Those who take a few minutes to browse through the site will discover all kinds of other neat features. One of the latest additions to the site is the option to download files directly, through partner site httpTorrents.

The integration with httpTorrents gives users the option to download the files directly without having to use a BitTorrent client. Music tracks can also be streamed directly from the site itself. The service works in a similar way to most other files hosting services such as Rapidshare, but only works with torrents and doesn’t allow users to upload files themselves.

The owner of the site told TorrentFreak that direct http downloads may be useful to users who have restricted access to BitTorrent, such as those whose ISP or firewall blocks or slows down transfers. There are currently 4000 files available as a direct download, but this number is growing rapidly.

KickassTorrents’ users can submit a request for files that are not yet available as direct downloads. “If someone clicks on the http download button at KickassTorrents and the file is not available yet, it places it in the request queue at httpTorrents. Only popular torrents are downloaded during the beta stage,” TorrentFreak was told by the site’s owner.

“KickassTorrents and httpTorrents are not directly connected. However we use their API to get hashes of the torrents available for the direct download,” the owner said, adding that if the beta tests are successful this API will also be available to other torrent sites.

Everyone can use httpTorrents, but in the future the download speed and number of simultaneous downloads will be limited for free users. Those who want to use it more than occasionally will have the option to sign up for a premium account without restrictions.

Since the service is actually hosting files (on an external CDN) it might run into complaints from copyright holders. The owner of the site told TorrentFreak that he’s not too worried about the legal implications, and hopes that a takedown policy will prevent the site from running into trouble.

It will be interesting to see how the service develops in the future, and we will definitely be keeping a close eye on it. Although direct downloads may be preferred in some cases, for those looking for (free) high speed downloads, BitTorrent probably remains the best solution.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The legislation came into force on April 1st this year, and the very next day the Netnod Internet Exchange reported a significant drop of 30% in Swedish Internet traffic. This dramatic reduction in data transfers was attributed to file-sharers reigning in their activities on fears of being identified by anti-piracy companies.

In response to the news, Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that most experts believed that the initial “scare effect” would wear off in time. They were absolutely right.

Current data from Netnod reveals that traffic levels in Sweden have not only returned to normal, pre-IPRED levels, but actually seem on track to surpass them. This increase is partly natural, but the relatively steep climb in recent months seems to suggest that P2P traffic is on the rise again.

While anti-piracy and copyright groups are working hard to clock up successes in getting governments to implement increasingly tougher laws to deal with online file-sharers, they too aren’t sitting back and accepting defeat in the face of these new challenges. Many are turning to services which enable them to hide their identities.

Recently the Cyber Norms sociological research project reported that 10% of Swedes aged between 15 and 25 were taking measures to neutralize online surveillance, with as many as 500,000 of their countrymen following suit. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimated that 6 to 7 percent of all Swedes could now be hiding themselves online.

In this cat and mouse game, the cats have to spend millions of dollars and years of effort to achieve their aims of getting new legislation to protect their interests. However, in a crushing response, the mice spend just a few minutes in thought deciding how to spend a few dollars in order to instantly neutralize the threat.

As people around the world look forward to the festive season, it must seem like Christmas every day for VPN suppliers.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It therefore came as a big surprise to hear that Ethan Applen, director of technology and business strategy at Warner Bros., stated at NewTeeVee’s Video Rights Roundtable that P2P technology doesn’t deserve to be blamed for the fact that some people use it to download copyright infringing content.

“In terms of our own view, we think P2P gets vilified. It’s just a technology. CNN used it for Inauguration coverage. It can be used for piracy, but as a technology, I think it has a lot of advantages to it,” Applen said, adding that “P2P works really well at delivering an entire season or the entire run of a show.”

Applen’s comments are at odds with the legal strategies of the Hollywood studio, where its lawyers continue to blame the providers of technology for the activities of their users. If Warner Bros. indeed believes that P2P technology is not the villain, then they should inform their lawyers or withdraw from the court cases they are currently involved in.

Applen appeared together with Bram Cohen in the roundtable session, where worryingly some of the attendees admitted hating the BitTorrent inventor for creating his famous file transfer protocol. Aside from praising P2P for its speedy delivery of TV-shows, Applen also mentioned that it is a good marketing tool.

This is no surprise as a Warner Bros. executive previously admitted to leaking a pilot of Pushing Daisies on BitTorrent in order to “help the cause”.

Bram Cohen himself also gave several example of how ‘unauthorized sharing’ via BitTorrent may have helped content creators. He mentioned that the leak of an unfinished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine might have boosted interest in the film, and he noted that BitTorrent may have also helped the anime business to grow.

