“We decided to move to the desert of Sinai in Egypt since we feel that we’ll be safe there.” Connectivity in Egypt should be uncongested, with only about 1 in 13 of the population regular net users, despite modern infrastructure investments by Telecom Egypt. Meanwhile, the sun should do wonders to counter the typical pasty-faced stereotype of the typical computer addict.

In other news, there’s egg on the face of ABC, as a pre-air episode of the popular TV-show “Lost” hit the net. Apparently, the episode is from a DVD screener, and proves, yet again, that the problems come from members of the industry, who are often claimed to be the victims.

There is more breaking news today, as the popular OiNK replacement Waffles.fm now accepts new members. For months thousands of users have waited to get an account at the popular private BitTorrent tracker, and today this may become reality.

Unfortunately, things have not been so rosy for all BitTorrent sites. BT-chat, a popular torrent site has closed it’s torrent operations, to concentrate on its Bluetooth based IM client.

BT-Chat owner NBtX told TorrentFreak ” Server costs we’re starting to get too much, and the ads were making everyone mad. We have since then decided to stop providing torrents, and focus solely on the Bluetooth instant messaging program.”

However, the worst news comes for users of the private BitTorrent tracker BitHQ. Like EliteTorrents before them, they have been raided and shut down by US Federal Officers. No comment from any party involved has been forthcoming so far.

What a day….

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Now, even though an appeal in respect of Everlasting.nu is still pending, an emboldened BREIN has moved to get 6 further Leaseweb-hosted torrent trackers shut down, including the popular Araditracker, BitHQ and Peerportal, who between them tracked 9,000 torrents.

In a move which is bound to concern many other administrators who have their sites at Leaseweb, the host has again given up the personal details of the tracker admins. All three named sites have now left Leaseweb (and the Netherlands entirely) and have secured hosting elsewhere in Europe and US but this exodus doesn’t seem to concern BREIN who seem intent on pursuing the owners outside the Netherlands.

Tim Kuik of BREIN said “we have the names and addresses of these administrators, so we can get to these people through our contacts abroad.”

Armed with these names, BREIN says it intends to go after the administrators to force them to compensate content owners for lost revenue and prevent the sites from starting back up again.

With two out of the three sites already fully operational, it looks as if BREIN’s main aim of closing these sites has failed – in the biggest possible way.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.