tagged w/ P2P
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The Isle of Man's Manx government may be the first to implement a scheme in which a top-up on all broadband charges acts as a blanket music consumption license, allowing unlimited, legal, P2P downloads for the entire population.
"At the end of the day, we are not going to stop piracy, so let's embrace it," says the Manx Inward Investment Minister, Ron Berry.
A blanket licence on P2P downloads? Your thoughts?The Isle of Man's Manx government may be the first to implement a scheme in which... more
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Formally rolls out new network traffic congestion management practices that are protocol agnostic.
Comcast, the country's second largest ISP, has announced that as of December 31st, 2008 it has ceased throttling BitTorrent users as requested by the FCC back in August of 2008.
"Effective December 31, 2008, we have completed this transition, which is now part of our daily business operations for managing congestion on our network," reads an announcement on its website. "The approach is designed to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that all of our high-speed Internet customers have fair and equal access to the Internet and to bandwidth resources."
The FCC found Comcast in violation of the agency's principles for electively targeting and throttling the connection speeds of a single application - BitTorrent - as part of its overall efforts in managing network traffic.
"Although Comcast asserts that its conduct is necessary to ease network congestion, we conclude that the company’s discriminatory and arbitrary practice unduly squelches the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet and does not constitute reasonable network management," read its ruling.
As past of its new congestion management practices, they've deployed new hardware and software close to the company's Regional Network Routers (RNRs). This hardware will flip a user from the standard "Priority Best-Effort" traffic (PBE) to lower quality of service (QoS) "Best-Effort" traffic (BE) for fifteen minutes if a subscriber surpasses a "User Consumption Threshold" of 70% of their upstream or downstream bandwidth bandwidth over a similar 15-minute period. Using more than 70% of your bandwidth for this duration is called an "Extended High Consumption State."
In other words, the new approach will (1) during periods when a CMTS port is in a Near Congestion State, (2) identify the subscribers on that port who have consumed a disproportionate amount of bandwidth over the preceding 15 minutes, (3) lower the priority status of those subscribers’ traffic to BE status until those subscribers meet the release criteria, and (4) during periods of congestion, delay BE traffic before PBE traffic is delayed.
The system is much improved since it no longer puts the burden of network traffic congestion on the backs of BitTorrent users, but it still seems to ignore the more poignant question of whether a customer should be guaranteed more than 70% of the service they pay for at any given time.Formally rolls out new network traffic congestion management practices that are... more
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P2P (peer-to-peer) is the nature of the Net. You can fight that, or you can embrace it. Here in the US, the mainstream entertainment business has mostly been fighting it. Hollywood and its phone and cable company allies have long regarded P2P, and BitTorrent in particular, as a copyright piracy system and a bandwidth hog. In the European Union, however, P2P is more than accepted: it's supported by the Union itself.
Early last year, the EU granted 14 million euros to P2P-Next, a consortium of 21 media companies and universities, including the BBC, Delft University of Technology, the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limited and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The purpose of the grant is “to develop a Europe-wide 'next-generation' Internet television distribution system, based on P2P and social interaction”. (An additional 5 million euros is also being donated by some of the P2P-Next partners, for a total of 19 million euros.) The project has a four-year span and will include technical trials of new media applications on many devices.
“Everything we're doing is based on open source”, says Johan Pouwelse, PhD, scientific director of P2P-Next and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Delft. The good doctor also runs P2P-Next's first trial application: Tribler (pronounced “tribe-ler”), a BitTorrent-based client with no servers and a “zero-cost” business model. Tribler provides an all-in-one way to find, consume and share media.
But Tribler goes beyond BitTorrent to support live streaming and other enhancements. The project's Research page lists 26 allied development projects, including six that are already completed and operational. If you're looking to help media evolve past the TV model, there's a rich pile of possibilities on the Tribler project list.
The Tribler download page lists two Linux sources: Ubuntu Linux and “GNU+Linux/Source”.
Check it out, and let us know how it works for you (or, you for it).P2P (peer-to-peer) is the nature of the Net. You can fight that, or you can embrace... more
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According to a new report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), 95 percent of all online music downloads are in fact unauthorized and can be considered piracy.
