TorrentFreak

The internet is built of services. One of the core services, and a major choke-point for control, is domain name resolution. There have been some alternates come and go, but one of the strongest has been OpenNIC, and they’ve just launched a new top level domain – .pirate

Pirates across the globe are working on an attempt to raid the music single charts, and with help from the most notorious BitTorrent site these efforts are paying off. Embracing Pirate Bay’s mantra, Dan Bull’s track “Sharing is Caring” now appears in a variety of daily download lists, setting course for a spot in the official weekly music charts around the globe this weekend.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom became the proud father of twin girls this week. The healthy twins are the fourth and fifth children of Dotcom and his wife Mona, who gave birth to the girls at the National Women’s Hospital in Auckland. Jokingly, Dotcom instructed hospital personnel to send the placenta to the FBI for forensic analysis.

When confronted with a doomsday scenario where mainstream online file-sharing becomes a thing of the past, it’s not uncommon for people to refer to days gone by, when files were swapped freely offline using discs and other mediums. Now, an interesting and compact system can deliver the [g]olden days of data swapping with a modern twist, by turning any open space into a wireless and anonymous file-sharing system at a rock-bottom price.

Last week, Syndicate, the latest game from Starbreeze studios, was released to the public by publisher EA. The game was immediately made available on the Internet but the swarthy pirates examining the files on the disc were met with an interesting item. In a direct message to those cracking their copy protection, Starbreeze included a cool job offer via a traditional pirate-formatted text file.

A few days ago we reported that no less than 6 IP-addresses registered to the RIAA had been busted for downloading copyrighted material. Quite a shocker to everyone – including the music industry group apparently – as they are now using a defense previously attempted by many alleged file-sharers. It wasn’t members of RIAA staff who downloaded these files, the RIAA insists, it was a mysterious third party vendor who unknowingly smeared the group’s good name.

A few days ago the independent film “The Inner Room” ended up on BitTorrent. Where some filmmakers would see such an event as a threat, for producer Mark Diestler it’s quite the opposite. For months he had waited for pirates to pick the movie up, and now it’s out he’s seeing the film gain additional exposure. For the first time his movie has jumped into the top 250 as listed by IMDb’s movie meter.