tagged w/ Torrent
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It's been a sliver under a month since UK ISP British Telecom was ordered to cut all ties to filesharing site Newzbin 2. Now, a European court decision deals a counter blow to media owners by denying their demands to hustle ISPs into tracking freeloading downloaders. Specifically, the court held that it was illegal to force an ISP to install and maintain a system filtering all of its traffic as it could infringe customer privacy rights. While the decision will prove unpopular in big-wig boardrooms, joe public will no doubt be pleased with the court's upholding of both net neutrality, and of course not having to shred quite as many strongly worded letters from his or her ISP.It's been a sliver under a month since UK ISP British Telecom was ordered to cut... more
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On Saturday, Lulz Security announced what would be their final release, indicating that the group of six (according to the release) would disband. Unlike past releases, which have been fraught with gloating and taunting messages, the press release that went with the information release was almost wistful, talking about their love of the “chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy”, and how such things entertain. It even went philisophical, stating that these things are “what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.”. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/free-stuff/42977-lulzsec-final-releaseOn Saturday, Lulz Security announced what would be their final release, indicating... more
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worrg
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added this
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11 months ago
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This is a follow-up to the report that detailed how Mr. John Steele, of Steele Hansmeier/ wefightpiracy/ Steele-law, recently mailed out signed pre-settlement letters with dates that are 4-5 years off from being accurate.
The included picture is a combination of two screen captures from the declarations of support for expedited discovery by an employee of Mr. Steele's Media Copyright Group.
The September signature comes from the declaration for the Hard Drive Productions v. Does 1-1000 case which was filed in Illinios(1:10-cv-05606). The September declaration starts out:
I, Paul Hansmeier, declare:
I am a manager of Media Copyright Group LLC.("MCG"). On behalf of its clients......
The May 2011 signature comes from the declaration for the Hard Drive Productions v Does 1-14 case that was filed in Illinios(1:11-cv-02981). The attorney for the plaintiff on that case is listed as Hard Drive Productions PRO Se. The fact that HDP is representing itself in that case makes me wonder if they photocopied the declaration from the other case.
If one reads the full declarations for both cases, one will notice how it is obviously the same author. However a couple of words changed between the two.
The May declaration starts out with:
I, Peter Hansmeier, declare under penalty of perjury as true and correct that:
1. I am a technician at Media Copyright Group LLC.("MCG). On behalf of its clients.....
---There is a very slight chance that Mr. Steele happens to employ both Peter and Paul. However, I can see no logical explanation for why the signatures are nearly identical.
If you look at the P and the H, the curves are exactly the same. The May signature does not include a full name, but rather is nothing more than initials. The May signature is also way above the signature line. It is as though someone tried to forge or photocopy the signature from one declaration to the other. If you look closely, the signature even have the same several small black dots on the perimeter. The dots are in the same location
Hopefully this is all some bizarre coincidence. If it is not, then it looks like someone involved with John Steele's blackmail letter campaign is attempting to defraud the courts. Looks like it is time to update my pending ethics complaint against his firm.....
For anyone who is unaware, Paul Hansmeier is Mr. Steele's partner in his wefightpiracy.com law firm. The issues about his signature are potentially very serious since he may be trying to conceal his relationship with Mr. Steele's firm. Mr. Hansmeier may also be attempting to dodge the conflict of interest charges that may result from him being a lawyer that is producing evidence so his partner can sue people.This is a follow-up to the report that detailed how Mr. John Steele, of Steele... more
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Recent evidence indicates that copyright troll John Steele, of wefightpiracy aka Steele Hansmeier PLLC, is attempting to sue so many John Does at once that he and his staff are losing track of their interactions with the Does. The evidence comes from an anonymous source, who stated that he had received one of Mr. Steele's settlement letters back in late January. The letter demanded $2900 by Mid February. The settlement letter deadline passed and then one of Mr. Steele's associates contacted my source via phone. My source explained to Mr. Steele's associate that he has no idea what Mr. Steele is talking about and that he does not even know what Bittorrent is. Mr. Steele's associate, Mark Lutz, appears to not want to take "I am innocent and you can't have my money" for an answer. Mr. Lutz called roughly 5 times within two days and then sent an e-mail to my source. During the last call my source received, he once again said no to settling. A few weeks went by, and my source received another e-mail this time stating that Mr. Steele's firm had not been able to get in touch with him(5 calls and 2 e-mails don't count as getting in touch) but they are willing to do him the generous favor of letting him pay them $2900 by mid April so that my source can avoid going to court for something he did not do. Best part is, the e-mail address that his firm sent the messages to is not my source's primary address. He gave them the address during one of the calls, which proves that Mr. Steele's firm is lying about not being able to contact him
Following this awkward scenario, an e-mail was sent to Mr. Steele's jlsteele@wefightpiracy_com address(it's really a gmail account. Every e-mail address he has appears to be g-mail) which asked whether or not Mr. Steele and his associates are documenting their interactions with the accused. The message also asked why his firm is not offering payment plans if the settlement deadlines apparently do not mean anything. No response to the the initial message. Concerned that Mr. Steele may merely be overworked due to his constant porn pirate chasing, the sender decided to locate the e-mail address of Mr. Steele's partner, Paul Hansmeier: prhansmeier@gmail_com(the sender found it in the source code for wefightpiracy_com)
The original message was resent along with the following post script:
The above scenario concerns me because it appears as though your firm is only interested in extracting settlements from as many people as humanly possible rather than attempting to accurately locate and prosecute individuals involved in digital piracy. Your firm seems disinterested in the details such as whether or not you have contacted someone already or that seemingly petty issue of whether or not they are innocent. I have discussed this individual with Mr. Steele before, and he told me that if this individual claims to want to go to trial than your client believes he is bluffing. In another on-line correspondence, Mr. Steele stated that your data collection methods may be flawed but people get convicted on circumstantial evidence all the time so there is no need to worry about potentially inaccurate data. It's as though your firm wants to do everything it can, including shifting back settlement deadlines, in order to avoid judicial scrutiny. I will continue monitoring this situation by maintaining copies of this individual's phone records, e-mails, and also intend to obtain the necessary equipment to record all the calls coming from your office.
