tagged w/ Torrent
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TV-shows are some of the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people sharing?
heroesEvery week we take a look at the most downloaded TV-Shows on BitTorrent. Heroes is leading the chart again this week, followed by Lost and Prison Break. All three episodes were downloaded well over a million times.
The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. The data for the second list is based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week is provided by ShowInsider.TV-shows are some of the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some,... more
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A study from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download free music from services like BitTorrent are also the biggest legitimate consumers of downloadable music.
In fact, among all 1,901 (global?) study participants (all of whom were over the age of 15), it was found that those who downloaded "free" music were 10x more likely to download pay music. In other words, music pirates are the music industry's largest online consumers.
Note: "Free" music obviously implies pirated music, but it also encompasses legitimate free music download services.A study from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download... more
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It is no secret that anti-piracy companies want to spoil all your sharing and caring. They have sued people, they have threatened people, they even affect your opinion with advertisements inside movies.
But what happened yesterday, is something outrageous and they’ll surely regret it. Someone created a project at GetAFreelancer.com (Page Mirror), in which he states that he’s going to pay people to upload fake torrents.
But why don’t we spoil his fun now!
The music & movie industry is known to upload fake torrents at trackers. With those, they can trap you and collect your IP-address and may threaten or sue you afterward. They mostly hire other companies to do it, so they won’t spoil their own good name. But those companies need independent people too. Until yesterday, it was a mystery how they recruited them.
At the GetAFreeLancer site, that’s made to get a freelancer (could’ve guessed that one), a user, called csebastian posted a project. You can sign up for it, and the wage can go up to $250 dollars per job.
This is the description of the project:
Looking for people to upload popular movie torrents
I will provide the names
Ok so basically you will upload Movie torrents that are new and with popular tracker names like Axxo , HDTV and others
I need only serious people who are willing to make a great job !
As of now, we’ve got no clue who csebastian is, and if he’s truly an employee of the RIAA, MPAA or some other scum company. Maybe you will tell? All information would be great!
VN:F [1.1.6_502]It is no secret that anti-piracy companies want to spoil all your sharing and caring.... more
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After its epic amount of Oscars, BAFTAs, and whatever other awards it cleaned up at, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire has rocketed up the illegal BitTorrent downloads chart.
Despite the movie's 'DVD screener' been available for months, it's only since it's cleaned up at the this year's awards ceremonies that the download counter has gone through the roof, with TorrentFreak claiming that the it has been downloaded nearly a million times.
That figure includes DVDrips, DVD Screeners, BDrips and R5 rips.
Is this really that much of a surprise?After its epic amount of Oscars, BAFTAs, and whatever other awards it cleaned up at,... more
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An expert witness in the trial of torrent site Pirate Bay in Europe testified that he saw no link between P2P sharing and the decline of the record industry. When asked if he wanted to be reimbursed for his travel expenses, he suggested the court send his wife some flowers.
Turns out more than a few Pirate Bay supporters were listening to the testimony via live stream.
In other news, the flower industry is looking into the possibility that the flowers were illegally shared.An expert witness in the trial of torrent site Pirate Bay in Europe testified that he... more
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Just a few minutes ago, the Swedish IFPI website has been hacked. The site has been taken down, and replaced with a simple, but clear message towards the IFPI.
The text tells that it is a “declaration of war against anti-piracy and industry players behind it“.
There is not much info who actually hacked the site but the hacker(s) are crediting Anakata, TiAMO and Brokep.
Translation sort of...
IFPI.se is hacked
Question is if it helps or makes a disservice. This is what the site contains, in simple Courier font.
SLUTA LJUG HÅKAN ROSWALL!!!
Den hänsynslösa jakt som IFPI, Antipiratbyrån, Warner Bros och alla andra företag med en bricka i spelet bedrivit har nu resulterat i en rättegång där fyra oskyldiga män står åtalade för upphovsrättsintrång.
Det här är en krigsförklaring mot antipiratindustrin och aktörerna bakom den, och vi uppmanar allmänheten till bojkott och lynchning av de ansvariga.
IFPI är bara början. Fortsättning följer.