Despite all the positive comments on the use of BitTorrent and P2P in general by this Warner Bros. executive, we can’t help wondering why they are still pouring millions into ridiculous anti-P2P lawsuits that haven’t decreased piracy a single bit.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The case continued in the Federal Court, with iiNet barrister Richard Cobden beginning his closing submissions.

Referring to the allegations by AFACT that it detected around 97,000 instances of copyright infringement carried out by iiNet subscribers, Cobden said that there was actually only sufficient evidence to prove that a single subscriber had carried out any. That individual was the mole planted by AFACT and DtecNet to carry out deliberate ‘infringements’ on behalf of the plaintiffs.

iiNet’s protection under Safe Harbor provisions which limit a carrier’s liability under the Copyright Act remained intact, since no infringer had been identified other than AFACT’s own investigator. Since he was authorized by the plaintiffs, he committed no offenses and could not even be accurately categorized as an infringer. On this basis, iiNet did not disconnect him.

Cobden admitted that AFACT’s method of counting infringements indicated that it’s possible that from a sample of 20 iiNet users, on average they could have downloaded two to three movies each in the reported monitoring period of 59 weeks.

“It’s clear from the accounts that ultimately the [infringing] activity is likely to account for a very modest percentage of that user’s activity [and] a very modest percentage of their quota,” said Cobden as reported by ITNews.

Cobden went on to say that this didn’t amount to the “dramatic” amounts of infringement alleged by AFACT, so there was no evidence that this activity drove the uptake of iiNet high-bandwidth accounts from which the ISP profited.

Disconnecting users on such limited numbers of infringements shown on the sample accounts would have been a disproportionate response, he added.

The iiNet barrister also spoke in detail on iiNet’s privacy responsibilities under Section 112E of Australia’s Telecommunications Act, which he said undermined AFACT’s claims that by not complying with its requests it authorized the infringing activities of its subscribers. Detailed information on this key aspect of iiNet’s defense can be found here.

iiNet was never legally obliged to deal with AFACT infringement notices, Cobden told the court, noting that the law concerning copyright “authorization” does not require any ISP to suspend or terminate a customer’s account.

Cobden attacked allegations by AFACT that iiNet’s business model relies on illegal file-sharing, saying that the anti-piracy outfit had a distorted view of the world.

“In many ways the applicants look at everything that iiNet does entirely through the prism of their own concern for copyright infringement,” he said, noting that the company had been in business for many years and had simply kept up with offerings from its rivals Telstra and Optus.

“Once you take that prism away and look at it in terms of business and keeping up-to-date with technologies, and keeping its customers happy, almost every document, internal document, takes on an entirely different reflection,” he added, as quoted by ZDNet.

Cobden said there was zero evidence to back up AFACT allegations that iiNet users burned downloaded material onto CDs and DVDs and distributed them. This, he said, significantly decreased the number of copyright infringements claimed by AFACT.

iiNet’s legal team will continue with their closing submissions next week.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Some user data and torrent files are unfortunately gone for good and the site’s code has been permanently damaged. This resulted in the extended downtime that persists through today.

Since Demonoid’s owners are not very talkative it didn’t take long before imposters created their own news about the site, causing wild rumors to spread among Demonoid’s fans. Some reported that the site would return under a new name and others claimed that the authorities had permanently shut it down.

In a rare update, Demonoid staff have informed their users that none of this is true. Demonoid will return and things will return to normal as soon as possible.

“There are some rumors about the site shutting down for good and we [sic] starting a new tracker next year. The rumors are of course, lies. There are no plans of shutting down or creating another site,” Demonoid staff write.

Aside from refuting those rumors, the staff update brings more good news. A full comeback of the Demonoid site is looming. Parts of the code had to be rewritten in order to get the site back up and this process is almost finished.

“The parts of the site code that got deleted are being rewritten and should be ready soon. We are also working to try and minimize the data loss as much as possible,” the Demonoid team adds.

As reported earlier, the tracker is already back up and running smoothly, and considering the latest update from Demonoid staff, it shouldn’t take long before the site itself is also recovered.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

A BPI investigation led to a police swoop on members of the group. They were subjected to searches, seizure of their computers and other assorted items, and later questioned at length.

The suspects were charged with Conspiracy to Defraud (the music industry), released on bail and ordered to reappear at later dates. One was later released with a police warning and told that charges would not be pressed against him.

