TorrentFreak

The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide

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  • Uncovering The Dark Side of P4P

    P4P is touted as the new and improved P2P. The technology has the potential to lower bandwidth costs for ISPs and speed up downloads for P4P enabled filesharing clients. There is a dark side to this new technology though. The strong anti-piracy connections are fuel for conspiracy theorists, and Net Neutrality might be at stake.

  • Find and Share Music with TinySong

    TinySong is an easy to use website where users can search for music and share tracks with friends via a direct link. The website is linked to Grooveshark, a P2P powered music service, that allows users to manage and store their entire music library “in the cloud”.

  • Noel Gallagher of Oasis Speaks Out on Piracy

    Noel Gallagher from the 50 million-selling band Oasis has been chatting about piracy on the UK’s Radio 1. He jokes about mainstream journalists asking him about non-existent leaks from the new album and encourages everyone to download the music of rival bands. Overall, he’s pragmatic and upbeat, looking forward to filling his swimming pool with mineral water.

  • Comcast vs. BitTorrent, What’s Next?

    Yesterday, the FCC ruled that Comcast’s network management practices that specifically targeted BitTorrent users, were unfair. The ruling is a small victory for Net Neutrality, but it wont stop ISPs from going after the heavy bandwidth users, not at all.

  • UK Game Piracy: Propaganda, Evidence and Damages

    This week, alleged game pirates in the UK have been condemned to the ruination of huge fines and misery. Well, not quite. See, if defendants don’t turn up in court, it’s easy to get a default judgment and huge damages because no-one contests the evidence. So what’s the truth and what evidence do the lawyers really have?

  • The Pirate Bay Appeals Italian Blockade

    The Pirate Bay has decided to fight the decision of an Italian judge after it ordered ISPs to block access to the popular tracker. The blocks didn’t prove particularly effective as traffic from Italy only increased but nevertheless, The Pirate Bay is determined to reverse the decision.

  • Olympic Torrents More Popular Than Ever

    This week, close to two million people have downloaded the Olympics opening ceremony, which makes it the most pirated TV-show of the week – again. The International Olympic Committee is not too happy about it, and they are urging the Swedish government to take on The Pirate Bay.

  • IOC Wants Olympic Torrents Off The Pirate Bay

    In an official letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has asked for “assistance” from the Swedish government with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing to be shared on The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay, however, does not plan to take anything down, and renamed their tracker to The Beijing Bay.

  • Shareaza Team Fights Back With Project Panthera

    The team behind the Shareaza client have recently had a tough time, having been the victim of a music industry conspiracy to steal their brand name and destroy goodwill. Undeterred they are fighting back and today proudly announce the development of a brand new filesharing client with BitTorrent support – Project Panthera.

  • Tackling College Piracy: MPAA and RIAA’s Favorite

    In part one of our look into the anti-piracy efforts at universities, we saw that Missouri S&T used a simple home grown system, ignoring the favorites of the entertainment industry. In part two, we look at Ohio University, Texas A&M University, Tulane University and others that do use one of the methods preferred by the RIAA and MPAA.

  • Usniff, Torrent Search Made Easy

    BitTorrent’s popularity is increasing with new sites seemingly launched every day. Usniff is one such site, offering a fast real-time torrent search engine where users can search four of the most popular BitTorrent sites.

  • Legal P2P Music Service Doomed to Fail

    If you can’t beat pirates, join them. This is Playlouder’s philosophy, a music download service that allows subscribers to download music from BitTorrent and other filesharing networks, while reimbursing the copyright owners. The concept sure is interesting, but the current setup is naive, flawed and doomed to fail.

  • U2 Tracks Leak After Bono Plays Stereo Too Loudly

    U2 manager Paul McGuinness, who wants file-sharers to be disconnected from the Internet, has something else to complain about today. Four songs from U2′s upcoming album ‘No Line On The Horizon’ have been leaked online after Bono played them too loudly on his stereo – and a fan recorded them.

  • IFPI Hijacks Pirate Bay Traffic

    Last Friday, Italian ISPs started to prevent their customers from accessing the Pirate Bay. Strangely enough, Pirate Bay traffic is not redirected to Italian authorities, but to the IFPI, the infamous anti-piracy lobby of the music industry. Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde is not happy, and says it’s a scandal.

  • RIAA Pays $107,951 to Alleged Filesharer

    It has been something of a David and Goliath battle, but the first skirmishes in the war on file sharing are over. While the RIAA jubilantly claimed success last year, it is another case that has has now silenced the RIAA, as it avoids drawing attention to the case it never had.

  • TorrentPrivacy Review: Download Torrents Anonymously

    Privacy has always been a major concern for BitTorrent users and there are only a few ways to remain anonymous. By using a secure connection, as the new TorrentPrivacy tool offers, you can bypass almost every firewall or traffic shaping application, while making sure that nobody can see what you’re downloading.

  • Critical Vulnerability Discovered in uTorrent

    A vulnerability described as ‘critical’ has been discovered in versions of uTorrent and the official BitTorrent client. The ‘buffer overflow’ vulnerability can be exploited to compromise a user’s computer for the execution of arbitrary code. It is suggested that users should immediately update to uTorrent version 1.8 RC7 or higher. There is currently no fix for the official client.

  • Millions Download Olympics Opening Ceremony via BitTorrent

    The opening ceremony of the 2008 summer Olympics, co-directed by Zhang Yimou, was a truly spectacular event. Not everyone had the chance to watch it live, but that’s where BitTorrent comes in. The broadcast of the Olympics opening ceremony has been downloaded more than a million times already, and the download counters go up every day.

