These sort of problem – when users in one geographical location can access a site when others can’t – is usually down to DNS issues which generally resolve themselves in a short time. However, in the case of Demonoid, this doesn’t appear to offer the answer.

According to reports we’ve received, when users from the Netherlands try to access Demonoid all they get is a blank white page. However, should they try to access the site using a proxy or VPN making the visitor appear they are not from the Netherlands, the user can now gain access. The block happens on all the major ISPs, and are persistent.

Canadians, having been previously blocked, remain unblocked, presumably after Demonoid fell out of range of the CRIA. However, more recently reports indicate that not only are Dutch users blocked from Demonoid, but in an unlikely scenario, Brazilians appear to be blocked too. So what could be at the bottom of this?

There could be some purely technical issues with the web, but as time goes on, this seems less and less likely. It is of course possible that Demonoid itself has some technical problems, having reported that the site had a few bugs to be ironed out around 9 days ago or so. If this is the case, there will be lots of relieved people around.

It’s also possible that there is a legal angle to these blocks, after all this type of action by Demonoid isn’t new in its quest to stay within the law. Around 12 months ago Demonoid blocked Dutch users for a while, as the pressure from BREIN increased quietly behind the scenes, and then later on very publicly blocked millions of Canadians following pressure from the CRIA, only to unblock them again after moving to ’safer’ Ukraine-based hosting.

But, if Ukraine is ’safe’ as a host country, why block the Netherlands, and why block Brazil of all places? As it turns out there is a Demonoid/Brazil link, in that the Demonoid.com domain has a protected WHOIS provided by the Brazilian-based Neurocube.com, which in turn is hosted in the Netherlands at Demonoid’s old host, LeaseWeb. And of course, Netherlands-based anti-piracy group BREIN aren’t the biggest supporters of Demonoid either – and have lots of resources – but whether or not they still hold anything over the site in order to force a block of an entire country is a matter of speculation.

In the absence of any announcement from the new admin of Demonoid (which seems incredibly unlikely), it’s some users of Demonoid who asked us to find out why they can’t access the site. Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer for them right now, maybe they will become more clear in the future.

In the meantime, please keep us updated in the comments with access reports from your country and we’ll try to keep people updated on the position for Dutch and Brazilian Demonoid fans. If you can or cannot access Demonoid, we’d like to hear from you.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Over the past years BREIN managed to shut down 131 sites that offered links to copyrighted content. Most of these sites were smaller BitTorrent sites, hosted on free hosting accounts or on a server box connected to a private DSL line.

You might wonder why BREIN is only picking on these smaller guys? Well, the answer is pretty simple, their intimidation tactics will not impress the larger torrent sites. Most of the larger BitTorrent sites and trackers have decent lawyers, and so far BREIN doesn’t have a strong case in court because BitTorrent sites are simply NOT illegal in The Netherlands.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Aufero is everything you’d want in a media centre. Here’s a list of features.

It lets you:

• manage any existing media you have.
• create a “wish list” of videos you would like to watch, and then have those videos automatically downloaded once they become available.
• view trailers, reviews and previews, and download torrents related to them.
• manually download torrents you feed it.
• seamlessly playback videos in an array of formats on your Xbox 360 (not just WMVs).
• receive “subtle notifications” on your screen after something on your wish list has been found, downloaded, unpacked, indexed and moved into your library.
• receive e-mail notifications of relevant events when you’re not in front of your TV.
• Lastly, Aufero is simple to use and tries to increase the “wife appeal” by making it easy for less tech-savvy people to make use of.

Best of all, it sounds like the developer is planning to release Aufero under an open source license. I think Microsoft should be thanking him, because he’s just created a worthy Windows-based competitor to the AppleTV. Sadly, there’s almost no chance of that happening. For his own “protection”, the developer isn’t disclosing anything about himself, not even his name. All we know is that he (or she?) is Dutch.

Aufero is not yet available for download, as it’s in the early alpha testing phase. If you look at some of the screenshots, this is made obvious by the current UI, which is rather unpolished. But the developer stresses that it’s not complete yet.



Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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