In the meantime the alleged leader of DV8 had his bail pushed back to mid November pending further investigations. TorrentFreak’s previously-reliable sources positioned close to the case have now informed us that the individual answered his bail a few days ago and was subjected to another day of questioning. He has allegedly been charged with ‘defrauding the music industry’, although the conspiracy element appears to have been dropped.

Earlier we reported that two more arrests were made of suspected pre-release music suppliers to DV8. One of those individuals was an executive at a record label. Our information is that this executive has now lost his job, but no charges have been brought against him.

It was believed that the delay in charging the alleged leader of the group was due to the police needing more time to track down additional suppliers, one of which we were told works for a major media outlet. Indeed, we are now being informed that during the last few weeks there have been further raids on people linked to the group.

One is reportedly a writer at a music publication, who allegedly supplied music to the leader of the group. We are told he was raided 2 weeks ago.

Another is a US member of DV8 who left months before the first raid. He was arrested several weeks ago but is understood to have been released without charge.

Court dates are pending for those charged, but could arrive as quickly as early 2010.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Just over a month has passed since the first stable public release of the software and PeerBlock has now managed to clock up more than 100,000 downloads. To mark this milestone, TorrentFreak caught up with Mark from the project for the lowdown.

Mark told us that the creation of PeerBlock was inspired by him upgrading his PC from 32 to 64 bit in order to utilize 6gb of RAM. Everything worked fine – until he tried to get PeerGuardian (another IP blocker) to work.

Having hacked away and jumped through hoops to get around driver-signing it would still only work half the time and often crashed without warning. As a software engineer who has worked in the commercial sector for more than 13 years, Mark – who admits to being “an arrogant bastard who truly believes he can do just about anything better than just about anybody,” decided he could find a solution. It was “put up or shut up time,” he told TorrentFreak.

Noticing that the PeerGuardian code was open-source but hadn’t been touched for a couple of years, Mark contacted another developer who had the same thing in mind, but having heard nothing back, he went at it alone.

“I started setting up a Sourceforge.net project for it so we could get free source-control, but they took too long to set it up for me so I instead created a project over at Google Code where it was ready within minutes,” he told us.

Having heard from a few people who were interested in helping out with the development side – “night_stalker_z” who’d earlier started trying to hack the PG2 code into shape, “DarC” / “DisCoStu” who wanted to help out with fixing up the installer, XhmikosR who rewrote the installer, and some testers, things moved forward.

After facing troubles due to the lack of a “signed driver” for 64-bit versions of Vista (which resulted in Mark having to set up a registered company before they were allowed to buy a $230 code-signing certificate), a couple of blogs wrote articles on PeerBlock which attracted some much-needed publicity to the project. This resulted in 10,000 downloads in just one weekend.

“We’re still getting donations from people and we now have enough to pay for next year’s annual code-signing certificate, and we’re saving up to be able to rent our own VPS with full root access etc, upon which we’ll be able to build a ‘real’ online-update system, a custom web-app to tie our forums/issue-tracker/website all together, and some other neat things,” Mark explains.

The first stable release of PeerBlock came out on September 27th, and as of November 5th had clocked up an impressive 100,000 downloads. The site now receives up to 7,000 visitors each day.

Aside from fixing one or two bugs, the team has lots of new features planned for PeerBlock. Anyone that has tried to surf the web with a blocklist in place will know how painful that can be, so PeerBlock will have some new features which allow the “whitelisting” of certain apps, such as a browser, the creation of a proxy server to let users configure PeerBlock to listen on certain ports, possibly an integral “AdMuncher” style ad-blocking feature on a per URL basis (as opposed to just an IP-address), and an encrypted chat feature.

TorrentFreak asked Mark why users should choose PeerBlock over the competition.

“Well, first off we need to ask ‘Who IS the competition?’ The only ones I’m really aware of are: Protowall by the folks over at Bluetack which is closed-source and I don’t believe was ever updated for Vista, and Outpost Firewall, which is closed-source and basically just a hack add-on to a more professional firewall product,” he responded, while noting that uTorrent’s built-in IP-filtering feature only handles one manually-updated list.

“We protect your entire machine, and give you the option to try out any P2P app you want – this freedom of choice is a very important thing, I think. And since it does everything automatically, including list-updates, it’s one less thing to think about,” he added.

Another important question relates to the blocklists that have to be used in conjunction with PeerBlock in order for it to block anything.

He told TorrentFreak that he’s a big fan of iblocklist, who serve up a staggering 10TB of blocklists every month for free. The site doesn’t create the lists, but does offer those from Bluetack, including the Level1 list (renamed to ‘P2P’ in PG2/PeerBlock, which contains both Gov and Anti-P2P IP-addresses) and others.