The trade group notes that piracy is "its biggest challenge" as it leaves artists and record companies without royalty payments.
The report noted that worldwide music revenue shrank by 7 percent last year but did add that digital downloads continued strong growth.
The IFPI says over 40 billion music files were shared "illegally" over the past year in comparison to the 1.4 billion tracks purchased legally via iTunes, Amazon MP3 and other online shops.
John Kennedy, the CEO of the IFPI, added:
"There is a momentous debate going on about the environment on which our business, and all the people working in it, depends.
"Governments are beginning to accept that, in the debate over 'free content' and engaging ISPs in protecting intellectual property rights, doing nothing is not an option if there is to be a future for commercial digital content."According to a new report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry... more
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So what can be said about the year 2008 in file-sharing? It’s been a long year for the P2P community. While there were no earth shattering events on the scale of 2006’s raid on The Pirate Bay, there were enough developments that kept things interesting.
January
Although it’s not often times for celebration in the P2P world, MiniNova, perhaps the largest BitTorrent indexer, found cause. In January of 2008, it celebrated 3 years online. It would be the first of several achievements for MiniNova, however, its success is tempered against its legal situation against the entertainment industry.
ISP filtering of P2P traffic became an even hotter issue, as large providers such as AT&T indicated they would help take on the fight against unauthorized file-sharing. However, the move isn’t totally altruistic. ISPs have a lot to gain in tempering P2P traffic, such as controlling the exploding volume of bandwidth consumption.
The year started off well for The Pirate Bay. With over 10 million users, TPB is far and away the largest P2P network. How much larger could the network possibly get?
February
The HD DVD/Blu-Ray format war finally came to an end, with Blu-Ray emerging as the victor. With downloadable high definition movies becoming more readily available, including portable memory such as SD cards and USB drives, Blu-Ray’s victory may soon be superseded by other technology.
May
Tanya Anderson, an accused P2P pirate, was awarded attorney fees in her fight against the music industry.
"Andersen should be awarded attorney fees in the amount of $103,175. Andersen's Bill of Costs in the amount of $4,659 should be APPROVED."
Her successfully fight helped prove that using IP addresses as evidence against the P2P community does not constitute rock solid substantiation.
December
Indexing reliability has returned to eDonkey2000, as The Pirate Bay resurrects a long time favorite, ShareReactor.
"For those of you that are not high (yet), this means ShareReactor is back, hosted by the good folks of The Pirate Bay," a news post on ShareReactor.com reads. "If you liked ShareReactor, have a party and spread the word (and send us pictures of it and any leftover cake... mmm cake...). If you had no clue about ShareReactor, this is your chance to get to know it."
With lawsuits, bandwidth throttling and politicking consuming the P2P community, the newsgroups are becoming a more attractive source of information. Giganews is one of the providers leading the charge, and in the process, gathering an impressive following.
"During September 2008, Giganews completed storage upgrades which increased retention levels to 240 days," Giganews reports. "Shortly thereafter, Giganews' upload traffic jumped to a sustained level averaging well over 400 megabits per second, representing more than 4.3 terabytes of new user generated content and discussions per day. Giganews has seen steady upload growth throughout the decade, but the pace following the recent storage upgrade exceeded all expectations."
2009 will mark the 10 year anniversary of Napster’s initial release. 10 years later, file-sharing continues to evolve and revolutionize the way we share information online. The next 10 years should prove to be just as remarkable.
[The rest of the months at the url]So what can be said about the year 2008 in file-sharing? It’s been a long year... more
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Last year The Pirate Bay and the Bureau of Piracy bought themselves a bus, painted it up in suitable pirate-style livery and embarked on a European tour. Now, with the trial of The Pirate Bay just a few weeks away, the bus will be coming home to Sweden to serve as the official court case press center.
The Pirate Bay’s summer tour started off in Sweden, where the bus was prepared. On July 10th, the bus was in Malmo where the ‘Bay and Piratbyrån (Bureau of Piracy) announced their ‘mixtape amnesty‘.
