Olympic Torrents More Popular Than Ever
Written by Ernesto on August 19, 2008This week, close to two million people have downloaded the Olympics opening ceremony, which makes it the most pirated TV-show of the week – again. The International Olympic Committee is not too happy about it, and they are urging the Swedish government to take on The Pirate Bay.
Last week we reported that the Opening Ceremony had been downloaded by more than a million people, and this figure has doubled over the past 7 days. However, there is less demand for the other Olympic events, as most of these get less than 20,000 downloads.
Compared to 2004, the availability of Olympic events on BitTorrent has grown significantly, both in quantity and quality. Interestingly, the demand for Olympic torrents is the greatest in China, as 65% of the people who downloaded the Openings Ceremony come from the host country.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not pleased seeing their shows on BitTorrent sites though. Yesterday they even sent a letter (read it here) to the Swedish Minister of Justice, urging her to take on The Pirate Bay. From the letter, it looks like they have been reading last week’s article. “Our technical advisor Informs us that as many as 1 million copies of the Opening Ceremony have been illegally downloaded worldwide, with the most significant activity taking place through Pirate Bay,” they write.
The IOC claims to have contacted The Pirate Bay with a takedown request, but turned to the Minister when they got no response. The Pirate Bay denies this, and Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde writes: “The phone hasn’t rung. And I guess their e-mail probably got caught in the Chinese firewall, since TPB is blocked there.”
From the letter, it seems that the IOC is predicting that the Closing Ceremony will hit BitTorrent immediately after the fireworks. “We are also gravely concerned about the upcoming Closing Ceremony on August 24, as it is entirely predictable that illegal copies of that event will be immediately made available through the Pirate Bay.” They are right of course, and we’re afraid that the Swedish government can’t do much about it either.
Today, the Minister said in a radio interview that The Pirate Bay is not really good promotion for Sweden (although some would disagree), but that there is indeed little they can do to stop the tracker from hosting torrent files.
It is not clear why the IOC is going after the Pirate Bay, and not any of the other BitTorrent sites. Of course, they are the most outspoken, but the majority of all the Olympic torrents are downloaded from other sites. Most BitTorrent sites do take down torrents when they are asked to, so it might be a good idea to start there….
Below is this week’s chart of the most pirated TV-shows on BitTorrent, the Olympics Opening Ceremony tops the chart again. The data for the TV-torrent chart is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.
Top Downloads August 10 – August 17
| Ranking | (last week) | TV-show |
| 1 | (1) | Olympics 2008 Opening Ceremony |
| 2 | (2) | Weeds |
| 3 | (3) | Eureka |
| 4 | (4) | Generation Kill |
| 5 | (5) | Burn Notice |
| 6 | (back) | Stargate Atlantis |
| 7 | (new) | Fifth Gear |
| 8 | (10) | Mad Men |
| 9 | (6) | Psych |
| 10 | (back) | Mythbusters |
Previously: IOC Wants Olympic Torrents Off The Pirate Bay
Next: British Government Caught Pirating On Prime Minister’s Website
49 Responses
God Bless China.
Come on, what did they expect, isn’t it the piracy capital of the WORLD?
Everyone wants to watch the opening ceremony to see the little girl miming in her ‘perfect cuteness’. Image and profit are everything.
@ 1 – God
exactly, they don’t respect any copyright, they don’t even sell game consoles there in the knowledge people will only buy counterfit games.
To get all up about TPB is stupid. The Swedish minister should be telling the IOC to stop wasting time. If it was live video I could understand but it’s a recording.
What exactly were the IOC gonna do with the footage after the fact. Are they so naive as to think anyone would pay money for the DVD? FFS, aren’t they the greedy AND stupid ones. And clueless. I forgot clueless.
LOL!
When you say ‘after the fireworks’, you mean after the digitally-re-created-faked-for-3-billion-people fireworks?
At least Athens got it right.
But nothing can beat Sydney’s Opening Ceremony. Spectacular.