  • Tackling College Piracy: The P2P Quiz

    Under the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, colleges and universities that get federal funding have to come up with ways to deal with “Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention”. The bill doesn’t give specific methods, and universities can come up with their own methods, as Missouri S&T has done with their P2P quiz.

  • Prototype Anti-Piracy Tool Revealed and Taken Offline

    The existence of a prototype management system for anti-piracy company ‘Logistep’ was revealed at the weekend. The online system called ‘Logistep Data Management Tool’, was located at eparken.com but since the revelations the site has been taken down. It is still available in limited form via Google’s cache.

  • uTorrent 1.8 Released, Mac Version Coming Soon

    After months of hard work and more than six months since their previous stable release, the uTorrent team has released version 1.8 of their BitTorrent client, with significant improvements and updates. Adding to the excitement, we were told that a public Alpha of the Mac version will be released in the next few weeks.

  • The Pirate Bay Blocked in Italy

    The Pirate Bay has been “censored” in Italy following an urgent decree from a deputy public prosecutor. Pirate Bay’s IPs and the domain name are inaccessible, as they are blocked by ISPs all over the country. Whether these blocks will be very effective, however, is doubtful, since The Pirate Bay has already announced several countermeasures.

  • African Drug Cops to Go After Pirates

    In the past, parallels between narcotics enforcement and copyright enforcement may have been drawn, but in one country parallels are out of the window, as copyright and trademark enforcement will now be treated as drug trafficking.

  • BitTorrent Fires 20% of Its Employees

    BitTorrent Inc., founded by Bram Cohen, the inventor of the BitTorrent protocol, is firing 12 of its 55 employees. The company, which also develops the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent, had been struggling to make money from their download store, which is one of the causes of the layoffs.

  • EFF Supports TorrentSpy in Electronic Privacy Case

    After it was ruled that a hacker who obtained unauthorized emails from TorrentSpy on behalf of the MPAA did not technically intercept them under the WireTap Act, the EFF has filed a friend-of-the-court brief. EFF describes the recent decision as a “dangerous attempt to circumvent privacy laws,” and wants to see it overturned.

  • Textbook Torrents Makes Long Awaited Comeback

    After a month of downtime, TextBook Torrents makes its return, right on time, as the first semester starts in just a few weeks. The BitTorrent tracker, dedicated to sharing knowledge in the form of textbooks, was pulled offline by Dreamhost early July because the hosting company received a takedown request.

  • BitTorrent Mac Fans Try To Save the Coratee

    Mac users missing the community spirit they enjoyed at BrokenStones are on an urgent mission to save an endangered manatee-like sea mammal which lives almost entirely on sea cabbage. But that will have to wait. There’s a brand new Gazelle-based Mac tracker in town – and it promises to be fun. We take a look.

  • Anti-Piracy Lobby Gains Power Over Internet Subscribers

    The deals between ISPs and anti-piracy organizations are a worrying trend. In just a few months entertainment industry representatives managed to convince ISPs and governments that they should have the right to accuse and warn Internet subscribers, without solid proof. The question that remains unanswered is whether these warnings will have any effect.

  • EFF Tool Hunts BitTorrent Throttling ISPs

    Comcast must feel it’s being attacked by all sides. It’s been hit by lawsuits, investigated by the FCC, and roundly criticised everywhere else. It has brought the issue of traffic shaping to the forefront of people’s minds, and into public discussion. Aiming to highlight ISP’s and their shaping, the EFF has released a new tool for users to test their connection’s integrity.

  • MediaDefender Walks The Plank to Bankruptcy

    MediaDefender and parent company ArtistDirect have had some serious setbacks recently. Last September they suffered a huge security breach when internal emails and a phone call were leaked to BitTorrent. They received even more bad press recently for DDoSsing Revision3. As a result, MediaDefender’s parent company stock dropped from $2.00 down to just 16 cents.

  • Travis Defends Fan from IFPI Threats

    Here is a story of a blogger doing his best to help the band Travis reach its fans (at the band’s request), and the IFPI subsequently steaming in thinking it knows best and getting it wrong twice over. We look at what happened and speak to Travis themselves to get their opinion on file-sharing.

  • The Pirate Bay Now Supports Tagging

    The Pirate Bay has rolled out a new feature which allows users to add tags to the torrents they upload. The tags will make it easier to structure and discover new content, and it gives users the opportunity to form tag based groups.

  • Band Leaks Track to BitTorrent, Blames Pirates

    When we reported about the leak of a BuckCherry track last week, and specifically the band’s response to it, we hinted that this could be a covert form of self-promotion. Indeed, after a few days of research we found out that the track wasn’t leaked by pirates, but by Josh Klemme, the manager of the band.

  • Lawyer Exposes RIAA’s Legal Bullying

    For many people, justice is something that is bought and sold in the US, especially where filesharing is concerned. Few lawyers are willing to represent, and fewer still understand the technologies involved in cases. Ray Beckerman is one of the few that seem to, and he now has an article in the current edition of The Judges Journal, about the RIAA lawsuits.

  • Two OiNK Uploaders Go Free

    Yesterday we reported that the bail date for OiNK administrator Alan Ellis and the six arrested OiNK uploaders was extended again. New information, however, now shows that two of the six uploaders were released from further investigation and can get on with their lives.

  • UK Government Opens Filesharing Consultation

    If you’re one of the many incensed by the file-sharing letters issue, the OiNK raid and extensions or the ease with which UK politicians are led by the media industries like prize cattle, this could be your chance to get a say. The UK government has started a public consultation on file sharing, and how to deal with it.

  • Where’s the Warning Letter for the OiNK Uploaders?

