How to Speed Up Torrent Downloads?

Torrents are used by the tremendously popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution system known as BitTorrent. This P2P system is used to transfer huge files within a large network of online users. Torrents are used for downloading music, video, games, books, television shows and more.

Torrents are very popular because they can be easily downloaded. However, not all torrents, torrent clients and computer systems are created equal. Below are some ways to speed up torrent downloads.

1. Choose the most effective BitTorrent client. Aside from the BitTorrent client itself, you can also choose from Vuze or uTorrent, both extremely popular clients.



2. Choose the right seeds and peers. To speed up torrent downloads, always look at the numbers. In torrent principle, the larger the amount of seeders, the higher the download speeds. It is also advised to choose torrents with a small amount of leechers.



3. Limit your upload rate to around 80 per cent of your maximum upload speed. You can verify your upload speed by looking for websites that carry out torrent speed tests. Once you have determined your maximum upload rate, modify it via your client’s preferences.



4. Modify your firewall since it can block incoming torrent connections. In Windows XP, go to the Windows Firewall and then check your torrent client on the list of allowed connections. Go to "Options," then "Preferences," then "Connection." Check the "Add (name of your client) to Windows Firewall." Make sure to check the option "Windows Firewall" exception (if turned on) in your torrent client. Do not however turn off the firewall since your system will be susceptible to attacks.


If your system is using a router, configure the setting via the Port Range Forwarding feature to allow torrent traffic. Refer to the router's documentation for this.


5. Utilize a different port. The default port used by the BitTorrent protocol is around 6881 to 6999. You should use a number above 10000 for preventing problems with other programs and getting around Internet Service Providers (ISPs). If your client randomizes ports each time it starts, do not enable your client's "Randomize Port" setting.



6. Boost the number of Max Half Open TCP connections. This identifies the amount of connections your client can try to simultaneously establish at any given time. Windows XP with SP2 and newer operating systems has limited this to 10 for preventing the spread of viruses, however, this is not good for torrent speeds since torrents need a huge number of concurrent connections. To address this, a patch from http://www.lvllord.de/ can be used for modifying the Windows TCPIP.sys file. This will allows a higher amount of TCP connections. When the patch has been run, set your client’s amount of connections. You can configure a number from 50 – 100. Regularly check if your client is still patched since downloading some Windows updates can overwrite it.



7. You can also enable outgoing protocol encryption so that your ISP will have difficulty detecting torrent traffic. Also check the option "Allow Incoming Legacy Connections."



8. Familiarize yourself with your torrent client's documentation and FAQs. Regularly check for updates of the client as well.

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Downloading torrents

Using torrents, you can quickly download movies, films and other files to your Mac. A torrent is a file with the file extension .torrent. This article will explain how to download torrents on a Mac.

Are torrent files legal?

Torrent files are not illegal, but downloading copyrighted material is. However, there are many torrent files out there containing non-copyrighted material which is why we choose to publish this article.

How torrent downloads work on the Mac

Without going all geeky, we'll now try to explain how torrents work.

Someone downloads a .torrent file

The first thing that happens is that a user downloads a .torrent file. This file is very small and contains only a list of the files that are to be downloaded and some other stuff used by the user's torrent application.

Opening the torrent

The next thing that happens is that the person that downloaded the file opens it with an application designed to handle this kind of file (more about these applications later). This application will try to find other people trying to download the same file. The torrent application will now grab pieces of the file from the other computers and put them together into one file. The user's torrent application will in its turn start to share pieces that you have downloaded with other users. You get some and you give some.

Torrent applications for the Mac

There are various torrent applications available for Mac users. In this article, we'll tell you about our favorite application, Transmission. It's simple to use and free (we're not paid to say this).

Transmission

Transmission is a great torrent application for Mac. It's easy to understand, it works pretty flawlessly and it has most of the features that one wants. To download Transmission, click here (download will begin immediately).

Adding torrent files to Transmission

Create a new download folder

Okay, let's assume that you have downloaded Transmission and want to start downloading files. The first thing you should do is create a folder where your downloads will be put. For instance, name it "Downloads" and place it on your desktop.

Tell Transmission that you want your downloads to be out into that folder

Now, open Transmission and go to the top menu. Click Transmission > Preferences. In the preferences window, click the second tab labeled "Transfers". A drop-down menu is now available and from that menu, choose the folder where you want your downloads to be put (the folder you just created).

Get a torrent file

The next thing you do is download a .torrent file. You do this from your web browser. Find a web site that offers torrents and find a download button. When you click it, a .torrent file will be downloaded to your computer.

Open the .torrent file with Transmission

Now drag the torrent file into Transmission and it will be visible in the list. All the files that you want to download will now be created in the Downloads folder. These files are useless and broken until Transmission says that the files are 100% downloaded. You can throw the .torrent file away after adding it to Transmission.

Download problems that may occur

The torrent download won't start

The problem with torrents is that they depend on someone seeding the file from his or her computer. Seeding means that you allow other users to download parts of the file from your computer. Sometimes no users are downloading or seeding the file and therefore it can't be downloaded.
Try to find another file. Finding good torrents might be tricky, but have patience.

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Google starts to censor torrent-related search queries

Searching for file-sharing information via Google is going to take a little bit more effort now, thanks to new steps taken by the search engine to remove all sorts of references to torrents from its instant search and autocomplete features.

In December, Google said it was taking steps towards "making copyright work better online." Among other things, it promised that "terms that are closely associated with piracy" would no longer appear in autocompletes.

Although it may be seen as an effort to crack down on illegal file sharing, the move is a troubling one, particularly for those who provide BitTorrent services. No surprise, these companies are quick to point out that there are many legitimate uses for torrents.

Forbidden from Autocomplete Arbitrarily?

Part of the problem with this new implementation, as TorrentFreak noted when it broke the story, the list of banned terms is "seemingly arbitrary." No version of the word "torrent" will work for instant search - neither the software "uTorrent," nor "BitTorrent," the name of a protocol and a San Francisco-based company. But while the cyberlockers RapidShare and Megaupload are now forbidden, other sites like HotFile and MediaFire are not. Furthermore, you can still find the names of other popular torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay.

TorrentFreak cites a response from RapidShare, who say that "We knew about Google's plans for quite a few weeks now. We embrace that certain search suggestions will not put a wrong complexion on RapidShare anymore, but we are concerned that at the same time the legitimate interests of our users will also be affected."

The company adds that "RapidShare is one of the most popular websites worldwide. Every day hundreds of thousands of users rely on our services to pursue their perfectly legitimate interests. That is why Google has obviously gone too far with censoring the results of its suggest algorithm. A search engine's results should reflect the users' interests and not Google's or anybody else's."

For now, you can still search for torrent information. While your search queries won't autocomplete, the results aren't censored. Yet.

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BitTorrent launches file sharing service SoShare; up to 1TB files for free

BitTorrent has launched SoShare, a service that allows users to share large files. Currently in public Beta, the service is available on Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari for Mac; and Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer for Windows through plug-ins, and offers free sharing for any number of files up to a Terabyte (1024GB) at once. The service is not available on Linux. Files are live for 30 days, but users can choose to expire them at any time.

Through the service, BitTorrent is specifically targeting users in the Media industry and professionals across fields like photography, films, music, and design, who need to share large files on a regular basis.

Users just need to sign-up for the service by creating an account, enter the recipient's e-mail address along with a message and can then attach the files through the browser. The recipient will get a download link and a thumbnail preview of the files which can be then downloaded by the recipient without the need to sign-up.

The management of the downloads is also done through the browser plug-in, and delivery is through BitTorrent framework. The download manager allows users to pause and resume downloads. The sender also gets a delivery receipt when someone views and downloads the file. Users can also create a public link for sharing file links.

This seems to be company's attempt to bring torrents to a more mainstream audience by letting the users focus on sharing the content, instead of worrying about finding a tracker and/ or downloading bit torrent clients.

We're not sure how the company plans to address issues related to copyright protected content. It will compete with services such as YouSendIt, and indirectly with cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Box and Skydrive. BitTorrent had also launched SyncApp in Alpha, which helps users in managing personal files between multiple computers.

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BitTorrent announces server-less secure messaging service

BitTorrent has announced that it's working on a new server-less chat service that would be private, secure, and free.

