TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- Pirate Parties Supply Wikileaks With Much Needed Servers
- MPAA To Target Pirating College Students and Rogue Universities
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 06 Dec 2010 02:58 AM PST The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, 'The Town' tops the chart this week, followed by 'Inception'. 'Despicable Me' completes the top three.
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. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Pirate Parties Supply Wikileaks With Much Needed Servers Posted: 05 Dec 2010 01:10 PM PST While most traditional political parties are wary of supporting the actions of whistleblower site Wikileaks, Pirate Parties around the world have made it very clear whose side they are on. Just before the weekend Wikileaks moved to a Pirate Party owned domain, and today a conglomerate of Pirate Parties have just announced that they are now providing the site with several much needed mirror servers.
Between the DDoS attacks and the DNS-server bans, it almost went unnoticed that a leaked cable from the Spanish embassy showed that the United States wrote Spain’s proposed copyright law. An interesting revelation to say the least. It is expected that future cables will reveal more about how deeply the copyright lobby is being played out at the highest political levels, including more details on the ACTA lobby. But, this of course requires that the public has access to the released materials. Here, Pirate Parties worldwide are lending a hand. Just a few days ago Wikileaks was ‘saved‘ by the Swiss Pirate Party, who helped the whistleblower site after they were kicked out by their nameserver provider. Today, a coalition of Pirate Parties is stepping up to host a worldwide network of mirror sites for Wikileaks, making it virtually impossible to shut the operation down. “Pirate Parties from around the world, including the Pirate Party UK, today reaffirmed their commitment to whistleblowing worldwide. Concerned about freedom of information, opinion and press, the Pirate Parties have decided in a joint resolution to make Wikileaks available on a worldwide mirroring infrastructure,” the UK Pirate Party just announced. “The mirrors will guarantee that the release of US diplomatic cables can continue and previous publications will stay online,” the Pirates add, explaining that the new solution is not just redirecting people to one central server, but actually hosting files on different servers scattered around the globe. The initiative is supported by the Pirate Parties of the Czech Republic, Austria, Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Russia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. With the added mirrors they hope to keep Wikileaks online and fight the political and technological pressure the US Government has put on the hosting providers of site. Over the last week many hosts have abandoned Wikileaks due to the controversial nature of the site and the continued DDoS attacks. Interestingly enough, the US Government hasn’t gone after the Wikileaks domain yet. This should be an easy job considering the seizure of Torrent-Finder last week, and the fact that the US Government is the copyright holder of the leaked cables. Even if the .org domain is seized, Wikileaks is not going away since there are still plenty of backup domains around which can be used. In a way, this cat-and-mouse game is reminiscent of the anti-piracy efforts against torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay that we’ve witnessed over the years. Every time a hosting provider cuts off access, the site reappears somewhere else unharmed. If a domain is seized, a new one is registered in a matter of seconds and the game continues. Article from: TorrentFreak. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MPAA To Target Pirating College Students and Rogue Universities Posted: 05 Dec 2010 10:10 AM PST Starting tomorrow, the MPAA will send out letters to higher education institutions in the United States, urging them to protect the interests of the six major movie and television studios. In addition, the MPAA will announce that it will start warning college and university students who are illegally sharing motion picture movies on college campus networks. Those who don't abide will have to face the consequences.
Individual movie companies have sent thousands of infringement notices but these campaigns have never been led by the MPAA, until now. This week the MPAA will notify all college and university presidents about this upcoming policy change, and at the same time the movie industry outfit will urge institutions to do whatever they can to stop illegal downloading on their campus networks. In July this year, the US put into effect a new requirement for colleges and universities to stop illicit file-sharing on their networks. This legislation puts defiant schools at risk of losing federal funding if they don't do enough to stop illicit file-sharers on their campus. With this ammunition in hand the MPAA drafted a letter which TorrentFreak received a copy of this weekend, a few days before it will be mailed to the universities. In the letter the MPAA politely asks the colleges and universities to help the movie industry to fight the evil that piracy is. The MPAA writes that the jobs of 2.4 million US workers are at stake, if proper countermeasures are not taken. “For these workers and their families, online theft means declining incomes, lost jobs, reduced health and retirement benefits, and a lessened ability to provide their children with an education at institutions like yours,” MPAA’s anti-piracy head Daniel Mandil writes. “In addition, online theft is a job-killer that also reduces the number of opportunities for graduates of your institution to make a living in the creative sectors.” “Beyond the negative economic consequences for both the current workforce and future employment, the downloading and distribution of copyrighted works are serious offenses that carry with them the risk of substantial monetary damages and, in some cases, criminal prosecution,” Mandil adds. Of course, between the lines the MPAA also notes that colleges and universities who fail to implement proper anti-piracy policies, may lose federal funding. The letter further notes that the MPAA itself will get involved in sending out warning letters to higher education institutions for any ‘illegal activity’ they detect. This, in addition to the DMCA takedown notices that individual film and television studios have been sending out already. Of course, the MPAA doesn’t only warn universities, they also offer solutions. One option that is recommended by the MPAA is to block students and employees access to ‘rogue web sites.’ This means, actively censoring BitTorrent search engines and indexes such as The Pirate Bay, Demonoid and isoHunt. Aside from commercial censorship there are also less aggressive methods such as ‘educational seminars,’ monitoring the browsing habits of students, or blocking all P2P-traffic entirely which some of the appointed ‘role model‘ schools do. Naturally, the additional DMCA notices and expensive countermeasures will take away a few hundred thousand dollars a year from the education budget, but it’s for a good cause. After all, if piracy continues at this rate many of the current students might not even be able to get a job when they graduate. Article from: TorrentFreak. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This week there are four newcomers in the list. The Town is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent this week.
This week has been quite a ride for Wikileaks, and for the herd of journalists that have been reporting on the site’s hosting difficulties. At times it almost seemed that the technology behind the site was becoming more interesting than the actual content being released, much to the delight of the US Government. 
The RIAA is famous for targeting college students with DMCA takedown notices or even full lawsuits. The MPAA however, has never been active on this front. | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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