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 (SMÃÃS), and gathered some valuable information that the tracker can use in its defense.
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.
AllianceP2P is a free open source software for Windows, Linux and Mac which allows groups of file-sharers to share content in a secure, encrypted way. As the software reaches version one, we interview the developer of AllianceP2P, to find out about his labor of love.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij from The Pirate Bay recently did a video interview which resulted in some great quotes. One such quote comes from Fredrik, he suggests that the movie and music industry should set up their own torrent site, and monetize it through advertisements. “We would be out of business.” he added.
Last week a court ruled that Israel’s largest ISPs should block access to HttpShare, a BitTorrent and http hyperlink site. Thanks to what the owners call “IFPI advertising”, the site is now so busy they’ve had to upgrade their hardware. TorrentFreak caught up with them as they cracked open the champagne.
Mininova has evolved quite a bit since it has started three years ago. Within a year it was one of the most visited torrent sites on the Internet, and the ever increasing number of users resulted in the 4 billionth torrent download recently. Time to ask some questions.
Two weeks ago we reported on Greens EFA launching the pro-filesharing campaign “I Wouldn’t Steal“. With new editorials in Swedish newspapers coinciding with The Pirate Bay’s charges, it seems the Green Party is looking to push the issue forward, thereby supporting The Pirate Bay.
