Hollywood Takes OpenBitTorrent’s ISP to Court
Written by Ernesto on November 18, 2009The Swedish hosting provider Portlane is being sued by several Hollywood movie studios for hosting the standalone BitTorrent tracker, OpenBitTorrent. The movie studios are claiming that OpenBitTorrent is a re-branded copy of The Pirate Bay tracker that shut down yesterday.
After the news broke that The Pirate Bay owners would sell the site to Global Gaming Factory, an independent tracker OpenBitTorrent (OBT) was launched. Due to its public nature, OBT was seen by some as a possible replacement for The Pirate Bay tracker.
Even though the sale never went through, OpenBitTorrent has proved its worth recently, since the Pirate Bay tracker had been struggling to stay online. That particular battle formally ended yesterday, with the announcement it had shut down for good.
OpenBitTorrent, Hollywood’s latest target
Unlike most BitTorrent trackers, OpenBitTorrent is not linked to a torrent site where users can download or search for torrents. Indeed, its involvement in the process is very much limited. The tracker is merely assisting in connecting peers with each other based on a hash value, without having any control over, or knowledge of what is being tracked. It also operates a clear DMCA-style takedown policy.
Despite this setup, the Hollywood movie studios have made the decision to try and shut it down by taking the tracker’s hosting company, Portlane, to court.
“OpenBitTorrent is used for file sharing, and we suspect that it is the Pirate Bay tracker with a new name. It is added by default on all of the torrent tracker files on Pirate Bay,” Hollywood lawyer Monique Wadsted said in a comment. She further noted that the domain of the tracker was originally registered by Fredrik Neij, one of the Pirate Bay founders.
For Portlane, this is not its first experience of a copyright holder demanding the takedown of a BitTorrent site it hosts. Earlier this year, the IFPI asked Portlane to close several BitTorrent sites, which they refused to do. This time around Portlane is not going to comply without a fight either, citing freedom of expression and freedom of information as their defense.
It is indeed questionable if OpenBitTorrent can be held responsible for any copyright infringements that may take place on BitTorrent. Aside from the alleged connection to The Pirate Bay, the site’s assistance in the downloading process is not greater than that of BitTorrent outfits Vuze and uTorrent. Indeed, it could be considered to be less.
Previously: Pirate Bay Ship Hijackers Let Logo Hostage Go
Next: Mininova Breaks 10 Billion Torrent Downloads
99 Responses
Obsuuurd… soon they are going to sue the internet!
First…
Well it sounds like another stage of checking if Europe still stays are jural state or not.
The more ISP fighting the merrier!
Off-topic: RIP Pirate Bay tracker and welcome Pirate Bay Magnet :P
Hollywood most there movies past 5 or so yrs have been block buster crap indie films and foreign films are better made
#2 FAIL.
Isnt it nice when the people have the power to stick it to the man? If only we could do this to the oil companies..
Do they really want people to stop downloading? Seriously?
Monique Wa(d)sted, you certainly have time and money to waste. My goodness these Hollywood bast*rds are so desperate for cash.
Guess what MAFIAA? I will not buy any music, movies or games anymore that has a label. Not even stuff I planned to buy. From now on, I’ll just download what I want for free.
And if musicians or whatever producer do not like it, go blame and whine to this monique wasted, she wasted sales.
@7
I fully agree, I havent been to a movie theatre in 8yrs, havent purchased a cd in 10, and have only purchased 6 games since 95′. I stopped buying long ago when all this crap started.
about time Monique Wadsted did some learning about what is and isn’t happening here and what a site can and cannot do. for someone who has the brains to become a solicitor, she seems to frequently show how stupid she actually is. i wonder how many times she has told clients to go home and check their information before proceeding with some kind of legal action?
They wont be happy until they can control each and every viewing…
Im sorry but once your crap is in the public domain it’s out of your F-king control..
You do not own the right to make anyone or everyone pay to view your crap..
If I spend money on a DVD, it’s mine, F-OFF, if I want to loan it to a friend who is having a HUGE party and want to show it to 150 people, too F-king bad!
Get a F-king Clue Wad-sted!
What happens when everyone chooses to go with magnet links, and private sites? Especially ones where everyone is given limited invites, and are not idiots.
RIAA & co are like viruses they keep training and evolving p2p immune system
If it moves, sue it.
What the heck, why not take all the operators of DNS servers to court as well?
After all, they are playing just as an important role as far as BitTorrent is concerned as ever any tracker.