The type of response that one would expect from a respectable law firm:
We apologize, there must have been a mix up with the e-mail addresses we sent the letter to. Please tell the recipient to ignore the message, but to be aware that we intend to continue moving forward with litigation( or some variation of the same message)
Instead, there was a prompt response from Mr. Steele's wefightpiracy_com e-mail address that looked rushed(a few obvious typos) and demanded to know what role the original sender has in this litigation.(Looks like Mr. Hansmeier may be trying to be the silent partner)
The sender explained to Mr. Steele, that he was acting on behalf of several John Does who have requested assistance with learning more about Mr. Steele's firm before making a decision about settling. The Does in question stand by their innocence and consist mostly of scared parents, scared teenagers/grandchildren, computer noobs, people with unsecured wi-fi, senior citizens with little to no computer knowledge etc.
The original sender stated that he was trying to ask extremely relevant questions about Mr. Steele's firm's practices such as:
1)Do your deadlines mean anything?
2)Why no payment plans if a deadline can change?
3)Do you maintain records of who you contact, when you contact them, and how often you contact them?
4)Are you ignoring people's refusals to settle and resending letters because you are only interested in settlements?
5) What terms does your client use to identify its copyrighted videos?(many of the videos Mr. Steele is trying to "blackmail" people over are technically not copyrighted yet. His complaints state that the videos have applications pending before the copyright office)
The original sender also explained that the Does involved are financially struggling to obtain legal counsel in their respective states.
Looks like Mr. Steele doesn't like it when people ask the right questions, as his final response was that he will not discuss other people's cases with someone who contacts him anonymously supposedly on their behalf. He said that the Does should contact his office directly or they should hire an attorney(I guess he missed the part where the sender told him they can't afford one).
Typical lawyer spin, as the way the messages were worded they did not request any information about a specific individual's case. All the planned questions were general questions about his practice and the above scenario merely served as an intro to the points that followed. The source above was referred to only as "an individual in another state"
So it looks like Mr. Steele will never answer questions from non-attorneys or anyone who chooses to remain Anonymous
I don't think he realizes the potential problems that can arise when there is one of him and tens of thousands of Anonymous web users who are keeping an eye on his firm, especially when it's obvious he his losing track of most of his online interactionsRecent evidence indicates that copyright troll John Steele, of wefightpiracy aka... more
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Following in the footsteps of The Pirate Bay and the successful BitTorrent distribution platform Vodo, uTorrent has now embraced an artist of their own. Starting today, all new uTorrent downloads will be bundled with the latest album from PAZ, an up and coming musician who hopes to achieve stardom through BitTorrent.
http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-backs-artist-bundles-album-with-new-downloads-100816/Following in the footsteps of The Pirate Bay and the successful BitTorrent... more
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A recent Net Neutrality proposal from Google and Verizon has dominated the news this week, with opponents claiming that the deal would kill Net Neutrality on wireless (cellular) networks. What hasn’t been mentioned thus far, however, is that BitTorrent and other types of evil traffic have already been banned for years by Verizon, AT&T and others.
http://torrentfreak.com/verizon-and-att-ban-bittorrent-on-wireless-networks-100813/A recent Net Neutrality proposal from Google and Verizon has dominated the news this... more
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So if the leaked torrent of Facebook pages wasn’t enough of a problem for those of you who haven’t yet changed your privacy settings, it should be now. Some BIG NAME COMPANIES (list below) are downloading these torrents and we’re probably going to be beyond spammed by it. It’s not like the Facebook ads weren’t bad enough, but now they are actually going to have data to back it up? Balls.