The organisation behind the popular file sharing service by the same name has announced BitTorrent Chat, a pre-Alpha experiment in server-less messaging and is accepting applications for testing out the service. One can apply for an invite to the private alpha version of the service at the BitTorrent Labs website.

Not many details have been made available, but BitTorrent's communications chief Christian Averill told CNET that there's no central server that stores communications, and that the service apparently works "similar to BitTorrent Sync, but adapted for real-time communications."

The report also mentions that the service requires a BitTorrent account at this point in time but is expected to work with other instant-messaging services and be interoperable with SIP standards.
It's not clear as to which desktop platforms will get the app first but mobile apps will also be offered, as per the report.

In the wake of the recent revelations about the NSA tracking interpersonal communication, people have become skeptical of online communication services. So the service might bring a sigh of relief to them as communication will not pass through an intermediary, and hence will not offer a central point that can be tracked by the authorities.

BitTorrent had previously launched Sync, an app that lets users securely sync files and folders across multiple devices. The app allows users to experience the functionality of file sync and storage services like Dropbox and Skydrive, but doesn't require them to store their files on a third-party server. It lets users access their files across multiple devices via the BitTorrent technology and there's no limit to file size, transfer or storage limits. Also, since a third-party doesn't have access to user data, and data is encrypted, there are fewer privacy and security concerns.

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BitTorrent updates Sync for improved speeds, announces 1 million users, new API

BitTorrent's Sync, the service that lets users securely sync files and folders across multiple devices without the need for them to go through third party servers, has announced that it now has an active user base of 1 million, synchronising about 30 petabytes of data on the service since its initial beta launch. In July, BitTorrent had said that Alpha users had synced over 8 petabytes (1 petabyte = 1048576 gigabyte) of data.

BitTorrent has now announced version 1.2 of the Sync service. The firm claims that the updated version of the service is twice as fast as its previous iteration and that the app has been clocked at 90 MB/s on LAN.

BitTorrent has also updated the Sync for iOS app, which now sports a new design, improved connection speed, iOS7 compatibility, and native iPad interface. The iOS app now lets users send and sync files in other apps, and save media from Sync folders direct to the iOS device's camera roll. The iOS app was first released in August. Sync also offers an Android app.

In addition to the new release, BitTorrent also announced that it's releasing the BitTorrent Sync Beta API, which will allow developers to create distributed social media, communications, and enterprise apps integrating the Sync platform. The API is designed to work across all major operating systems, including Windows, Mac, and Linux, as per the company.

The initial release of the API offers support for syncing selected files only, allowing developers to choose whether to sync specific items, or entire folders; UI-less mode enabling developers to integrate Sync and all its functionality, without the need to use the default UI and support for Encryption Secrets that allows storing an encrypted copy of all the users' folders on a remote server, to build a private cloud.

Sync allows users to experience the functionality of file sync and storage services like Dropbox and Skydrive, but doesn't require them to store their files on a third-party server. So, they can access their files across multiple devices via the BitTorrent technology, and there's no limit to file size, transfer or storage limits. Also, since a third-party doesn't have access to user data, and data is encrypted during transfers, there are fewer privacy and security concerns.

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The Interview a Global Smash Hit on Torrent Sites: Report

The Interview movie, which was released online for viewers in the US on Christmas Day, is reportedly a smash hit on torrent sites and has been downloaded several hundreds of thousands of times worldwide. Notably, the movie is said to have been uploaded on torrent sites within one hour of its first streaming.

The report added that torrents of the controversial movie were downloaded around 200,000 times worldwide in the first 10 hours, shooting up to 750,000 downloads after 20 hours.

It is worth noting that The Interview is officially limited to the US region via YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video and Sony's seetheinterview.com site. It is priced at $5.99 (roughly Rs. 370) to rent or $14.99 (roughly Rs. 940) to buy, Sony Pictures said on Wednesday, a day after agreeing to release it at some 200 independent theatres. No cable or satellite TV operator has yet agreed to make "The Interview" available through video on demand (VOD).

"Just signed up to say Thanks, since it was not released outside of US when it should be all at the same time. Will now be finally able to watch this," commented one of the user who downloaded The Interview movie on a torrent website.

Sony Pictures made the controversial film available online on Wednesday, expanding distribution of a comedy that triggered a destructive cyber-attack against the company that has been blamed on North Korea. The studio reversed its decision to halt the movie's release after it was criticized for self-censorship.

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This Torrenting App Is Too Good to Be Legal

Clean and simple, Popcorn Time has made illegal downloads easier than ever
 
 Why Cheap Oil Doesn't Stop the Drilling For more than a decade, pirating a movie or TV show using BitTorrent, the Internet’s notorious file-sharing protocol, required a modicum of work and technical ability. You had to use a clunky program specially designed to seek out and decode pirated files, then learn to refine its search tools to find the videos you wanted. Annoying banner ads within the search program were part of the deal, as was occasional malware. Pirating wasn’t just a pain for the Hollywood studios whose products were being passed freely around the Web; it was a pain for unscrupulous seekers of free video, too. 

In the past year, a program called Popcorn Time has become the kinder, gentler face of piracy online, taming BitTorrent to make it far more user-friendly and less obviously sketchy. Free incarnations for PCs, phones, and tablets look pretty much like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Instant Video, except with vastly deeper catalogs that include theatrical releases such as Oscar winner Birdman and with little to no advertising. Those benefits have raised fresh concern in Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Although it’s difficult to estimate total viewership of a pirate service, in Netflix’s latest annual report to shareholders Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings and Chief Financial Officer David Wells named Popcorn Time a major worry.

The sharp rise of Google searches for Popcorn Time, Hastings and Wells wrote, is “sobering.”  Netflix’s Jan. 20 report included a chart showing that about as many people in the Netherlands search Google for Popcorn Time, which made its debut in March 2014, as for Netflix or HBO. As of Feb. 25, Google data show similar results for Italy, Portugal, and Spain. In the U.S., Popcorn Time grew by 336 percent from July to January and now accounts for one-ninth of the country’s torrent traffic, estimates Ceg Tek International, a company that movie studios contract to find and stop copyright infringement. Netflix declined to comment for this story.  Popcorn Time’s crisp grids of TV shows and movies, including the most recent episodes and blockbusters, use art straight from marketing posters.

The service looks so professional that many viewers think it’s legal, says Kyle Reed, chief operating officer of Ceg Tek. “Some people don’t even seem to know that it’s BitTorrent,” he says. “We send out copyright infringement notices, and they question why they received them. It just looks like Netflix to some people.”  “Some people don’t even seem to know that it’s BitTorrent. We send out copyright infringement notices, and they question why they received them.” —Kyle Reed  Creating a less cumbersome wrapper for BitTorrent was the primary objective of Popcorn Time’s anonymous developers, a group of friends in Argentina, says a Dutch blogger who goes by Ernesto van der Sar and runs TorrentFreak, a news site that covers file sharing. The creators abandoned Popcorn Time just a few weeks after its launch, writing on their website that they needed to “move on with our lives.”

 In an e-mail later revealed by the hack of Sony’s computer systems, the Motion Picture Association of America bragged at the time to Sony and other movie studios that it had “scored a major victory in shutting down the key developers of Popcorn Time” by coordinating with law enforcement on three continents. The MPAA declined to comment.  Nonetheless, Popcorn Time survived. Its code is open-source, so several other groups of coders quickly released versions after the site shut down. (Would-be viewers need to choose carefully; some of the knockoffs contain malware.) “We were users of the original and were sad to watch it go,” wrote a developer of one of the spinoff versions, who answered an e-mail sent through his group’s website and insisted on communicating through anonymous Internet chat software to protect his identity. “The amount of attention this project has been receiving is HUGE, ground breaking and way above anything we expected when we first picked it up.” 

The developers don’t call themselves pirates. Asked about the consequences of making illicit file sharing easier, the anonymous developer claims Popcorn Time doesn’t break any laws because it’s just an index of other BitTorrent sites and doesn’t host any pirated material. “The torrent world was here with millions of users way before us and will be here with BILLIONS of users way after us,” he wrote.  Robert Red English, a developer of a separate Popcorn Time spinoff who communicated over Skype Instant Messenger from Ontario, also said the responsibility for obeying copyright laws should fall to users. “I’m not going to justify it,” he wrote. “If it’s stealing or not varies by country and each user is given the choice to use the program, and warned we use torrents. It’s up to them to choose if they wish to continue.” 