    This week, many thousands of warning letters will be received by people in the UK accused of sharing files. Each recipient will get the smallest possible slap on the wrist. Yet today another police bail deadline will come and go for six people accused of doing exactly the same on OiNK. Don’t they deserve letters too?

  • ImageShack’s Free Torrent Download Service Expands

    ImageShack, one of the largest media hosting websites, has implemented some significant upgrades to their torrent download service. One of the most innovative new features is the “video preview”, which allows users to browse through stills of the video they are downloading, to get an impression of the quality of the file.

  • EZTV Trials TV-Torrent Streaming

    Last week, we wrote about the new attempt to invigorate video distribution, by mixing torrents with streaming video. Our piece piqued the interest of the leading TV-torrent distribution group , EZTV , and just a few hours ago, they launched a live-beta test of the technology for their ‘warez’.

  • The Pirate Bay Promotes “The Dark Knight” Leak

    The Pirate Bay is messing with Hollywood again, as they’ve put up a new logo which links to pirated copies of the blockbuster movie “The Dark Knight”. Although Warner did all it can to protect the film from leaking, a Cam version leaked onto BitTorrent sites soon after it premiered.

  • Torrentz Celebrates 5th Anniversary

    Torrentz.com, the largest BitTorrent meta-search engine, celebrates its 5th anniversary today. The site, one of the oldest torrent sites around, has evolved quite a lot over the years. Let’s take a look at how it all started.

  • Does BuckCherry Think The BitTorrent Community is Stupid?

    Some artists, bands and labels claim that their lives are ruined by their material being available on P2P networks. BuckCherry are complaining that a track from their latest album has leaked to BitTorrent. How do they complain? Via an Atlantic Records press release. I smell a rather large free-publicity rat.

  • Halite, a Fast and Lightweight BitTorrent Client

    During the last three years, not many new BitTorrent clients have surfaced. Together, the likes of uTorrent, Azureus and BitComet have a 90% market share, with uTorrent being the most popular client. For a new client it is nearly impossible to catch up with these giants, but Halite might just stand a chance.

  • P2P-Next Introduces Live BitTorrent Streaming

    The Swarmplayer developed by the P2P-Next research group is now capable of streaming live video in true 4th generation P2P style using a zero-server approach. With a $22 million project budget from the EU and partners, the P2P-Next research group intends to redefine how video is viewed on the Internet.

  • Ubisoft Steals ‘No-CD Crack’ to Fix Rainbox 6: Vegas 2

    “Piracy is BAD” proclaims every copyright dependent industry lobby group. “Downloading is stealing” is another popular one. How about “downloads are a lost sale”? Ubisoft clearly didn’t believe that last one, as they distributed a no-cd patch from the scene group RELOADED as a fix for one of their games.

  • UK File-Sharers and the “Wireless Defense”

    As the legal issues surrounding file-sharing heat up in the UK, more and more recipients of compensation demands are considering their defense. One such possibility is the ‘wireless’ or ‘WiFi’ defense. We take a look at the issue and try to shine some light on what people can expect, should they take this route.

  • EU to Extend Copyright, Break Royalty Monopolies

    As we mentioned earlier in the week, EU commissioner McCreevy has been pushing for a longer copyright period for recorded performances. This proposal has now passed the commission and is on the way to the parliament. The upside however, is that the commission also aims to break music royalty monopolies.

  • YouTorrent Relaunches with 67,170 Legal Torrents

    YouTorrent is without a doubt the most talked about newcomer in the BitTorrent scene this year. The site initially indexed all the popular torrent sites, but switched to purely ‘verified’ torrents after receiving legal threats. Today, YouTorrent officially relaunches with 67,170 “legal” torrents, good for 6 TBs of data.

  • QuebecTorrent Clone Outmanoeuvres Music Industry

    Just days after the QuebecTorrent BitTorrent tracker was taken down by an injunction in a blaze of publicity, a near identical clone of the 108,000+ member tracker has appeared out of nowhere. Allegedly the product of the old team, Torrent411.com is up and running with 109,000+ members – and counting.

  • Speed Up Your Torrent Downloads, Get a Seedbox

    A seedbox is BitTorrent jargon for a dedicated high-speed server, used exclusively for torrent transfers. With a seedbox you’ll be able to download and upload faster than you ever imagined. Additionally, you can manage your torrents through a browser from anywhere, anytime.

  • EU to Extend Music Copyright to 95 Years

    The IFPI and mediocre artists around the world are rubbing their hands in glee, after a proposal to extend copyright in the EU for another 45 years. The proposal, intended to ‘benefit musicians’, comes up for a vote on Wednesday. On the plus side, at the same time collecting societies are going to have their practices scrutinized.

  • Anti-Piracy Evidence Put in Doubt by Leecher

    The accuracy of evidence collected by anti-piracy tracking company Media Protector has been called into doubt. It is alleged that the recipient of a 700 Euros compensation demand for unauthorized uploading was actually operating a client which was modified never to upload, thus making infringement impossible.

  • BitTorrent Host Loses in Court, Site Moves to Sweden

    A hosting provider who refused to hand over the personal details of a torrent site administrator has been told by a judge to comply. EuroAccess who hosted the site Torrent.to must also pay all of the costs associated with bringing the case to court. Meanwhile, torrent.to moved to Sweden, where the site continues to operate.

  • No Anti-BitTorrent Precedent Achieved in Canada

    Following comments which suggested that the closure of QuebecTorrent was “a major victory” for the recording industry, we have a statement from the owner of the site to balance things up. The smaller battle against this site is over, the larger one against Canadian BitTorrent sites in general appears unaffected.