Come to think of it, why not the electric companies as well?
well then, lets start to sue microsoft since it is them that are really responsible for all of this file sharing mess!!!
written in sarcasm font :)
There ain’t no dmca nothing on Openbt.
How about we sue the FTP protocol while we’re at it? I mean it basically does the same thing… Connects peers to data.
Hell why not sue Http protocol too? It does the same thing…
Just because one is peer based & one is server based really has little correlation to the files being served…
Really now, they really are trying to sue the internet. What a fkin’ retarded stance on file distribution.
They better be prepared to take on uTorrent, Vuze, Transmission, rTorrent, Deluge, KTorrent, and every other bittorrent client because they all use DHT or PEX which does the same thing…
So frivolous…
#10 fail
Private trackers can just as easily be taken to court. in fact, most of them are so cowardly they shut down when they hear the news that the riaa when after the public trackers. Therefore, the public trackers are used solely to alert the private ones, so at least those private scumbags should be thankful there are public trackers out there. Plus, Utorrent since 1.7 has support a very rudimentary but stable tracker that you can set up yourself using that client…. why do people never read the documentation and start crying at the sole thought of something? I’m sure this will be another long, lost fight. The industry is not loosing sales anymore, they are loosing court cases too! i wonder if the 1.8 dollar billion or whatever has been received by the industry… not! keep demanding all you want, you ain{t getting even acknowledgements from me!
Sue Al Gore for inventing the Internet
who needs bittorrent any more?
HTTP is the wave of the future.
try sceneacc
@16 (NegroCamouflage)
I wanna see them sue google & the inventor of the http protocol as well… That would be some entertainment there!
They realize that they can’t use the torrent files as a reason to sue anymore, with the use of magnet links now being implemented.
Now they’re going after the trackers. When everyone is using DHT they’ll go back to suing individuals again…
They’re running backwards in circles & TPB is thumping them in the head every time they look back..
lol
Ok, I’ve just read the synopsis for now… And I’m laughing my ass off. It’s not April 1st is it? *checks calendar* Nope, it’s not. But jeeeeeeez. ROFLMAO
Seems like their grasping for straws.
Or is it gasping for air?
@19 Chaka
Your ignorance to the benefits of BitTorrent are laughable.
P2P will be a greater system than Server-Client any day because of the bandwidth consumed.
If sceneacc uses an HTTP protocol to serve users then its paying an immense bill to their ISP to support Hundreds of MBits of upload bandwidth. P2P solves this instantly.
@23 Capn
You apparently didn’t even look at the site.
It’s simply a custom google search that finds megaupload, rapidshare & other file serving host links to the newst files from their sources (the scene).
Your ignorance of where most of the file on bittorrent originated from are laughable.
Ok, now I’ve read he entire article. And I’m still laughing. The only thing that’s missing is Hollywood suing, say, Dell for making the computers people use to pirate stuff. What they’re doing now is not much different.
@23 Capn
apparently you didn’t look at the site & no nothing about how files usually get on bittorrent.
SceneAcc is a Google Custom Search, that finds the files on rapidshare, megaupload, hotfile, etc.
The scene is what usually leaks the file to bittorrent, therefore you get content quicker than you would on bittorrent. And no they’re not paying anything for that, rapidshare, megaupload, etc are… Mostly with ads & those who use premium accounts…
You ignorance is laughable
holy ish
thanks for tha link Chaka!
quick search for “family guy” turned up lots of sites housing links to their latest episodes!
i even found YESTERDAY’s episode of so you think you can dance! it was posted on some sites as quickly as 4 hours after it aired! nothing hits bittorrent that quick!
OK, now this just makes me angry! OpenBitTorrent is JUST a tracker. It doesn’t even host torrents. It can be used for distributing both legal and illegal content. Such is the nature of what it is.
As an artist, I use OpenBitTorrent to distribute my work to others. I am not the only one – there are many others like me, which is why I am utterly appalled by this!
WTF?! They are crazy there in Hollywood! Its like trying to shut down the internet, or ICQ!
@ 17 Nov 18, 2009 at 19:24 by ultraleetj
users on private trackers PAY to keep their tracker going and improve the file sharing service/experience AND are more likely to be community minded especially when it comes to FILE SHARING FAIRLY
whats wrong twat, get booted out of 1 for being a retard did you?
Flame war anybody??
Capn has good points to make…ya might wanna overlook the oversight and listen
Sheesh!
Thanks 18 for pointing out that being auto mod’d fails to post my comment, LoL..
I feel much better and more educated!
Monica will have to get out the checkbook to buy some more judges.
