevented.

How and if the DVD-screener will affect the box-office revenues is up for debate. The film has already grossed more than $2 billion worldwide, which is an absolute record despite the relatively high piracy rate. In fact, high piracy numbers are often an indicator of success at the box-office and vice versa.

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

Last year several studios including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network took legal action against iiNet, claiming that the ISP did nothing to stop its customers from sharing copyright media via BitTorrent.

The ISP refuted the claim with a multi-layered defense, which was heard then adjourned in November 2009.

Passing his verdict today, Justice Cowdroy ruled that while the studio’s copyrights had indeed been infringed upon, iiNet did not authorize the copyright infringing activities of its subscribers and therefore the ISP could not be held responsible.

Notably, Justice Cowdroy said that iiNet had no control over BitTorrent networks and the ISP was covered under so-called “safe harbor” provisions.

“It is impossible to conclude that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement … [iiNet] did not have relevant power to prevent infringements occurring,” Justice Cowdroy said in his judgment.

AFACT had insisited during the original court case that iiNet should forward copyright infringement warnings to its customers on behalf of AFACT members, but the judge ruled that this was not the way copyright infringements should be handled.

Electronic Frontiers Australia said the outcome of the case was the “application of common sense” and Pirate Party Australia also welcomed the decision.

“This is a good decision by Justice Cowdroy, and reflects that there is no legal basis or obligation for any ISP to act in the interest of copyright holders, or to expect that they should disconnect any entity upon allegation of infringement without judicial oversight and due process,” said Rodney Serkowski, Party Secretary.

“Essentially an ISP should be considered similar to the postal service – they simply carry data in the form of packets, and that communication should be considered private,” he added.

In a statement, iiNet said it had “never supported or encouraged breaches of the law, including infringement of the Copyright Act of the Telecommunications Act,” adding that the company had always been a “good corporate citizen and an even better copyright citizen.”

After the huge distraction of this prolonged legal battle, iiNet said it would now like to get on with business, adding that it looks forward to working with the entertainment industry to make content available legally to reduce illicit file-sharing.

AFACT executive director, Neil Gane, said his group was extremely disappointed with the Court’s ruling.

“Today’s decision is a set back for the 50,000 Australians employed in the film industry,” he said in a statement.

“But we believe this decision was based on a technical finding centered on the Court’s interpretation of the how infringements occur and the ISPs’ ability to control them. We are confident that the Government does not intend a policy outcome where rampant copyright infringement is allowed to continue unaddressed and unabated via the iiNet network,” he added.

AFACT will have to pay all of iiNet’s substantial legal costs. Thus far, the group has declined to confirm whether it will appeal the Court’s decision.

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

Today, uTorrent version 2.0 was officially released. This new release is built to be more network friendly thanks to the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP) which aims to mitigate network congestion caused by poorly configured BitTorrent clients.

uTP is a new and improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol which is designed to be more network friendly than its predecessor. The current implementation often causes interference with other applications. This is one of the main reasons why ISPs try to slow it down, or even stop it altogether. uTP aims to solve this problem.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management is quite proud of the end result, and told TorrentFreak that most ISPs have also responded positively to the implementation of the uTP protocol.

“In general the ISPs who we have explained the technology to have been quite pleasantly surprised. There are occasional noisy skeptics who think its something evil, but they are generally poor confused souls who are more interested in selling a centralized vision of the internet rather than the distributed egalitarian system we have today,” Morris said.

“I’m excited about uTP finally arriving at a full scale deployment on the internet and I really hope that ISPs take the time to understand the potential benefits to them before they take decisions about how to manage this new class of traffic on their networks,” he added.

Aside from being gentle to the ISP’s networks, uTorrent 2.0 might also have a beneficial effect on the download speeds of individual users. Since there is less congestion, uTorrent users will experience no slowdowns in web-browsing.

Less congestion and a more efficient use of the network may eventually result in faster download speeds, which means that it will be a win-win situation for both ISPs and uTorrent users.

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

Below is an excerpt of Twitters blog post revealing the threat.

It appears that for a number of years, a person has been creating torrent sites that require a login and password as well as creating forums set up for torrent site usage and then selling these purportedly well-crafted sites and forums to other people innocently looking to start a download site of their very own. However, these sites came with a little extra — security exploits and backdoors throughout the system. This person then waited for the forums and sites to get popular and then used those exploits to get access to the username, email address, and password of every person who had signed up. Additional exploits to gain admin root on forums that weren’t created by this person also appear to have been utilized; in some instances, the exploit involved redirecting attempts to access the forums to another site that would request log-in information. This information was then used to attempt to gain access to third party sites like Twitter.