  • Permanent Injunction Closes QuebecTorrent

    The battle to keep QuebecTorrent open against a legal attack by the CRIA and 30 other media organizations, is over. The site has complied with a permanent injunction handed down by the Superior Court of Quebec. The recording industry has dropped its claim for $200,000 damages.

  • G8 Pushes Anti-Piracy Trade Agreement

    During their annual summit meeting in Japan, the G8 members agreed to get the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) ready for implementation by the end of the year. The agreement, pushed by multimillion dollar companies, will open the doors to a digital police state, much to the pleasure of the MPAA and RIAA.

  • The Pirate Bay Starts its Summer Tour 2008

    Today, the Pirate Bay and the Bureau of Piracy start their journey throughout Europe, that will reach its climax at the art festival Manifesta by the end of next week in Bolzano, Italy. The good news is that if you’d like to join them en route, everyone is welcome.

  • Victims of WiFi Theft Not Responsible For Illegal Uploads

    A German court has ruled that Internet users operating a WiFi router are not responsible if others use their equipment to infringe copyright on P2P networks. The news is likely to be seen as yet another blow for lawyers Davenport Lyons who have been insisting that German law decisions would be mirrored in the UK.

  • US Pirate Party Study Shatters MPAA Claims

    While the Pirate Party might be well known in Sweden, and heard of elsewhere around Europe, it’s not really taken off in the country that prides itself as being ‘the land of the free’. Unperturbed, the US Pirate Party has soldiered on and with the preliminary release of data from it’s first study, it’s hitting back at the media lobbyists.

  • Pirate Bay Cop Not to be Investigated

    The Pirate Bay, often attacked by the Swedish establishment, but never beaten. However, their faith in the judicial system has plummeted after prosecutors have stated that Jim Keyzer, a police official investigating the Pirate Bay, has done no wrong by working for Warner at the same time.

  • Swedes Massively Protest Wiretap Law

    In June the Swedish parliament passed a controversial surveillance law that gives authorities a mandate to read all email and listen in on all phone calls without warrant or court order. In response to the law, The Pirate Party organized rallies, bloggers and journalists turned into activists, and even Google decided to relocate their servers.

  • Canadian MP: Three Strikes Law is Idiotic

    When It comes to politicians taking a stand against ‘anti-piracy bills’, such as the three-strikes legislation that’s being backdoored in Europe at the moment, the mind generally goes Swedish, to Rick Falkvinge for example. The mind doesn’t tend to think of North American politicians, but there is an exception, in Canada’s Charlie Angus.

  • Top Torrent Sites Ranked by Google

    BitTorrent’s popularity is growing every day. Despite the lawsuits that some of the larger torrent sites are involved in, they continue to grow traffic wise. Let’s take a look at how Google ranks the top torrent sites.

  • BitTorrent Tracker Hosting Illegal Says Dutch Court

    Leaseweb, the former ISP of BitTorrent trackers such as Demonoid, What.cd and Waffles.fm lost the appeal against the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The Amsterdam court concluded that Leaseweb has to permanently shut down the BitTorrent tracker everlasting.nu, and hand over the admin’s personal information.

  • ‘Heroes’ Producer Recognizes Benefits of BitTorrent

    Half of the people who use BitTorrent do so to download TV-shows. Some episodes of popular shows such as ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lost’ get up to 10 million downloads. We had a chat with Jesse Alexander, the co-producer of both ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lost’, and asked him what his thoughts are on BitTorrent, piracy and the future of TV.

  • Court Hits BitTorrent Users Who Failed to Appear

    Last week, lawyers Davenport Lyons who are currently threatening hundreds of BitTorrent users with legal action, tasted victory in Central London County Court with wins in cases against four file-sharers. Fortunately, these ‘victories’ mean little, as Davenport chose not to go after people who defend themselves, instead picking on people they knew wouldn’t even come to court.

  • Australian Drug Mafia to Sell Pirated DVDs?

    If you ask any Australian what the most annoying thing is about TV shows or movies, a common response is that it can take a long time for things popular in the US and UK to make it ‘down under’. Apparently, the Mafia has picked up on this, as they have started selling pirated movies and TV-shows on the streets, or have they?

  • How The FBI Dismantled a BitTorrent Community

    On June 25th 2005, the homepage of the EliteTorrents.org tracker displayed an ominous message. Thousands of members trying to log in to get a sneak peak at a leaked copy of Star Wars: Episode 3 were surprised and confused in equal numbers. Had the FBI really raided one of the largest BitTorrent communities and put up a badly made Word document, or were hackers to blame?

  • 3-Strikes Law Not Needed to Disconnect Pirates

    In an attempt to cut down on so-called “illegal downloading” in the UK, the anti-piracy outfit BPI has sent out a round of intimidating emails, based on faulty evidence. BREIN plans to follow this example in The Netherlands, and meanwhile, the French Minister of culture is encouraging all EU member states to do the same.

  • Coming Soon: Pirate TV Show

    Jesse Alexander, the executive producer of the popular TV-shows ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lost’ and Matt Mason, author of ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’, are working on a new TV-show about piracy. The show will be based on Matt’s book, and will show how important pirates are for today’s society.

  • Malaysian Government Orders Torrent Sites Shutdown

    Reports are coming in that the government in Malaysia has ordered the immediate suspension of many BitTorrent trackers hosted in the country. In a shock move, the government – citing the ‘Copyright Act 1987′ – has ordered hosts to suspend servers hosting BitTorrent sites, pending an investigation. Many sites are offline.

