During the past two weeks the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN forced 6 (small) torrent sites to stop their services. Brein is known for its intimidating techniques, and is successful in taking down sites, mostly set up by hobbyists.
Today the IFPI announced a new wave of lawsuits (2000) in Europe. But how new is this wave? It seems like they keep suing the same people over and over again. If you compare today’s press release with the one they put out last year you will see that in both cases they sued a “German judge”, a “British Councilor” and a “French Chef”. What a coincidence!
In November 2005 BitTorrent and the MPAA announced that they were going to cooperate in the “war against piracy”. The agreement was called a “historic event” and a “major breakthrough”. But now, 4 months later BitTorrent.com is still indexing pirated movies and other copyrighted material.
Germany just agreed on a new law that makes it possible to put downloaders behind bars for two years. This is if you use the movie for personal use, commercial downloaders face up to five years in prison. Germany is considered to be one of the leading filesharing counties in Europe so this law will [...]
It’s almost a month after the MPAA targeted 5 of the bigger torrent sites. In the meanwhile Isohunt has been planning to fight the MPAA and is currently raising money to do so. Niteshdw on the other hand doesn’t have the money to fight and tries to settle without taking too much damage. The official [...]
Torrentspy, one of the biggest torrent sites out there “lost” their TV and Movie directory. This obviously makes it harder for people to browse through the torrent listing and find the files they want. The categories in question are replaced by a more general “video” directory. And categories like DVD-screener, Telecine and Cam are totally gone.
Brein, the Dutch anti-piracy organization has taken down 6 dutch torrentsites. Among these sites is Dutchnova, a torrentsite with 25.000 members. Brein gave the sites a choice: admit you infringe copyright and give us all the information about your members or we will sue you. These threatening and intimidating talk seems to work, although Brein [...]
The latest news from around the web, not covered on the frontpage
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,...
In the wake of the Megaupload raids and attacks on domains in the US and elsewhere,...
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...