Following a lengthy legal procedure the Court of Bergamo has once again ruled that Italian ISPs have to censor their networks and prevent customer access to The Pirate Bay. Millions of Italian Internet users will be denied access to the popular torrent site in an attempt to prevent copyright infringement.
Twitter has published an announcement on its blog where it attributes a recent phishing attack to an unnamed torrent site script. Twitter is blaming a torrent site developer for intentionally installing backdoors into the code he sells to people who want to run a torrent site of their own. The big question is, who is behind this attack?
In mid 2009, FileSoup – the oldest surviving BitTorrent site – was raided by police and the owner arrested. Despite this, however,the site remained online. Then, during the first week of 2010, FileSoup disappeared without warning. But there is cause for cautious optimism – FileSoup could be back sooner than you think.
Demonoid is without doubt one of the most famous BitTorrent trackers on the Internet. That said, despite its fame and large userbase, it’s still necessary to obtain an invite code to use the site. Right now, however, be it intentional or a fortunate bug, its torrents are open to all. Has Demonoid transformed from a semi-private to a public tracker?
There has been a lot of talk about magnet links since The Pirate Bay decided to include them on their site recently. Various BitTorrent clients quickly added support for these type of links, and recently the first ‘magnet-only’ torrent index opened to the public.
Continuing our series of articles on the most pivotal BitTorrent sites of the last decade, our focus turns to the most dramatic site shutdowns. Without doubt, 2005 proved a momentous year, marked by the introduction to the war of a new anti-piracy force to be reckoned with – the FBI.
We are about to end the decade that brought us BitTorrent, and all the good and bad that came with it. In a series of articles during the coming days, we will review some of the most pivotal torrent sites that emerged over the years, each of which left their mark and brought us to where we are today.
This decade witnessed the meteoric rise of BitTorrent, but during the last five years associated sites have endured some of the most aggressive anti-piracy legal action ever seen. The top three BitTorrent sites, after fending off threats for years, all lost in a big way during 2009. But the show ain’t over yet.
As BitTorrent sites have developed over the years, many have added a plethora of features to enhance the user experience. A brand new torrent site called Nerrot, which officially launches its beta today, takes completely the opposite approach.
Every week, more and more BitTorrent trackers come online, the vast majority being so-called private trackers where an invite is required to gain access. However, around 50% of these aren’t making it to their first birthday, and many of them are causing their own death. The culprit? Rising costs.
Just a few weeks remain in 2009, so it’s time to publish the list of the top 25 BitTorrent sites that pulled in the most traffic this year. The Pirate Bay leads by a wide margin, followed up by Torrentz and isoHunt. KickassTorrents is the highest ranked newcomer in 11th place.