Mark admits that even in a best case scenario, the available blocklists aren’t 100% effective. That said, there have been studies which show that using blocklists along with software such as PeerBlock can help speed up downloads, but no-one knows how many of the potential “bad IPs” are covered by currently available blocklists.

P2P aside, Mark says there has been feedback to suggest that PeerBlock discovered a Conficker infection on a user’s machine that their anti-virus programs missed, and can also stop ads appearing in browsers that lack in-built blocking.

One other exciting thing for the future of PeerBlock is porting it to the Mac. Mark says they’re saving all the donations for additional development and this is the most-requested request right now.

Users of PeerBlock are encouraged to give as much feedback as possible to Mark’s team, via their forums, IRC (#peerblock on freenode.net) or email.

PeerBlock can be downloaded here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Ink was downloaded more than 400,000 times last week and ended up in fourth place in our weekly chart of most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, where Zombieland occupied the top spot.

Zombieland co-writer Rhett Reese has been following our most pirated movies chart as well, and thus the online success of his film. “Zombieland currently the most pirated movie on bit torrent. Over one million downloads and counting,” he tweeted a few hours ago.

However, unlike the makers of Ink, Reese is not pleased with this achievement, claiming that this piracy disaster may very well prevent a Zombieland sequel from being shot. “Beyond depressing. This greatly affects the likelihood of a Zombieland 2,” he wrote.

Reese’s comments are the classic Hollywood response we wrote about yesterday. Piracy is causing billions of dollars in lost revenue and prevents new movies from being funded, is the doomsday scenario they often paint. But is there any truth in this hunch, or is it just another Hollywood performance? Facts seem to support the latter.

More piracy is not necessarily linked with a drop in box office grosses or DVD sales. ‘The Dark Knight’, which was the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent in 2008 sold millions of DVDs, and grossed a record breaking billion dollars in cinemas worldwide. But what about Zombieland?

The Hollywood Insider wrote that the movie is “alive and kicking” at the box office, putting its success down in part to “strong word-of-mouth”. The release also marks the most successful debut of Woody Harrelson’s career, hitting the No.1 spot and taking $9.4m on its first day and a worldwide $84m to date – all this on a production budget of less than $24m.

Zombieland grossed more than $60.8 million in 17 days, even surpassing the remake of the Dawn of the Dead to become the top-grossing zombie film in history. That does not really sound like something that will prevent a sequel to us.

On the contrary, if anything success on BitTorrent has a direct relation with success at the box office. Since unauthorized ripped versions of virtually all movies appear on the Internet nowadays, it would be a really bad sign if no pirate would want to download it.

But of course, Reese and others could still argue that they would have made even more money if there was no piracy. There are no hard facts to refute this, but with the box office revenue steadily increasing since P2P file-sharing became mainstream, it has to be doubted as well. The same can be said for the claim that less films receive funding.

As many independent filmmakers have already experienced, BitTorrent and the Internet in general can be a boon to the film industry. Instead of seeing it as a threat Hollywood might want to embrace it before it’s too late.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The case continued in the Federal Court, with AFACT continuing to make its closing submissions, marked by further attempts by barrister Tony Bannon to ruin the credibility of key iiNet witnesses Michael Malone and Steve Dalby.

Referring yet again to iiNet CEO Michael Malone’s earlier and multiple assertions that his company could not disconnect subscribers on mere allegations from a 3rd party, Bannon pointed that Malone had earlier referred to the evidence collected by anti-piracy tracking company DtecNet in a more positive light.

“But when asked the question in cross-examination, the truth is they regarded the notifications as compelling evidence,” said Bannon according to ITNews.

Based on what Bannon tried to insist was a contradiction, that “compelling” and “mere allegations” were incompatible when referring to the same material, Bannon asked the judge to disregard iiNet’s evidence.

Although earlier information about DtecNet’s methods were revealed in a closed-court session, CW reports that the anti-piracy company operated by downloading a portion of a file from iiNet subscribers while recording the IP address, the time of the transfer and the date, the protocol, the client id and a hash value.

Reiterating his earlier claims, Bannon insisted that chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby had deliberately exaggerated his claimed lack of understanding of BitTorrent and the infringement notices sent to iiNet by DtecNet. While Dalby had said that he had waited for AFACT to send more information, in fact internal iiNet email evidence showed that Dalby had discouraged further investigation, he said.

Bannon went on to state that companies like iiNet benefit greatly from illicit file-sharing, since the activity consumes a lot of bandwidth – the commodity the ISP sells to its customers.

