If you have ever used a public or open tracker, you know that reliability often comes with a half-hearted smile – trackers can go offline and return again, often without explanation or warning. To help keep track of the status of public trackers, there’s now Trackon, the BitTorrent Tracker Tracker.
Seen by millions of people worldwide, the ship design used by The Pirate Bay is one of the most recognizable logos on the Internet today. But after discovering that the iconic emblem had not been officially registered, a Swedish company has hijacked the trademark as their own, with an eye on commercial exploitation.
When Sweden’s IPRED legislation came into force on April 1st this year, the country saw a massive 30% drop in Internet traffic. Many attributed this to Internet user fears associated with increased powers of anti-piracy groups. Now, 8 months later, traffic is completely back to normal and on track to exceed pre-IPRED levels.
At a recent roundtable discussion, Warner Bros. technology director Ethan Applen commented on BitTorrent and P2P’s bad reputation in the entertainment industry. Applen said that P2P is not the bad guy some Hollywood insiders claim it to be, but actually a great way to transfer TV-episodes and entire seasons.
PeerBlock is a tool which can control who can connect to your computer on the Internet. In addition to hindering monitoring by anti-P2P companies, it’s also capable of blocking malicious software. As the team is currently celebrating more than 100,000 downloads, TorrentFreak caught up with the creators for the lowdown.
Black Internet, the ISP that was previously a supplier of bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, was threatened with large fines earlier this year if it did not disconnect the world’s largest tracker from the Internet. Now the ISP has been given leave to take the case to the Court of Appeal.
Microsoft’s much sought-after COFEE law-enforcement forensic tool has leaked onto the Internet. One user uploaded it to private tracker What.cd to collect a huge 1.6tb bounty. However, in a sensible move, the admins of the site took action to remove the link and ban further sharing of the tool via the site.
Millions of file-sharers have responded to the entertainment industry lobby by taking measures to hide their identities. A recent survey found that in Sweden alone, half a million Internet subscribers use anonymizing services. The findings further suggest that tougher anti-piracy legislation will boost these numbers significantly.
Following the abortive attempt by Global Gaming Factory to purchase the Pirate Bay, fans and onlookers could be in for a sequence of new dramas as the site pursues new buyers. According to a report today, four entities are in the running, one of which proves particularly interesting.
The Pirate Bay tracker has been in a state of flux for a few weeks now, mostly offline. If your torrent relies on it, what can you do? The easiest solution is to go ‘trackerless’ and use the Distributed Hash Table (DHT), but there are many myths and misunderstandings that can put people off using it.
A unique event takes place today in a movie theater in the north of Norway. Using the Swarmplayer software developed by the EU-funded P2P-Next project, for the first time ever a live concert will be broadcasted on the Internet utilizing BitTorrent technology.
