Danish Appeals Court: 'ISP Must Continue Blocking The Pirate Bay' torrent downloads.

uTorrent for Mac Beta Released torrent downloads.

The Pirate Bay Celebrates 5th Anniversary torrent downloads.

CRTC: 'Bell Canada Can Throttle BitTorrent - For Now' torrent downloads.

CRTC to Rule on Bell's BitTorrent Throttling Tomorrow torrent downloads.

TorrentValley BitTorrent Tracker Site Shutdown by Bulgarian Authorities torrent downloads.

The Pirate Bay Surpasses 23 Million Peers torrent downloads.

isoHunt: 'Copyright Infringers Aren't Wrong, the Law Is' torrent downloads.

BitTorrent President Steps Down torrent downloads.

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isoHunt: 'Copyright Infringers Aren't Wrong, the Law Is' torrent downloads.

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

The Pirate Bay Surpasses 23 Million Peers torrent downloads.

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

BitTorrent President Steps Down torrent downloads.

This year’s Wikipedia edition for schools is the largest since the project started back in 2006. With 34,000 images and 20 million words, it is comparable to a twenty volume encyclopedia captured on a single DVD.

Without a doubt, it is the most successful “checked content” project based on the English Wikipedia, used by hundreds of schools in first and third world countries. The project was originally aimed at schools in developing countries, but because of the high quality articles - all based around the UK curriculum with an absence of adult content - it is often used on intranets in first world schools too.

To save on resources, Wikipedia for schools is only available online via BitTorrent, which practically reduces the charity’s distribution costs to zero. SOS Children CEO Andrew Cates, who is a Wikipedia administrator himself, said that they have no other choice than to use BitTorrent, since the 2.9 GB download would crush their server.

“BitTorrent was a bit disappointing in that it got us the only substantial criticisms we received online,” Cates said in an interview with Wikinews. “A lot of people find it too much effort to use. However for the period we offered a straight http: download we had huge problems with spiders eating vast bandwidth.”

“As per last year therefore our main two channels will be free download by BitTorrent and mailing the DVDs free all over the world. At a pinch we will (as before) put straight copies up for individuals who cannot get it any other way, and we have some copies on memory sticks for on distributors,” Cates added.

The .torrent file is available for download on the SOS Children’s Villages website. For those who don’t want to install a BitTorrent client, the DVD can also be downloaded from any web browser with BitLet.

A final word of advice from SOS Children’s Villages: “It helps our charity if you keep µTorrent running after your download is finished.”

Post from: TorrentFreak

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Wikipedia DVD Released on BitTorrent torrent downloads.

The law will make it easier for copyright holders to get a court order in order to force ISPs to release the customer info linked to a suspect IP-address. The Local reports that, although the law is based on a EU directive, the current draft goes further than that.

In order to obtain the personal details, copyright holders will have to prove that there is “probable cause” that a person, or rather an IP-address, has actually shared copyrighted material with others. With the current state of evidence gathering, where mistakes and false accusations are fairly common, this may not be that easy to achieve.

The many unsecured Wireless routers complicate the evidence gathering even further, and BitTorrent trackers have also implemented countermeasures of their own. Earlier this week we reported that the Pirate Bay tracker software automatically inserts several “random IP addresses” that are not actually downloading data. This is done on purpose, to pollute the evidence gathering of anti-piracy outfits.

The new law is also heavily opposed by Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge who told TorrentFreak: “These laws are written by digital illiterates who behave like blindfolded, drunken elephants trumpeting about in an egg packaging facility. They have no idea how much damage they’re causing, because they lack today’s literacy: an understanding of how the Internet is reshaping the power structures at their core.”

“We have good hope of putting an end to these ridiculous developments. Either the existing politicians start to understand what they’re actually doing at work all day, or they will escalate the conflict to the point where we’re replacing them in office. Either way, copyright will be scaled back,” Falkvinge added.

It is to be expected that opposition against the new anti-piracy law will be great, similar to the public outrage when Sweden introduced a wiretapping law earlier this year, and after the raid on The Pirate Bay in 2006. It wouldn’t surprise us if The Pirate Bay fights this battle at the front, clashing with local politicians and media once again.

Post from: TorrentFreak

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Sweden to Introduce Controversial Anti-Piracy Law torrent downloads.