Den Nya Generationen
# credz till: anakata, TiAMO och brokep
Which freely translated into English is:
STOP LYING HÅKAN ROSWALL!!!
The ruthless hunt that IFPI, Antipiratbyrån, Warner Bros and all the other companies with a foot in the game has now resulted in a trial where four innocent men are charged for copyright infringement.
This is a declaration of war against the antipiracy industry and the agents behind it, and we encourage the public to boycott and lynching of the responsible ones.
IFPI is just the beginning. To be continued.
The New Generation
# credz to: anakata, TiAMO och brokep
In the HTML source you find the following commented line twice:
This won’t win sympathy for the pirates, but still it’s a rather equal way of fighting back against those who run this trial at the cost of Swedish tax payers, the justice system and democracy.
Update 2009-02-18 20:12
“…this is not a trial against The Pirate Bay, it’s a declaration of war on the internet!”
//Marcin de Kaminski, 080216
Internet slår tillbaka.
Update 2009-02-18 20:30
The message has been taken down by Ifpi’s web administrator and now has the following message:
Välkommen till IFPI Svenska Gruppen
Sidan är tillfälligt tagen ur drift
which in English is
Welcome to IFPI Swedish Group
The page is temporarily taken out of serviceJust a few minutes ago, the Swedish IFPI website has been hacked. The site has been... more
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The goal of the trial, for those who asked for it, is to punish the creators of The Pirate Bay and to, in the long run, bring it down. Unsurprisingly it is having the opposite effect.
There has been a jump in users at thepiratebay.org and a leap in peers. More people are visiting the site. Trial.thepiratebay.org has been extremely slow and unable to keep up with visits! Currently there are 3 443 996 registered users and 23.510.609 peers (IPv4). Recently TPB added IPv6 support which is steadily gaining peers. The number of torrents has jumped over 150 000 in the last week (according to the statistics I keep). If TPB wins the trial mod tse7en predicts TPB will hit 40 million peers by the end of the year.
There has been a large jump in internet traffic over the last few days. These stats show the totals of most of Sweden’s web traffic. As you can see in the graph below yesterday’s peak was well above other weekend peaks. The red line in the graph below was added to help you see this. Yesterday’s peak was ~10 G Bits per second higher than past weeks. The peaks of other weeks was reached a day early. According to TPB’s press conference 80% of web traffic is bittorent. With the increase in publicity more people are sharing! Well, you get the idea :P
The Pirate Bay’s IRC channel on EFnet (#thepiratebay.org) has seen a huge jump in users. For the past months it has averaged around 175 users. As of me writing this blog there were 271 users in the channel, steadily rising. Thats a jump of 100 users!
Instead of stopping The Pirate Bay, the trial is only making it stronger. Best of luck!The goal of the trial, for those who asked for it, is to punish the creators of The... more
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As The Pirate Bay trial got underway, dozens of supporters gathered around the Court waving skull-and-crossbone flags as the parties entered the court house. Pro-piracy forces in Sweden had vowed to play along in the theater of the trial. The opening act was a spectacle; in court, on the streets and online.
As reported earlier today, during today’s court session, social media came alive as prosecutor Håkan Roswall did a tedious presentation of the history of the tracker, various companies, revenue streams, ad sales and how he will “prove” it is all connected.
It was remarkable to see how thousands of people were following and contributing to an ongoing stream of information on the Internet. Through live blogs (in Swedish and translated), Twitter, live audio from inside the court and live video from outside, the coverage was massive.
The hash tag #spectrial was the most searched term on Twitter, The Pirate Party’s servers went down and it was nearly impossible to get access to trial.thepiratebay.org, which collects the various streams of information.
One of the defendants even contributed, as Peter Sunde (aka brokep) wrote on Twitter: “Might this be the first twitter from within a court case? It must be a #spectrial.” This might indeed be one of the first tweets from a defendant in court.
As the court went in recess for lunch, the gathering outside grew, in spite of the cold February day in Stockholm. Pirate Party flags marked the street corner, a band played and candy was handed to passers-by while being told that “sharing is caring”.
In the crowd we found Christian Engström, Vice Chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party who are currently heading towards getting seats in the European Parliament in June’s elections.
