TorrentFreak

Last century filesharing was a fringe hobby, only for geeks who were lucky enough to own a computer that could dial into the World Wide Web. How different is that today, where filesharing has become daily routine for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. In just a few years swapping files has become mainstream. Time to take a step back and see how it all came about.

The record labels would have you believe that Napster and now BitTorrent are ushering in the Dark Age of music, but really it’s just the Dark Age of the music industry; music as an art form is on the brink of a new renaissance. Here’s a countdown of the top six reasons why consumers and [...]

Just two days after Sweden’s new anti-piracy law came into force, two men have been arrested for sharing copyrighted files and administering a rip-box. The arrests were part of an international operation headed by Europol, and the suspects are alleged to be part of an international network.

A recently published survey on the ‘criminal’ habits among 15 year old Finns has revealed that more than two thirds of the youngsters have used file-sharing applications to downloaded copyrighted material. Online piracy was by far the most prevalent form of ‘criminal behavior’ among Finnish youth.

It’s been a bad week for the RIAA. First their headline campaign victory over Jammie Thomas was thrown out, and then the government said it ‘strongly opposes’ a bill lobbied for by the entertainment industries.

P4P is touted as the new and improved P2P. The technology has the potential to lower bandwidth costs for ISPs and speed up downloads for P4P enabled filesharing clients. There is a dark side to this new technology though. The strong anti-piracy connections are fuel for conspiracy theorists, and Net Neutrality might be at stake.

As the legal issues surrounding file-sharing heat up in the UK, more and more recipients of compensation demands are considering their defense. One such possibility is the ‘wireless’ or ‘WiFi’ defense. We take a look at the issue and try to shine some light on what people can expect, should they take this route.