  • IsoHunt Goes Secure, Adds SSL Encryption

    ISPs and authorities increasingly use Deep Packet Inspection hardware to block access to BitTorrent sites, or spy on users’ browsing habits. To offer its users more privacy, isoHunt has now added SSL encryption, making it impossible for your ISP or the authorities to monitor your activities on the BitTorrent site.

  • Arrested OiNK Uploaders’ Bail to be Extended

    The six individuals who are arrested for allegedly sharing music on the OiNK BitTorrent tracker, are due to report to police at the start of July. The five men and one woman, who are suspected of conspiring to defraud the music industry, will have their bail extended. Unsurprisingly, the police need more time to make their case.

  • Don’t Humiliate Yourself Complaining to The Pirate Bay

    The ‘legal threats’ section of The Pirate Bay is where record labels, movie companies, software house and general anti-pirates have their complaints posted after the staff on the site have ridiculed them. A new set of complaints has appeared in the last few days – some of the most cringe-worthy ever.

  • Government “Holds a Gun to the Head” of ISPs Over P2P

    The British government appears to be running out of patience with ISPs as they struggle to come to an agreement with the music industry on P2P music piracy. One ‘top-level’ ISP executive says “The British government just put a gun to our head.” Major ISPs are now in “serious” talks with the music industry.

  • The Pirate Bay Pledges ISPs to Block Sweden

    In an response to the new wiretapping law that was introduced in Sweden this week, The Pirate Bay will ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, to protect their customers. In addition, the BitTorrent tracker will add SSL encryption to their site, and roll out a new VPN service.

  • Reports: Demonoid Blocking Countries

    According to an ever increasing wave of emails to TorrentFreak, it appears that residents of at least two countries can no longer access Demonoid. Not only are users from the Netherlands complaining they cannot access the site but now it’s the turn of Brazilian BitTorrent fans to wonder why they’ve been cut off.

  • Swedes To Be Wiretapped, Despite Protests

    Despite public protests both online and on the streets of Stockholm, the Swedish parliament has voted in favor of a new “wiretapping” law which invades the privacy of its citizens by allowing the government to monitor web traffic and phone calls, without the need for court orders or similar authorization.

  • 3-Strikes Law to Disconnect French Pirates

    Over the past few months, many countries have looked into the possibility of disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet. Today, France is the first to present their new “3-strikes” law, which allows anti-piracy outfits such as IFPI, RIAA and MPAA to police the Internet.

  • Kid Rock: Don’t Just Steal Music, Steal Everything

    With his tongue firmly in his cheek, Kid Rock has been commenting on file-sharing again but says he doesn’t need to steal himself, because he’s rich – but not rich enough, as it turns out. Kid Rock announced that he’s boycotting iTunes because he says between Apple and the labels, they’re keeping all the money.

  • Crazy Video Game DRM Prism, 1980′s Style

    These days, although DRM is almost universally hated, it’s not a new reaction – people have always hated it. We take a look at an innovative device designed to thwart 1980′s pirates and hope and pray that no-one reintroduces this one. Love it or hate it, it’s one of the most intrusive DRM systems ever seen.

  • Azureus is Dead, Vuze Goes Social

    After 5 years, the popular BitTorrent client Azureus is no more. The Vuze team has officially abandoned the Azureus name and the new “social” BitTorrent client is now completely integrated into the Vuze content distribution platform.

  • Survey Shows Huge Demand for Legal P2P

    A recent study on the music consumption habits of today’s youth shows that most of them download music illegally. However, music is more popular than ever and 80 percent of the participants indicate that they would pay for a legal filesharing service, if only one was available.

  • BitTorrent Users Refuse To Pay Copyright Fines

    During the last couple of years, hundreds of people have received letters from lawyers demanding compensation for the alleged uploading of copyright works. Their demands state that if you don’t pay up, you will be taken to court and dealt with severely. However, when people refuse to pay – nothing happens.

  • MediaDefender Goes Forward with P2P Marketing

    Most people recognize MediaDefender for their clumsy anti-piracy efforts, but there is much more to them than that. In fact, they are warming up advertisers and record labels to use LimeWire and other file-sharing software to distribute millions of legitimate, but branded, MP3s.

  • Pirate Tax Funds Pirate Album

    For every blank CDr bought, a few cents “pirate tax” are added to compensate artists for loss of revenue when people share their albums. However, not every artist agrees that sharing is wrong so as a statement, the Swedish artist Mr.Suitcase has used his “pirate tax” income to make a pirate album.

  • Canada Proposes Draconian Anti-Piracy Law

    Canada, one of the shining lights in the copyright and intellectual property world, has a shadow approaching that may dim that for all. The name of that shadow? Bill c-61, which was formally introduced by Industry minister Jim Prentice an hour or two ago. One of the ‘highlights’ is the abolition of court’s flexibility in statutory damages, fixing it at $500 (CAD)

  • Police Chief Faces High Court Anti-Piracy Action

    After the police arrest citizens for minor copyright infringements that allegedly took place on OiNK, they now face their own anti-piracy woes. Chief Constable Steve Finnigan is accused by the music industry of copyright infringement and now faces High Court action. Police pirates – who would have imagined it?

  • Download Torrents on PS3, iPhone and Web-Enabled Devices

    There are many devices available today that are technically able to run BitTorrent, but the manufacturers choose to limit the usability of their devices. TorrentFreak chats to the developer of TorrentRelay, a service that allows you to download torrents on the PS3, iPhone and many other web-enabled devices.

  • The Pirate Bay Takes Stand Against Wiretapping Law

    The Pirate Bay likes to get involved in Swedish politics every now and then, to stand up for their rights and those of others. Today they take a stand against a new law proposal that would make it possible for the government to track phone calls, emails and everything else people do on the Internet.

