Nearly two years after authorities took popular pirating site The Pirate Bay down, federal authorities say they have arrested the mastermind behind another BitTorrent distribution site, Kickass Torrents. [More]
bittorrent
MPAA Celebrates The Shutdown Of Two Sites Accused Of Circulating Pirated Movies
By 11.4.15
The Motion Picture Association of America is doing a happy dance right now at the news that two online services that distribute movies and TV have been shuttered: Popcorn Time, which streams content from torrent sites and is sometimes called “Netflix for pirates,” and YTS, a site that has pirated editions of movies using BitTorrent software. [More]
Judge Says An IP Address Is Not Enough To Identify A Movie Pirate
By 4.10.15
Since the dawn of online piracy, media companies have been serving subpoenas on Internet service providers to try to compel them to match up IP addresses of alleged pirates with the names on the accounts tied to those IP addresses. Unless the ISPs put up a fight, courts frequently grant these subpoenas, but one federal judge in Florida has said that a mere IP address is not sufficient to identify someone as a pirate. [More]
High Number Of Oscar Screeners Hit Pirate Sites
By 1.8.15
While you and I have had to pay to see all this year’s possible Oscar contenders (some of which haven’t even been released outside of NYC and L.A. yet), members of the various nominating guilds have been sitting at home and watching these films for free on screeners provided by the studios. And even though the movie industry tries to keep these screeners from getting out, a record number of them are readily available through pirate torrent sites. [More]
The Pirate Bay Taken Offline, Raided By Police
By 12.9.14
The Pirate Bay, perhaps the most popular — certainly the best known — destination for anyone looking to score pirated movies, music, books, games, and other digital content, was taken offline earlier today after a raid by police in Stockholm. [More]
Judge: $30K Penalty For Pirating Movies Is “Excessive Punishment”
By 11.20.14
If police catch you racing down the highway at 25 mph over the speed limit, you’ll probably have to pay a ticket in the low three-figure range, even though you were putting your life and the lives of others at risk. But get accused of illegally downloading a movie and you should have to pay $30,000? Not according to a federal judge in Washington state. [More]
Google Fights Piracy (And Makes A Buck) With Ads For Legal Downloads In Search Results
By 10.20.14
Have you been wanting to catch up on Game of Thrones but don’t have HBO (or a friend who will share her HBO Go login info)? People who search for things like “Game of Thrones Download” on Google are now being greeted by ads from services offering legal ways to pay for the content you’re after. [More]
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Unleashes Surprise New Album Via BitTorrent
By 9.26.14
Because he’s already made more money than some small nations, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke is free to experiment with new ways of distributing his music. It wasn’t that long ago that the band tried a pay-what-you-want model with its In Rainbows album. And today, Yorke announced the release of his first solo album in nearly a decade as a bundle via BitTorrent. [More]
Game Of Thrones Episode Breaks Record, With 193K BitTorrent Users Sharing Single File At Same Time
By 4.16.14
The new season of HBO’s Game of Thrones is doing well in the TV ratings for the premium network, but it’s also gaining popularity with pirates who don’t feel like subscribing to the channel (or whichever premium stations air the show in other parts of the world) or waiting until it’s available to buy or rent legally. In fact, the most recent episode of the series has shattered a record for the number of people simultaneously sharing a single file via BitTorrent. [More]
Report: Comcast Sends Out Around 1,800 Copyright Alert Notices Each Day
By 2.7.14
It’s been almost a year since the nation’s largest Internet service providers began using the Copyright Alert System, better known as Six Strikes, which identifies potentially illegal file-sharing and sends a series of increasingly severe warnings before the ISP penalizes the user. According to a new report from TorrentFreak, in the short time since Six Strikes launched, Comcast has sent out at least 625,000 such warnings. [More]
Gene Simmons Compares Napster To Nazis, Blames Fans For Killing Music Industry
By 1.17.14
In spite of the fact that superstar rock bands and pop artists still travel the world in private jets and tricked-out custom buses while having their every whim catered to before and after performing to thousands of fans who pay huge amounts of money for tickets, the music industry is dead. At least if you believe Gene Simmons of KISS. And who’s to blame for this death that has occurred only in Mr. Simmons’ mind? That would be music fans. [More]
First Hobbit Movie Was The Most Pirated Film Of 2013
By 12.31.13
While one might assume that the most popular movies are automatically the films that pirates would flock to download for free, the latest list of most-pirated flicks has some surprising results. [More]
BitTorrent To Saturday Night Live: “We’re Not A Website & We Don’t Pirate Movies”
By 10.28.13
While people are always saying “I BitTorrented that movie” or “I used BitTorrent to get my hands on some sweet porn,” they’re not talking about a website or a service. Instead, they’re talking about the method through which the shared file was obtained. This distinction was apparently lost on the writing staff at Saturday Night Live this weekend. [More]
MPAA Says It Has No Way Of Measuring The Damage From Piracy (But Wants Damages Anyway)
By 10.17.13
If you read stories about movie piracy, you’ll hear the industry throw around some very specific numbers about how much money is lost to pirates by the U.S. movie business every year, but when it comes time to actually detail those damages in court, the MPAA says actual piracy damages “are not capable of meaningful measurement.” [More]
Breaking Bad Finale Has Already Been Pirated More Than 500,000 Times
By 9.30.13
Plenty of people tuned into AMC last night to watch the finale of Breaking Bad (Spoiler Alert: Jesse and Walter have been living under a transparent dome the whole time!). And hundreds of thousands more around the globe chose to get their hands on the episode via less-than-legitimate methods, even in countries where it is incredibly easy to get the show on the cheap. [More]
Netflix Wants To Know What Movies & Shows You’re Pirating
By 9.16.13
A friend of mine who managed a sneaker store back in the day when people still went to malls once told me that he kept track of the most-stolen shoes, not just for the purpose of keeping his inventory straight, but so that he’d know which ones the local kids wanted the most. Seems like Netflix is taking a similar view toward video piracy. [More]
Comcast Claims Copyright On Publicly Available Letter, Threatens To Sue Site For Publishing It
By 8.21.13
It’s no secret that Comcast is not the most loved company, but only a few days ago some folks were happy with Comcast after a court document showed it had provided information indicating that lawyers for porn producers had planted material on a file-sharing site. Now Comcast is claiming that its copyright has been violated by the news site that published the publicly available document. [More]
Comcast Letter Indicates Porn Troll Lawyers Planted Material On Pirate Bay
By 8.19.13
Not even a year ago, lawyer John Steele was touting himself as the “original copyright troll,” talking up his efforts to fight online porn pirates. Now his law firm is on the other end of legal boot, accused of planting copyrighted content online with the sole purpose of tracking — and threatening to sue — the people who shared those files. [More]