“I’m stuck at 49.1%, seed please!!” or similar comments are fairly commonplace on BitTorrent sites. Normally the case on older torrents, essentially all the full 100% seeds have gone, leaving people all stuck at the same amount completed. Without a seed reappearing, or many other users that between them have the remaining 50.9%, the download will not complete, which is pretty frustrating.

Of equal annoyance, is a new torrent which the user knows is well seeded, yet for one reason or another it is impossible to connect to the tracker in order to complete the download. Maybe the tracker has gone down or is simply too busy to accept the connection - either way, the download isn’t getting very far without it.

The good news is that with a little perseverance it’s possible to resurrect a seemingly moribund torrent. The key to bringing the torrent back to life is the hope that an identical release is available on another tracker, and in that swarm there people that have enough data to complete the download. But how is it possible to find the same release on other trackers?

There are manual solutions involving Google, but quick and easy is my preferred method and btReAnnouncer offers just that. The site is really easy to use, so, although it is well seeded, here is a walk-through to find more trackers tracking Michael Moore’s ‘Official’ ‘Slacker Uprising’ torrent - the same technique can be used for any release, especially ones with tracker or seeding issues.

First of all I downloaded the .torrent file from The Pirate Bay onto my PC and uploaded it to btReAnnouncer. Within a few seconds the site displayed the current primary tracker - http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce. However, it also displayed a list of 17 other tracker URLs identified as tracking the same torrent - any one or combination of which could help you to complete a stubborn download. Note that it doesn’t make sense to add more than one tracker from the same url (e.g. thepiratebay.org) because they often track the same peers.

At this stage it is possible to select a new primary tracker for the torrent by ticking the checkbox and pushing the ‘ReAnnounce’ button. Then check any of the other trackers in the list to be used as an alternative and click ‘ReAnnounce’ again. To finish up and start downloading the .torrent, download it by clicking on the hyperlinked text underneath ‘Download ReAnnounced Torrent…’ and import it into your favorite client, not forgetting to point it at your previously incomplete download.

btReAnnouncer can also be used to find public sources for otherwise private torrents, just don’t forget to remove any passkeys etc from the announce URL in the torrent. If your BitTorrent client doesn’t allow you to edit or add trackers manually, this can be achieved by using another online service, TorrentEditor.

Post from: TorrentFreak

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How to Bring Dead Torrents Back to Life torrent downloads.

Over the years, many Internet traffic reports have been published. Back in 2004, long before the BitTorrent boom had started, studies already indicated that BitTorrent was responsible for an impressive 35% of all Internet traffic.

Since then, we’ve seen a couple of dozen reports, all with a totally different outcome. Some estimate that P2P traffic represents approximately 50% of the total traffic, while others go as high as 85%, or as low as 20%. The overall consensus seems to be that there is little consensus, or is there?

We think we might have spotted a trend, not so much in the data, but in the companies that publish these reports. Most Internet traffic research is conducted by companies that offer traffic shaping and broadband management solutions. Cachelogic, Ipoque, Sandvine, they all sell (or sold) products that help ISPs to manage their traffic.

Consequently, it is not a big surprise that their presentation of the results is often a little biased. After all, it is in their best interests to overestimate the devastating effects P2P traffic has, and convince ISPs that they need to throttle these awful bandwidth hogs.

Or as Sandvine co-founder Dave Caputo puts it: “Bulk bandwidth applications like P2P are on all day, everyday and are unaffected by changes to network utilization. This reinforces the importance of protecting real-time applications that are sensitive to jitter and latency during times of peak usage.”

In Sandvine’s report we see that P2P represents less than a quarter of all downstream traffic, and even less during peak times. Web traffic is most dominant and online media streaming sites take up nearly 16%.

On the upstream side, P2P traffic takes up 61% of all traffic (the black makes it even more scary), followed by web-browsing, tunneling and VoIP traffic.

Interestingly, the amount of bandwidth that is transferred on the Internet has more than quadrupled since the first reports came out a few years ago, and it is likely to quadruple again in only a few years. Unlike Sandvine suggests, throttling is not the solution. Investing in the network is.

Post from: TorrentFreak

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‘Shocking’ 61% of all Upstream Internet Traffic is P2P torrent downloads.

Similar to last week, Heroes is leading the chart. Prison Break is missing since there wasn’t a new episode. A notable newcomer is Californication, which makes its first entry in the top 10.

The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Post from: TorrentFreak

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Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent torrent downloads.