“This is a political trial,” he told TorrentFreak. “Firstly, the trial itself is political because the prosecutor wrote a memo in 2005 and said that it wasn’t possible to prosecute from the evidence. This trial only occurs because of political pressure from the United States on the then Minister of Justice.”
The trial, as Engström explains, is more than just a prosecution of The Pirate Bay. It is a question of the future of communication.
“Should the Internet be a place where everyone can communicate or should it not? That’s the question of this trial, and no court can answer that question. Even if The Pirate Bay would be freed all the way through the court system, the problem isn’t solved. The Copyright Lobby will demand more restrictions and tougher laws and the only way to protect social media culture in the long run is to work politically.”
When asked if the trial had any significance at all, Engström told TorrenFreak that he finds it incredibly fun as a spectacle.
“Hollywood knows how to stage a show, I’ve got to hand them the credit for that. And I think that’s very positive because it means that for the following weeks, there will be lots of media focus on these important issues.”
After the lunch break, the proceedings continued as well as the coverage online. On Twitter Sofia did an outstanding job translating the audio feed into English, but she was just one of many. It is truly remarkable how many people committed themselves to covering the trial. For now we still live in a society where information is open and free.As The Pirate Bay trial got underway, dozens of supporters gathered around the Court... more
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Judge Declares Mistrial in RIAA-Jammie Thomas Trial
Remember that woman that lost a case with the RIAA for sharing music online.
The RIAA tries to sue the single mom for a few 100 thousand.
Well, a judge has declared that the RIAA needs to stop being such dicks and actually have proof next time.
So as far as I know, the RIAA has never ever won a case.
Judge Declares Mistrial in RIAA-Jammie Thomas Trial
Remember that woman that lost a... more
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Electronic Arts, the publisher of the upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, has chosen BitTorrent for the distribution of the closed Beta client. Included in the documentation is a recommendation to use a TorrentFreak ’speed up’ guide.
warhammerDeveloped by Mythic Entertainment, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is a long-awaited WoW competitor, due for general release on September 18th this year. As with many games of this type, the developer is beta testing the software, helped by players in the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australia.
To become a tester in the beta, many people were selected via applications, contests and prize draws. The first stage of testing was over in the final quarter of 2007 and during February 2008, invites to test were sent out to lucky recipients. July this year saw the activation of so-called ‘Guild beta’ keys which signaled the start of the next stage of testing and on August 10th, keys were sent out for Beta 3.
The Warhammer Online beta gaming client is quite a size, weighing in at over 9.3GB. Providing a download of this size for testers could turn into a needlessly expensive exercise for the publisher, Electronic Arts, and the developer, Mythic, so they have made the decision to utilize BitTorrent instead, dramatically reducing distribution costs.
There is no other way to download the client, indicating that EA/Mythic are completely confident that their target market will have no trouble using torrents but just in case, they provide a comprehensive BitTorrent guide which covers basics like client selection, up to more advanced techniques such as port forwarding. An eagle-eyed reader who is involved in the beta testing pointed out that the guide also includes advice to follow a TorrentFreak guide to speed up transfers.
The Mythic tracker is located at http://torrent2.eamythic.com and currently reports around 1300 seeds and over 7000 leechers. A search on the hash value of the torrent, reveals the beta is (unsurprisingly) being tracked by other torrent sites too.
The Warhammer Beta team was contacted for a response, but hasn’t responded before publication.Electronic Arts, the publisher of the upcoming massively multiplayer online... more
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Comcast must feel it’s being attacked by all sides. It’s been hit by lawsuits, investigated by the FCC, and roundly criticised everywhere else. It has brought the issue of traffic shaping to the forefront of people’s minds, and into public discussion. Aiming to highlight ISP’s and their shaping, the EFF has released a new tool for users to test their connection’s integrity.
Switzerland logoIt’s been about a year since we first broke the story about Comcast and their torrent-throttling practices. Today, they were ordered (doc|pdf) to cease their practices by the end of the year, and disclose their practices by the end of August. Many expect Comcast to appeal, but others feel that Comcast has no grounds for it.