The bus, originally codenamed ‘S23M’, then headed off to Berlin to continue its European tour, with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde declaring, “It kinda shows that we’re more than just a site, that we’re an idea, and that we’re art in ourselves. As I’ve said many times before, we see The Pirate Bay as some sort of ongoing art project/performance.”
Somehow, over six months later, the bus is currently sitting in a parking lot in Belgrade, many miles away from home. In the fall of 2008, Piratbyrån renamed the bus S23X, and now want to bring S23K, as it’s now known (I hope you’re keeping up!) back home to Stockholm, Sweden. Here, it will serve as a press center for the upcoming Pirate Bay trial.
“During February and March 2009 there is a state-funded spectacle arranged, unprecedented in the capital. The Trial of The Pirate Bay - one of the longest in Sweden’s history - will be held in the Stockholm District Court on Kungsholmen,” note Piratbyrån.
The bus, they say, will have a very special function. “Once in place it will be used in direct connection to the trial in order to intensify the spectacle, including serving as the press center for Piracy Office and The Pirate Bay, and a natural meeting point for supporters and the curious.”
In order to fund the journey from Belgrade to Sweden, supporters are being invited to make donations via the Piratbyrån website. In return, donors will be invited to be a VIP guest at a party celebrating the bus’ homecoming.
More photos, videos and history behind the bus can be found at this URL: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&u=http://www.piratbyran.org/s23k/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.piratbyran.org/s23k/%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DGLast year The Pirate Bay and the Bureau of Piracy bought themselves a bus, painted it... more
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Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides ‘Guilt Upon Accusation’, which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement, they are immediately guilty. The punishment - summary Internet disconnection.
The term “3 Strikes” is a familiar one to those monitoring attempts to crack down on illicit file-sharing. Many countries are looking at proposals which if implemented, would mean that a ‘graduated response’ is taken against those accused of online copyright infringement. ‘Strike One’ would earn the infringer a warning, ‘Strike Two’ would result in a slowing of the user’s Internet connection, with Internet disconnection proposed on a third accusation.
However draconian these proposals might appear, they are nothing compared to the proposed ‘Section 92′ of the Copyright Amendment Act in New Zealand. Scheduled for introduction at the end of February 2009, the act assumes that any individual simply accused of sharing copyright works on the Internet, is guilty. The punishment for ‘guilty’ is summary disconnection from the Internet. Understandably, this proposal hasn’t been well received by many outside of the entertainment industries. Indeed, RIANZ, New Zealand’s answer to the RIAA, has been a vocal supporter.
One group voicing dissent is The Creative Freedom Foundation. On December 18th the group launched with the aim to “unite artists who are against the removal of New Zealander’s rights through proposed changes in Copyright law, done in the name of protecting creativity.”
Foundation Co-Founder and Director, Bronwyn Holloway-Smith is strongly opposed to Section 92, which she says threatens Internet disconnections “without evidence or even a trial.”
“The result of this law could be that one rogue employee or even one virus infected computer could bring down a whole organization’s internet and it’s highly likely that schools, businesses, hospitals, and phone services will be harmed by this,” she said.
Hollyway-Smith warns that as the government has shown support for the bill, unless there is a major public protest against it the proposals will “roll over into law” - just 54 days from now. To this end, the foundation has started a petition and campaign against the “Guilt Upon Accusation” laws, called “Not in my Name”. The petition can be signed on the Creative Freedom Foundation website.Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright... more
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To Hollywood executives, he's public enemy number one. To film fans around the world, he's a modern-day Robin Hood. As the internet's most prolific pirate makes his 1,000th illegal film download available to the masses, Tim Walker investigates the mysterious figure known only as aXXo...
At 8.40am on Monday 15 December, a new post appeared on an internet forum called the Darkside Release Group. "Darkside_RG" is a clearing house for internet pirates, a site dedicated to the online redistribution of movies, music and videogames. Its members happily spend their days sharing and discussing their ill-begotten booty on the site's many message boards.