  • Swedish Left Party Wants to Legalize Piracy

    This Sunday, the Swedish Left Party voted in favor of a motion calling for the legalization of sharing copyrighted files for personal use. The party, which currently holds 22 seats in the Swedish parliament, sees piracy as something positive, much like public libraries.

  • Artist Releases Album Exclusively on Demonoid

    When Nine Inch Nails decided to give away their latest album for free, the news soon spread all over the Internet. However, NiN was not the first, nor will they be the last. Tens and thousands of artists share their music on Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, Mininova and other BitTorrent sites. We got in touch with one of them to find out why.

  • Be Afraid of BitTorrent, Very, Very Afraid

    A new file-sharing service called Rhever is using an interesting tactic to get customers. It appears to be trying to scare users away from BitTorrent and LimeWire, and onto its service. Their promo videos are entertaining, I admit that, but are you scared enough dump torrents and try it? I don’t think I am.

  • BPI and Virgin Media Agree to Start Warning Uploaders

    The British Phonographic Industry and UK ISP Virgin Media have done a deal which will see thousands of file-sharers getting warnings. The BPI will use its resources to track file sharers and will then hand the information to Virgin who will send out their own warnings to the customer along with a letter from the BPI.

  • Study Reveals Reckless Anti-Piracy Antics

    A new paper from the University of Washington department of Computer Science and Engineering, has investigated a problem with current DMCA notices and the methods used in dealing with them. It puts further pressure on anti-p2p groups like BayTSP to validate their claims.

  • Warner Confesses: Pirate Bay Cop Compromised

    Police officer Jim Keyzer, the leader and key witness in the Pirate Bay investigation, has returned to his job at the police’s IT crime unit after being employed by Warner Bros. for several months. Warner Bros now admits Keyzer was working for them while he was leading the Pirate Bay investigation.

  • Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

    TV shows are by far the most wanted files via BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s fast becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading? Let’s find out, and take a look at this weeks “Most pirated TV-episodes” chart.

  • Pirates Slowly Killing MediaDefender

    It has been a rough year for MediaDefender and their parent company ArtistDirect. Last September a database of internal emails leaked, and last week they received more bad press for DDoSsing Revision3. Unsurprisingly, MediaDefender’s revenue has dropped significantly as a result.

  • British Police Confirm Six OiNK Users Arrested

    British Police have just confirmed that several users of BitTorrent site OiNK were arrested recently. TorrentFreak broke the news last Friday after sitting on the story for a while but the mainstream press have been holding back over the weekend, waiting for confirmation. Just seconds ago, confirmation came.

  • Will BitTorrent Sites Become Obsolete?

    Researchers from several Universities are currently working on a search technology that could make BitTorrent sites obsolete. While the idea of a completely decentralized filesharing network is not new, there are some downsides that are often overlooked.

  • OiNK Investigation: Police Start Making Arrests

    TorrentFreak has received information which suggests that British police have made good on their claim that they would go after ex-users of OiNK. Last week, several officers arrested at least one individual for the seeding of a single album. It is believed police are in the process of arresting and questioning others.

  • Revision3 Sends FBI after MediaDefender

    The popular Internet television network Revision3 suffered from a severe DDoS attack, launched by the infamous anti-piracy organization MediaDefender. After targeting The Pirate Bay’s trackers, MediaDefender apparently thought it was a good idea to spread their fake torrents through Revision3.

  • MPAA Threatens World’s Premier Usenet Indexer

    Newzbin, considered by many to be the internet’s premier indexer and .nzb provider, is under legal threat from the MPAA. The site, which was the creator of Usenet’s answer to the .torrent file, will likely have to undergo significant changes in order to appease the movie studios.

  • Mininova, 5 Billion Downloads and Counting

    Today, one of Mininova’s users will will have the honor to download the 5 billionth torrent, an impressive figure for a site that has only been around for little over three years. If Mininova continues to grow at this rate, we might see the 10 billionth download before the year ends.

  • RIAA Declares Victory Over AllofMP3, Drops Lawsuit

    The RIAA has declared victory over Russian music download store AllofMP3, which it accused of the illegal distribution of millions of copyright tracks. The site, which was declared legal by a court last October, no longer offers music – but has spawned dozens of fully operational spin-offs. Victory for RIAA? Not quite.

  • BitTorrent Tracker Insider Infiltrates Anti-Piracy Lobby

    Anti-piracy oufits have gained access to private BitTorrent trackers before, but the opposite has never happened, until now. Over the past few weeks, Unnar Geir, spokesperson of “The Viking Bay”, successfully infiltrated the Icelandic equivalent of the MPAA (SMÁÍS), and gathered some valuable information that the tracker can use in its defense.

  • Manage Your BitTorrent Downloads on Facebook

    A recently launched Facebook application for uTorrent makes it easy to manage your torrents when you’re away from your desktop computer. In addition, the application can also search your favorite BitTorrent sites from Facebook, and allows you to add new torrents remotely.

  • SceneAccess and NFOrce Under Pressure from BREIN

    One of the most exclusive private torrent trackers, SceneAccess, has found itself hounded out of the Netherlands by anti-piracy outfit, BREIN. The site was hosted by NFOrce who handed over the owners details to BREIN who discovered them to be false. Worryingly, there are many other torrent sites hosted at NFOrce.

  • Mininova Faces Legal Action: Filter or Else

    No torrent site on earth is more popular than Mininova. Surprisingly, however, all the legal pressure seems to have been focused on sites such as The Pirate Bay. Mininova – against all the odds – appears to have stayed under the radar. All that changed today as Mininova is now facing legal action by Dutch anti-piracy agency, BREIN.