Question: What with the internet DOGS controlling EVERYTHING over in China, could Fred Blogs living somewhere in Beijing set up a VPN through TorrentFreeedom, or Relakks, say? Or is the government too paranoid because that means they can’t control the access Fred gets?
And how many torrent sites in CHINESE are there? Or possibly specifically for Chinese? I can’t imagine there’d be many. (TPB?)
PEACE!
You can order a DVD of the opening ceremonies from NBC, so I’m sure they’re trying to protect that revenue as well. But, as stated, the Chinese are the biggest stealers in the world. They don’t buy ANYTHING.
Leave the Swedes alone!
First they got a little girl to mime for the opening ceremony, i think the present project is trying to digitally craete the Swedish wrestler who threw his medal… to say how fantastic China is and they are just scared people will see through that “mastery” as well.
Little commie yellow bastards remember one thing, the great wall of China as well as the great _firewall_ of China + all the control that goes with it will only be in your country, you cant control shit out of there, least of all here.
- A Swede
http://www.eZee.se
fukkk the chinese harem rulers IOC !Olympics was,is & will be FREE!!!
> urging the Swedish government to take on The Pirate Bay.
We already know the Swedish Police and Politicians can be bought. Tell the IOC to fill in the appropriate form and post a check.
The IOC got Youtube to take down a Free Tibet video that China complained about. The IOC are scum.
great i am 8th commenter
I think the opening ceremony is going to be remembered as authentic “Made In China” shit types.
“gravely concerned”?
LMFAOPMP!
IOC tards…
olympics who cares
oh yah
FREE TIBET thats what i remember about it…..
I heard a guy say in a fourm once that he enjoyed living in china because of how relaxed their policies were. His example was that he’s subscribed to a PSP gaming magazine, and included in the magazine is a DVD which is full of all the games that they reviewed.
I’ve been keeping track of TPB torrents for Olympics 2008. Before the news got out, there was only a sprinkle of Olympics 2008 torrents. After the news about TPB, the number Olympic 2008 torrents increased significantly. I think the news story encouraged more torrents to be posted.
This is just a publicity stunt to increase interest in the games, knowing that “pirates” like to do things that people are trying to stop. Looks like its worked for the olympics, my hats off to there PR guy
Dictators are well-known for being able to make better olympics… Great tool for propaganda.
@1
No, China is not exactly for free information. They selectively enforce copyright. The purpose of file-sharing is freedom of information, and how could any totalitarian state stand for such a purpose? Remember: The Pirate Bay is blocked in China.
who cares
this site is sh!t
tpb awful design, slow, annoying sh!t site
You are confusing China with the IOC.
The International Olympics Committee is not China. They are a separate organization that moderates the Olympics.
Even so, most of the above comments are still valid regarding China and their approach to the world.
I dL’ed two versions!
Who would want to buy the DVD. Its not like a movie or something is it(Its the best Olympics Opening Ceremony I have ever seen thou). And I didn’t see any Official Olympics streams in any sites.I googled for an hour just so I could watch an ad free version of the show. Mr. #17 is obviously related to IOC.
And b/c of this, people will download the closing ceremony even more.
Keep promoting TPB IOC people with the letters and it making the news!
Did you see the new Piratebay Logo
http://thepiratebay.org/
They changed it to: The Beatrice Bay
Maybe if our terrible new’s groups (USA) didnt filter what they want to see and showed us everything, we wouldnt have to resort to such drastic measures. oh wait clicking twice to download something isnt that drastic.
Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVXCr6upWUo
“Maybe if our terrible new’s groups”
news.
s = plural
’s = possessive
:)
http://thepiratebay.org/lovetpb.php
The Swedish minister of justice, Beatrice Ask, told the Swedish national radio that she believed that The Pirate Bay did not give Sweden a good reputation :-/ (this time regarding the threats from IOC towards TPB).
We hope (and think) that’s wrong, so we now urge our users to tell her how they feel about the bay!
Please fill out the form below (and do alter the default text if you like) and press Send. Madame Ask will receive it as an official document, so please do be careful with what you write, as it will be a public document.