This aXXo may be anonymous, but he (or she, or they) is a global brand. His most popular uploads are downloaded illegally by up to a million internet users per week. His files regularly make up more than one-third of all the films trafficked on BitTorrent. Most of them are mainstream multiplex fare – aXXo's recent posts include Mamma Mia!; the Ricky Gervais black comedy Ghost Town; and Bangkok Dangerous and Eagle Eye, thriller vehicles for Nicolas Cage and Shia LaBeouf.
The list of the Top 100 movie downloads at The Pirate Bay – one of the largest "torrent portal" sites, which aggregate torrent links from around the web – is littered with his work, easily recognisable by the suffix "DVDrip-aXXo" left like a graffiti tag at the end of each filename. Over at The Pirate Bay's most popular competitor, Mininova.org, aXXo's fame is evident in the "search cloud", a page of the most searched terms on the site, their relative popularity denoted by the size of the font in which their names are displayed.
"Today, the largest search terms might be aXXo and Prison Break, if Prison Break aired on US television last night," explains David Price, head of piracy intelligence at the internet consultancy Envisional. "But tomorrow Prison Break will be a lot smaller, whereas aXXo will always be that size. Over the last two years, he's been one of the top five searched terms on Mininova every day."
Whenever aXXo posts a new film (which can be as often as three times a day) his followers fill the comments boards with praise. He is the lowly film-fan's Robin Hood. Last year, one aXXo fan, codenamed the_dwarfer, composed a version of the Lord's Prayer for his idol, which began: "Our ripper, who art on Mininova, aXXo be thy name..."
The name aXXo first appeared in November 2005, when he began to post pirated movies to the message board at Darkside_RG. He quickly acquired a reputation for both quality and convenience. All of his films were copied to DVD quality (or near enough for the amateur eye); in a simple format that would play instantly on almost any computer as soon as the download was complete; and handily compressed to emerge at 700Mb, just the right size to fit on a single writeable CD.
Hence aXXo's popularity: as a trusted brand name, users rush to acquire his releases as soon as they appear online. His small "torrent" file takes a matter of seconds to download from a torrent portal site like Mininova, after which the user add it to their computer's BitTorrent queue, sit back and watch the data flood in. With so many people downloading the same files at once, an entire aXXo film can be complete and on a user's desktop in a few hours at most.
"He tried to go away," says Price. "But he came back. The pull of it is quite attractive to him. When you have millions of people downloading your content online and they know who you are, that's quite an incentive. Even if he's not getting any money, he is getting name recognition and status." To commemorate his return, aXXo chose as his first post the symbolic – and hubristic – film title, I Am Legend.To Hollywood executives, he's public enemy number one. To film fans around the... more
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Look at me, look at me, my reach is global, my tower is secure ... I can guide a missile by satellite ...
Things are looking really good for the Swedish Pirate Party. Running up to the 2009 European Parliament elections more than half of all Swedish men under 30 are considering voting for them. Thanks to the Internet, its membership has grown 50% during the last quarter, surpassing that of the well established Green Party.
When the Swedish Pirate Party was launched three years ago, the majority of the mainstream press viewed them with skepticism, with some simply laughing them away. Times have changed though. As the government works to introduce harsher copyright laws and others that threaten the privacy of Sweden’s citizens, the party is growing stronger and stronger.
In a recent poll, 21 percent of all Swedes indicated that they would consider voting for the Pirate Party in the upcoming European Parliament elections. Among men in the 18-29 age group, this number goes up to a massive 55% - an unprecedented statistic.
Aside from the support in this poll, more people have joined the party recently. During the last quarter the membership count increased by 50% - from 6000 to 9000 - which makes the party larger than the Green Party which currently holds 19 seats in the Swedish parliament.
Swedish Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that the Internet played a big part in the recent successes of the party. “We couldn’t have done this without the dialog infrastructure that the Net provides. Oldmedia has lost control of the discourse,” he said. With all the controversy surrounding the new anti-piracy and wiretapping legislation, the Pirate Party was often mentioned on blogs, since they are the most outspoken opponent.
For the upcoming European election, the Pirate Party requires 100,000 Swedish votes to get a seat, a goal that is within reach in the current political climate. Falkvinge is optimistic too, and said “We need to grow by another 50%, counting from the Swedish election two years ago, to get seats in the EU parliament and shake the political copyright world at its core. It’s hard, it’s supposed to be hard, but the numbers show we can do it. We can do this, and the charts are going stratospheric.”