That’s a common defense among people who collect links to pirated videos, but judicial precedent doesn’t back it up. The founders of Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent hub, made similar arguments in a Swedish court and received prison sentences. Older file-sharing networks such as Napster and Grokster shut down, because U.S. courts ruled that they were emboldening users to break laws. “If you are seen as encouraging people to infringe, then you have a copyright problem,” says Corynne McSherry, the acting legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for consumer rights online. Users are also vulnerable to suits, she says, though most studios and other major rights holders no longer target individual viewers for redress.

Instead, the MPAA has for the past few months demanded that organizations such as EURid, the nonprofit that distributes .eu domain names, withdraw URLs from popular versions of Popcorn Time and that hosting company LeaseWeb withdraw the servers running them. The lobbying group has also sent takedown requests to sites such as GitHub, where programmers store the open-source code they’re working on. GitHub declined to comment. The anonymous Popcorn Time developer says the added pressure is motivating him and his colleagues to finish a version of the software that operates entirely by connecting viewers’ computers and doesn’t rely at all on central servers. “When we release this, there will be nothing to be taken down again,” he says. 

Even if Popcorn Time’s coders succeed in that effort, studios and legitimate streaming services will have at least one other way to answer its growing popularity: making sure legal alternatives are widely available, affordable, and desirable. In the U.S. and U.K., where Netflix and other legal streaming services are well established, Popcorn Time’s Google search numbers are still way behind.

 

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How to Use Bit Torrent

Using Bit Torrent is a great way to download and share files, especially since they do not take up much bandwidth compared to HTTP downloads and can be paused and resumed anytime. However, Bit Torrents are a bit more complicated than your standard computer downloading process but with just a few minutes of reading this, you can find and use basic Bit Torrent services in no time.

Materials Needed:

- Bit Torrent client

Step 1

To begin, you must first have the Bit Torrent client. The Bit Torrent client is the software that handles the Torrent downloads on your computer. It can be downloaded for free at http://www.bittorrent.com.

Step 2

After downloading and installing the Bit Torrent client, it is now time for you to find the site with the Torrent you wish to download. Torrent files are widely available in Torrent storage sites such as ISOHunt and MiniNova. However, be careful when downloading Torrents from such sites, as some of these files are pirated and infringe copyright laws. As a rule, always check the Torrent’s details or readme file on the site before downloading.

Step 3

Once you have found the Torrent you want to download from, click on its link. Depending on how your computer is configured, clicking on the Torrent link should either ask you to open it or save the Torrent to the local hard drive. If you choose to save the Torrent in your computer, place it in an accessible folder in your local hard drive and add it to Bit Torrent by clicking the 'Add Torrent' button on the top left corner of the client.

Step 4

At this point, the 'Add New Torrent' window should appear. Choose a location in your computer where you want the downloaded files to be saved and click 'OK'. If the Torrent features multiple download files, you can also choose which files you want to download and which ones you want to ignore. If you want to download all the files, simply check all the boxes and click the 'OK' button.

Step 5

Once you have clicked the 'OK' button, the Bit Torrent client will automatically start downloading the files onto your system. You need to have the Bit Torrent client running in the entire process, which could take from a couple of minutes to several hours depending on the file size and your computer’s network connection. Once the download bar reaches 100%, the client has finished downloading all of the files onto your hard drive and is now ready for use.

 

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BitTorrent Pirates Go Nuts After TV Release Groups Dump Xvid

Some Internet piracy groups decided to implement some new regulations and standards last week. Instead of releasing TV shows in the Xvid/avi format, groups responsible for putting major TV shows online switched to MP4/x264. Outraged by the lack of democracy, some BitTorrent users are directing their anger at bewildered torrent sites and even threatening to boycott releases. For those who understand, the whole thing is pretty amusing.

Every now and again, the world’s most famous piracy release groups get together and have a big old meeting to decide how they’ll carry out their future activities. At the top of the agenda is an item of utmost importance – how to change things around to ensure the highest levels of annoyance and inconvenience for BitTorrent downloaders.

Ok, so the last sentence isn’t true, but nevertheless that appears to be the current assessment of events according to some BitTorrent users. Worryingly, the interpretation from others is even more wide of the mark.

The problem stems back to a new document which details a set of standards TV show release groups such as LOL and MOMENTUM will have to live up to in order to comply with so-called ‘Scene rules’. Not complying with the format means that a release group’s work risks being ‘nuked’ – a term which means something has been rated second-class by their pirating peers.

The document – ‘The SD x264 TV Releasing Standards 2012′ – is extremely detailed and covers all sorts of technical issues, but the main controversy stems from the adoption of the x264 codec.

“x264 has become the most advanced video codec over the past few years. Compared to Xvid, it is able to provide higher quality and compression at greater SD resolutions,” the rule document begins.
“This standard aims to bring quality control back to SD releases. There are many standalone players/streamers such as TviX, Popcorn Hour, WDTV HD Media Player, Boxee, Xtreamer, PS3, XBOX 360, iPad, & HDTVs that can playback H264 and AAC encapsulated in MP4,” the doc adds.


From February 22nd and earlier in some cases, release groups including ASAP, BAJSKORV, C4TV, D2V, DiVERGE, FTP, KYR, LMAO, LOL, MOMENTUM, SYS, TLA and YesTV began releasing TV shows in the new format. Out went Xvid and avi, in came x264 and MP4.

However, while the release groups want to move with the times, there are many people consuming their content who either don’t or can’t. In the main, people seem disappointed because their standalone Xvid compatible DVD players won’t play the new releases.

Some of the reactions are polite enough, but show a misunderstanding of how the system works.
“LOL, why are all your new uploads MP4 format? How do we get hold of you? We need the AVI format back, really frustrating as most DVD players don’t play MP4 format which means we are back to converting format to AVI – how 3rd world LOL,” begins one user on popular torrent site EZTV.

“Hi there, I agree too please can you revert back to AVI as most DVD players cannot recognize MP4 format and this means I need to do conversion to AVI all the time for my grand mother and its quite painful,” says another.

At worst, some of the comments show an embarrassing sense of entitlement and an attitude that those downloading for free are actually “customers” of these release groups and as such deserve to be treated better.

“F@#k LOL and their mp4’s,” is just one example of the aggression directed towards them.
But there are another set of users who don’t understand where the releases come from at all and are instead directing their anger at the torrent sites – the equivalent of blaming Google for not listing the pictures people had hoped for in their image search.

“MP4 SUCKS AND IS A BULL SHIT FORMAT. AVI WILL ALWAYS BE KING. MORE TROUBLE THAN IS WORTH. TIME TO GET MY DOWNLOADS FROM A BETTER SITE THAT OFFERS AVI AND I KNOW A MAJORITY OF THE DOWN LOADERS WILL DO THE SAME,” shouts an EZTV user.

“SO I THINK EZTV HAS A LIMITED LIFE SPAN LEFT IF THEY DO NOT TELL DOWN LOADERS TO GO BACK TO AVI IT IS PROBABLY ALL OVER FOR THIS SITE.”
First off, these release groups aren’t deliberately releasing TV shows to please the masses. They do it for their own entertainment and it’s only when they leak out do the wider world get access to them. They are certainly not being put online to satisfy the needs of ALL CAPS MAN. Second, the torrent sites index other people’s content, they tend not to be the originators of it.

Sure, some of the more friendly but bewildered comments of upset downloaders are pretty amusing to read, but the more aggressive ones highlight a more worrying trend.

Somewhere along the line a consumer appeared who not only wants everything super quickly and for free, but also believes that the same should be offered with Class A service. Should these things not be delivered, he feels it is his right to take his “business” elsewhere. Could this become the new consumer standard for service on the Internet?

At the moment this toughest breed of consumer appears to be in the minority but thanks to the law of supply and demand, even he will find his needs served. Already people are ‘pirating’ the MP4 releases and re-uploading them in the Xvid format to satisfy his needs.