Most often, companies such as BayTSP and MediaSentry are hired to connect to BitTorrent trackers, and send takedown notices to the users (via their ISP) who download movies, TV-shows or music albums of a company they represent. This is a fairly easy process, since BitTorrent is far from anonymous: Every user necessarily broadcasts his or her IP-address to other peers in the swarm.

Sometimes anti-piracy outfits use their own trackers to gather evidence. Last week we reported that The Pirate Bay started to actively remove these suspicious trackers from their torrents, with some help from torrenteditor.com. Running a tracker is not required though, to collect information from BitTorrent users. In fact, many attempt to use publicly available trackers such as The Pirate Bay to do so. However, the tracker owners are aware of this, and trick these tracking companies by polluting the list of IP-addresses the tracker returns. That is one of the techniques The Pirate Bay uses, just to show how flawed the evidence gathering is.

Polluting the evidence works like this. When a client asks for a list of peers who are downloading the same torrent, the tracker software automatically inserts several “random IP addresses” that are not in the swarm. They are based on existing sub-nets, but might be from people who may not even be aware that BitTorrent exists. This means that the evidence that’s being gathered by anti-piracy companies includes IPs that belong to people that were not downloading the movie or album they are accused of. Perfect deniability, as the people who coded the tracker software explain.

Of course, this doesn’t work when the pirate-tracking company requires itself to connect to the peer, before the IP-address is collected, since it is impossible to connect to a non-existing peer. A representative from BayTSP told TorrentFreak that they have such a requirement, but several others are less thorough, which makes their claims useless, and impossible to defend in court.

The best solution is of course to ban these anti-piracy companies from using the tracker in the first place. This is something The Pirate Bay is working on as well, and they have blocked many IP-ranges already, but it’s impossible to ban them all. Unlike most of the suits in Hollywood, the companies that go after illicit file-sharers are experts in their field, and know more about BitTorrent than many users. They try to circumvent blocklists such as PeerGuardian whenever possible, and change IPs when they are marked.

Pirate Bay co-founder TiAMO told TorrentFreak that he has several criteria on which he can pick out the suspicious users that might be collecting IP-addresses. He also said that he’s working on a automated warning system which will operate as a sniffer on a monitor port. That project is far from complete, but has the potential to detect suspicious behavior more easily.

Nevertheless, it is impossible (as the name might give away) to keep the prying eyes of Hollywood off public trackers. Even private trackers are far from secure, as most anti-piracy companies have accounts at the larger communities. The private in “private tracker” merely refers to the fact that you have to login, and has nothing to do with “security”. The Pirate Bay (and other tracker owners) take several measures to prevent their users from being tracked by anti-piracy outfits, but there’s only so much they can do.

Post from: TorrentFreak

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

Pirate Bay Tricks Anti-Pirates with Fake Peers torrent downloads.

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

Vuze 4.0 - A Beginner's Guide to BitTorrent torrent downloads.

We do not link to actual torrent files because linking to files that link to files that may be copyrighted is something that might get us in trouble.

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

Post from: TorrentFreak

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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent torrent downloads.

Always wanted to learn more about Robotics, Linear Dynamical Systems or Programming Paradigms? Now you can, for free, thanks to Stanford Engineering’s online courses.

The University not only gives away videos of lectures, but also syllabi, handouts, homework and exams. In addition to offering torrents, the courses are also available on YouTube, via iTunes and Vyew. With the project Stanford aims to spread knowledge on technology worldwide.

Thus far, the online courses have been a great success. Over 200,000 people from all over the world have visited the site already. Most foreign visitors come from Canada, according to a recent news release, followed by Brazil, China, Italy and the UK.

For now, only the 10 most popular computer science and electrical engineering courses are published online, but additional courses will be added later. All course materials are published under a Creative Commons license, which allows others to adapt, remix and share them as long as it is for noncommercial use, and if they link back to the university.

As P2P-blog points out, there is one downside to the torrents Stanford is offering. They do not use regular trackers, but only Vuze’s DHT tracker. This means that people who use BitTorrent clients that do not support DHT, such as Transmission, BitLord and BitTornado, are not able to download the files. Of course, uTorrent and Azureus users will have no problems.

While Stanford recognizes the benefits of BitTorrent, it is also cracking down on students who use it to download copyrighted material. Students who get caught for the first time have to pay a $100 fine, the second offense costs $500, and those who get caught three times will have to pay $1000 to regain access to the university network.