Next sue the nameservers, timeservers and what the heck DHCP servers.
Sue the f*** out of everyone, hell go sue yourself.
come one why won’t we start putting the cables of our modems so the internet is going down!
http://www.turnofftheinternet.com/
@torrenter and @Chaka
You don’t seem to know what the scene is either. lol.
Anyone ever seen “the scene” uploading to megaupload and rapidshare ??? lol, just lol…
I use trackers with less than 2 min pre-time … want to see how you kids get your “scene” stuff that fast onto megaupload and rapidshare…^^
@ Topic
Yeah… they are just tryin to scare ISPs of…
They are perfectic!!
This one one of the long list of reasons why i will never buy a DVD again…
I like TPB’s idea of getting rid of the trackers completely.
if the ‘industries’ ever did (god forbid!) get their way completely and managed to control the whole internet, watch for the almost immediate and total change of view. the taking of any and all individuals and companies would stop simply because they would be able to use, and charge others for using, the very technology they are fighting atm. the other downside of course would be the exorbitant prices. they would stay the same as buying from a shop even tho’ people would be using their own power and equipment as well as paying for the connection and bandwidth to do the download in the first place. there is definitely no end to the greed!
I know! Lets sue Microsoft and Apple for letting users access FTP and HTTP servers that contain “illegal” files.
F*ck ‘em…Soon they’ll start sueing the developers of each and every sharing program because let’s face it – if there’s no torrent-client you can download…Nothing.
Hollywood should better put their money into some good movies instead of expensive law firms, infringement recording companies and all of their other anti piracy aperatus.
They will never beat piracy so they should use it as a tool to promote their movies. Let’s hope they will get it soon that the guys they sue are actually their best customers.
Also I will never believe that when I copy something I steal it. The one(s) I copied the file from still have the same, so I didn’t take anything. Freedom of information is very important for humanity. Don’t let some rich guys who think they are not rich enough take your rights!
lol wow.
Why are they not suing Rapidshare?
They serve illegal content to millions everyday. As soon as they delete it, someone re-uploads it & it’s available again…
This is so futile…
I’m looking forward to hear all the upcoming developments in this case. Please keep us posted dear TorrentFreak ;)
P.S: Ernesto, you’re gold my friend. Don’t let the haters get to you.
Maybe they should sue all of the browser software creators, all operating system software writers, all computer manufacturers, Internet providers, fiber optic backbone leaseholders/operators, electrical companies and computer desk manufacturers because they all enable and promote privacy.
I think I’ll go out and sue motor vehicle companies for enabling and promoting criminal activities and death. Yeah…
agree with #18 JohnnyComesMarchingHome
lol
I Guess there will be only true freedom when Hollywood, Washington and Brussels are burned down… Corrupt gov’s and businesses turned into ashes…
@12: no wonder john f kennedy and movie industry were always cheek-to-cheek. They always had same ideology.
@15: They are not hosted in United Fucking State. When will Americans learn that Europe is not in America. America is not the end of the world. What about RIAA/MAFIAA putting money to reintroduce “Geography” in US schools for a change.
Man, Hollywood is handling this all wrong.
I am so pissed off by this Hollywood shit. Let us go on street and protect. HOllywood is going to far. And we have to teach these fucking industry a lesson.
Ban Hollywood. Remove them completely from this planet!!
Fuck you Hollywood!!!!
i bet z hollywoods dont even know what tracker is
So, owning a domain that may have once been owned by a copyright violator makes you a criminal? Good luck getting that one through the courts…
lol at these hollywood types!
Kinda makes me think about people who think cars should be illegal because they cause pollution…its just not gunna happen! The technology is already out there and will never be stopped. Society and humanity as a whole, wants progress! No matter how many people you sue, you cant turn back the clock. Maybe if they gave us solutions instead of creating more problems? Everyday there is a new story exposing these studios and corporations for the money grabbing eegits they really are.
They shoot themself in one foot….then hack the other one off…before taking a butter knife to a tank fight =P
Ah well, as much as i wish Hollywood and all theyre cronies would just dissapear right now, i will take some solice in watching them slowly go extinct =)
We are legion ;)
SceneAcc is a Google Custom Search, that finds the files on rapidshare, megaupload, hotfile, etc.
would you be kind enough to post the link?
i’ve only managed to find scc (sceneaccess.org) but this is a torrent site not a site for finding rs links?
tried all variants in google but nothing shows up
I came up with a good idea.
Hosting a tracker would not cost too much.
If it is running C++ tracker, it is going to be very efficient.
