The site was never involved in any legal action, and to keep it this way the site’s operators decided to shut the site down for good today. The following message was posted on the BTjunkie homepage a few minutes ago:

“This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!”

Talking to TorrentFreak, BTjunkie’s founder said that the legal actions against other file-sharing sites such as MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay played an important role in making the difficult decision. Witnessing all the trouble colleagues got into was cause for a lot of worry and stress, and those will now belong to the past.

That said, BTjunkie’s owner still thinks there might be a future for other BitTorrent sites.

“I really do hope so, the war is far from over for sure,” he told TorrentFreak.

While BTjunkie was never targeted directly by copyright holders, the site was reported to the US Trade Representative (USTR) November last year. Both the RIAA and MPAA listed the torrent index as a ‘rogue’ site that facilitated mass copyright infringement.

BTjunkie is also one of the search terms censored by Google because it’s piracy related, alongside The Pirate Bay, RapidShare, uTorrent and others.

As a result of the decision to shut down BTjunkie, one of the top 5 torrent sites with dozens of millions of users a month is no more. Judging from previous shutdowns like that of TorrentSpy and Mininova, users will quickly find a new home at one of the many alternatives.

Nonetheless, it’s the end of an era.

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

When BTjunkie was censored in Italy earlier this year, the site’s owner quickly launched a proxy site at the domain proxyitalia.com. The site is a general purpose proxy service which allows Italians to browse the Internet from a foreign IP-address, including blocked sites such as BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay.

Although there are thousands of sites like this, the Italian authorities classified proxyitalia.com as illegal. A few days ago the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the police division tasked with cybercrime cases, took the proxy site offline after a request from Cagliari deputy prosecutor Giangiacomo Pilia.

But BTjunkie isn’t going to cave in this fast. After being censored again BTjunkie’s owners launched a new proxy service, but one with a twist. Instead of hosting the proxy on its own domain and servers, BTjunkie is now using Google’s services.

“The Italian police have taken freedom of speech censorship to a new low with the blocking of a general purpose proxy. As strong advocates of freedom of speech and open Internet, we feel an overwhelming duty to teach the Italian police a proper lesson on how futile their attempts to silence these fundamental freedoms are,” BTjunkie’s owner explains to TorrentFreak.

“First we will spread the word to Italians on how to use a general purpose Google proxy. We will advertise this address on our website and e-mail over a half million registered Italians. Next we will launch a new e-mail notification tool to make it easier for even more Italians to stay up to date with new ways to circumvent any further blocks,” he added.

Indeed, it only took a few minutes to start a new proxy on Google’s services, and BTjunkie’s half million Italian members were quickly notified. Not exactly the result the Italian authorities were looking for.

BTjunkie’s owner, however, believes that it is his duty to stand up against what he feels is blatant censorship.

“As the police continue to push the line of Internet censorship, I hope that Italians wake up and take a stand for their right to communicate on the Internet. Because right now, Italian Internet policies are more like China’s then a Western democracy,” he said.

BTjunkie’s owner is not the only one who’s surprised by the far reaching actions of the Italian authorities. Several UK Internet providers have expressed their concerns over the recent censorship attempts in Italy.

“This demonstrates a concern with blocking in that it can be a slippery slope to censorship and blocking of legitimate sites,” TalkTalk’s Executive Director of Strategy and Regulation, Andrew Heaney said in a comment.

Moving to Google seems to limit the options for the Cagliari deputy prosecutor to crack down on the new proxy. Unless they want to take on Google, and even if they do we have a feeling that a new proxy will surface soon again. It’s a battle that can’t be won.

To quote John Gilmore once again: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

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

This week it turned out that not all Internet providers were complying with this second court order, which prompted the Sardinian prosecutor to sue these ISPs for aiding and abetting criminal copyright infringement.

But even if all ISPs block BTjunkie there are still several ways to access the site from Italy, through a proxy site for example.

When BTjunkie’s owner heard that Italy had blocked his site he decided to register the domain proxyitalia.com. “I’m disappointed with the Italian judicial system,” he told TorrentFreak at the time. “We will do our best to fight for Italian people’s right to communicate.”

A few hours later the new domain was hosting a general purpose proxy service which allows Italians to browse the Internet from a foreign IP-address. The added benefit is of course that censored websites such as BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay are readily accessible. Or were accessible, we should say.

