FileSoup Admins Walk Clean-Handed

February 28, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Two years ago, file-sharing website FileSoup got into legal troubles and its admins George Cartledge and Stephen Lanning were arrested for copyright infringement.

This year seems to be a fortunate one for the two as the case against them was dropped before trial. The reason ? Well, apparently the alleged copyright infringement crimes were not of criminal matters but of civil ones.

A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) explained: “The CPS reviewed the file in accordance with the code for Crown Prosecutors, and no longer considered there was a realistic prospect of conviction. Accordingly, we offered no evidence in court.”

George Cartledge and Stephen Lanning were first arrested back in August 2009 after reportedly being approached with evidence of infringement by representatives from the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT),

However, the admins are far from happy that this is over – now they have their own complaints to make as Lanning also posted on the BitSoup’s forum: “Of course, it absolutely goes without saying from my personal perspective at least from the moment they threatened to break down my front door, barged into my home and then arrested me 18 months ago, all of the procedures they’ve just ignored, all the crap they’ve done and put me through, continuingly and consistently until today in no way does this end here!”

Since this is not the only such case in the UK, one can easily spot the failure this sort of prosecution has been under since the authorities decided to deal with file-sharing in this manner.

Bad luck from now on as well!

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Pirate Bay Film Gets Governmental Funding

February 28, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services, Movies, MP3, Digital Audio & Games 

The story behind Pirate Bay and its founders is about to be put on film in a documentary called TPB-AFK. This project lies in the hands of Swedish filmmaker Simon Klose who already received $30.000 from the Swedish Government. This will be added to the $50.000 that was already donated by peers thanks to the Kickstarter project.

Back in 2003 Anakata, Brokep and Tiamo – three computer geeks from Sweden – launched what is today the world’s leading torrent site, Pirate Bay. What drove them to start this project, how did they manage to deal with the pressure of private investigations and what makes the website so special ? These are just some of the questions the documentary aims to answer.

To make this project a reality, Klose started a funding campaign (Kickstarter). The initial goal of $25.000 was reached in only three days. This figure doubled by the end of the month.

The film includes the period of 2009 when Pirate Bay’s trial was closely watched and documented by Klose as he felt to be one of the most important events in the website’s life.

The project has been completed and Klose is currently working on the final touches. To help with these final steps the Swedish Government chipped in with 200.000 (~$31.000) Swedish kroner grant.

In a discussion with TorrentFreak, Klose said:

“I feel really honored getting 200,000 kroner from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee. The money, together with the Kickstarter share, will go to editing the film with a Danish editor.”

The film project has already received an award from The Swedish Arts Grants Committee (which falls under the Ministry of Culture).

“If TPB AFK can shed some light on how an open Internet can benefit artists, maybe the current Swedish government’s schizophrenic Internet policy can change too,” Klose told us. “On one hand they praise internet activists that help spread democracy in the Middle East, on the other they actively oppose the same activists building an open Internet in Sweden.”

The release is expected in the coming months and will be available – naturally – on Pirate Bay.

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BTDigg: The BitTorrent DHT Search Engine

February 28, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services 

We all know that every BitTorrent search engine works on one simple principle – the search is made through a database of .torrent files that are uploaded and stored online. BTDigg (BitTorrent Digger) approaches a whole new method by using BitTorrent’s DHT.

DHT is a feature supported by most of BitTorrent’s clients. Its purpose is to find peers that are downloading the same files without communicating with a BitTorrent tracker and by this bringing the advantage of continuing a download even if the tracker goes down. This is also known as “trackerless torrenting”. A less known fact is that clients like uTorrent use this method by default.

BTDigg takes the information from the DHT network in order to index and find torrents. The site presents itself with a rather old-school interface, offering detailed information about the file, including size and download link.

An interesting feature is that of using the Sphinx query language in the search box.
Eg: @name 127 Hours @content avi – finds all .avi files containing 127 Hours in their name. To better understand the benefits of this syntax visit http://sphinxsearch.com/docs/manual-1.10.html#extended-syntax.

The resulted list can be sorted in two ways: Relevance and/or Downloads. To see information regarding the torrent you’re about to download, just click on its name.

BTDdigg also uses magnetic links – click [hash].

The advantage of using a DHT-based search algorithm is pretty clear. Here’s what the founder of the site had to say:
“We think that the Internet’s moving towards to decentralized and distributed systems and would like to contribute to it by creating BTDigg.”

The brain behind it all told TorrentFreak that improvements in design and not only will be seen in the following weeks. Hopefully, this will be the next step in BitTorrent’s development.

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Top 10 Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent

February 28, 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 February 27. All the films included in this chart are DVDrips (unless mentioned otherwise).

There’s a new leader this week, the thriller ‘The Next Three Days’ staring Russel Crowe – a remake of the 2007 French film Pour Elle (Anything for Her) by Fred Cavayé. ‘S.W.A.T.: Firefight’ drops to #2 as Jason Statham climbs as ‘The Mechanic’ to #3.

This week’s list features four new entries.

Ranking (last week) Movie Rating / Trailer
1 (…) The Next Three Days 7.4/ trailer
2 (1) S.W.A.T: Firefight - / trailer
3 (9) The Mechanic (R5) 6.8/trailer
4 (7) The Green Hornet (TS) 6.6/trailer
5 (…) Sanctum 5.7/trailer
6 (6) 127 Hours 8.4/trailer
7 (…) The Jackass 3D 7.3/trailer
8 (8) The King’s Speech (DVDscr) 8.5/trailer
9 (2) Tangled (PPVrip) 8.1/trailer
10 (…) Morning Glory 6.8/trailer

(via TorrentFreak)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1231583/

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LinkCyb.org: Easy Access to Rapidshare and Hotfile Links

February 25, 2011 by · Comments Off
Filed under: Announcements & Events, File-Sharing Programs, Networks & Services 

Linkcyb.org can be considered an indexing website for Rapidshare and Hotfile links and files. The search engine offers an easy and fast way towards different types of links: rapidshare, hotfile, fileserve, filesonic and mediafire. This is due to its impressive algorithm. Another interesting feature is that of compiling the search results into a list for a better use of your time. All you have to do is insert the search terms and hit “Go”.

Their database contains a list of over 44 sites listed alphabetically. More mirrors mean more search results and, of course, more download links. Using the same website you can also download Warez for free. While Rapidshare links are limited because they can only be shared between friends or larger groups who are looking for the same links, Warez data points out to online releases by a set of users or members. Warez files are distributed through torrent files uploaded on p2p websites.

All the files that are found on LinkCyb.org are provided by their users. The website does not promote nor affiliates itself with the content uploaded.

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