If the open tracker is going to be shutdown, I am going to setup another tracker for your guys to use.
Not just one, I will setup a cluster.
I am not the founger of any bittorent site. I am a Canadian.
I just hate the fact some stupid whore thinks she can shut down every thing. If she can , I will shut her down for good.
Al Gore did NOT invent the internet.
Leonard Kleinrock did.
http://www.roguegovernment.com/Internet_Turns_40_Years_Old/17880/100/9/9/Y/M.html
lol just pull the plug on internet you dumb fucks!!
while we are at it why don’t we go back to stone age, so some us can rape seed you, hollywood pricks :P
Go, go, DHT! Enjoy an irrelevant victory, MPAA. :)
@50
Your ignorance is laughable.
Everyone knows Al Gore invented the internet at the same time he invented the vibrating buttplug and climate change.
Once again they use the word filesharing in place of piracy! When will these ingrates learn that not EVERYONE pirates stuff when they fileshare? FFS!
@15 You utterly clueless bumkin, the DMCA procedure is all over their frontpage. I want to flame you more buy it’s pointless since you can’t read
Hopefully the case will be thrown out.
You can not expect a company to police material it has no idea of its existence.
So they waste millions making frivolous lawsuits then blame piracy for their losses. Brilliant! Actually no, it’s blithering stupid.
@ 41 “Why are they not suing Rapidshare?”
Good point man, why not go for sites like Rapidshare and Megaupload? They’re the ones selling premium accounts..
Bit torrent is mainly non-profit, seems unfair.
Monique Wasted please come back when you are sober and can understand how stupid you make yourself and the industry look. give up. i wont pay not as long as you keep doing what your doing now.
I am no longer buying any new Hollywood films.More and more folks should be spreading the word out there to boycott the industry.I mean it we all have friends and i make sure to tell them a thing or two.
I stopped buying movies after i saw how hollywood and mpaa were doing unfair things to us all.I am concerned with my rights and i will make sure i never go near your greedbag industry again.
Someone should maybe make a petition.one of thoseonline ones to bring down hollywood.i would love to see how many would put their name on it as never going near the greedbags industry.
FUCK YOU HOLLYWOOD !!!
YOU LOSE ALREADY !!!
@7, 8
Same here! If iiNet somehow lose this court case (bribes etc) I’ll be boycotting hollywood too. Why won’t these ignorant hollywood types just hurry up and adapt!
Remember to get a VPN service people, thats the only way you can ensure your privacy is not invaded
Good luck going after that one LOL
For a look at how litigious mad these greedy bastards are, take a look at the current glut of lawsuits in the California Federal courts for one judge. There are two pages. See “next” link on bottom of page.
http://dockets.justia.com/browse/state-california/court-cacdce/judge-Pregerson/noscat-10/nos-820/
This a publicly accessible page so no fears TF. If you want you can register and for a small fee you can access more info.
I see there are still some John Doe suits listed.
Who cares about trackers anymore when you can use DHT? It takes a few minutes to locate enough peers, but then it starts downloading at full speed!
It’s impossible to bring down DHT, or take DHT to court because people who use DHT are DHT!
p2p can save p2p in my opinion, go DHT!
@#5 heh
Yeah, how do we stick it to the oil companies? They make BILLIONS and claim its made overseas not from raising the price of gas. I’m calling BS on that.
@68: EXACTLY!
Portlane should string the MPAA along for a few months to waste their money… then OBT could just turn off their tracker anway and case closed.
Public trackers are dead in the water now that DHT/PEX is working so well.
@#45 – RoestVrijStaal
Don’t forget Wall Street.
#68 Sam: “It’s impossible to bring down DHT, or take DHT to court because people who use DHT are DHT!”
As a backbone admin I agree, but it’s more complicated than that. Right now, most network operators allow every IP to freely connect to every other IP of their own and all other remote ASes… which is fine and great for DHT.
However, what would we do when this internal communication will be severely curtailed by new, even more paranoid laws, and that we network operators may only allow traffic from end users to a white list of Government/WIPO pre-approved destinations (like websites and such)?
Without internal connections between peers, DHT necessarily collapses.
However, VoIP, Skype et. al, which rely on P2P by design, will ALSO collapse… and that’s currently the ONLY thing holding our corrupt lawmakers back from enacting a pure no-P2P law.
That’s why we need to develop a lot more P2P protocols and (legit) applications, and make the whole population (not only file sharers) depend heavily upon them (just like VoIP), so that such an anti-P2P law will never be approved, no matter how much cash the entertainment industry offers to the lawmakers.