Referring to an iiNet press release from late 2008 where the company said it would defend the court case, Bannon said the ISP had stated it could not disconnect a customer on a simple allegation. This, he said, amounted to assuring customers of their safety when carrying out illicit file-sharing.

Earlier in the case, iiNet claimed to have taken “reasonable steps” to deal with infringement on its network, an assertion roundly criticized by Bannon. The AFACT barrister said that iiNet has a technique to limit a subscriber’s access to the Internet if they don’t pay their bills, so this could easily be applied when an allegation of illicit file-sharing is provided by his client.

Bannon also said that since Westnet, the company iiNet had earlier acquired, already had a system in place to notify infringers, it was a “nonsense” to say that iiNet hadn’t got the facilities to deal with AFACT notices.

Bannon went on to tell the court that iiNet’s participation in discussions 4 years ago with the Internet Industry Association to create a code of conduct to deal with copyright infringement allegations, also did not constitute “reasonable steps”, since it didn’t address the “day to day” problems. Furthermore, he said that the overall plan by the ISPs was to aim at “doing nothing”.

Going on to strengthen his claim that iiNet “authorized and encouraged” the infringements of its customers, and in the face of iiNet failing to carry out any actions that could be described as “reasonable steps”, Bannon asserted that this meant that the ISP effectively allowed its subscribers to do whatever they liked on their Internet connection.

The case continues.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In this short time span it was downloaded by more than 400,000 people on BitTorrent alone, earning it a spot in TorrentFreak’s chart of top 10 most pirated movies this week.

For most Hollywood bosses this is usually a trigger to start complaining about lost revenue, but the makers of Ink are welcoming their new pirate audience.

In an email to the followers of their newsletter, Jamin and Kiowa Winans say that they have “embraced the piracy” and are “just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.” Thanks to the pirated copy their movie jumped to 16th place on IMDb’s movie meter, and according to the makers this increased popularity also boosted DVD and Blu-ray sales.

Who needs a hefty marketing budget to promote a movie (and merchandise) when they have BitTorrent? Sent out a few hours ago, here’s the mailing in full plus a follow up response from Kiowa.

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn’t expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it, we’ve embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb’s movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world.

This all started as a result of the completely underground buzz that you’ve each helped us create. We’ve had no distributor, no real advertising and yet the word of mouth that you’ve generated has made the film blow up as soon as it became available worldwide. So many of you came to see the movie multiple times, bringing friends and family and many of you have bought the DVD and Blu-ray from us. All of this built up and built up and suddenly it exploded.

We don’t know exactly where this will all lead, but the exposure is unquestionably a positive thing.

Ink hits Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes and many more tomorrow! Remember to get your signed copies, t-shirts and posters at the Ink Store.

Thank you so much for the constant love and support.

Jamin and Kiowa
Double Edge Films

And the follow up response we got from Kiowa, in reply to this article.

Dear Ernesto,

To say we are shocked by all this news and are digesting it rapidly is an understatement. We made this film in Denver, CO on a budget of $250,000 and have fought to bring it to 15 cities ourselves over the past ten months. Hollywood has claimed that they don’t know how to market the film or that it doesn’t have an audience, and what BitTorrent has done in the last four days is prove, unequivocally, that Hollywood is wrong.

So is this the best thing that could happen to our little film? Absolutely! There is no way this many people would know about the film otherwise, or that our IMDb MovieMeter would have shot up an astounding 81,000% from a few days of activity over the torrent sites. What Hollywood would calculate as lost dollars, we calculate as fans earned. Due to many suggestions from downloaders over the past few days we have established a Donate button on our Store page for people to contribute what they can. Thank you for posting that info.

We’re not looking to get rich, but would like to pay back our investors and the enormous amount of personal debt we’ve gone into making the film. We’re also not looking to make Hollywood films (Jamin has had several opportunities) and plan on continuing the march of making fiercely independent films. In order to do that we have to count on the power of the people, eyeballs all over the world and torrenters to throw our film a few bucks apiece. It’s the indie film model of the future and we appreciate each and every person who takes the time to watch our film. It appears we’re all rebels here… so let’s wave that flag proud.

Again, we are really floored that all of this is happening and that you’ve opened up the conversation!

All the best,

Kiowa K. Winans

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The case continued in the Federal Court, with AFACT making its closing submissions and tearing into iiNet witnesses CEO Michael Malone and chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby.

