Together with Cox and Warner Cable, Comcast has aided in the development of a new piracy tracking tool. Named BitStalker, researchers claim it can effectively collect evidence on millions of file-sharers with relative ease. Operators of large BitTorrent trackers have their doubts.
In the first few months following the adoption of the three-strikes anti-piracy legislation in France, online piracy has increased significantly. Instead of stopping, file-sharers are seeking alternatives to bypass the new law. Perhaps even more striking is that new research reveals that disconnecting file-sharers will actually hurt the revenues of the music industry.
In just a few hours the Oscar winners will be announced, including the award for the best movie of 2009. We take a look at the nominees in the Best Picture category to see which film would win if every download on BitTorrent counted as a vote.
In mid-February an Italian court ruled that the country’s ISPs must censor their networks and prevent subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay. While millions of Italians are now barred from accessing the site, it seems that BiTorrent users in another country nearby have become collateral damage, since they can’t access the site either.
After a fairly bumpy ride, the High Court trial between Newzbin and the MPA has reached its conclusion. While the site’s owners are claiming that the site will remain open no matter what, a negative result could result in hefty damages and an obligation to make changes to the site, including the implementation of a Mininova-style filter.
Global Gaming Factory’s planned acquisition of The Pirate Bay last summer surprised BitTorrent’s friends and foes alike. But The Pirate Bay was not the only site the company was after. It also put in a massive 20 million euro offer for fellow BitTorrent site Mininova.
One of the key clauses in the UK’s Digital Economy Bill is the suggestion that alleged persistent copyright infringers could be disconnected from the Internet. In a response to an online petition opposing the measure, the UK government has stated it will not terminate the accounts of infringers. But it has a wording trick up its sleeve.
A massive Russian BitTorrent site has seen its domain name suspended by order of the authorities. Torrents.ru, the largest torrent site in the country indexing just about every type of media one can think of, has set up a temporary domain in order to keep serving its 4 million users.
More than two years have passed since a coalition of anti-piracy organizations forced Torrent.is, the largest BitTorrent site in Iceland, to go offline. In the years that followed, the BitTorrent tracker won in court more than once, but at the end of the road there was a negative verdict for the site’s owner.
Twitter is calling in the help of BitTorrent to deploy files across its many servers in a more efficient way. The project dubbed ‘Murder’ is based on the Open Source BitTornado BitTorrent client. Aside from assisting Twitter it is available to other developers at no cost.