They really don’t get it do they?
Byebye TPB tracker, even byebye OpenBitTorrent tracker… it will make NO DIFFERENCE.
We oppose and protest the greed of mega-corporations by sharing their work for free.
If they weren’t such gluttonous pigs and charged a reasonable price (considering their packaging and distribution overheads for digital copies is pretty much ZERO) – rather than trying to keep the price the same when everyone knows it’s a lot cheaper for them now…
They might not be in this mess.
I will continue to protest and express my outrage at their extortion through the action of sharing. If they can’t be fair in their pricing, I won’t comply – no matter how many judges and politicians they bribe.
Sweden is my country. Hollowood and greedy American capitalist corporate pigs should leave it alone!
I hope politicians will have the spine not to give in to the big bully-boy of countries (aka USA) this time around, like they did with TPB.
@Cordelia
Not all Americans are greedy, please stop bashing the rest of us.
I could point out the attempted greed of a certain Swedish company* that backfired on them, but I won’t.
Oops, slipped out.
*Name not mentioned because I will not give them any free advertisement.
This song should be the anthem.
‘Fuck Hollywood’ by The Anti-Heroes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SHRdjZJXPo
It’s funny to see these guys getting desperate.
Every time they close a website/tracker 2 or 3 appear. lol
The idiots didnt realize that they cannot win this way.
Its impossible to stop file sharing.
IMPOSSIBLE !!!
Just get over it and try to find a new business model that work with new technologies.
They look like fools.
How about we sue Intel for making CPU’s that could be used to process illegal data?
Or Western Digital for storing the data?
For fucks sake, we might as well sue God for making humans that could share illegal files with each other!
We shall start sending envelopes with a bit of flour in them (by snail-mail) to the MAFIAA’s critical infrastructure. This will cause some panic and will temporally shut down targeted buildings. Equals loss of profits.
Our political wing will then demand closure of all postal services. That should, by our measurements and calculations, cause general hilarity.
love that internet shutdown button thingy :D
anyone having troubles with openbittorrent atm? tracker & site seems offline for me(tried several ISP’s)
Haha Wow amazing, Will it ever end??
Jess
http://www.amule.org
use Kad :-)
#79
Yes, it seems tracker and site are down.
Thanks to YOU , the net WILL be closed.
@79
It’s been up and down a lot over the last week or so.
what is the legality of this in united states?
@36
“You do not have enough credits to view this website………Choose payment method…..”
LMAO, I just said in my last comment it would be amusing… I’m already breathless from all the laughter hahahah
They even claim it’s TPB successor hahaha.. What do you guys smoke? Gimme some please hahahah
MAFIAA, being your clowns since P2P was born.
how many more sites are they going to take to court?
Tracker? What the heck is a “tracker”? Is this more of that “Gee whiz” technology stuff?
I’m going to have to e-mail Lesley Stahl and get some info about this…
too bad this happened…p2p technology is just like heroin to these hollywood/anti-piraacy outfits
love to hate it,hate to love it.
they will eventually realize their losing in the big picture and will embrace p2p. all it takes is for some of these old guys who are empowered to die off. then younger guys who arent yet too greedy and paranoid will change the course of their ship.
cant wait
Anyone remember mongo56?
Cordelia: “Sweden is my country. Hollowood and greedy American capitalist corporate pigs should leave it alone!”
Hmmm… let’s see it this way: weren’t Sweden’s politicians so easily corruptible, lobbyists from Hollywood wouldn’t have had a chance to sway Sweden’s copyright law in the wrong direction in recent years.
But to save Sweden’s honor: it’s ALSO the country with the highest pirate party votes worldwide… which is pretty encouraging despite Big Content’s underhanded tactics. I’ve not written Sweden off (yet), and hope that our Swedish friends will keep up the good fight.
@62
Same reason weed was Criminalized its the drug of the poor.
It sounds like a weak try to keep TPB alive as the “big bad wolf”. Yes, the Bay has located away from “civilized world” to some highly secure bunker; yes, they´ve turned off their trackers; yes, they´re moving away from .torrent files. Doesn´t matter, it´s “TPB”, the root of all evil that Big Content´s been fighting for years, can´t let it just fade away, gotta keep those 3 letters alive so it can be blamed for all the bad decisions the media industry has done or will do in the future. Perhaps nobody will notice that “everything will be like it used to be once we´ll destroy TPB” was just an empty promise.
One word: “Lame”.
Its time to dump trackers all together. DHT is good enough.
First day online and already a trial! They work fast!
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