Yesterday the Italian authorities decided to step up their anti-piracy actions and block access to the proxy site as well. The Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian police tasked with cybercrime cases, took out the site after a request from Cagliari deputy prosecutor Giangiacomo Pilia.

According to the authorities proxyitalia.com was acting illegally by allowing Italians access to BTjunkie and The Pirate Bay. This far-reaching intervention means that practically all proxy sites and VPN services located outside of Italy can be branded as illegal.

Following the logic of the Italian prosecutor means that the authorities will have to add thousands of sites and services to their blacklist in order to fully block the two torrent sites. Even then, it takes only a few hours to set up a new proxy site, so this cat and mouse game will never end.

BTjunkie’s owner told TorrentFreak that he’s in utter disbelief following the latest developments in Italy. He’s not going to give up yet though, and will try once more to help out BTjunkie’s Italian users.

“I’m going to offer the same type of proxy site, but hosted at Google apps this time. Let’s see if the police will ban Google’s IP-addresses as well,” he told us.

More info on the new proxy site will become available in the days to come.

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

The owner of BTjunkie was not informed about the action. “I’m disappointed with the Italian judicial system,” he tol TorrentFreak at the time. “We will do our best to fight for Italian people’s right to communicate.”

This promise was kept and a few days later BTjunkie launched a proxy site which allowed Italian users to circumvent the block. However, for many Italians the proxy wasn’t needed as the ISPs Fastweb and NGI reportedly failed to block the popular torrent site.

This failure to comply with the court order has now prompted the Cagliari court to launch a criminal investigation into both ISPs who are suspected of aiding and abetting online copyright infringement. This is the first case in Italy where Internet providers are being held liable for the copyright-infringing actions of their subscribers.

The case against the two ISPs was prompted by an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian police force with responsibility for dealing with cybercrime. They regularly monitor the traffic levels of ‘pirate’ sites and found that not all Italian ISPs were adhering to the court order.

As expected, the legal action was welcomed by the Italian music industry group FIMI, who previously called for a total blackout of all piracy-related websites.

“We believe the action brought by the judiciary of Cagliari sends a very important signal that lawlessness can not be tolerated or encouraged in any way. Especially not from companies that offer telecommunication services, who have a key role in stopping copyright violations as required by law,” FIMI’s president Enzo Mazza said commenting on the news.

According to a response from Fastweb, the whole case stems from a technical failure. The Internet provider today stated that it was never their intention to allow subscriber access to BTjunkie, and actually resolved the error as soon as the news broke.

BTjunkie’s blockade is not the first Italian attempt at blacking out a popular torrent site. The court order is similar to an earlier Italian block of The Pirate Bay that was first handed down in 2008. After an appeal process of nearly two years, The Pirate Bay was eventually blocked both completely and permanently last year.

Whether Fastweb and NGI’s failure to block BTjunkie was an accident or a deliberate attempt to bypass the court order will become clear in the coming weeks.

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

Last week’s actions are similar to an earlier Italian block of The Pirate Bay that was first ordered in 2008. After an appeal process of nearly two years, The Pirate Bay was eventually blocked both completely and permanently last year.

TorrentFreak spoke to the owner of BTjunkie who told us that he does not intent to appeal the court order. However, that doesn’t mean that Italian users wont be able to access the site anymore. As it turns out, with just one simple step Italians can have full access to BTjunkie again, as well as every other censored website.

Italian visitors whose ISPs have not yet implemented the block now see the following message.

“Attention Italians: BTjunkie will soon be blocked following an Italian judicial complaint. You can continue to access the site through proxyitalia.com/btjunkie.org”

Indeed, all BTjunkie users have to do to gain access to their favorite torrent site is update their bookmarks to use the proxy site. And this is not limited to BTjunkie either. The proxyitalia.com site works for The Pirate Bay as well, or any other site that may be blocked in the future.

BTjunkie’s action shows how futile web censorship is. Aside from updating one’s bookmarks to use the proxy URL, there are plenty of other ways to bypass the block. A particularly popular solution is signing up with a VPN service, which assigns users a foreign IP-address, lifting all local restrictions.

And the above is no secret to Italians.