In the meantime, no doubt LOL and LMAO will be doing what their acronyms suggest.

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Leaked: Police Plan to Raid The Pirate Bay

More than half a decade after Swedish police officers first raided The Pirate Bay, there is talk that a second police raid against the world's most famous torrent site is in the planning. The Pirate Bay team has learned that local authorities have acquired warrants to take action against the site, and expect that both servers and the new .se domain name may be targeted soon.

In the spring of 2006 a team of 65 Swedish police personnel entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The officers were tasked with shutting down the largest threat to the entertainment industry at the time – The Pirate Bay’s servers.
The raid eventually led to the conviction of four people connected to The Pirate Bay, but the site itself remained online.
Today, the Pirate Bay team has informed TorrentFreak that a second raid is being prepared by the Swedish authorities. The site’s operators, who are well-connected in multiple ways, learned that a team of Swedish investigators is gearing up to move against the site in the future.
The suspicions were also made public by The Pirate Bay a few minutes ago.
“The Swedish district attorney Fredrik Ingblad initiated a new investigation into The Pirate Bay back in 2010. Information has been leaked to us every now and then by multiple sources, almost on a regular basis. It’s an interesting read,” the Pirate Bay crew notes.
“We can certainly understand why WikiLeaks wished to be hosted in Sweden, since so much data leaks there. The reason that we get the leaks is usually that the whistleblowers do not agree with what is going on. Something that the governments should have in mind – even your own people do not agree.”
The Pirate Bay team confirmed to TorrentFreak that the announcement is no prank. The authorities have obtained warrants to snoop around in sensitive places and two known anti-piracy prosecutors, Frederick Ingblad and Henrik Rasmusson, are said to be involved.
Employing a little psychological warfare aimed at putting the investigators off-balance, the Pirate Bay team has chosen to make the news public to make the authorities aware that they are not the only ones being watched.
According to The Pirate Bay team they aren’t doing anything illegal, but nonetheless they noticed that the investigation intensified after the site’s recent move to a .SE domain.
“Since our recent move to a .SE domain the investigation has been cranked up a notch. We think that the investigation is interesting considering nothing that TPB does is illegal,” they say.
“Rather we find it interesting that a country like Sweden is being so abused by lobbyists and that this can be kept up. They’re using scare tactics, putting pressure on the wrong people, like providers and users. All out of fear from the big country in the west, and with an admiration for their big fancy wallets.”
Behind the scenes The Pirate Bay team is working hard to ensure that the site will remain online in the event that servers, domain names and Internet routes are cut off. In this regard The Pirate Bay has learned a valuable lesson from its former operators.
Those who are aware of the site’s history know that without a few essential keystrokes in May 2006, The Pirate Bay may not have been here today. When Pirate Bay founder TiAMO heard that something was amiss, he decided to make a full backup of the site before heading off to the datacenter, where he was greeted by dozens of police officers.

TiAMO’s decision to start a backup of the site is probably the most pivotal moment in the site’s history. Because of this backup the Pirate Bay team were able to resurrect the site within three days. If there hadn’t have been a recent backup, things may have turned out quite differently.

It was a close call at the time, and a defining moment in the history of the site. The determination to get the site back online as soon as possible set the defiant tone for the years that followed. Today, the site prides itself in being the most resilient torrent site around.

In recent years The Pirate Bay has implemented a variety of changes to guarantee that the site remains online. It added several backup domains, placed servers all over the world, and removed resource intensive processes.

Earlier this week The Pirate Bay took another important step by removing .torrent files altogether to become a “magnet link” site. As a result, the entire site can now be reduced to a few hundred megabytes, small enough to fit on the tiniest thumb drive.

For the police, this makes a successful Pirate Bay raid almost impossible. While they can take steps to put the site out of business briefly, it’s inevitable that it will re-appear in a matter of hours, or days.
Or to use the words of the Pirate Bay team. “We’re staying put where we are. We’re going no-where. But we have a message to hollywood, the investigators and the prosecutors: LOL.”

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The Pirate Bay Moves to .SE Domain To Prevent Domain Seizure

After the court case against the founders of The Pirate Bay was concluded today, the operators of the site quickly moved to change their domain name from .ORG to the Swedish .SE. A Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak that this move was made to prevent the US authorities from seizing the domain, which is a serious risk now the court case has completed.

Earlier today Sweden’s Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay criminal trial.
This means that the prison sentences and fines against the defendants are now final. The Pirate Bay website itself, however, wasn’t part of the trial and will remain operational as normal. That is, unless the US Government chooses to intervene.

In 2010 it was reported that both The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload barely escaped a domain seizure. Although it wasn’t entirely clear at the time, one of the assumptions was that in the case of The Pirate Bay the pending trial against several people involved with the site acted as a roadblock.

Today this last barrier was removed. And with MegaUpload also out of the way, the largest torrent site on the Internet is now a prime target for a domain seizure.
The people running The Pirate Bay are aware of this risk and quickly redirected the site to a Swedish .se domain, outside the reach of US authorities. A Pirate Bay insider confirmed this morning that this was done “just in case ICE has been waiting for the court case to be over.”
Along with the domain change The Pirate Bay team delivered a defiant message.
“2012 is the year of the storm. The Pirate Bay will reach an age of 9 years. Experiencing raids, espionage and death threats, we’re still here. We’ve been through hell and back and it has made us tougher than ever,” they begin.
“Our 3 friends and blood brothers have been sentenced to prison. This might sound worse than it is. Since no one of them no longer lives in Sweden, they won’t go to jail. They are as free today as they were yesterday,” they note, adding:
“In this year of the storm, the winners will build windmills and the losers will raise shelters. So flex your muscles, fellow pirates, and give power to us all! Build more sites! More nets! More protocols! Scream louder than ever and take it to the next level!”
Although it’s clear that The Pirate Bay lost a battle today, the above statements signal that the war is far from over.

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The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record

Despite the widespread availability of pirated releases, The Avengers just scored a record-breaking $200 million opening weekend at the box office. While some are baffled to see that piracy failed to crush the movie's profits, it's really not that surprising. Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage.

A week before its premiere in US movie theaters, a camcorded version of The Avengers appeared online.
Immediately thousands of fans jumped on the release and according to figures collated by TorrentFreak, in the days that followed it was downloaded half a million times. While this may very well be a record for a “CAM” movie, it failed to exceed the download numbers of several other movies that were available in higher quality.
Record or not, the movie’s distributer Disney must have been terrified by this early release. However, this weekend the suits at the studio were able to breathe a sign of relief, or rather, start popping open the Champagne.
With more than $200 million in box office revenue, The Avengers had the most successful first weekend in movie history. It broke the record set by Harry Potter last year by more than $30 million, despite the “massive” piracy.
But is this really such a big surprise? Not when you look at the numbers.
Of all the people who downloaded a pirate copy of the film about 20% came from the US. This means that roughly 100,000 Americans have downloaded a copy online through BitTorrent. Now, IF all these people bought a movie ticket instead then box office revenue would be just 0.5% higher.
Not much of an impact, and even less when you consider that these “pirates” do not all count as a lost sale.
We don’t think that there are many movie fans who see a low quality camcorded version of a movie as a true alternative to watching a film in a movie theater. The two are totally different experiences, and not direct competition at all.
If anything, downloading a camcorded movie could be compared to downloading a low quality bootleg of a concert. People who download these are collectors, passionate fans, or just curious. But in no way do these bootlegs seriously hurt concert attendances.
The same might be said for advance leaks of games. These pre-release copies are often downloaded by tens of thousands of people, but not necessarily those who refuse to pay. The people who download these buggy and sometimes hardly playable games are often curious game fanatics who tend to buy the official game when it comes out.
The claim that camcorded films are killing the movie industry is nonsense and spending millions of dollars on anti-camcording technologies is simply not worth it.
But does this mean that piracy is not an issue for the movie industry at all? Well not so fast.
A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available on pirate sites while a movie is still showing in theaters.
These high quality copies are more likely to “compete” with movie theater attendance and if a movie is not showing in local theaters at all, it definitely has the potential to impact future attendance.
This is even more true for the DVD-aftermarket and VOD sales. High quality pirated copies are direct competition and can impact revenues.
The challenge for the movie industry is to make legal offerings more appealing than pirated counterparts. Of course it may not always be able to compete with “free,” but there is still a lot of ground to make up when it comes to availability and quality of legal offerings.
But in no way are camcorded copies killing the US movie industry.

