The interest has been absolutely unprecedented. Issues that niche sites like TorrentFreak have covered for years are now suddenly mainstream fodder, the public’s interest peaking along with their interest in real-life participation in the file-sharing phenomenon. The existence of The Pirate Bay has played a huge part in this new awareness but, as is often the case, it became a victim of its own success. No amount of bravado and no amount of public support would enable the world’s biggest file-sharing site to continue the work indefinitely – at least not in its current format.

A few P2P sites have previously tried to gain legitimacy or avoid legal action by “going legal” to a greater or lesser extent, but nothing really compares to the revolutionary plan put forward by GGF for The Pirate Bay.

Due to the mass press coverage, almost everyone has heard about the audacious and wildly ambitious plan to keep the site going with (hopefully) all of the torrents still on board, to allow people to carry on sharing while paying them to do so, selling off excess bandwidth to ISPs and paying the rights holders. And taking responsibility for any copyright claims that may come along. And selling Pirate Bay branded merchandise including vodka and baby accessories. And, of course, making a profit.

We’re continually informed by GGF CEO Hans Pandeya that the multitude of problems that have made the press almost daily are part of a conspiracy against him, and that people need not worry since all the funding is in place. The purchase of the world’s biggest tracker will go ahead as planned he says, providing the GGF shareholders agree.

But what about the current users of the site, the people who know the site best and have its future close to heart? You’ve read the stories, unencrypted the rumors and experienced the drama. So, regardless of if you’d like it go ahead or not, or whether you’d just like the whole thing to just go away, what do you really think of the deal’s chances?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

We’ve restricted the results to a few of the most used clients plus ’seedbox’ for the hardcore torrenters. If you’re not using one of these, please let us know what your preferred BitTorrent client is in the comments.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

More recently, however, the pressure is being applied to the administrators of public BitTorrent sites and trackers who accommodate millions of users every day. At any given point in time 25 million peers are connected to The Pirate Bay’s trackers, which dwarfs every other tracker on planet earth while making the site the prime target of the entertainment industry.

If the Pirate Bay were to close, roughly 50% of all public torrents would be put to a halt, and many of the smaller public trackers would have a hard time in coping with the extra load and could even collapse under the strain. Meta-search engines like Torrentz would have much less to index too. That said, if you’re lucky enough to be a member of a private site, the show probably goes on.

What we’re interested in is how many of you rely almost exclusively on public trackers such as The Pirate Bay and what percentage get your BitTorrent fix mainly on private trackers. For clarity, we define a public site as one that requires no membership or logins and is open to all, while a private site is one you have to join and have probably been invited to. This leads us to the following question for this week’s poll.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’ and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The defense did not agree, and all pleaded not guilty – backed up by the inimitable King Kong defense.

In an earlier post we summarized some of the key arguments in the case, but much will depend on the judge’s interpretation of the word ‘assisting’. The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde still predicts an EPIC WIN, he told us so, and the IFPI and MPAA fancy their chances too.

Of course, if we ran a poll asking you if you believe the defendants are innocent or guilty, it’s likely the response would be overwhelmingly in favor of the former. So what we would like to know in this poll is not whether you think the four are innocent or not, but purely what you believe the court’s verdict will be. Your personal opinion of The Pirate Bay doesn’t really matter, only what you believe the court will decide – good or bad.

The court’s decision may not be straightforward. It’s possible that one, two or more people walk, or equally be found guilty, or any other combination incorporating the four defendants. So we ask for your feeling overall, when all things are considered.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

20th Century Fox wasn’t happy with this global sneak preview and asked the FBI and MPAA to investigate the case. On Friday it was rumored that an FBI investigation led to a raid on a Dallas data center, but this turned out not to be true. The leak has already cost one Fox news reporter his job. He posted a review of the downloaded movie online and although he loved it, Fox didn’t and he was fired.

What we want to find out with this week’s regular Sunday poll is whether you feel the leak will end up hurting the success of the movie in the long run – or not. It will, if those who have downloaded the film don’t end up seeing it in the movie theater or on DVD, having originally planned to do so. The flip side is that the leak and the associated widespread press coverage could be serving as a useful promotional tool. Those who’ve seen it might become even more curious about the final product, recommended it to others or even take a few friends along to the theater with them.

We’d like to know what you think. How would you respond, IF you had downloaded a copy?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.