The film industry, represented by chief barrister Tony Bannon, labeled Malone’s evidence as “incredible”, “evasive” and unreliable. Bannon said iiNet gave nothing but excuses for not acting on such notices and that Malone’s assertion that copyright laws should should be changed or an industry code introduced before he could act on infringement notices were “extreme”.

Since only Malone and Dalby appeared for cross-examination on behalf of iiNet, Bannon took the opportunity to criticize the company for not putting forward other staff from the company, who, Bannon claimed, would be better placed to answer the questions during the trial.

Bannon said this had put Malone and Dalby in the position of providing evidence on matters they knew nothing about, citing the pair’s lack of BitTorrent knowledge as a prime example.

“To put forward these two gentleman as the extent of familiarity of BitTorrent in the company is an entirely inaccurate picture of a company which plainly has a mass of technical expertise,” said Bannon, as reported by ITNews.

“It beggars belief that a company which paints itself as an Internet pioneer doesn’t have a level of knowledge within that company that knows exactly how the BitTorrent client works,” he added.

On an earlier claim where the iiNet CEO claimed to understand the BitTorrent protocol by not the operation of a torrent client, Bannon said it was a nonsense, to which insult to injury was added when it was revealed that iiNet operated its own BitTorrent tracker.

Bannon said it was clear to him that the only individuals in the court who claimed to know little to nothing about torrents were Malone and Dalby, but in reality the company understood the system perfectly well. Its motive for this stance, he said, was so that the company could distance itself from the accusations of authorizing the copyright infringements of their customers.

Bannon also heavily criticized Dalby’s evidence when he claimed to have the company’s policy on taking action only against repeat infringers “in his head”, insisting that no such policy exists.

iiNet is also asking the court to find its own terms and conditions both unenforceable and unreasonable, said Bannon as quoted by CW.

Although iiNet has asserted time and again in the case, that if a court ruled that someone had infringed copyright the ISP would disconnect them, the AFACT barrister said that iiNet’s own terms alone gave them the right to disconnect copyright infringers, and dismissed the ISP’s claims that the clause was unenforceable.

AFACT claims that iiNet engaged in secondary acts of infringement when it failed to stop its subscribers sharing illicit files on their network, citing the legal principles established in the 1975 case known as University of NSW v Moorhouse, details of which can be found here.

According to another report, the case could run over into a fifth week to 19th November and beyond to allow enough time for iiNet lawyers to prepare the company’s closing submissions.

The case continues.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The link uses the torrent hash and DHT to download content and allows for additional trackers to be added. Thus far, most BitTorrent users have ignored this alternative download method, but thanks to the Magnetiser Firefox add-on, this might change.

The idea behind the add-on is simple. It allows users of meta-search engines, such as Torrentz.com, to download a torrent’s magnet link without having to go to an external site where the torrent is hosted.

“I’ve recently written an add-on for Firefox that generates magnet links for torrent pseudo-indexers that don’t host torrents but does list them by their hashes. So far it supports Torrentz and isoHunt, but the code is simple and could be extended to any searchable indexer that shows the info hash either in the URL, or on the torrent page,” the coder of the add-on told TorrentFreak.

Once the add-on is installed, users can click the ‘magnetise’ link at the bottom right of their Firefox window when they are on a torrent detail page on Torrentz. This will launch a new window that will prompt you to pick the torrent client of your choice.

We have to say that this usage of magnet links is a great idea, and it works like a charm. Not only does it save time, it also comes in handy when a torrent is no longer available on the external site. The only downside is that the title of the download as it appears in your client will not be very descriptive.

The add-on is not available on Firefox’s add-on section just yet, but those who want to try it can download this xpi file and drag it into the Firefox browser window. After it’s installed users can add additional trackers, but since it includes the most-used trackers by default, this is not really needed.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The site’s bandwidth supplier, Black Internet, was told it would face penalties of 500,000 kronor ($70,600) if it failed to carry out the order of the court.

The company complied, but after initially deciding it would simply accept the decision, its management later changed their mind and said they would appeal. Unless they did so, they noted, the same kind of action could be taken against other sites and ISPs with possibly far-reaching implications.

“This is the first time in Sweden that an operator has been ordered to stop delivering Internet to someone. We want to know if it’s correct to do so,” said Black Internet CEO Victor Möller at the time.

The ISP has now been authorized to take the decision to the Court of Appeal, but unlike Black Internet had requested the earlier verdict remains intact until the Court of Appeal decided otherwise.

“This is such a fundamentally important issue as far as ISP responsibility goes,” said Victor Möller to SR.se. “It is not important for us if we can deliver bandwidth to The Pirate Bay or not – it is about the principle,” Möller concluded.

