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Latest Posts

• The Moral Battle Between Pirates and Copyright Lobbyists

  In a recent interview, Harvard Professor Yochai Benkler raises some serious concerns surrounding the MegaUpload bust. One question raised by the professor, which may not have been entertained by many prior to the wide public opposition to SOPA, is of whether the lobbyist companies currently reaping the benefits of increasingly harsher copyright enforcement confer a [...]

• American Chamber of Commerce Threatens Estonia’s Open Internet

  This is a guest post from Otto de Voogd, digital freedom fighter, a member of the non-profit Estonian Internet Community and a volunteer Mozilla contributor. Thousands of sites, led by Reddit and Wikipedia, staged a successful blackout against SOPA and PIPA last week. But, it would be a mistake to think that the threat against [...]

• Hurt Locker Makers Subpoena ISPs for Non-Defendants

  This is a guest post by BitTorrent defense lawyer Blair Chintella. More news on the case here. — I have been practicing in the area of copyright infringement and specializing in bittorrent cases essentially since they started in the District of Columbia.  I wanted to write this short anecdote to raise awareness to an important [...]

• The Case for Piracy

  The excellent article below comes from ABC Australia and is written by Nick Ross. Well worth the read. When it comes to copyright theft and piracy, many people assume there’s just one side – the side of truth, justice and copyright owners. Beyond that there are parasitical thieves. When most governments come to legislate on [...]

• Are Pirates Freetards?

  The following is a guest column by Michael Neumann, philosophy teacher at a Canadian university. The Register’s Andrew Orlowski habitually calls illegal downloaders of music ‘freetards’. But if you’re going to label people tards of any sort, you ought to be able to think straight. Not so Orlowski, whose snarky asides conceal either inconsistencies or [...]

• How to Unblock The Pirate Bay

  This is a guest post by TorrentFreak reader Jeroen, in response to the Belgian Pirate Bay blockade. Today, two of Belgium’s biggest operators, Telenet and Belgacom, got a court order to block the website ThePirateBay.org, and about 20 alternative URL’s to the same site. The court ordered them to do a DNS-level block of the domain names, which [...]

• Are You Guilty If Pirates Use Your Internet? Lawyer Says NO

  Every month thousands of people are sued for allegedly sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent. Many of the accused claim to be innocent, and point their finger at someone else who may have used their Internet connection to share the file. But does this mean they’re off the hook? Lawyer Nicholas Ranallo believes so.

• Are You Guilty If Pirates Use Your Internet? Lawyer Says YES

  Every month thousands of people are sued for allegedly sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent. Many of the accused claim to be innocent, and point their finger at someone else who may have used their Internet connection to share the file. But does this mean they’re off the hook? Lawyer Marc Randazza believes not.

• 6 Reasons Why Filesharing Will Go Down in History as the Greatest Thing Ever to Happen to Music

  The record labels would have you believe that Napster and now BitTorrent are ushering in the Dark Age of music, but really it’s just the Dark Age of the music industry; music as an art form is on the brink of a new renaissance. Here’s a countdown of the top six reasons why consumers and [...]

NewsBits

The latest news from around the web, not covered on the frontpage

• RIAA: “Misinformation May Be a Dirty Trick, But It Works.”

  For years the RIAA has tried to convince the world that piracy is killing musicians. Supported...

• Russia’s Largest BitTorrent Tracker Under Huge DDoS Attack

  RUTracker, Russia’s largest BitTorrent tracker, has been dealing with the effects of a DDoS attack over...

• Reddit and WordPress Urge Congress to Shelve SOPA/PIPA

  A coalition of 70 groups, including Reddit and WordPress, are asking Congress to stop working on...

• Turbobit.net Blocks US Visitors After MegaUpload Shutdown

  In the aftermath of the MegaUpload shutdown, file-hosting sites continue to change their services. After Uploaded.to,...

• QuickSilverScreen Streaming Links Site Calls It Quits

  In the wake of the Megaupload raids and attacks on domains in the US and elsewhere,...

MostDiscussed

Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.

• Cyberlocker Ecosystem Shocked As Big Players Take Drastic Action

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• Filesonic Kills File-Sharing Service After MegaUpload Arrests

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• BitTorrent Giant BTjunkie Shuts Down For Good

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• MegaUpload Loses Top Lawyer After ‘Outside’ Pressure

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• Copyright Industry Calls For Broad Search Engine Censorship

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RecommendedArticles

A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.

• Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2012

  Continuing a long-standing New Year's tradition, we present an up-to-date list of the world's most visited...

• What’s The Best VPN / Proxy for BitTorrent?

  Privacy is important on the Internet, and BitTorrent users are certainly not excluded. Already, hundreds of...

• 5 Ways To Download Torrents Anonymously

  With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users...

• BTGuard Review: How Does it Work?

  With the entertainment industries lobbying for increased powers to spy on BitTorrent users, many downloaders are...

• Optimize Your BitTorrent Download Speed

  BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current...