Movies | January 31, 2011 | 14 comments

MPAA Shuts Down 50+ Torrent Sites in Global Sting

source: http://TorrentMovies.com

Image
bundlebear
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), with the cooperation of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, has quietly shuttered 12 torrent websites in the U.S. and at least 39 sites abroad by filing copyright violation complaints with the sites’ hosting providers.

The names of the sites themselves remain unknown; so far, however, the major players seem to be unaffected.

The specific URLs are not being released because frequently the affected sites will spring up elsewhere online under a different TLD (e.g., TorrentMovies.com becomes TorrentMovies.info). Releasing the names of the sites would make it much easier for users to find their new URLs in the future.

This news, while interesting and concerning, is a far cry from the 70-plus sites shut down by the Department of Homeland Security last November, the culmination of a brewing crackdown effort.

Some torrent and file-sharing sites, including RapidShare, have even taken to hiring lobbyists of their own. A company spokesperson told Mashable recently, “Given the fact that the U.S. government is currently undertaking great efforts to fight copyright infringements on the Internet, our having a voice in Washington could be beneficial for us as well as for the U.S. government.”

According to TorrentFreak, BREIN “has (temporarily) disabled more than 1,000 torrent sites in The Netherlands, and they are now helping the MPAA towards doing the same in the U.S.”

In a BREIN release, the organization stated that it helped the MPAA take down around 29 sites last year; and earlier this month, it shut down 39 sites in the Netherlands for the MPAA, as well.

BREIN also conducts these anti-piracy “stings” in 11 other countries, including Germany, France, Britain and Canada. Its director, Tim Kuik, said in the statement (via Google Translate), “There will be new sites, but we take them down fast so they cannot grow.”

http://mashable.com/2011/01/27/mpaa-shuts-down-50-torrent-sites-in-global-sting/
  1. groups:
    Community,   Entertainment,   Movies,   Technology,   1 more
  2. tags:
    Piracy,  Torrents,  Bittorrent,  MPAA,  2 more
  3.     
    |

14 comments // MPAA Shuts Down 50+ Torrent Sites in Global Sting

  • mspray11
    • 0
      mspray11  

    • So... only the rich will get to see movies. The poor and un-employed are going to get bored. I know a few sites that will prevail.

    • 1 year ago
  • mitekillem
    • 0
      mitekillem  

    • Just like with peer-to-peer, they'll try to shut them down, but something else will just pop-up. Each time harder to trace, and harder to shutdown.

      There are entire Movie sites setup where you can watch movies/bootlegs for free, if you download a tool bar. The sites use your computer to store parts of movies.
      When someone watches a movie, those pieces are recalled, and placed into queue from all related computers on the large network. It's genius!
      No servers to trace, it's powered (unknowingly) by users.
      It's like having a bot-net for movies.

      Imagine the same principle being used for file transfers.

    • 1 year ago
  • Saladin
    • +2
      Saladin  

    • Isohunt and Pirate Bay are still up.

      The is the futility of trying to shut things down on the internet. Unless you're China, someone can just start them right back up.

      Also, since torrents are user driven, they could never be eliminated.

    • 1 year ago
  • Dejan_Croatia
  • MizPiz
    • -4
      MizPiz  

    • Just thought I should let the people who pirate shit know that you are just stealing money from people. I'll admit I'm guilty of doing this, but I at least don't try to make myself out to be some sort of freedom fighter because I do.

    • 1 year ago
  • boothanew
    • +1
      boothanew  
    • MizPiz:

      not completely true...
      i think this is misinformation.. pirating is not the same as stealing a cd from the store..

      most of the time , if i really like an artist that i have "sampled" some music from a torrent site,i will pay for their merch but i will go to the show,attend the concert,and give money to the merch guy...which is usually a friend of the band (bc i listen to underground music)

      record labels dont need anymore of these artist's money

    • 1 year ago
  • MizPiz
    • 0
      MizPiz  
    • boothanew:

      Not really, the artist isn't the one who throws down the money to record the album (which pretty expensive to do), it's the label. Even if the artist did pay for the recording, then you're stealing from artist, and thus a hypocrite.

      Again, I download music, movies, and a couple of games, but I'm not going to act like I have a right to.

    • 1 year ago
  • bundlebear
  • toyotabedzrock
  • bundlebear
  • Swisher
  • bundlebear
  • Swisher
  • bundlebear
    • +1
      bundlebear  
    • Swisher:

      How many stupid movies are out now? Or about to come out. They are all clones of one another, badly made, acted, written, put together, etc. They put in minimal effort and what do they expect from it? Heck if they even gave some of these sh!t movies to me to watch for FREE I STILL would not watch it.
      hollywood just pointing the finger at piraters when they are the ones to blame?

    • 1 year ago
more from Movies:
from the community

top videos