Top 10 Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent

January 31, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Downloads, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games, Tops 

TorrentFreak has published the data they collected with the top 10 most shared movies on BitTorrent for the week ended January 30. All the films included in this chart are DVDrips (unless mentioned otherwise).

Leader of the chart remains ‘The Green Hornet’ with the newcomer ‘Unstoppable’ coming in second and ‘The King’s Speech’ dropping one place to #3.

This week’s list features five new entries among which the animation ‘Tangled’ and the drama/political-thriller ‘Fair Game’.

Ranking (last week) Movie Rating / Trailer
1 (1) The Green Hornet (TS) 6.6/trailer
2 (…) Unstoppable 7.0/trailer
3 (2) The King’s Speech 8.5/trailer
4 (…) The Tourist
 6.0/trailer
5 (3) 127 Hours 8.4/trailer
6 (…) Tangled (PPVrip) 8.1/trailer
7 (4) Megamind (SCR) 7.3/trailer
8 (…) Fair Game (DVDscr) 7.0/trailer
9 (…) Love and Other Drugs 6.6/trailer
10 (9) Inception 9.0/trailer

(via TorrentFreak)

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Tens of Torrent Sites Smashed by the MPAA

January 31, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

The mighty MPAA has joined forces with Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN to take down more than 50 torrent websites. From these sites 12 were within the U.S. and the rest international – the anti-piracy organizations filled copyright infringement complaints with the sites’ hosting providers.

So far no specific names of the sites have been given probably since very often file-sharing sites brought down by anti-piracy groups resurrect under different TLDs .

You probably remember the massive take-down action at the end of the last year when the Department of Homeland Security targeted more than 70 sites. This and other similar actions have alerted file-sharing sites and pointed them new directions to follow – for example, file-hosting service RapidShare hired a Washington lobbying firm to help them fight legislative efforts to sanction companies that don’t take reasonable measures to prevent copyright violation.

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The Dawn of Games Piracy – Nintendo

January 28, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Nintendo has done it. The 3DS is now the most sophisticated anti-piracy technology in their history, as David Yarnton declares to CVG.

Last week in Amsterdam an event about 3DS was held by Yarnton and James Honeywell – the UK marketing manager. Here they declared that thanks to the new and improved security system, backed-up by international laws, piracy is now in the past.

As a response for Ian Curran’s (THQ boss) comments on 3DS, Yarnton replied:
“It’s always like a red rag to a bull isn’t it? I almost don’t want to comment on that sort of thing,”

“We can’t divulge any technical details on that but needless to say this is probably one of our best pieces of equipment in that respect. There are a lot of things we’ve learnt over time to try and improve the security and protection – not only of our IP but of our third-party publishers’ IP as well.”

Honeywell seconded Yarnton’s comments by telling to CVG that the era of game piracy will not be viable anymore.
“People are aware that video games, music and movies make massive contributions to the economies of countries. They need to make sure they start protecting those things.”

Yarnton added:

“Recently there’s been some quite significant cases where there were some grey areas as far as IP protection goes. Recently there have been a couple of rulings with R4s where people have been found guilty and had quite significant sentences against them.”

The dynamic duo, in the same interview given to CVG, closed up by guaranteeing that 3DS is definitely worth the money.

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RIAA Lawyer Nominated for Solicitor General

January 28, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Donald Verrilli Jr.

Donald Verrilli Jr. – former lawyer for Recording Industry Association of America – was nominated by president Barack Obama to serve as the nation’s solicitor general.

All that Donald needs now, before occupying the empty chair once resided by Elena Kagan – who was promoted to the Supreme Court -, is the confirmation of the Senate. His job would be to defend the government before the Supreme Court, and files friend-of-the court briefs in cases in which the government believes there is a significant legal issue. The office also determines which cases it will bring to the Supreme Court for review.

Verrilli’s fierce reputation consists in leading of the recording industry’s legal charge against music and the victory against the late movie-sharing website Grokster. Not long ago, he was also in charge of Viacom’s $1 billion copyright-infringement fight against YouTube. However, the case was dismissed last year, but Viacom is not giving up. Viacom believes that YouTube did not bother to police uploads made by their users, in order to avoid the sharing of copyright materials.

In 2008, Verrilli told a federal judge in Minnesota that uploading copyright materials on sharing networks is itself a copyright infringement and that no proof of someone downloading those files is required.

This argument was also used in the Jamie Thomas’s file-sharing case. The judge declared a mistrial of the first jury’s $220.000 civil judgment for sharing 24 songs on Kazaa. It took two more trials and a third jury for a verdict of almost $2 million to be rendered against Thomas. Justice is blind.

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Google’s Censorship on Piracy Search Terms Detected

January 28, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Google, the world-leading search engine, has started filtering piracy-related search terms. This means that the Autocomplete feature and Instant services has been modified accordingly. For example, if you start typing BitTorrent, uTorrent, RapidShare or Megaupload into their box, the search engine will simply stop suggesting the full terms or dynamically show search results through Google Instant.

However, the website will show the results if you type the full name and click search or if you disable Autocomplete.
This change also affected movies, games and album tags. For example, before this, a search for Inception suggested Inception Torrent. Even more interesting is the fact that Microsoft’s Bing also started this filtering. If you’re looking for an alternative, Yahoo’s search engine is still untouched.

The database of soft-blocked terms is momentarily focused on popular websites like Megaupload and RapidShare, while Mediafire and 4shared still show up in suggestions. It goes the same for uTorrent (blocked) vs BitComet.

Many sites and communities are upset about this and with a good reason. Not every file hosted on Megaupload, for example, is a rip and not every torrent is a pirated album. However, Google’s statement last years was:

“…while it’s hard to know for sure when search terms are being used to find infringing content, we’ll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose.”

Look like Google’s going down on a slippery road if they keep bending their own rules and regulations just to keep the entertainment industry satisfied. If Bill Gates learned his lesson, I believe that’s Google time to learn that they can’t monopolize the internet.

(via Wired)

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