Post from: TorrentFreak

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Stanford University Embraces BitTorrent torrent downloads.

Previously we’ve discussed how certain countries have been pushing for laws requiring ISPs to disconnect filesharers, if they receive multiple notices alleging copyright infringement. This proposal has been struck down by the EU, and no-one but lobby groups seems to want it.

However, over in New Zealand a law requiring ISPs to disconnect repeat copyright infringers has been proposed, passed and signed into law. The law, Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 adds a new section to deal with Internet Service Providers and copyright infringement. Yet, opposition from ISPs, and Internet user groups may see it being struck down or modified before it goes into force.

The section in question, 92A reads

Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers
(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.
(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

Opposition to this section of law has been steady, with six industry bodies that have opposed the law meeting with government ministers. Indications from Communications Minister David Cunliffe and Associate Commerce Minister Judith Tizard, are that if the opposing groups and rights holders can come to an agreement by developing a workable code of practice, the law can be reworded. Tizard also reiterated strongly that the law was going ahead, and it would do so because of ‘Internet piracy’, according to one of the meeting’s participants

The issue at the heart of the debate is that of proof. InternetNZ head Keith Davidson told New Zealand’s Stuff, that he wanted to see an element of proof being required before people are cut off. A position understandable with the recent bad press given to copyright infringement allegations in the US, both in studies, and the courtroom. Countering him was the CEO of the NZ Recording Industry Association, telling Stuff that proving the guilt of infringers in a court of law, before any penalty is dealt out would be “impractical and ridiculous”, a sentiment also shared by his American counterparts.

A provision to penalize false or inaccurate accusations was in the bill at one point, after dealings by the group of six with a select committee. However, Tizard stated that it was inappropriate, as the Cabinet had already decided the law was to go ahead as was, and that people shouldn’t be surprised.

New Zealand is also in the middle of an election (voting day is November 8th) so there may be a change of ministers soon. These may be more amenable to changing the wording of the law, to be based on proof, not simple accusations. As always though, nothing is certain for the 3.3 million kiwi’s (around 80% of the population) on the net, except they are considered less important than the greed of lobby groups.

Post from: TorrentFreak

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New Zealand First to Adopt 3-Strikes Law for Pirates torrent downloads.

DistriBrute is a brand new desktop deployment solution developed by 4M88. Instead of several central distribution servers, it uses the BitTorrent protocol to update workstations in a local network.

With DistriBrute, central distribution servers are no longer needed. The data doesn’t have to be distributed from one location, since all the workstations connected to the network actively help in the spreading the data. Every desktop in the system becomes a peer, and helps to send the data to other desktops. The result: faster distribution of updates and patches, and a significant cost reduction.

There are more selling points other than the cost reductions and speed improvement. Since servers tend to use a lot of energy, between 6000 and 7000 KWh a year, it can also be been as a ‘green’ solution. This ‘green’ aspect has not gone unnoticed. Today, DistriBrute won the audience price of the Digikring Innovation Awards, an initiative that rewards environment friendly ICT solutions.

After winning the award, DistriBrute officially launched. Thus far, it had two successful test runs at large educational institutions in The Netherlands, and the initial results are promising. At INHOLLAND, a concept version of DistriBrute is now used to send software to 6500 desktop computers across 16 different locations. It thereby eliminates 20 servers that were used before to distribute 25.6 TBs of data across the network. Even more so, the P2P based solution speeded up this process significantly, from 4 days to only 4 hours.

The cost savings for those who use DistriBrute are immense. Leo Blom, co-founder of 4M88 told TorrentFreak that they were able to cut 50 servers at ROCMN, another Dutch educational institution. The costs to manage a TCO server can get as high as $10,000 a year, but these will evaporate thanks to DistriBrute.

DistriBrute is one of the first commercial products for business use to reveal the true power of the BitTorrent protocol. For now, availability is limited to organizations in The Netherlands, in the first quarter of 2009 it will be released internationally.

Post from: TorrentFreak

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

DistriBrute: P2P Powered Desktop Deployment torrent downloads.

torrentlog.com - Full movie downloads (dvdrips and divx)

RIAA Appeals Jammie Thomas Mistrial Ruling torrent downloads.

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Textbook Torrent 'Now Permanently Offline' torrent downloads.