Apple
Church of Scientology
Disney
Goldman Sachs
Halliburton
Lockheed-Martin Corp
SONY CORPORATION
Sprint
USPS
Viacom
Click the link for more companies.So if the leaked torrent of Facebook pages wasn’t enough of a problem for those... more
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After their former hosting provider received an injunction telling it to stop providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, the worlds most resilient BitTorrent site switched to a new ISP. That host, the Swedish Pirate Party, made a stand on principle. Now they aim to take things further by running the site from inside the Swedish Parliament.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-to-run-tpb-from-parliament-010702/After their former hosting provider received an injunction telling it to stop... more
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A power outage on ThePirateBay's servers was responsible for the coincidental temporary shut down of the website. The website is NOT permanently down as previous reported.
In 2003 a group of friends from Sweden decided to found Piratbyrån (the bureau of piracy), a lobbying organization to promote the sharing of information and culture. A few months later the group took a decision that would change the Internet – the launch of a BitTorrent tracker named ‘The Pirate Bay’. Today marks the end of an era with the announcement that Piratbyrån has disbanded.
Piratbyrån had many purposes, but could be described as a pro-piracy lobbying organization. It was founded in response to Antipiratbyrån, the local anti-piracy outfit in Sweden. The goal was to start a debate on copyright issues and how they affect society. Until then, most press in Sweden would simply take everything Antipiratbyrån said for granted.
Internationally, Piratbyrån is mostly known for launching The Pirate Bay in the fall of 2003, just a few months after the group itself was founded. Since there were no Swedish BitTorrent sites at the time, Piratbyrån decided to launch the first Scandinavian BitTorrent community, using the then relatively new BitTorrent protocol.
By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was already tracking a million peers and more than 60,000 torrent files. Around the same time the founders also became aware that it wasn’t just Scandinavians showing an interest in their site.
Because of increasing worldwide popularity, The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages from then on. Around the same time The Pirate Bay became separated from Piratbyrån, with the latter focusing more on other ‘copyfights’ that had to be won.
In the years that followed Piratbyrån engaged in discussions about the role of intellectual property in the digital age, giving a voice to millions of file-sharers who believed that copying is not a crime. Now, nearly 7 years after it was founded, Piratbyrån’s role has been played out and the group has decided to disband.
The discussions about file-sharing that Piratbyrån wanted to have, are already won,” former Pirate Bay spokesperson and Piratbyrån member Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. “The projects that needed to start have already been finalized. Piratbyrån was a temporary group for a temporary reason.”
The final decision to disband the group came after Ibi Kopimi Botani, a prominent member and co-founder of the group, passed away. Without one of its greatest minds, the group would never be the same again, Piratbyrån’s member felt.
“The discussions about abolishing Piratbyrån have been going on for years already, but this weekend a beloved friend and member died, and we decided it was time to move on for real, since the group could not be the same without him anyhow. It felt like a good time for passing this part of life,” Peter told TorrentFreak, who added that the group was about much more than being the founders of The Pirate Bay.
“Without Piratbyrån there would have been no Pirate Bay of course, but Piratbyrån has accomplished so much more than just that,” he said, a position shared by all of the group’s members. Marcin de Kaminski, who announced the end of Piratbyrån in a blog post, is proud of what they’ve accomplished in all those years.
“The most longlived project which has originated from Piratbyrån is obviously The Pirate Bay, but when it comes to great accomplishments I would like to point out how Piratbyrån were forerunners in one of the most obvious clinches of our time,” Marcin told TorrentFreak.
“By proudly standing up for the ideas of a whole generation of internauts and taking the fights no one else did, Piratbyrån worked as catalyzers when it came to understanding the current evolution of culture, clusters and chaos,” Marcin said. “While other actors have been trying to deliver answers, Piratbyrån has been very focused on targeting problems of the present by searching for the right questions.”
All the right questions have been asked now, and the group believes it has served its purpose. File-sharers are more vocal than ever before, they can stand up for themselves now and continue to challenge the corporations that promote intellectual property abuse.
Just copy what Piratbyrån did and evolve.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-founding-group-piratbyran-disbands-100623/
http://www.digitalbattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/thepiratebay1.jpgA power outage on ThePirateBay's servers was responsible for the coincidental... more
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The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine that Hollywood has tried in vain to shut down for years, was offline Monday morning.
The blackout was presumably the result of an injunction won recently by the film studios that ordered The Pirate Bay's bandwidth provider to stop servicing the site. This is only the latest chapter in the cat-and-mouse game between Hollywood's big studios and the site's operators.
