Following the decision in Italy to block access to The Pirate Bay comes the inevitable announcement. Has the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker faded away in the face of media industry pressure? Hardly. Traffic from Italy to the ‘bay has actually increased this week and the site has jumped 10 places on Alexa in Italy.
According to initial reports, an announcement due later today will state that major ISPs in the UK have reached an agreement to work with the music industry to start mass warning file-sharers. The deal, brokered by the government, will see hundreds of thousands warned but not disconnected.
The Internet is a world penitentially embroiled in a Cold War. Now, as then, an arms race between factions is constantly ongoing, each working to counter the efforts of the other. Into this race, comes deep packet inspection, a serious threat to online privacy.
The six individuals who are arrested for allegedly sharing music on the OiNK BitTorrent tracker, are due to report to police at the start of July. The five men and one woman, who are suspected of conspiring to defraud the music industry, will have their bail extended. Unsurprisingly, the police need more time to make their case.
The British government appears to be running out of patience with ISPs as they struggle to come to an agreement with the music industry on P2P music piracy. One ‘top-level’ ISP executive says “The British government just put a gun to our head.” Major ISPs are now in “serious” talks with the music industry.
Today, one of Mininova’s users will will have the honor to download the 5 billionth torrent, an impressive figure for a site that has only been around for little over three years. If Mininova continues to grow at this rate, we might see the 10 billionth download before the year ends.
A recently launched Facebook application for uTorrent makes it easy to manage your torrents when you’re away from your desktop computer. In addition, the application can also search your favorite BitTorrent sites from Facebook, and allows you to add new torrents remotely.
The latest news from around the web, not covered on the frontpage
FilePorn, one of the longest standing adult BitTorrent trackers, has called it quits. After more than...
For years the RIAA has tried to convince the world that piracy is killing musicians. Supported...
RUTracker, Russia’s largest BitTorrent tracker, has been dealing with the effects of a DDoS attack over...
A coalition of 70 groups, including Reddit and WordPress, are asking Congress to stop working on...
In the aftermath of the MegaUpload shutdown, file-hosting sites continue to change their services. After Uploaded.to,...
Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.
Continuing a long-standing New Year's tradition, we present an up-to-date list of the world's most visited...
Privacy is important on the Internet, and BitTorrent users are certainly not excluded. Already, hundreds of...
With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users...
With the entertainment industries lobbying for increased powers to spy on BitTorrent users, many downloaders are...
BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current...