  • Danish Copyright Censorship Proposal Revealed

    In February a Danish court forced ISP Tele2 to block its subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay, following a similar order late last year to block allofmp3.com. A new proposal before the Danish government would mean that such actions would be quick and easy to do, without the need for a single court hearing.

  • Michael Jackson to Take on The Pirate Bay

    Micheal Jackson and several other artists plan to take on The Pirate Bay. The king of pop hired the infamous ‘Web Sheriff’ to protect his rights. “Hey Michael – do you want us to pay you in small kids maybe?” was the first response of Pirate Bay admin Brokep.

  • The Pirate Bay File Police Bribery Complaints

    The chief investigating officer in the Pirate Bay case who was revealed as recently working for Warner Bros, has been reported to the police. Yesterday the Pirate Bay crew filed “at least” three complaints, and further people have been reported for bribing the police.

  • iSlsk Brings File-Sharing to iPhone

    Those lucky enough to own a ‘jail-broken’ iPhone got a rather pleasant surprise last evening. When refreshing the installer, a brand new application appeared. iSlsk brings the Soulseek file-sharing network directly to iPhone. Download music for free, and listen to it on your iPhone. For most, it’s very nearly that simple.

  • Understanding Anti-Piracy Enforcement

    There is a great deal of confusion on the net, as to just how people get warning letters and notices from ISPs and copyright holders. In an attempt to clear the murk, we’ve produced this guide to help clarify what actions are taken, by whom, and how to respond to it.

  • Best-Selling Author Turns Piracy into Profit

    Paulo Coelho, author of books such as “The Alchemist” and “The Witch of Portobello”, sold over 100 million books last year. In part, he puts this success down to BitTorrent, as he saw a huge increase in sales when his books appeared on sites such as The Pirate Bay. We talked to Coelho to find out more about this remarkable story.

  • IFPI Advises Kids to Use LimeWire and Kazaa

    Together with the charity Childnet, IFPI recently launched a campaign to educate kids, teachers and parents about the dangers of filesharing. Ironically, the legal alternatives they suggest direct the kids to LimeWire, Kazaa and sites that sell hardcore adult movies.

  • Victorious BitTorrent Tracker to Return

    Rounding off a series of court decisions and actions regarding BitTorrent sites, torrent.is users will have something to celebrate. The BitTorrent tracker favored by Icelandic downloaders, has won yet again in Court, and the site will reopen May 16th.

  • BitTorrent Shrugs Off Massive Malware Attack

    Described as “One of the most prevalent pieces of malware in the last three years,” the Downloader-UA.h trojan is running wild on P2P networks. But thanks to its system strength – and the work of torrent site moderators – such outbreaks are shrugged off by BitTorrent.

  • Test: Does Your ISP Slow Down BitTorrent Traffic?

    Hundreds of larger and smaller ISPs all over the world try to limit BitTorrent traffic on their networks. Unfortunately, most companies are not very open about their network management solutions, with Comcast as the prime example. Thanks to the Glasnost project, you can now test wheter your ISP is one of the bad guys.

  • File-Sharer Convicted in Sweden’s Biggest P2P Case

    A 31 year old file-sharer escaped prison this morning when he received a heavy fine and a suspended sentence for uploading music and movies. The court refrained from putting the defendant in prison, saying that the music industry needs to take some responsibility for the current situation.

  • Nine Inch Nails Give Away New Single on Facebook

    After experimenting with free BitTorrent distribution on their last album, ‘Ghosts’, The Nine Inch Nails are today releasing their latest single ‘Echoplex’ for free, to tens of millions of Facebook users. Also, everyone should check out NIN.com tomorrow – apparently a “surprise” awaits.

  • MPAA Silently Drops Case Against BitTorrent Site

    In 2005, DVDr-core was the first BitTorrent site that was targeted by the MPAA outside the US. A classic story: Man runs site, man gets sued over site, nothing more is ever heard. Whilst in most cases, this means that the defendant bowed to pressure, paid an out of court settlement, and promised not to do it again, that is not the case here.

  • Warez Leader Is Chairman Of San Diego Republican Party

    This week, a 30 year old man was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his involvement in the so-called pirate ‘warez scene’. In what appears to be some sort of bizarre parallel universe, it’s been revealed that another notorious pirate has an interesting job – he’s chairman of the San Diego Republican Party.

  • Mininova’s Traffic Doubles in a Year

    The BitTorrent popularity explosion is still underway, with some torrent sites now amongst the most visited sites, anywhere on the web. One of those, Mininova, now gets well over half a billion page views a month and is now 100% bigger than it was this time last year. And the site is still growing.

  • Book Authors See BitTorrent As a Promotional Tool

    Authors are becoming less concerned with piracy, and having pirated copies of their books listed on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay is even considered to be an honor to some. Particularly for book authors, piracy seems to be a useful promotional tool, rather than a threat.

  • uTorrent Marked as Trojan by Avast Antivirus

    Thousands of uTorrent users got a worrying message from their antivirus software recently. Their favorite BitTorrent client was recognized as a trojan by Avast, and deleted form their computers. Attempts to redownload the software from uTorrent.com resulted in the same trojan warning.

  • Pivotal Canadian BitTorrent Showdown Looming

    In three months time, the Canadian music, movie and TV industries will unleash their combined legal might on a little known BitTorrent tracker. A true David and Goliath battle, the QuebecTorrent case is one that Michael Geist says is “worth watching”, and will have wide implications for all of ‘online’ Canada.