The Pirate Bay has lost at least two other bandwidth providers in the past few years and the site typically just acquires a new host. That is likely to happen once again in this case, according to a source close to the site.
According to the blog TorrentFreak, the CB3ROB, operator of host CyberBunker, was ordered last week by the Regional Court of Hamburg, Germany, to cut off The Pirate Bay.
A year ago, four men associated with operating The Pirate Bay were found guilty of copyright violations by a Swedish court. They were sentence to a year in jail and ordered to pay 30 million Swedish kronor ($3.6 million) in damages to copyright holders, among them a number of American film studios.
The four men--Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundström--were found guilty of having made 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file sharing via the Piratebay.org Web site. The case is pending an appeal.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20005091-261.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine that Hollywood has tried in vain to shut... more
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Most BitTorrent sites operate in the shadows, with operators who rarely speak in public and guard their identities closely. Mininova is not one of those sites and in a new interview, company directors reveal a little more about running one of the world’s biggest BitTorrent sites. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/free-stuff/343-torrent-sceneMost BitTorrent sites operate in the shadows, with operators who rarely speak in... more
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worrg
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added this
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2 years ago
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These are your Current Virals for 10/23. Check out the latest virals at Current.com/virals.
1 cello, 4 players
The world's deepest bin
Brett Domino: Hip-Hop Medley - Stylophone Beatbox
350.org: Because the world needs to know
#1 Video:
Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party
Hosting Your Windows 7 Torrenting Party - watch more funny videosThese are your Current Virals for 10/23. Check out the latest virals at... more
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Seeding fake files on BitTorrent is nothing new and the practice has been carried out by anti-piracy groups and malware spreaders for a long time. While many of them choose to use various open and public BitTorrent trackers, others are setting up their own trackers. We take a look at an easy way to find out more about them.
http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-quickly-investigate-a-fake-bittorrent-tracker-100220/Seeding fake files on BitTorrent is nothing new and the practice has been carried out... more
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The up and coming torrent indexer KickassTorrents has launched a new search trends feature. Users can use it to browse through the most popular search phrases for any given day or month to find out what’s wanted by other BitTorrent users. Some interesting trends and old habits are revealed by the new feature.
http://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-reveals-bittorrent-search-trends-100215/The up and coming torrent indexer KickassTorrents has launched a new search trends... more
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As millions of people wait for the arrival of Christmas in just a couple of weeks time, the festivities have come early for BitTorrent fans. A few hours ago the mighty Demonoid fully returned and the good news is that there appears to be little data loss. Users are feverishly uploading fresh torrents right now.
http://torrentfreak.com/christmas-comes-early-for-bittorrent-demonoid-is-back-091213/As millions of people wait for the arrival of Christmas in just a couple of weeks... more
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Mininova, the largest torrent site on the Internet, has removed all torrents except those that were uploaded through its content distribution service. Mininova’s founders took the drastic decision after they lost a civil dispute against Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, and were ordered to remove all infringing torrents from the site.
http://torrentfreak.com/mininova-deletes-all-infringing-torrents-and-goes-legal-091126/Mininova, the largest torrent site on the Internet, has removed all torrents except... more
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A few days ago we reported that Lady Gaga earned a measly $167 for more than a million plays on the music streaming service, Spotify. According to new information received from music industry insiders, it turns out that Spotify isn’t ripping off the artists, the labels are.
http://torrentfreak.com/spotify-isnt-ripping-off-artists-the-labels-are-091123/A few days ago we reported that Lady Gaga earned a measly $167 for more than a million... more
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The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘2012′ tops the chart this week followed by ‘Gamer’. ‘Funny People’ completes the top three.
2012This week there are four newcomers in the top 10 including ‘Gamer,’ which ended up as the second most downloaded movie on BitTorrent this week.
The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.
RSS feed for the weekly movie download char
http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-on-bittorrent-091123/The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘2012′ tops the chart... more
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The Pirate Bay’s tracker closure has spurred several discussions about DHT, BitTorrent’s fallback technology for when central trackers are unavailable. According to some, DHT has some problems of its own. Novell, for example, decided to ship openSUSE with the BitTorrent client Transmission, but not before stripping DHT support.
http://torrentfreak.com/novell-strips-bittorrent-dht-technology-from-opensuse-091122/The Pirate Bay’s tracker closure has spurred several discussions about DHT,... more
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Piracy is without a doubt, truly evil. It doesn’t help the artists, it robs them of their rightful revenue and is such a poor basis for a business model, it’s unworthy of consideration. Of course, new streaming sites are miles better, offering a legal way to listen to free music. Hmm – Lady Gaga got a million plays on Spotify and earned $167.
http://torrentfreak.com/lady-gaga-earns-slightly-more-from-spotify-than-piracy-091121/Piracy is without a doubt, truly evil. It doesn’t help the artists, it robs them... more
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