Regardless, Comcast is not the only ISP that is throttling. As was revealed in the stats from Project Glasnost, Cox is also throttling heavily. So, while some are popping the champagne corks over this victory, others are still working hard to keep our ISP’s honest, and ensure that their customers are getting what they paid for.
The latest of these, is a project called Switzerland by the EFF. Still in very early alpha, it’s an attempt to not just detect sandvineing by an ISP, but other forms of throttling as well. Unlike Glasnost, which uses a central server and known torrent streams to detect activities from the ISP interfering, this will use a more decentralised method, where peers running Switzerland swap information about the packets they send to other Switzerland users, in encrypted data packets sent via a central server. In effect, it’s a checksum of torrent activity sent via a 3rd party. As Peter Eckersley, staff technologist for the EFF, and developer of Switzerland puts it “Alice and Bob are exchanging packets, they connect to a neutral server (Switzerland) to arbitrate between their different views of the packets”.
When asked why the EFF started this project, and why they believe a neutral network is important, he told TorrentFreak: “There were several reasons why we started the Test Your ISP project, and designed and built Switzerland. One reason was pragmatic: we were trying to run systematic tests of the interference that Comcast was deploying against P2P networks, and we decided that the only sensible way to do that was to build an automated sensor network. So we set about doing that.”
“The bigger picture, of course, is that without transparency the Internet won’t remain the amazing open and innovative thing that it has been,” Eckersley says. “And EFF’s mission is to make sure that the Internet stays open and innovative. We need to shine lights into the dark corners of the network, and make sure that ISPs aren’t setting themselves up in some control room and saying “protocol A okay, but protocol B doesn’t fit with our business plans, so let’s give it second-class treatment or stop it from working entirely.”
Some might worry that the client might open up people to being monitored by anti-p2p companies or other undesirables, using the system as another method of verification, but there is really no way around it. The simplest method to avoid that is, in Peters words, “avoid exchanging copyrighted files between Switzerland clients. The copyright risks are probably lower if you run your own Switzerland server, but it’s still going to keep logs.”
The question of what the FCC will do about these other ISPs and their traffic management is one to ponder. Our inquiries on this matter have been acknowledged, but not replied to at the time of publication.
Comcast must feel it’s being attacked by all sides. It’s been hit by... more
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"Virgin Media and the BPI have announced a new campaign to crack down on those customers illegally downloading and distributing music illegally.
“As part of the campaign, customers whose accounts appear to have been used to distribute music in breach of copyright will receive informative letters, one from Virgin Media and one from the BPI,” Virgin’s press release informs us.""Virgin Media and the BPI have announced a new campaign to crack down on those... more
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So we finally see some more action on the case of OiNK. Six users have been arrested for questioning, but why exactly these 6? One of them uploaded a single album to the website. It seems as though the BPI is trying to get more information about the site.
Which brings me to another concern...If all the information about OiNK's users wasn't enough to incriminate them, then how did they get enough information to arrest these users? There may be more to the story than we know. So we finally see some more action on the case of OiNK. Six users have been arrested... more
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YouTube is the most successful video hosting site in the cyber world today. It is a phenomenon in its own rights. At this time of writing YouTube is hosting a more or less 6.1 million videos requiring about 45 terabytes of storage space....YouTube is the most successful video hosting site in the cyber world today. It is a... more
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This may perhaps be the new model for making money and using torrents and even infamous pirating site "The Pirate Bay" for music once again.
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails released the first part of his album for free and uploaded in The Pirate Bay for anyone to download. A higher quality version is available for $5, and digital versions of all four parts are available for $10 including CD versions of them. $75 and $300 deluxe versions were also released which included things like Blu-Ray format and typical "Special Edition" material (behind the scenes fodder, deluxe packaging, etc.)
He made $750,000 in three days. Multiple price points may be the way to go. This may perhaps be the new model for making money and using torrents and even... more
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Music artists and their managers are suing the RIAA for not sharing the compensation money from large legal settlements such as Napster and KaZaA.
“Artist managers and lawyers have been wondering for months when their artists will see money from the copyright settlements and how it will be accounted for.”Music artists and their managers are suing the RIAA for not sharing the compensation... more
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