As of today, hundreds of thousands of Italian BitTorrent users use The Pirate Bay website despite a nationwide censorship order. And even those who stop using The Pirate Bay can still choose from dozens of other large indexes to score their daily BitTorrent fix. Apparently, censorship is not the best solution for decreasing piracy.

Needless to say, the authorities are not too fond of the proxy sites that allows Italians to bypass their court orders. A proxy site that was setup in response to the Pirate Bay blockade was quickly pulled offline by the authorities last year, but ultimately they’re fighting a losing battle.

To add to this, shutting down proxyitalia.com will not be so easy as it’s a general purpose proxy. Unlike the Pirate Bay proxy site it can be used with all URLs, so if the authorities block the proxy site they might as well block the thousands of other proxy sites that exist on the Internet too.

As John Gilmore famously said: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

Perhaps, then, the only way to succeed is to shut the Internet down altogether.

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

Local authorities claim that BTjunkie was one of the most frequently visited BitTorrent sites in the country, with over half a million visitors from Italy every day. In addition, they claim that aside from downloading music and movies, it was also possible to stream soccer matches of Italy’s top competition – the Serie A – via the site.

The court order follows an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), an Italian police force with responsibility for dealing with cybercrime, and falls under operation “Poisonous Dahlia.” The name of the operation references Dahlia TV, a pay-per-view television network that shut down in March due to financial problems. Among other things, Dahlia TV was offering live soccer matches of the Serie A soccer competition.

According to the prosecutor BTjunkie is in part responsible for Dahlia TV shutting down, as it allegedly offered streams of the soccer matches that the television network broadcasted. This appears to be a misunderstanding, as BTjunkie is a regular torrent indexer that is not involved in streaming in any way.

TorrentFreak briefly spoke to BTjunkie’s owner who was surprised by the developments in Italy. He’s currently considering how to respond and whether there are ways to circumvent the blockade, but he told us that he does not intend to appeal the court’s decision.

“I’m disappointed with the Italian judicial system. We will do our best to fight for Italian peoples right to communicate. At the moment I can suggest to try any of the other popular torrent sites and checking TorrentFreak later for a update on alternative methods for accessing BTjunkie from Italy.”

BTjunkie is not the first BitTorrent site to be rendered inaccessible in Italy. The Pirate Bay was first ‘censored’ in the summer of 2008, when a similar court order led ISPs to block millions of Italians from accessing the world’s largest torrent site.

At the time, The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and it eventually won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted temporarily, as the case was appealed once again by the authorities.

The Supreme Court then reviewed the case and ruled that ISPs can be forced to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. According to the decision by the Supreme Court, sites offering torrent files that link to copyrighted material are engaging in criminal activity.

The above means that even if BTjunkie’s owner wanted to, fighting the ban will be very hard, if not impossible. In response to the Pirate Bay blockade some people setup a proxy site that offered access to The Pirate Bay, but this site was eventually pulled offline by the authorities as well.

Update: BTjunkie works in Italy via a proxy of course.

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

In a follow up article posted yesterday, we offered more information about the raids and their aftermath from Scene insiders, but still a lot of questions remained unanswered. Things got particularly confusing when leading torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie were linked to the police action in one or two news reports, a rumor which then spread virally around other media outlets.

Since the raids were targeted at Scene servers, computers where members have direct access to a variety of files in a closed system, torrent sites would be an unusual target to include. Still, when there’s news about a huge piracy raid – especially in Sweden – torrent sites are the things that naturally come to mind for a lot of people.

So, when the news broke about the raids while The Pirate Bay was temporarily and coincidentally offline a couple of days ago, several reporters added one and one. This is why dozens of sites reported yesterday that The Pirate Bay was taken down in the raids. Even when it reappeared, it was assumed that the site had relocated elsewhere. Other torrent sites including BTJunkie were mentioned as targets as well. Luckily for the site’s users, none of these sites were affected by the raid, nor were they targeted.

Although we never linked any torrent sites to the raids ourselves we felt the need to clear up the confusion. TorrentFreak contacted both The Pirate Bay and BTJunkie and we were assured that nothing was going on. BTJunkie’s founder told us that they didn’t even suffer the slightest downtime. The Pirate Bay team said that they were indeed down for a few hours, but this was because they had to upgrade the servers.

Hopefully this will put an end to some of the rumors that have been making the rounds in the last few days. There is little doubt that the police raids have had a serious impact on the Scene, but apart from seeing a minor decrease in Scene releases appearing online, BitTorrent sites are operating as usual.