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MegaUpload Shut Down by the Feds, Founder Arrested

MegaUpload, one of the largest file-sharing sites on the Internet, has been shut down by federal prosecutors in Virginia. The site's founder Kim Dotcom and three others were arrested by the police in New Zealand at the request of US authorities. MegaVideo, the streaming site belonging to same company, and a total of 18 domains connected to the Mega company were seized and datacenters in three countries raided.

Just a few weeks ago, MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak that his Mega ventures have nothing to worry about, as they operate within the rules of the law.
“Mega has nothing to fear. Our business is legitimate and protected by the DMCA and similar laws around the world. We work with the best lawyers and play by the rules.
“We take our legal obligations seriously. Mega’s war chest is full and we have strong supporters backing us,” Dotcom said.
But behind the scenes powerful forces were at work, plotting the forceful demise of MegaUpload, one of the world’s biggest websites.
An indictment unsealed today by the Department of Justice claims that MegaUpload has caused the entertainment industries more than $500 million in lost revenue and generated $175 million “in criminal proceeds.”
Two corporations – Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited – were indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia on January 5th, 2012, and charged with “engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.”
Today, the authorities executed in excess of 20 search warrants in the United States and eight other countries.
Data centers in the Netherlands, Canada and Washington housing MegaUpload’s equipment were raided. In an apparent reference to the latter location, a source has just informed TorrentFreak that the FBI are currently detaining everyone at the ISP Cogent Communications’ headquarters in Washington DC, in connection with a Mega-related search warrant.
In addition to MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom who was arrested today in New Zealand, another six alleged members of the Mega “conspiracy” were charged in the indictment:
– Finn Batato, 38, Mega’s chief marketing officer and a citizen and resident of Germany
– Julius Bencko, 35, Mega’s graphic designer from Slovakia
– Sven Echternach, 39,Mega’s German head of business development;
– Mathias Ortmann, 40, the German CTO, co-founder and director of Mega
– Andrus Nomm, 32, programmer and head of the development from Estonia
– Bram van der Kolk, 29, a Dutch citizen who oversaw programming and network issues.
Dotcom, Batato, Ortmann and van der Kolk were arrested today in Auckland, New Zealand, by authorities there. Bencko, Echternach and Nomm are still at large.
The authorities seized approximately $50 million in assets, which appears to include Kim Dotcom’s treasured collection of several dozen cars, as detailed below.
A total of 18 Mega-related domains were also seized by authorities including Megastuff.co, Megaworld.com, Megaclicks.co, Megastuff.info, Megaclicks.org, Megaworld.mobi, Megastuff.org, Megaclick.us, Mageclick.com, HDmegaporn.com, Megavkdeo.com, Megaupload.com, Megaupload.org, Megarotic.com, Megaclick.com, Megavideo.com, Megavideoclips.com and Megaporn.com.
According to the Department of Justice, the individuals named in the indictment face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering, five years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, 20 years in prison on the charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering and five years in prison on each of the substantive charges of criminal copyright infringement.
The legal action against Mega will set a precedent for similar cloud-hosting services. The MegaUpload site itself had no search function to discover content directly, but according to the indictment this was done to “conceal the scope of its infringement.” Would the same be true for services such as Dropbox?
Breaking story, more to come.

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Pirate Bay Enjoys 12 Million Traffic Boost, Shares Unblocking Tips

Last week the UK High Court ruled that several of the country's leading ISPs must block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. The decision is designed to limit traffic to the world's leading BitTorrent site but in the short-term it had the opposite effect. Yesterday, The Pirate Bay had 12 million more visitors than it has ever had, providing a golden opportunity to educate users on how to circumvent blocks. "We should write a thank you letter to the BPI," a site insider told TorrentFreak.

Last Friday the UK High Court ruled that several of country’s leading ISPs must censor The Pirate Bay website having ruled in February that the site and its users breach copyright on a grand scale.
The blocks – to be implemented by Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media (BT are still considering their position) – are designed to cut off all but the most determined file-sharers from the world’s most popular torrent site.

On hearing the news a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak that the measure will do very little to stop people accessing the site and predicted that “the free advertising” would only increase traffic levels.
It’s not possible to buy advertising “articles” from leading UK publications such as the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph, but yesterday The Pirate Bay news was spread across all of them and dozens beside, for free. The news was repeated around the UK, across Europe and around the world reaching millions of people. The results for the site were dramatic.
“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 MILLION more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak today.
“We should write a thank you note to the BPI,” he added.
The blockade, which was not contested by any of the ISPs listed above, will be implemented during the course of the next few weeks. While that time counts down, The Pirate Bay say they are viewing the interim period as an opportunity to educate site visitors on how to deal with censorship by bypassing it.
“Another thing that’s good with the traffic surge is that we now have time to teach even more people how to circumvent Internet censorship,” the insider added.
In court papers released today, Mr Justice Arnold said that since the terms of the court order (how the blocks would be implemented technically) had been agreed to by the ISPs in question, there was no need for him to detail them in his ruling. However, The Pirate Bay told us that by taking a range of measures, any blocking technique employed by any ISP can be overcome.
First off they advise that the most simple solution is to use a VPN, such as iPredator or other similar services that carry no logs.
These VPN providers cost money but there are free solutions too. Companies such as VPNReactor offer a free service that is time limited to around 30 mins per session, but that’s plenty of time for users to get on Pirate Bay and download the torrent files they need. Once users have the torrents in their client, the blocking has been bypassed and even with the VPN turned off, downloads will still complete.
Pirate Bay are also recommending the use of TOR but only for the initial accessing of their website and the downloading of the .torrent files. Torrent clients themselves should never be run over TOR, the system isn’t designed for it and besides, transfers will be pitifully slow. TPB also point to I2P as a further unblocking option.
While the above options will cut straight through any kind of blocking with zero problems, Pirate Bay are also advising people to change their DNS provider. By permanently switching to a DNS offered by the likes of OpenDNS and Google, users of UK ISPs that censor The Pirate Bay purely by DNS will have a free and effective work around.
As readers will recall, there are other simple unblocking solutions where domain names are blocked by ISPs but their related IP addresses remain unfiltered. These include the MAFIAAFire plugin and the simple action of typing a site’s IP address directly into a browser. However, in this UK case there is a problem with these solutions.
According to court papers made available today, it seems that on the advice of an expert and after being agreed to by the ISPs in question, IP address blocking of The Pirate Bay is now part of the injunction. This means that the techniques in the above paragraph simply won’t work.
To circumvent this kind of problem, The Pirate Bay can be accessed via a 3rd party – a so-called ‘proxy’. One of these purely for the job is being operated by the UK Pirate Party.
Quite how long this particular proxy stays up remains to be seen though. The Dutch Pirates tried a similar thing and were quickly pursued by rights holders. Nevertheless, there are countless free proxies online that can do the job just as well.
In just a few weeks the block of The Pirate Bay will be implemented and despite all the coverage and millions of extra visitors to the site, thousands of users will remain unprepared. Those patient enough to type a question into a search engine will regain access to the site in a few minutes.
But will the impatient start pumping more money into the pockets of the BPI? That’s the big question.

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Demonoid Is Back, BitTorrent Tracker is Now Online

After three and a half months of downtime Demonoid's tracker is now back online. The unexpected revival of the tracker is the first sign of life in weeks and suggests that the Demonoid team is working to bring the full site back online. While the index and forum remain offline, the many thousands of torrents tracked by Demonoid have been brought back to life.

When Demonoid went down at the end of July the site’s admin blamed a DDoS attack. This initial attack resulted in a series of problems that were not easy to fix.
However, at the time the tech admin of the site was determined to get the site back online.
“You know how it goes with Demonoid. It might take a while but it will come back,” the admin told us.
This was easier said than done though, and things went from bad to worse when Demonoid’s hosting provider Colocall pulled the plug following pressure from Interpol. But despite the site’s entanglement in a criminal investigation, Demonoid’s users never gave up hope that the site would return.
Today, this hope appears to be justified as the first step towards a comeback was been made. A few hours ago Demonoid’s tracker was kicked back into action.