So, the company blames ’someone’ of installing backdoors in a torrent site script that was sold to prospective torrent sites operators, something that has apparently gone unnoticed for years. The question that comes to mind immediately is, if this is such a serious and widespread threat, why doesn’t Twitter name the source or at least give some examples of affected sites?

All of the popular public torrent sites are custom built and cannot be the source of the exploit. From the information Twitter has made available it seems they could be blaming a private tracker script for the attack – most private trackers also operate forums which matches Twitter’s description of the sites involved.

There are quite a few private tracker scripts out there and the most established ones, such as TBDev and Gazelle for example, have been examined by untold numbers of experts and come free of charge – any suggestion that they could be involved in underhand activity is unthinkable. But there are also a few scripts that are created by middle-men whose reputations are less-easily tested.

Accusations of including back doors and exploits in tracker code are not new. The owner of Template Shares, a site that sells a heavily modified version of the TBDev BitTorrent tracker script, has been accused by several people of installing backdoors which provide access to the user databases of customers’ sites.

Template Shares is used by hundreds of smaller private BitTorrent trackers.

To warn the public, other online services and the operators of the affected torrent sites, it would be appropriate if Twitter gave out some more information. TorrentFreak will continue to look into this case and will post an update if we find out more.

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

Yesterday the showdown of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Others v Newzbin Ltd began before in London’s High Court before Mr Justice Kitchin.

The case began at 10:30 on Monday with the barrister for the plaintiffs making his opening statement. As reported by Newzbin, in a 3 hour speech “mostly being full of how evil we are” the barrister explained what Usenet is along with a description of Newzbin.

The file format originally created by Newzbin – the .NZB – also had its functions explained along with an explanation by the barrister of how they compare to hyperlinks. Newzbin notes that much effort was put into trying to convince the Judge how .NZBs differ from hyperlinks.

Accusations were also leveled at Newzbin’s backend code, which the plaintiffs claim is designed to go looking specifically for copyright works on Usenet.

In contrast to the long speech by the plaintiffs, Newzbin took little time to state that they disputed most of what had been said so far and would address this in the evidence to come.

Later in the day witnesses for the plaintiffs were produced, including representatives from the MPAA-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

“[They] didn’t have much to say under cross-examination apart from they did a half-assed job analysing our site,” Newzbin reports.

Other witnesses included “some junior lawyers who confirmed they had harvested data from our listings but didn’t bother to check how much of it was actually under any form of copyright.”

According to Newzbin, the “star of the show” was an expert witness who was cross examined for an hour at the end of the day. Apparently he reported that it could be dangerous to auto-open an NZB meta-file file in a browser since it could lead to the user being infected by a virus. Strange guy.

Newzbin indicate they are happy with Judge Justice Kitchin, who they believe is “remarkably on the ball and switched on”. They are confident that this will be a fair trial since Justice Kitchin has already pulled up the plaintiff’s barrister on several points.

“This Judge certainly won’t blindly eat everything he’s told by the MPA,” Newzbin adds. “On the other hand it doesn’t mean he’ll accept our arguments easily either.”

The case continues.

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

There is no doubt that the final season of the show will again be a strong contender in 2010’s list. However, it already has the honor of becoming the first TV-show to leak online after being recorded using a webcam on a tropical beach.

The copy of the first episode that appeared online two days ago was recorded during a live screening hosted by ABC at an Oahu beach. Well over 10,000 fans of the show attended the screening and at least one of them decided to record it via their laptop webcam.

The recording was posted online a few hours later and is now available on virtually all BitTorrent sites. The video quality is ‘reasonable’ according to initial reports from people who downloaded the file. The sound quality on the other hand is not that good, which is not really a surprise considering that thousands of people were present.

The cammed version of the episode has been downloaded a little over 25,000 times on BitTorrent thus far, which is really low and unlikely to cause ABC to lose any viewers tonight. If anything, it might serve as free publicity reminding people that the new season is starting soon.

From the torrent site comments we indeed learn that the majority of fans say they would prefer to see the episode in full quality on TV, or download a copy on BitTorrent a few hours later. In this case, most people seem to prefer quality over early access, which must be a comfort to the makers of the show.

