TorrentFreak

In a few weeks Amelia Andersdotter will be the second Pirate Party member to take a seat at the European Parliament in Brussels. The 24-year-old Swede was voted in more than two years ago, but due to bureaucratic quibbles her official appointment was delayed. TorrentFreak catches up with the soon-to-be youngest MEP to hear about her plans and expectations.

A release group blamed for a Hollywood boycott of all early release movies in Hungary has been raided by the authorities. Dramatic footage shows armed and masked police raiding home addresses and a datacenter said to be connected to CiNEDUB, a release group which provided worldwide high-profile cam releases. Hidden panels for hard drives, a shotgun, evidence of cocaine use and piles of money complete the Hollywood-style video.

The ever-rising costs of textbooks is an unavoidable nightmare for many students and hot-topic to those who see the system as corrupt. Now, a site with a mission to dismantle what they say amounts to a publishing monopoly has come up with another solution to bring cheap and free textbooks to students. The publishers are going to hate it but the site doesn’t care. They insist that it’s students that are being abused by publishers, not the other way round.

A few weeks ago the highly anticipated game No Time To Explain was officially released. Since the beginning of the year the indie game developers worked day and night to complete it, so it must have been quite a shock to see a pirated copy appearing on The Pirate Bay shortly after the release. Or perhaps not? Could it be that this blatant act of piracy is in fact a clever promotional move?

After several Swedish movies ended up on The Pirate Bay, an anti-piracy tracking company says it has found the source of the leaks. But in surprise twist, rather than pointing the finger at the usual suspects, the company says the movies came from a most unlikely location – the servers of the Swedish Film Institute.

Despite many crackdowns over the years, camcorder piracy is still alive and bringing the latest blockbusters to the masses. What is perhaps less well-known is that this is not a new phenomenon. There are documented instances of camming dating back to just after World War I. Cammers in 1920 were as cunning as their modern-day counterparts and had to contend with surprisingly sophisticated anti-piracy measures.

A few months ago 21-year old Travis McCrea participated in the Canadian federal elections as candidate for the Pirate Party in Vancouver Centre. Aside from his political ambitions, McCrea also described himself as an entrepreneur. As with his political views, his business ventures are also focused on file-sharing related ideas, and most recently he started a torrent site to promote the distribution of movies.