Although the case will set an important precedent for ISPs in Sweden, The Pirate Bay itself hardly suffered as the site simply switched to a new provider and returned within a few hours.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Like all respected anti-piracy organizations, LANVA holds accounts at all the popular private torrent trackers, including LinkoManija. For a long time their account remained inactive, but this week LANVA claimed a small victory as it reported the IP-addresses of 106 users of the site to the police.

According to the anti-piracy outfit, the reported users were caught sharing a copy of the newly released Windows 7 Ultimate operating system. As evidence the self-proclaimed investigators submitted a screenshot of peers listed by uTorrent.

The owner of LinkoManija was not impressed by LANVA’s actions. “Anyone can copy a peer list, but it doesn’t prove that anyone downloaded the full file or actually uploaded anything,” Kestas told TorrentFreak. “It can’t be used as serious evidence,” he added.

LANVA disagrees and hopes that the police will track down the identities of the accused infringers. If this happens the users will face fines of up to several hundred dollars, plus additional damages Microsoft’s lawyers may call for.

In a response the owner of LinkoManija has reported LANVA to the police. People who are affiliated with an anti-piracy group are not allowed to use LinkoManija according to the site’s disclaimer, and Kestas has asked the police find out whether LANVA broke the law.

“We contacted the police and asked them to investigate how LANVA obtained the information, because we did not give them permission,” Kestas told TorrentFreak. The police informed him that they would look into the case.

If any of the reported users faces legal action, Kestas says he will help them out with legal support. “We told our users that we will be fighting for them if they get in trouble, because it’s a fight for the freedom of us all,” he said. “Our users are our strength,” he added.

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“They must capture important evidence on a computer at the scene of an investigation before it is powered down and removed for later analysis. ‘Live’ evidence, such as active system processes and network data, is volatile and may be lost in the process of turning off a computer. How does an officer on the scene effectively do this if he or she is not a trained computer forensics expert?”

Using COFEE, of course.

The Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) is a piece of software designed for the use of law enforcement agencies, and provided to the same free of charge by Microsoft. And, largely because of its mystique, has been a much sought-after piece of code.

Indeed, on the private tracker What.cd, users had offered a huge bounty (a reward for finding and sharing something) of 1.6 terabytes.

During the last day or so, a user – who had only been a member for a matter of weeks – uploaded COFEE.

However, What.cd then took the unusual step of removing the torrent. Not just an unusual step but, in my opinion, a very sensible step indeed.

“Suddenly, we were forced to take a real look at the program, its source, and the potential impact on the site and security of our users and staff,” said What.cd management in a statement.

“And when we did, we didn’t like what came of it. So, a decision was made. The torrent was removed (and it is not to be uploaded here again),” they added.

According to the site’s staff, neither them or their host was threatened by Microsoft or law enforcement. The decision was taken purely on the issue of site and member security.

Of course, the tool is now widely available from other sources and while some are saying that the tool is useless to regular Internet users, there are others who disagree. It certainly won’t take long for a detailed analysis to appear.

There will doubtless be lots of finger-wagging and complaints that this tool has become available in this way, but as with unexpected leaks of anything from software, to movies, to music, rarely is the finger pointed at the initial supplier of the material. That is usually way too embarrassing to reveal.

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“As the law is today, you can not have a media center without breaking the law,” he told TorrentFreak.

“When I think of a media center it is a place where you have all your movies, pictures and music together. You can only do that by having a digital copy of the movie.”

Henrik told us that he had taken this action to draw attention to laws which allow him to copy DVDs for his own personal use, but forbid him to remove the DRM in order to do so. In his confession he asked Antipiratgruppen for a response by December 1st, indicating if they are prepared to take action against him.

The group has announced that Henrik will indeed get a response, but didn’t tell him directly, instead preferring to comment via the press.

“It is a political matter, and we have sent it to the Association of Danish Videodistributors so they can consider it. But Henrik Andersen will get a reply by 1st December,” said Antipiratgruppen lawyer Thomas Schlüter to Comon.

Schlüter went on to say that proving this type of infringement is usually impossible.

“Unless people confess, then it’s impossible to prove that they have broken copy protection. We can not break down the door to people’s homes and explore what they have available on their media server,” he said.

Poul Dylov, director for Warner Bros Denmark and chairman at the Association of Danish Videodistributors, said they will have a meeting next week to decide whether to report the matter to the police.

Dylov added they have not previously encountered a similar event, and consider the confession to be a media event, an assessment with which Henrik agrees.