And we love you for showing us support!
http://thepiratebay.org/lovetpb.php
yea just what you expect from a IOC legal director named Howard Stupid
“Police That Mustache!!!” Funniest line ever shouted on television.
Also enjoyed “Scrape that hippy shit off your lip” – Generation kill is a great show thats realistically demonstrates the asshole to cool human ratio in the Marine Corps.
Although ALL the marines I have personally known have been total assholes, I always imagined some must be decent folks.
What crying babies. I thought the Olympics was supposed to be about the world, not a wealthy elite. If they truely cared about this they should have offered it online for a 25 cent download.
@27: The Swedish minister of Justice need not worry. I barely heard of Sweden before this, or cared for it.
Now I refer to Sweden as Valhalla for their amazingly intelligent people. The reputation is huge and stands out above all others in Europe as far as I’m concerned.
They are going after TPB and no one else because really it is just part of their advertising.
Looks like IOC is spineless to to enforce their own rules but expect others to follow MPAA/RIAA style rules. In fact I suspect other forces at work here.
China Olympic Gymnastics Age Scandal
http://www.teachabroadchina.com/china-gymnastics-age-scandal-2008-olympics/#comment-5184
RIAA, MPAA, IOC,… Same shit, different acronyms. Free and public distribution services akin to what The PirateBay provide threaten the profitability of some industrial sectors, so they utilise their powers to eliminate the threat and so solidify their position of control so they can profit.
Hand A: Popular interest.
Hand B: Corporate interest.
And as a reminder for the Ministers;
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=democracy
IOC can suck my lizard penis
Torrent is like a hydra … chop off one head and several others appear. Take down one site and several others will appear. Stomp on one story and your town will be burned down by a deluge of defiant users.
I really thought at least someone would have learned that resistance is futile …
Pirating music is one thing, but http://FreelanceNotes.com pirates homework. I guess with the internet, you can pirate anything nowadays…
LOL, with all the “good stuff” out there, I cannot imagine why anyone would waste bandwidth downloading the stupid Olympic stuff.
RD
http://www.decrypt.net.tc
Funny part is a lot of these downloads are coming from China, and the IOC is trying to take these torrents down…
thepiratebay = organized crime
It is ridiculous to relate this pirating to Chinese people without any proof. It should be denounced if The Pirate Bay provides torrents for the opening ceremony, and i believe IOC is doing the right thing. I cannot think out any reasons why Chinese people would even try to download this stuff; they can see it right on TV from public channels, without any charge. Maybe Chinese have lots of thing they don’t do well, but try to impose all the charges on them is unfair, and with no evidence, what do you call that?
as a hosting country, China is too eager to put on a perfect show to the world, maybe some approaches are inappropriate in the eyes of the West, but do the Chinese people steal something from you?
God bless us with more understanding.
@41: Actually, RIAA and MPAA = organised crime
Scres you all who made the shitty comments about China and the opening ceremony. Get your facts straight before opening your mouth you mofo retards.
@7
Love the casual racism there. Surely you of all people should be backing those “yellow bastards”? They are after all, pirating like you and me are.
And heaven forbid the Chinese wanting to show their best to the world. Not like us Westerners, who always put substance before style!
its magnificent event. no wonder that Olympic Torrents are more pupolar than ever.
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to all the above tallking shit about beijing olympics, you´r all just as stupid as it gets! i feel sorry for you all mad agains china just because they did something far better than america could possibly do, beijing olympics are and will be by far the best ever games ever organized, such cuality of performances and such cualtiy of arganization will be very hard to superate in a long time, get over it!
shity americans with their stupid camplains about anyone who does something better than they do, and for the sorry dumbass who says that olympics are no good thing he just demonstrate himself ass a absolute loooooosser and useless fatass, you better get to work for London
for me the most important thing is clean conscience despite of the unfairness in the Olympics. thanks
#47 and #48 — AGREED! Jealous, narrow-minded, geographically and historically imapaired fat-asses! But just half of them. There’s a lot of sensible people in america, but it seems haters are more prone to barking, they’ree same who live inside the FoxNews, NBC, insert-hypocrite-media-here, world)
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