  • Filesharing Report Shows Explosive Growth for uTorrent

    New data on the ever changing P2P landscape shows that the number of uTorrent users worldwide has more than doubled compared to last year. The BitTorrent client is most popular in Europe – with an install rate of 11.6% – and least popular in the United States, where 5.1% of the PCs have uTorrent installed.

  • Create Your Own YouTorrent Clone in 1 Minute

    YouTorrent recently restricted the number of sites it indexes, but before that, it was one of the most widely used BitTorrent meta-search engines. Due to this popularity many have copied the concept -and as of today- everyone can have their own YouTorrent clone, thanks to the free and open source “YouTorrent3″.

  • Subscribe to TV Shows Using BitTorrent on OSX

    Last year TorrentFreak covered the TV-Shows application which allowed the user to subscribe to TV shows using BitTorrent. Some people are reporting that the app isn’t working for them so for those that don’t mind working at a solution, here is a tutorial to achieve the same, using freely available tools.

  • Anti-Piracy Blunder Shuts Down BitTorrent Tracker

    A large BitTorrent tracker dealing only in documentaries has been shutdown after an anti-piracy company wrongfully identified content being tracked by the site. The 150,000 member site, which has had just “one mildly upset” copyright-related email in 4 years of operation, is moving to a new host.

  • BitTorrent Throttling ISPs Exposed by Azureus

    Data collected by the BitTorrent client Azureus shows that Comcast might only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to BitTorrent throttling ISPs. Early findings show that customers from quite a few other Internet service providers experience an unusually high amount of TCP-resets.

  • Biohazard Bassist Blasts BitTorrent

    The bassist and vocalist of the band Biohazard says that people who ‘steal’ media by downloading it are “scumbags” and you better know that if he catches you doing it, he will happily “kick the shit out of you”. But the real problem, he says, are BitTorrent sites.

  • Help Steal This Film Win $30K

    The filesharing documentary Steal This Film has been a great success. Yet, despite millions of downloads and a lot of support from the P2P community, they admit they haven’t yet covered the costs of producing STF II. There is hope though.

  • The Pirate Bay Launches Uncensored Blogging Service

    In their ever continuing battle to free the Internet, The Pirate Bay has now launched an uncensored blogging service, called Baywords. The service is intended to be a safe haven for bloggers who want to be able to write whatever they want, without being afraid to get shut down by their blog host.

  • Purdue University Launches P2P Network to Bypass RIAA

    College students have always had the dubious distinction of being easy marks in the target against P2P file sharing. As of February 2007, the RIAA has dispatched thirteen new waves of litigation letters against U.S. University students in their ‘deterrence’ campaign aimed at more than 5,000 students. But one University is fighting back – albeit very quietly – and that’s Purdue.

  • The Pirate Bay Demands Compensation for IFPI Block

    The Pirate Bay has announced that it will file a complaint to ask for compensation from the IFPI for the traffic which was destined for its site, but blocked by the Danish ISP Tele2. If they win, the money will be spent on funding independent artists who share their music for free on filesharing sites.

  • TorrentFreak’s Top 10 YouTorrent Alternatives

    After YouTorrent decided that they were only interested in indexing a relatively tiny amount of licensed content from seven other sites, their links to content dropped dramatically. If the word on the BitTorrent streets is to be believed, their users are doing the same. But where will they go for their meta-searches?

  • MPAA Gets a Slap From Norwegian ISPs

    At the end of March we reported that the MPAA’s pirate-chasing lawyer Espen Tondel sent a letter demanding that Norwegian ISPs disconnect file-sharers from the Internet. Unfortunately for him, the ISPs aren’t going to comply and have issued a letter in response, refusing to break the law to please copyright holders.

  • Demonoid To Be Resurrected Under New Admin

    Deimos, the administrator of Demonoid has announced that he is stepping down for good due to his preoccupation with ‘real-life’ issues. For those tearing their hair out with dismay, you can stop now. The site will be resurrected under a trusted new admin and Deimos is asking the community to give him support.

  • Vote for the Movie Screening Security Guards

    Last week we published a post featuring ‘The Movie Screening Security Guards’ as they terrorized the movie-going public with their outrageous anti-piracy antics. After being delighted with the response, director Joe Russo got in touch asking for a little help from the TorrentFreak readers.

  • IFPI Erases Evidence Of Fascist Roots For 75th Anniversary

    Any organization reaching a major anniversary would be proud of this fact, with press releases, interviews and celebration. The IFPI hasn’t said anything about reaching its 75th birthday. Instead, one of their staff has edited their Wikipedia page to keep their roots a secret. So what exactly do they want to hide?

  • Legal and DRM-free Movie Torrents from Sweden

    For most people, Sweden and BitTorrent equals The Pirate Bay. There is more though, Headweb, a new online movie store now offers over 500 authorized and DRM-free movies, which can be downloaded via BitTorrent. True to the BitTorrent philosophy, sharing is rewarded.

  • Movie Director Says it is OK to Pirate His Movie

    Last weekend, a CAM version of the Norwegian movie “Lange Flate Ballær II” leaked onto several BitTorrent sites. Quite surprisingly, the producer doesn’t hold a grudge against the person who leaked the film. Instead, he thinks it’s an honor that someone took the effort to record it in a movie theater.

  • BitTorrent Throttling: Interview With Gemini Project

    Every week there is more controversy as ISPs continue to limit, throttle and otherwise interfere with P2P traffic. For those people who think their ISP is meddling with their traffic, there is a new system available to confirm it. TorrentFreak catches up with the creators of Gemini Project.

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