Demonoid’s tracker is working

It may not come as a surprise that Demonoid is no longer with its former hosting company in the Ukraine. It appears that they have moved to Hong Kong instead, judging from the IP-address linked to the tracker.
While the news of the revived tracker will delight many Demonoid users, it may take some time before the site itself returns, if that’s the plan. In 2007 and 2009 Demonoid suffered similar downtime episodes and at the time the tracker reappeared several weeks before the site.
When the DDoS hit Demonoid late July the site also suffered from an “exploit of sorts” which caused some damage. It is unclear whether this has been resolved at this point. The admin told us at the time that if the site did indeed return, it might move over to the new code they had been testing for a while.
Time will tell if that’s indeed the case.
TorrentFreak has asked Demonoid’s tech admin for a comment on the tracker comeback and the possible return of the website, and we’ll update this article once we receive a response.

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Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down

While the file-sharing ecosystem is currently filled with uncertainty and doubt, researchers at Delft University of Technology continue to work on their decentralized BitTorrent network. Their Tribler client doesn't require torrent sites to find or download content, as it is based on pure peer-to-peer communication. "The only way to take it down is to take the Internet down," the lead researcher says.

The Tribler BitTorrent client is no newcomer to the BitTorrent scene. It has been in development for more than 5 years and has delivered many innovative features, which have mostly been ignored by the masses.
Today, however, Tribler is more relevant than ever before.
Developed by a team of researchers at Delft University of Technology, the main goal is to come up with a robust implementation of BitTorrent that doesn’t rely on central servers. Instead, Tribler is designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline.
“Our key scientific quest is facilitating unbounded information sharing,” Tribler leader Dr. Pouwelse tells TorrentFreak.
“We simply don’t like unreliable servers. With Tribler we have achieved zero-seconds downtime over the past six years, all because we don’t rely on shaky foundations such as DNS, web servers or search portals.”
So how does it work?
Like many other BitTorrent clients, Tribler has a search box at the top of the application. However, the search results that appear when users type in a keyword don’t come from a central index. Instead, they come directly from other peers.

Tribler’s decentralized search results

Downloading a torrent is also totally decentralized. When a user clicks on one of the search results, the meta-data is pulled in from another peer and the download starts immediately. Tribler is based on the standard BitTorrent protocol and uses regular BitTorrent trackers to communicate with other peers. But, it can also continue downloading when a central tracker goes down.
The same is true for spam control. Where most torrent sites have a team of moderators to delete viruses, malware and fake files, Tribler uses crowd-sourcing to keep the network clean. Content is verified by user generated “channels”, which can be “liked” by others. When more people like a channel, the associated torrents get a boost in the search results.
The latest addition to Tribler is a Wikipedia-style editing system dubbed “Open2Edit,” where users have the option to edit names and descriptions of torrents in public channels. All without a central server, totally decentralized.

open2Edit

According to Dr. Pouwelse, Tribler is fully capable of resisting any pressure from outside, and it will still work when all torrent sites and trackers are gone. It simply can’t be shutdown, blocked or censored, whatever laws politicians may come up with.
“The only way to take it down is to take The Internet down.” Pouwelse told us.
One thing that could theoretically cause issues, is the capability for starting users to find new peers. To be on the safe side the Tribler team is still looking for people who want to act as so called bootstraptribler peers. These users will act as superpeers, who distribute lists of active downloaders.
“Together with software bugs and a code cleanup, that is now our last known weakness,” says Pouwelse.
While the Tribler client only has a few thousand users at the moment, for avid file-sharers it must be a relief to know that it’s out there. No matter what crazy laws may pass in the future, people will always be able to share.
Those who want to give it a spin are welcome download Tribler here. It’s completely Open Source and with a version for Windows, Mac and Linux.

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Demonoid Busted As A Gift To The United States Government

The nightmare week for Demonoid has just reached a huge crescendo, with news coming out of Ukraine that following a massive DDoS attack the site has now been busted by local authorities. Those looking for a U.S. connection to the raid won't be disappointed - a source in the country's Interior Ministry says that the action was scheduled to coincide with Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky's trip to the United States.

Last week thousands of Demonoid users feared the worst when their beloved site disappeared from the Internet. Many thought that the site had been busted, but were eventually relieved to hear that it was ‘only’ a massive DDoS attack.
But today the roller-coaster ride plummeted to new depths, with confirmation coming out of Ukraine that the DDoS was just the beginning – the site has been busted by the authorities.
ColoCall is the largest datacenter in Ukraine and a place that has been Demonoid’s home in recent years. But in the middle of last week, in the wake of the DDoS attack, government investigators arrived at ColoCall to shut Demonoid down.
“Investigators have copied all the information from the servers Demonoid and sealed them,” an anonymous ColoCall source confirmed. “Some equipment was not seized, but now it does not work, and we were forced to terminate the agreement with the site.”
As reported on TorrentFreak following our discussions with Demonoid’s admin last week, there were suspicions that the site may have been subjected to some kind of exploit or hack in addition to the DDoS. That version of events is now confirmed by the ColoCall source.
“Shortly after [the DDoS] a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators,” the source added.
But aside from the busting of the site, which is the biggest BitTorrent-related raid in recent memory and one that has taken out the world’s largest torrent site/tracker combo, there is a rather large international sting in the tail.
Despite general opinion that Demonoid did not contravene Ukranian law, especially since it blocked all Ukranian IP addresses to avoid upsetting the locals, the site still attracted the attention of the authorities there. That, according to a source in the country’s government, is all down to the United States getting involved.
A source inside the Interior Ministry has informed Kommersant that the raid on Demonoid was timed to coincide with the very first trip of Deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky‘s trip to the United States. On the agenda: copyright infringement.
Ukraine had promised the United States that it would improve its attitude and efforts towards enforcing copyright and no doubt its Western partner will be very pleased indeed that Demonoid’s head has been presented on a platter.
But while Demonoid’s servers are in custody, the site’s admin does not appear to be. The ColoCall source would not say who is behind the site, only that its management is located in Mexico. The devil may yet be back….
TorrentFreak contacted the Demonoid admin for a comment but we have yet to hear back

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Download a Copy of The Pirate Bay, It’s Only 90 MB

Soon The Pirate Bay will stop linking to .torrent files. Instead, the world's largest BitTorrent site will only list so-called magnet links. One of the advantages of the switch is that The Pirate Bay will be much more portable, and easier to copy. A new torrent listing all titles and magnet links on The Pirate Bay proves this point, as the public can download a copy that fits easily on a small USB stick - or even a few dozen floppies.

Last month The Pirate Bay announced that it will stop hosting torrents in the very near future.
This change is expected to go into effect before the end of the month. From then on, Pirate Bay users can only download files through magnet links.

The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that one of the advantages of the transition to a “magnet site” is that it requires relatively little bandwidth to host a proxy site. This is needed, because The Pirate Bay is currently blocked in several countries, and more are bound to follow in the months to come.
Without torrents, the Pirate Bay also becomes extremely portable which makes it possible for people to download a personal backup. As we said before, such a copy would easily fit on a thumb drive. Pirate Bay user “allisfine” was intrigued by this idea and decided to find out how small a copy of the torrents site would be.

“I did a complete snapshot of ALL the Pirate Bay torrents, in case somebody wants to close it or something similarly crazy,” he told TorrentFreak.
Using this script, “allisfine” managed to copy the title, id, file size, seeds, leechers and magnet links of 1,643,194 torrents. Comments were not copied to keep the files as small as possible, and the end result is a full copy of all magnet links (magnet) on The Pirate Bay in a 90 megabytes file, 164 megabytes unzipped.

A copy of The Pirate Bay

There is some confusion as to whether the 1,643,194 torrents are indeed a full copy of the site, as The Pirate Bay itself lists 4,199,832 torrents in the footer link on its site. However, the latter stats apply to the number of torrents that are available on several public trackers, The Pirate Bay itself only hosts a fraction of those.
With the release of the copy everyone can now download a personal backup of The Pirate Bay in a few minutes. Although searching the copy isn’t as convenient as using The Pirate Bay itself, there is little doubt that someone else will soon come up with another script that solves this problem.
Recent history has shown that when a site is threatened with shutdown, or censored, the Internet is very quick to come up with a workaround. And with thousands of backups of The Pirate Bay floating around, it will be very hard at this point to get rid of the famous torrent site.