“Of course, until now the film industry has not met the intentions of the law and as the culture minister will not force the film industry [to allow copying by removing DRM] by changing the law, then there must indeed be an awareness of the problem through the media,” he explains.

“But the whole problem lies in a sense with the Minster of Culture who does not follow its own interpretation of the law and the intentions of it. This gives the film industry an easy ride to the detriment of consumers,” he added.

All will be revealed here, on or before December 1st.

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“It requires very strong and concrete evidence to have these people convicted. We simply could not lift the burden of proof,” said Antipiratgruppen lawyer Mary Fredenslund when explaining the decision to Politiken.

In just a year, four cases against alleged pirates have come before the High Court in Denmark and the overall result for the copyright holders has been negative. Three of the defendants were acquitted due to insufficient evidence, and in the one case where a file-sharer was convicted, the defendant had confessed.

Defense attorney Per Overbeck says that in addition to these outcomes, cases against two of his clients have been dropped in recent years. “Antipiratgruppen has acknowledged that they can not get people convicted without either catching them in the act or threatening them to confess,” Overbeck said. “In practice, this means that without a confession there is no case,” he added.

Per Overbeck and Antipiratgruppen’s assessment that recent High Court rulings make it virtually impossible to get individuals convicted for illegal file sharing are supported by a recent Government report from the Ministry of Culture.

According to the report, IP-addresses can only be used to identify the person paying for the Internet subscription, not the person who actually downloaded the files. The courts have ruled several times that in terms of evidence, an IP-address alone is insufficient to prove guilt.

In one case a defendant walked free after arguing that that someone else must have accessed his wireless router to download copyright infringing material.

Despite these legal setbacks for copyright holders in Denmark, it is worth noting that Danish anti-piracy tracking company DtecNet remains the main partner of the RIAA and other music groups in countries where governments are looking to implement three-strikes policies to get alleged file-sharers disconnected from the Internet.

The evidence DtecNet gathers also consists of just an IP-address. Indeed, there is no known anti-piracy method to discover who is sitting at a particular keyboard, on any particular computer, at any given time.

In the on-going trial of AFACT v iiNet, DtecNet gathered the evidence used in the case. Under cross-examination a computer forensics investigator – who was previously a key witness in the 2004 KaZaA trial – admitted that any ISP account could have multiple users in the same household, and could have other unauthorized 3rd-party users if a wireless router was compromised.

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“Piracy is here, so how can we take advantage of that? What we did actually, on day one, we put that game immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves,” RedLynx CEO Tero Virtala, told a panel discussion at the Develop game conference.

The company didn’t upload the full game, but a slightly altered version which excluded the leaderboards that are required to play against other users on the Internet, hoping that it would convert some ‘pirates’ into paying customers.

“That game relies really heavily on the server side – the leaderboards are the soul of the game,” Virtala said. “I don’t know if it’s helped, I’d assume so because even though the version that we put on the torrent networks wasn’t the full version, it’s the version of the game without the actual soul, without the leaderboards to play against other players,” Virtala said.

Unfortunately the company has no way of knowing whether the free marketing on torrent sites has paid off. Thus far RedLynx has sold almost 150,000 copies of the game, but unlike the CEO claims, it is also available on torrent sites in a version where the leaderboard functionality is hacked.

It is good to see that companies are recognizing that giving away games on torrent sites can actually help to market their products. Making demo versions of a game available to the public is not necessarily a novelty, but uploading these onto torrent sites is an opportunity that only a few have taken advantage of.

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Without any legal basis, Telenor refused to comply.

“This would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered,” said Telenor boss Ragnar Kårhus.

The verdict in the case was due to be delivered October 30th, but was delayed until today.

IFPI has lost the case and Telenor will not have to block The Pirate Bay.

The court ruled that Telenor is not contributing to any infringements of copyright law when its subscribers use The Pirate Bay, and therefore there is no legal basis for forcing the ISP to block access to the site.

“Obviously we are pleased that the District Court has arrived at this conclusion,” said Telenor’s Ragnar Kårhus in a statement.

“At the same time it is important for us to emphasize that this case is not about being in favor of or opposed to copyright, but about whether or not it is reasonable to saddle Internet service providers with a censorship role in respect of content on the Internet,” he added.

Kårhus went on to say that the most important way for IFPI and other rights holders to maintain healthy revenue streams, is to develop business models and services that render the use of sites like The Pirate Bay less attractive to Internet users.

In making its decision, the court also had to examine the repercussions if it ruled that Telenor and other ISPs had to block access to certain websites. This, it said, is usually the responsibility of the authorities and handing this task to private companies would be “unnatural”.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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