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

The filtering process is not automated and DMCA takedown requests are generally reviewed manually. Sometimes this leads to errors, such as when Google removed The Pirate Bay’s home page from its search results last October.

The Pirate Bay homepage does not list any torrent files as most people know, so there was little doubt that the filter was applied in error. Google later admitted this mistake and after blaming it on an incorrect takedown request, the company finally said that an “internal error” was the reason behind the Pirate Bay ban.

As promised, The Pirate Bay homepage soon reappeared in Google’s search results and things went back to the way they were. However, fellow torrent site BTJunkie is now in a similar position as The Pirate Bay was a few months ago. BTJunkie’s homepage no longer comes up in Google.

“In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org,” Google explains at the bottom of the search results.

The DMCA complaint Google links to appears to come from Fox and refers to the blockbuster movie Avatar. At the time of publication the full complaint is not yet available so we were unable to verify whether it listed BTJunkie’s home page.

Unlike The Pirate Bay, BTJunkie does list several torrents on its homepage including Avatar which is among the most downloaded torrents on the site. These lists are all dynamically generated and constantly changing of course, and it is unclear whether that will warrant a removal from the search results.

TorrentFreak discussed the issue with the owner of BTJunkie who told us that he has sent a counter notice to Google (picture below). Thus far Google has not responded on the issue, but we will update this article when there’s an official statement on BTJunkie’s removal.

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

This level of coverage is a great accomplishment for a new torrent site, but the fun didn’t last very long. Those who took a closer look at the site could easily see that TaffyBox was simply using the resources of another torrent site, BTjunkie, without informing the site’s founder.

Needless to say, the BTjunkie team was not amused when they found out and they responded by preventing TaffyBox from accessing the site’s backend. As a result, the newly launched site no longer functions.

“Sites like TaffyBox drain costly resources without putting into the pot. Most sites that utilize our backend reciprocate and when they don’t we ban them,” the founder of BTjunkie told TorrentFreak. “He just ripped off the site and stripped the ads,” he added.

The disconnection which rendered TaffyBox useless didn’t go unnoticed by Jake who runs the site. Just minutes after BTjunkie disallowed the newcomer from using their resources he offered to link back to BTjunkie, but unfortunately for him that is not enough to earn a reprieve.

BTjunkie’s founder explained to TorrentFreak that those who want to use the search have to link to the site’s download page instead of hotlinking the torrents. “You would think the least he would do is put some reference to BTjunkie, not wait until I cut him off and offer to add one link,” he added.

What happened to TaffyBox is probably a good lesson for all the people that want to use existing torrent indexers to create their own torrent search engine. Sites like BTjunkie don’t see any problems in sharing some of their resources, as long as they get something in return. After all, BitTorrent is all about reciprocity.

Update: TaffyBox switched to The Pirate Day and seems to be working again.

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

“So this is my mission control, believe it or not I bought most of this stuff with baccarat winnings,” he told TorrentFreak, while sharing two pictures of his home base with us. Below he walks us through his current setup.

Desktop 1: My fastest desktop is a Dell XPS 630 with Intel® Core™2 E8400, 2GB RAM, 500GB SATA + 1TB external., and Dual nVidia GeForce 9800GT video card. This machine is hooked up to the very nice 25.5″ Samsung Syncmaster 2693HM monitor.

Desktop 2: The computer next to the XPS is a home built Athlon 64 3GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB SATA, and it’s hooked up to 17″ Samsung SyncMaster 173P.

Laptop: The laptop is the Samsung X460: Intel Core2 Duo P7350, 3GB RAM, 14″ WXGA screen, and weighs only 1.29kg.

Server: The server I’m setting up to send to a data center is the IBM 326m with Opteron 280, 4GB RAM, 73GB 15K SCSI.

Misc: I have a little apple in my diet, I use my jail broken iphone for monitoring servers & tethering on the go. For all my paper work I use the Canon MP620. The speakers & sub are the Altec Lansing VS4221.

To top it off the BTjunkie founder told us that his Internet connection was just upgraded to a 30Mbit connection. Below are the pictures of his current setup and links to the larger sized images. In a few days we continue this series with the workstation of isoHunt’s Gary Fung.

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