Last week, Torrents.ru, a massive Russian BitTorrent site had its domain name suspended by order of the authorities. It quickly returned with a new URL but with accusatory fingers being pointed at Autodesk, questions raised over the .RU domain, DDoS attacks and a petition to the Russian President, the drama isn’t over yet.
The days are numbered for ZeroSec, once billed as the number 2 release blog second only to RlsLog.net. The new owners had but two avenues to traverse for the future of the blog: either keep the status quo; or else tank the site beyond all repair. After a series of blunders which can only be [...]
For the first time in five years Mininova is about to disappear from the top 10 of most visited torrent sites. This exit is due to a traffic drop that resulted from the removal of most of the site’s torrents following a lost court battle. Newcomer KickassTorrents is still gaining momentum and has already surpassed Mininova in terms of traffic.
Another brand new episode of TorrentFreak TV. This week’s episode covers the latest Pirate Bay news, Olympic pirates, Twitter’s BitTorrent crush, Flattr, LG’s pirate manual and much more.
After an ISP refused to hand over the identity of a customer to anti-piracy lawyers who claim him to be the first uploader of a pre-release movie, they took the case to court. Shrouded in secrecy the case is heading for the Supreme Court but even if the anti-piracy group wins, they’re going to get the ID of the wrong guy.
Jim Keyzer, a police IT forensics specialist who was leading the Pirate Bay investigation while he was also working for Warner Bros. is back in action. Despite all the controversy he is now leading the IT Crime Unit which is tasked with various anti-piracy efforts.
When the operators of The Pirate Bay were sentenced to prison last year Google quickly distanced itself from the site. Nearly a year later, three of Google’s employees have just received suspended jail sentences in Italy for failing to prevent a video from being uploaded to Google Video, placing them in a similar position as most torrent site admins.
In early February, AFACT, representing several Hollywood movie studios, lost its case against Aussie ISP iiNet after a judge ruled the ISP was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers. Now the anti-piracy group is claiming that Justice Cowdroy was wrong on almost all points and will appeal his decision.
The PRO-IP Act is a United States law that aims to combat copyright infringement by increasing civil and criminal penalties for offenders. Copyright czar Victoria Espinel is now seeking comments from the public on piracy’s apparent disastrous effect on the economy and health and safety, as well as proposed punishments and enforcement.
Most of us who download scene releases don’t keep the original RARs, sample, NFO & SFV files after extracting the goodies inside. If you unpack and delete the RARs, there’s no way to get back to the originals without some major hacking – and even this doesn’t guarantee that the rar set will pass a [...]