The Internet will probably play a big role in this election for the Pirate Party, and recent history has shown that this is not only true for parties that carry “pirate” in their name. Elections to the European Parliament will be held in June 2009, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the Pirate Party fares.Look at me, look at me, my reach is global, my tower is secure ... I can guide a... more
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Australia has been the focus of much tech news recently, as the country struggles with its Internet piracy ‘problem’. Thanks to the infinite wisdom of ABC, Aussie Doctor Who fans are left with a tough decision - wait until mid-January to watch the show’s pivotal ‘Christmas Special’ - or pirate it with BitTorrent.
Dr WhoThe number of people downloading TV shows via BitTorrent is growing. Our ‘Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2008′ list reveals that some shows are amassing downloads in their millions and this will only increase.
Whereas some people may download a movie to avoid the cost, TV shows offer something different. People are generally able to watch these shows for free on regular TV, but still, due to superior convenience and greater availability, those same people choose to get their fix from BitTorrent instead.
In Australia right now, online piracy is a hot topic, with anti-piracy outfits going as far as trying to hold ISPs accountable for the infringing actions of their customers, and the ‘firewall’ of Australia threatening to target BitTorrent. But when it comes to deterring piracy it seems the big studios are blind to some of the small things they can do to make the situation better, instead of continually going to war with pirates - a war they simply cannot win.
The TV show Doctor Who, like many shows, has a ‘Christmas Special’. This episode, unsurprisingly, will air Christmas Day on the BBC in the UK. In it the Doctor will have one of his trademark re-incarnations, a very important event for fans of the series. The problem for Australian viewers is simple - ABC who have the rights to the show think that Christmas Day falls on January 25th 2009 down-under, as this is the date it will air there, officially at least.
But of course, Doctor Who fans know about BitTorrent, the show has appeared in our most pirated TV show lists and was even subject to a major ‘leak‘ of its own.
Thanks to ABC’s short-sightedness, thousands of Australians will pirate this episode of their favorite show just minutes after it finishes airing in the UK and a month ahead of its official launch. It’s not just The Doctor who is capable of time-traveling these days.Australia has been the focus of much tech news recently, as the country struggles with... more
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Fed up with the growing power of the anti-piracy lobby, a group of free-culture supporters gathered in front of the headquarters of the socialist party with their laptops, and started trading copyrighted files. The goal was to show that sharing copyrighted files is legal in Spain, something they appear to have achieved.
Sharing copyrighted files on filesharing networks such as BitTorrent is a serious offense, according to the entertainment industry lobbyists, that is. This is also what these groups try to convince lawmakers of, with some success.
In an attempt to prove the opposite, however, a group of Spanish free-culture supporters organized a demonstration on the doorstep of one of the leading political parties in Spain. The two groups, Compartir es Bueno (Sharing is good) and Hacktivistas (Hacktivists) gathered in front of the headquarters of the socialist party yesterday, where they fired up their P2P clients and started sharing copyrighted material. The police were notified beforehand about the demonstration, and were present. No arrests have been made though, as expected.
The demonstration, which was covered by several of the leading news outlets in Spain, was organized in response to the growing propaganda and power of entertainment industry lobbyists. Like many other countries, Spain is mulling a three-strikes proposal that would give the entertainment industry the right to disconnect alleged sharers of copyrighted material. This, despite the fact that sharing copyrighted material for non-commercial use is not against the law in Spain.
Previous court cases have confirmed that this is the case. In 2006, a judge ruled that a man who downloaded and shared copyrighted music was not breaking any laws since the man’s intent wasn’t to make money. More recently, a court ruled that a site providing links to P2P downloads is operating within the law.
The protesters proved this once again by sharing copyrighted material on the doorstep of the socialist party, in front of the police. The demonstration was successful, as Hacktivistas report on their website “We have shown it once more: downloading copyrighted files from a p2p network is legal in Spain, as long as it isn’t done for profit.”Fed up with the growing power of the anti-piracy lobby, a group of free-culture... more
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While the nation’s attention was focused on a bailout, most failed to notice that Congress passed a law whose impact remains at best unseen for musicians and the music industry.
