TorrentFreak Email Update |
- The Pirate Bay Says Goodbye to (Most) Torrents on February 29
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- World’s Unluckiest BitTorrent Pirate Fined But Avoids Jail
| The Pirate Bay Says Goodbye to (Most) Torrents on February 29 Posted: 13 Feb 2012 04:50 AM PST
The first step in this direction will be taken on February 29, the Pirate Bay announced today. Instead of deleting all torrent files at once, the Pirate Bay crew will start with all files that have more than 10 peers. This is to guarantee that people will still be able to download less popular files. While there are fears that this is the end of The Pirate Bay, nothing could be further from the truth. For users of the site the upcoming switch is expected to go smoothly. People will be able to download all files as usual, but instead of using a .torrent file downloads will be initiated through a magnet link. The actual content of the .torrent file will then be downloaded from other people instead of the Pirate Bay’s servers. Although it might take a little longer for less popular downloads to get started, all files will remain available. Also, users will still be able to upload .torrent files, which will be converted into magnet links by The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that the transition to a magnet site is “a step forward in technology,” and one that will make the site more resistant to being shut down. Without torrents it takes less bandwidth to host a Pirate Bay proxy site which are used to circumvent ISP blockades in countries like Italy, Ireland, The Netherlands and Belgium. In addition, the Pirate Bay will become much more portable and thus easier to move around. How easy it is to carry a copy of a torrent-less Pirate Bay became apparent last week, when a user reduced the entire site to 90 megabytes – small enough to fit on a tiny thumb drive. The Pirate Bay team likes the idea of a “portable” backup of the site and told TorrentFreak that they are considering releasing an official version in the future. It’s quite remarkable to see how The Pirate Bay has transformed in recent years. The site is no longer hosting a tracker, and soon .torrent files will be entirely replaced by magnet links. Despite these changes the iconic file-sharing site is picking up new users every week. The Pirate Bay crew told TorrentFreak that users can be assured that they have no intention of going anywhere in the near future. With or without torrents, the site is here to stay. Source: The Pirate Bay Says Goodbye to (Most) Torrents on February 29
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| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 13 Feb 2012 12:51 AM PST
The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
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| World’s Unluckiest BitTorrent Pirate Fined But Avoids Jail Posted: 12 Feb 2012 05:35 AM PST In the majority of cases, rightsholders avoid pursuing BitTorrent users in Sweden since it’s technically problematic to prove more than an individual case of unauthorized sharing, such as that of a single movie, TV show, or music album. Small infringements like this aren’t generally considered worthy of criminal prosecution. This has meant that in recent years the focus has fallen on users and operators of Direct Connect hubs where a ‘shared folder’ arrangement makes it easy to identify people sharing dozens or indeed tens of thousands of files at once, an offense considered sufficiently serious by the authorities. This week a Swedish court delivered its verdict on the case of an alleged illegal file-sharer. The case was unusual in a number of ways, not least because it featured the first person in the country ever to be accused of multiple infringements using BitTorrent. The case in hand, presented by prosecutor Frederick Ingblad and plaintiffs including 20th Century Fox, Sony and Paramount (assisted by Universal, Warner and Disney), stated that a man had illegally shared at least 60 movies using BitTorrent. The offenses were said to have occurred after the man downloaded torrents from two sites – The Pirate Bay and TorrentBytes. The defendant appears to have admitted to everything he was accused of but offered some items in mitigation. In his defense the man said that where possible he would download an item but remove it from his torrent client as soon as it began to seed so as to minimize the amount of uploading, i.e unauthorized sharing with others. This behavior had seen the man banned from TorrentBytes, a private tracker that requires its users to maintain a good sharing ratio. Furthermore, the defendant said he had limited his upload bandwidth so he could play online games while he downloaded. None of the above paragraph could have been easily refuted by the prosecution following a remote online investigation. However, they had possession of the defendant’s computer, an unusual situation for a BitTorrent sharer, and the reason they had it was down to sheer bad luck on the defendant’s part. In 2010, the defendant was house-sitting for a friend, watering plants and feeding fish. Answering an early morning knock at the door he was faced by five police officers who were looking for the property owner on an unrelated matter. Despite having no initial interest in the house sitter, police decided to seize his computer. An examination revealed a uTorrent client loaded with torrents and dozens of movies. This fact was reported to the prosecutor and various movie studio copyright holders and the decision was made to press charges. If the now 25-year-old had indeed removed his torrents as he had claimed then things might have turned out differently, but he didn’t and the court found him guilty of the willful copyright infringement of 60 movies between February 2010 and December 2010. The court, however, did not consider the offenses to be serious enough to warrant a prison sentence so instead imposed a fine of 6000 kronor – approximately $900. Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad expressed his deep displeasure at the decision saying that the offenses were tantamount to “going into a store every week for a year and shoplifting” and should not have been considered as a single act. Ingblad has until February 29th to appeal. He is expected to do so. In the meantime, most BitTorrent users in Sweden can rest easy – as long as they stay in possession of their own hardware that is. Source: World’s Unluckiest BitTorrent Pirate Fined But Avoids Jail
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For half a decade The Pirate Bay has been the leading BitTorrent site, but soon its users will no longer be able to download .torrent files.
This week there are three newcomers in our chart. Tower Heist is the most downloaded movie.| You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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