What’s perhaps even more striking is that the greatest arch rival of a billion dollar entertainment industry is nothing more than 164 megabytes of text. Something to think about.
Update: Here’s a copy of 17 million torrents from Bitsnoop.com, pretty much the same format but nicely categorized. It’s only 535 MB.

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Police Raid 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay Girl, Confiscate Winnie The Pooh Laptop

An anti-piracy company has found itself in the middle of a huge controversy. CIAPC, the company that had The Pirate Bay blocked by ISPs in Finland, tracked an alleged file-sharer and demanded a cash settlement. However, the Internet account holder refused to pay which escalated things to an unprecedented level. In response, this week police raided the home of the 9-year-old suspect and confiscated her Winnie the Pooh laptop.

Very soon in the United States, letters will be sent out to Internet account holders informing them that they should stop sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent.
The message in the US from mainstream rightsholders is designed to be educational, but more aggressive companies carry out the same process but with a sting in the tail – a request for cash-settlement to make potential lawsuits go away.
One such request for cash landed on the doorstep of an Internet account holder in Finland during the spring. Known locally as TTVK, Finnish anti-piracy group CIAPC sent the man a letter informing him that his account had been traced back to an incidence of online file-sharing.
To stop matters progressing further the man was advised to pay a settlement of 600 euros, sign a non-disclosure document, and move on with his life. He chose not to give in to the demands of CIAPC and this week things escalated as promised.
Tuesday morning the doorbell of the family home rang around 8am and the man, who works in the hospitality sector, had quite a shock. Police were at his door with a search warrant authorizing the hunt for evidence connected to illicit file-sharing.
Surprisingly, the man isn’t a previously unknown Kim Dotcom-related “co-conspirator”, nor does he run a warez site or BitTorrent tracker. He is, however, guilty of having a 9-year-old daughter with a taste for pop music.
Having failed in her quest to put enough money in her piggy bank to buy the latest album from local multi-platinum-selling songstress Chisu, in 2011 she turned to the Internet, first via Google and then The Pirate Bay.
The girl’s father said the resulting downloads didn’t work so the following day they went to the store to buy music. Nevertheless, this week’s police visit shows that CIAPC mean business, no matter how young the targets or whether or not they also buy music.
In concluding their search, the police confiscated the girl’s file-sharing weapon of choice – her Winnie The Pooh laptop – and according to her father offered some final words.
“It would have been easier for all concerned if you had paid the compensation,” the police advised
“I got the feeling that there had been people from the MAFIA demanding money at the door,” the girl’s father explained.
“At that point my jaw hit the floor and I wasn’t sure if I was awake or dreaming. So the investigator suggested, between the lines, that I empty my wallet and keep my family in hunger for the next two weeks so that they could get rid of the case? What the f––… is this how it goes? I could evade justice murder by skipping Christmas this year?”
“We have not done anything wrong with my daughter. If adults do not always know how to use a computer and the web, how can you assume that children or the elderly – or a 9-year-old girl – knows what they are doing at any given time online?
“This is the pinnacle of absurdity. I can see artists are in a position, but this requires education and information, not resource-consuming lawsuits,” he added.
Electronic Frontier Finland say that this week’s developments are an indication of just how far copyright enforcements issues have progressed in Finland.
“It is not in anyone’s interest, that in the name of the copyright, little girls are being harassed. This shows poor judgment, and consideration from TTVK and from the police,” vice chairman Ville Oksanen said in a statement.
However, there are signs that support might come from an unexpected corner. In a statement the artist in question – Chisu – said that she doesn’t want to sue anyone and that no artist needs this kind of media attention. Indeed, the criticism of the move on her Facebook page is fierce.
“I hope that the matter will be resolved soon and sorry to my 9-year-old girls,” Chisu wrote, pointing them to this free link to her music on Spotify.
Joonas Mäkinen of Finland’s Pirate Party welcomes Chisu’s comments but bemoans artists’ apparent lack of power to get anything done.
“It is sad to see how even the big artists have no idea what CIAPC / TTVK is doing in their name. And the worst part is that even after learning about this, like Chisu did just now and took part in the discussion on Facebook, they can’t stop it since all copyright protection and monitoring is centralized,” Mäkinen told TorrentFreak.
“I hope all musicians realize that the fan hunt that involves confiscating laptops and signing deals that require you to be silent about the payments are severely hurting the image of copyright and creators. Authors of works should actively rise up to say NO to what CIAPC/TTVK is doing if they wish to keep their fans,” he concludes.
CIAPC confirmed that the case against the 9-year-old is only the latest in a line of attempted settlements. Last fall a total of 28 Internet account holders settled with CIAPC, but of course we haven’t heard of the cases due to the confidentiality agreements recipients are required to sign.

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Under U.S. Pressure, PayPal Nukes Mega For Encrypting Files

After coming under intense pressure PayPal has closed the account of cloud-storage service Mega. According to the company, SOPA proponent Senator Patrick Leahy personally pressured Visa and Mastercard who in turn called on PayPal to terminate the account. Bizarrely, Mega's encryption is being cited as a key problem.

During September 2014, the Digital Citizens Alliance and Netnames teamed up to publish a brand new report. Titled ‘Behind The Cyberlocker Door: A Report How Shadowy Cyberlockers Use Credit Card Companies to Make Millions,’ it offered insight into the finances of some of the world’s most popular cyberlocker sites.
The report had its issues, however. While many of the sites covered might at best be considered dubious, the inclusion of Mega.co.nz – the most scrutinized file-hosting startup in history – was a real head scratcher. Mega conforms with all relevant laws and responds quickly whenever content owners need something removed. By any standard the company lives up to the requirements of the DMCA.
“We consider the report grossly untrue and highly defamatory of Mega,” Mega CEO Graham Gaylard told TF at the time. But now, just five months on, Mega’s inclusion in the report has come back to bite the company in a big way.
Speaking via email with TorrentFreak this morning, Gaylard highlighted the company’s latest battle, one which has seen the company become unable to process payments from customers. It’s all connected with the NetNames report and has even seen the direct involvement of a U.S. politician.



According to Mega, following the publication of the report last September, SOPA and PIPA proponent Senator Patrick Leahy (Vermont, Chair Senate Judiciary Committee) put Visa and MasterCard under pressure to stop providing payment services to the ‘rogue’ companies listed in the NetNames report.
Following Leahy’s intervention, Visa and MasterCard then pressured PayPal to cease providing payment processing services to MEGA. As a result, Mega is no longer able to process payments.
“It is very disappointing to say the least. PayPal has been under huge pressure,” Gaylard told TF.
The company did not go without a fight, however.
“MEGA provided extensive statistics and other evidence showing that MEGA’s business is legitimate and legally compliant. After discussions that appeared to satisfy PayPal’s queries, MEGA authorised PayPal to share that material with Visa and MasterCard. Eventually PayPal made a non-negotiable decision to immediately terminate services to MEGA,” the company explains.


What makes the situation more unusual is that PayPal reportedly apologized to Mega for its withdrawal while acknowledging that company’s business is indeed legitimate.
However, PayPal also advised that Mega’s unique selling point – it’s end-to-end-encryption – was a key concern for the processor.
“MEGA has demonstrated that it is as compliant with its legal obligations as USA cloud storage services operated by Google, Microsoft, Apple, Dropbox, Box, Spideroak etc, but PayPal has advised that MEGA’s ‘unique encryption model’ presents an insurmountable difficulty,” Mega explains.
As of now, Mega is unable to process payments but is working on finding a replacement. In the meantime the company is waiving all storage limits and will not suspend any accounts for non-payment. All accounts have had their subscriptions extended by two months, free of charge.
Mega indicates that it will ride out the storm and will not bow to pressure nor compromise the privacy of its users.
“MEGA supplies cloud storage services to more than 15 million registered customers in more than 200 countries. MEGA will not compromise its end-to-end user controlled encryption model and is proud to not be part of the USA business network that discriminates against legitimate international businesses,” the company concludes.