Oh looky lookly a new Czar in Washington. It is like pre-cold war Russia over here.While the nation’s attention was focused on a bailout, most failed to notice... more
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Following the banks and the car companies, the movie industry might be the next to be hit by the economic downturn. No bail-out plan has been suggested as of yet, but MPAA chairman Dan Glickman is worried that piracy will grow to a new high during the current financial crisis - and he might just have a point there.
If everything the MPAA said was true actually turned out to be true, the movie industry would have been bankrupt years ago. In 2005 the organization funded a study which claimed that in the US alone, over $6 billion was lost to MPAA members due to piracy. However, the figures and data behind those claims have never been publicly released, and it later became apparent that they were not completely accurate.
In fact, earlier this year the MPAA had to release a statement saying ‘they made a mistake’ in the figures. Nevertheless, the $6 billion figure in question has been quoted a lot, with MPAA chairman Dan Glickman still using it in almost every public talk, to convince his listeners of the seriousness of the ‘piracy’ issue. According to the MPAA there is more bad weather ahead, as it is now worried that piracy might flourish in the current financial climate.
“If you look at the situation, the current economic crisis makes this problem much more serious than before,” Glickman said recently at a forum, adding, “If we don’t protect IPR (intellectual property rights), our economic losses will be far worse.” The MPAA will of course leave no excuse unused to justify its anti-piracy measures, nothing new there. Although there are no studies that show how illegal downloads actually affect sales at the box office, there has been a significant bump in the number of BitTorrent users recently.
One should always be cautious to interpret these two events as having a causal relationship. However, after several months of relatively slow growth, BitTorrent sites have seen a dramatic increase in visitor numbers this fall. Since September, the number of peers tracked by The Pirate Bay has nearly doubled from 14 million in early September, to 25 million now. Other BitTorrent sites such as Mininova, Torrentz and BTjunkie report an increase in downloads, searches and web traffic, ranging from 25 to 50 percent over the same time frame.
This increase, even if it is directly related to the economic downturn, is not necessarily linked with a drop in box office grosses or DVD sales. ‘The Dark Knight’, which is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent in 2008 sold millions of DVDs, and grossed a record breaking billion dollars in cinemas worldwide. That does not really sound like a ‘bad year’ to us.Following the banks and the car companies, the movie industry might be the next to be... more
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BREIN has apparently taken down no fewer than 75 Dutch based BitTorrent sites, as reported in their press release today. The 72 sites were part of an elaborate hierarchy and made money from preferential treatment related to donations. With BREIN on an enforcement roll in the Netherlands, it's surprising that any BitTorrent operator would continue operation in such a climate.
"The sites were managed by several different people but all made use of the same model that they got in franchise from the same person," the press release states. "The sites made money by giving preferential treatment to users that paid a ‘donation’. Such users were enabled to unlimited download of illegal content for a period. Never before were so many illegal peer-to-peer file sharing sites taken down simultaneously."
BREIN would not divulge who the lead BitTorrent site/individual was.
According to BREIN, the civil enforcement action was taken against Allmypower.org, Luckytorrents.org, Allmymovies.org, Digi-tor.org and Seederstor.org - amongst many others.
“Clearly this is an organisation aimed at illegally making money by systematically organizing the theft of other people’s creative work through a chain of relatively small sites”, says BREIN director Tim Kuik. “Knowingly linking to illegal content is illegal. These sites did so structurally. They are party to a crime.”
If BREIN's press release is accurate, the 75 sites were a tightly organized money-making machine. The sites were taken offline through a civil complaint to the fiscal police, however, BREIN states their investigation is ongoing. Additionally, further action may be taken as information provided by BREIN, especially about the operation's leader, is furnished to the police.
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I love torrents for both "legal and illegal stuff" but not torrent sites that just want your money....shit you might as well go buy that damn DVD your downloading, cause your going to need to donate $20 just to get it super fast!BREIN has apparently taken down no fewer than 75 Dutch based BitTorrent sites, as... more
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