uTorrent parent company BitTorrent Inc. just announced that the BitTorrent Mainline client and uTorrent have hit the milestone of 150 million monthly users. Together both clients increased their user base by more than 50 percent compared to last year, and the end of this surge is not yet in sight.
In October 2011, a court in Finland ordered local ISP Elisa to block The Pirate Bay to stop copyright infringement among its subscribers. Today, the blockade – which covers many domains and IP addresses – took effect, but behind the scenes there is an effort to unblock the site and render the court order useless. Meanwhile there is already collateral damage – the court order has succeeded in blocking a domain linking to Electronic Frontier Finland.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Real Steel’ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’. ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ completes the top three.
Cory Doctorow held a presentation just before the turn of the year, showing how the current copyright wars are just a skirmish in the battles yet to come. It is a very strong omen that gives you an idea just how much is at stake in the coming two decades.
Continuing a long-standing New Year’s tradition, we present an up-to-date list of the world’s most visited BitTorrent sites. At the start of 2012 The Pirate Bay continues to pull in the most visitors, followed by Torrentz and KickassTorrents. The six-year-old TV-torrent distribution group EZTV appears in the list for the first time, ranked 8th.
Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde has revealed that the words of an MPAA lawyer several years ago inspired the creation of the Missionary Church of Kopimism. The Church hit the headlines this week and was met largely by words of tolerance, but a Catholic bishop has just labeled it “farcical” since it has no God. Interestingly, Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge mulls the idea that ‘pirate’ communications may now be barred from evidence in court.
An outspoken founder of NinjaVideo, one of the first domains to be targeted in the ongoing Operation in Our Sites, was sentenced today for conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement. Hana Beshara, known online as Phara, will now spend 22 months in prison followed by 2 years of probation and 500 hours of community service. A source close to NinjaVideo told TorrentFreak that Hana’s lawyer “was happy” with the sentence.
Below are TorrentFreak's most discussed articles of the past month. Join the discussion if you like.
Left Quote“Music file-sharing is a vibrant, open, global distribution system for music of all kinds, and presents a tremendous opportunity to both creators and rights-holders.
Canadian Songwriters Left Quote
A selection of some TorrentFreak's classics dug up from our archives.
Continuing a long-standing New Year's tradition, we present an up-to-date list of the world's most visited...
Privacy is important on the Internet, and BitTorrent users are certainly not excluded. Already, hundreds of...
With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users...
With the entertainment industries lobbying for increased powers to spy on BitTorrent users, many downloaders are...
BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current...