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*CENSORED* Fifty Shades of Grey an HD BitTorrent Hit

As predicted here on TF in January, an HD copy of Fifty Shades of Grey has just leaked onto the Internet from a Chinese source. But while hundreds of thousands of downloaders are going crazy for the quality, those looking for super-sexy scenes may be disappointed - the copy is censored to comply with China's obscenity laws.

Last month a couple of near perfect copies of the Liam Neeson movie Taken 3 leaked onto the Internet. One with Arabic subtitles and one without, both copies were recorded from the OSN pay TV network headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
At the end of our article we noted that a Chinese VOD platform had already announced that it would air Fifty Shades of Grey in HD in the final days of February.
Yesterday and as promised, China’s QQ.com aired the popular movie. As predicted by our source, pirates were waiting for the screening and within minutes of the final credits, Fifty Shades of Grey began to appear on torrent sites in full HD.

Needless to say, the quality boost was most appreciated by the waiting masses. Earlier copies of the controversial movie have been circulating for a couple of weeks but their grainy and shaky CAM sources left much to be desired. Now available in HD – albeit with Chinese subtitles – one might think the eroticism would be so much more detailed and enjoyable. Well, not exactly.
Despite more than 100,000 BitTorrent users flocking to the release in just the first 12 hours (and most being highly complimentary about the quality), many have noticed that the movie is somewhat lacking in the sex scene department. The problem, it appears, is the source.
QQ.com is operated by Tencent, one of China’s largest Internet companies and, as can be seen from the image below, also has deals with some of the leading studios in the United States.
While this means that QQ has early access to movies, it’s not free to show content frowned upon by Chinese authorities. As a result, Fifty Shades appears to have fallen to the censors.
“Good quality scan, but most of the nudity has been edited out.This is basically a PG-13 version,” a KickassTorrents user reported.
“It is really good quality,” said another. “But it is missing what the movie was so popular for, sex scenes. If you don’t care for them, then this is a good copy, if you do….don’t waste your time.”
Exactly how much has been cut will be revealed in due course, but according to several people familiar with the Chinese version between four and six minutes are absent from the release.
The big question now is whether the majority of viewers will think the movie has been censored or will conclude that it’s much tamer than they were led to believe. Either way, downloaders will most certainly remain eager for a longer, sexier copy – without off-putting subtitles.

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NBC Universal Tries to Censor TorrentFreak’s News About Leaked Films

n an attempt to make it harder for people to find pirated copies of its movies, NBC Universal has tried to remove several TorrentFreak articles from Google's search results. Apparently, talking about piracy is already enough for websites to be hit by takedown requests.

Earlier this year an unprecedented flood of leaked movies hit the net, including screener copies of popular titles such as American Sniper, Selma and Unbroken.
Hoping to steer people away from these unauthorized copies the copyright holders sent out thousands of takedown notices.
These efforts generally target URLs of torrent sites, cyberlockers and streaming services that link to the unauthorized movies. However, some requests go a little further, targeting news publications such as the one you’re reading at the moment.
Last week NBC Universal sent a series of takedown notices to Google including one for the leaked movie “Unbroken.” Aside from the usual suspects, the list of allegedly infringing URLs also included our recent coverage of the screener leaks.
As with the other pages, NBC Universal urged Google to remove our news report from its search results.
Luckily, Google appears to have whitelisted our domain name so the search giant didn’t comply with the request. However, other sites may not be so lucky and could have their articles removed. The overreaching takedown request doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident. Two days earlier NBC Universal sent another takedown notice targeting our coverage of the “Taken 3″ leak.
But there’s more. Aside from our news articles there are also other dubious claims in the notices, such as the request to remove a live concert from the band “Unbroken.” The question remains whether NBC Universal intentionally targeted our news articles or not.
While the latter seems to be the most likely explanation, it doesn’t change the fact that the overbroad censorship requests go too far.

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Piracy Lawsuits Dominated By Just Three Movie Companies

A new study into IP litigation over the past 20 years has revealed that file-sharing has transformed copyright litigation in the United States. In particular, attacks against anonymous file-sharers dominated the landscape of the past decade, with just three companies now responsible for 93% of all John Doe lawsuits.

 Thanks to the development of advanced file-sharing systems and fast Internet connections, lawsuits aimed at alleged Internet pirates have become commonplace over the past decade and are showing no signs of disappearing anytime soon.
The statistics behind the threats have been documented periodically but now a detailed study of IP litigation as a whole has painted a clearer picture of trends during the past 10 years.
Published by Matthew Sag, Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, IP Litigation in United States District Courts: 1994 to 2014 provides a review of all IP litigation in U.S. district courts over the past two decades to include copyright, patent and trademark lawsuits over 190,000 case filings.
Perhaps unsurprisingly one of the paper’s key findings is that Internet file-sharing has transformed copyright litigation in the United States, in one area in particular.
“To the extent that the rate of copyright litigation has increased over the last two decades, that increase appears to be entirely attributable to lawsuits against anonymous Internet file sharers,” the paper reads.
In broad terms the paper places lawsuits against alleged pirates into two categories – those with an aim of discouraging illegal file-sharing and those that exist to monetize online infringement.
Category one is dominated by lawsuits filed by the RIAA against users of software such as Kazaa and LimeWire who downloaded and shared tracks without permission. Announced in 2003, the wave seriously got underway during 2004 and persisted until 2008, straggling cases aside.
Category two is dominated by the so-called copyright trolls that have plagued file-sharing networks since 2010. These companies, largely from the adult movie sector, track down alleged file-sharers with the aim of extracting cash settlements.
As illustrated by the chart below, so-called ‘John Doe’ lawsuits witnessed their first big boost during 2004, the year the RIAA began its high-profile anti-P2P scare campaign. The second big wave can be seen from 2011 onwards.
“John Doe litigation in the second wave appears to be aimed primarily, if not exclusively, at monetizing infringement—i.e., creating an independent litigation revenue stream that is unrelated to compensation for the harms of infringement and unconcerned with deterrence,” the paper reads.
“The availability of statutory damages is essential to the infringement monetization strategy. United States copyright law allows a plaintiff to elect statutory damages ranging from $750 to $150,000 for willful copyright infringement, regardless of the extent of the copyright owner’s actual damage.”
Needless to say, this situation has encouraged some companies to file more and more lawsuits over the past several years in pursuit of profit. However, they have been required to adapt along the way.
Between 2010 and 2012 lawsuits were typically filed against hundreds or even thousands of John Doe defendants at once, but due to increased scrutiny from District Court judges the average number of Does per suit has declined dramatically.
“[In] 2010 the average number of John Doe defendants per suit was over 560; by 2014 it was just over 3,” the paper notes. “2014 still witnessed the occasional mass-joinder suit, but by this time the model had almost entirely shifted to suits against individual unnamed defendants.”
Also under the spotlight are the types of content being targeted by trolls. Pornographic titles were behind the lion’s share of lawsuits since 2010 and in 2014 accounted for 88% of all ‘John Doe’ actions.
What is also startling about this second category is how it has become increasingly dominated by a tiny number of plaintiffs. Back in 2010 the top three plaintiffs accounted for less than 25% of John Doe lawsuits but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
“In 2011 and 2012, the top three plaintiffs accounted for just under 50% of John Doe cases. In 2013, Malibu Media, alone accounted for 64% of John Doe cases and the top three in that year accounted for more than 75% of such cases. The top three plaintiffs in 2014 account for more than 93% of John Doe litigation filings in copyright,” the paper adds.
Conclusion
Despite the large number of lawsuits being filed against John Doe defendants, the paper dismisses the notion that litigation since 2010 is a broad-based phenomenon. In fact, it draws quite the opposite conclusion, noting that a tiny number of plaintiffs are effectively making a huge noise.
“The trend from 2012 to 2014 is one of increasing concentration of plaintiff activity. In fact, the pornography producer Malibu Media is such a prolific litigant that in 2014 it was the plaintiff in over 41.5% of all copyright suits nationwide,” the paper notes.
Finally, in respect of the activities of the plaintiffs listed above, Matthew Sag’s study arrives at an opinion long held by many ‘troll’ critics.
“John Doe litigation is not a general response to Internet piracy; it is a niche entrepreneurial activity in and of itself,” Sag concludes.

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