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

Billy Ray has been remixed by some big names including Junior Vasquez, David Morales, BT, Roger Sanchez and Todd Terry. By embracing BitTorrent and giving away two exclusive remixes, she hopes to reach out to a new audience.

“The reason why I chose this path is as a path to generating renewed attention to my stuff,” Billie Ray told TorrentFreak.

“I’ve been keeping up to date with online developments over the years and frankly I find it more fun than chasing indie labels around, waiting for someone to sign you for no money. It’s more fun to put out my own stuff and part of that is making sure people get to hear it.”

The remixes released on Mininova are part of the forthcoming ‘Crackdown Project’ which will kick off officially on the March 6th at the release party in Berlin.

In the past year Billie Ray has been sending out some free music to blogs, through which she received a lot of positive feedback, but this is the first time she has used BitTorrent to distribute her music.

This doesn’t mean that her music wasn’t available on BitTorrent already, of course. When we asked her how she felt about these unauthorized copies that are floating around, Billie Ray said: “It happens, so I can’t grumble really. I make some money from selling that work still so it’s all good. It’s all pocket-money these days.”

Unlike many other artists, Billie Ray doesn’t seem to have much faith in the new (legal) music streaming services that have surfaced in recent years, labeling them as rip-offs.

“Things like Spotify and Last.fm I do not wish to support. They give free unlimited streaming without paying the artists. They say they do, but they don’t,” she said, adding that she made less than $4 from these services so far. “I think they’re killing music off for good.”

She is not the first artist to complain about the revenue generated by Spotify. Lady Gaga has been complaining bitterly as well, although the labels might be to blame for this, since they tend to keep a big chunk of the money.

From her release on BitTorrent she’s not making any more direct money, that’s for sure, but seeing thousands of downloads in a week might cheer her up a little. Being heard, whether it’s through BitTorrent or Spotify, will eventually benefit artists in the long run.

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.

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Most of the upcoming features of the Falcon project are still being developed, but those who download the latest Alpha release have the option to take a peak at what to expect from the future. Below we sum up some of the key features.

Access Anywhere

Allowing users to access their BitTorrent downloads from anywhere through a simple web-interface is one of the main goals of the Falcon project. Without having to configure uTorrent and home networks so that they can be accessed remotely, users can simply head over to the Falcon page and connect to their client instantly.

The easy to use web interface is as secure as it gets, a major improvement over the Web UI currently available. When logged in, it gives users all the controls they are familiar with in their regular PC client. Torrents can be added, paused and removed using an interface with a look and feel identical to that of the uTorrent application.

Those who want to try the remote access features require an invite for now. Invites are sent out regularly and those who leave their email address behind should receive one within a few days.

Download Anywhere

Aside from the added security and easy setup, accessing your torrents via the Falcon web-interface offers another advantage – remote downloading. Once a file has finished downloading you can transfer a copy of the file to a remote computer via the web-interface.

This feature is not enabled in the current version of the Falcon web-interface. However, it has been publicly announced in the uTorrent forums so we expect that it will return soon.

Streaming

Another new feature of the Falcon project is the added option to stream video files while downloading. Instead of having to wait until a file has finished downloading, users can already start watching video provided that the download speed is sufficient.

“Our hope is to transform getting media using uTorrent from a ‘load-wait-watch-tomorrow’ to more of a ‘point-click-watch’ experience,” Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak, commenting on the new feature.

Easy Sharing

Also new in the Falcon release is the “Send Torrent” feature. This feature is particularly useful when you want to share torrents with people who do not have a BitTorrent client installed yet.

Right clicking a torrent in uTorrent shows a “Send Torrent” option which then brings up a URL similar to this one. This is a direct link to a download of the uTorrent client with the torrent file included.

Finding Torrents

The Falcon release is expected to make it easier for users to find torrents. The uTorrent team didn’t want to comment on how this will be integrated, but Simon Morris has stated that they are working on “better ability for torrent sites to promote content or search within the client.”

When we asked if this means that uTorrent will come with a built in torrent search engine, Morris said that they are more interested in “APIs rather than bloating the uTorrent user experience.” We’ll see what this means in the months to come.

Further Improvements

The features listed above are just a few of many that will be added to the new uTorrent clients. The latest Alpha release also had a ‘minify interface’ option, for example, and the development team is also working on speed improvements, UI improvements and optional file security features.

Exciting times ahead for uTorrent users.

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

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.