TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- 100,000 P2P Users Sued in US Mass Lawsuits
- Extremists on Both Sides Means Piracy War Goes On Forever
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 31 Jan 2011 12:59 AM PST Check out TorrentFreak's new News Bits feed! .
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.
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| 100,000 P2P Users Sued in US Mass Lawsuits Posted: 30 Jan 2011 01:34 PM PST Check out TorrentFreak's new News Bits feed! . Mass P2P lawsuits have been filed all across the United States in recent months, especially by companies dealing with adult content. They have embraced this new revenue stream by the dozen and new studios are joining every month. Through these mass lawsuits the copyright holders are trying to obtain the personal details of (mostly) BitTorrent users who allegedly shared their material online. Once this information is handed over, they then offer the defendant the opportunity to settle the case for a few hundred up to a couple of thousand dollars, thereby avoiding a full trial and potentially even bigger financial penalties. In the United States the judicial system is currently being overloaded with new cases, but the scope of the issue was never really clear until now. An anonymous TorrentFreak reader has spent months compiling a complete overview of all the mass P2P lawsuits that have been filed in the US since the beginning of 2010, listing all the relevant case documents and people involved in a giant spreadsheet. The research shows that between 8th January 2010 and 21st January 2011, a total of 99,924 individuals have been sued. The vast majority of the defendants have allegedly used BitTorrent to share copyrighted works but a few hundred ed2k users are also included. Of the 80 cases that were filed originally, 68 are still active, with 70,914 defendants still in jeopardy. # defendants suedWhat’s further worth noting is that although the makers of the Hurt Locker were one of the first to sue, this scheme has now been hijacked by copyright trolls and adult movie studios. Nearly all the cases filed recently involve adult material, and the law firm behind the pioneering United States Copyright Group has now accepted its first adult cases as well. The mass lawsuits have had quite a lot of criticism from consumer rights organizations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in particular. One of the main points of critique is that the copyright holders have no intention of going to a full trial against each of the defendants. They are out to get a settlement, which means that the (possibly weak) evidence will never be tested in court. Two weeks ago the EFF filed an amicus brief in which it asked an Illinois judge to quash subpoenas issued in pay-up-or-else lawsuits involving alleged illegal file-sharing of pornography. "Copyright owners have a right to protect their works, but they can't use shoddy and unfair tactics to do so," said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. "We're asking the court to protect the rights of each and every defendant, instead of allowing these copyright trolls to game the system." All the information regarding these mass P2P cases can be accessed by the public though this Google spreadsheet that will be regularly updated. “I am hoping that having the data available will stimulate discussion and that it could be of value to people actively resisting/fighting the suits. Even if that is overly optimistic, public access to the information that shows the scope of this bullshit is, in and of itself, a good thing,” the anonymous spreadsheet creator told TorrentFreak. Stopping the lawsuits wont be easy though, considering the huge amounts of money that can be made by the suing parties. Just multiply the 100,000 defendants by an average settlement proposal of $1000 dollars and it’s clear that tens of millions of dollars can be made with this dubious scheme. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Extremists on Both Sides Means Piracy War Goes On Forever Posted: 30 Jan 2011 01:06 PM PST Check out TorrentFreak's new News Bits feed! . When referring to the so-called piracy menace, the entertainment industries love to draw beautifully clear battle lines. On one side sit the music and movie creatives, leaking blood, sweat and tears over their latest masterpieces. The toils of their labor will bring joy and happiness to millions while providing much-needed employment and a positive effect on the economy. If you’re looking to join a team of damn fine upstanding good guys, then this is the side to be on. If, however, you prefer the forces of darkness and intend to steal, thieve and defraud your way through the Internet, look no further than the opposing team. These scummy parasites contribute nothing, but instead munch their way through endless piles of media without a single thought for anyone but themselves. They never spend their money and are ruining the entertainment industries and the economy bit by bit, each and every time they connect to the Internet. It doesn’t take a genius to see that when the piracy ‘problem’ is defined like this, with good on one side and bad on the other, reaching a compromise is unlikely. In reality the situation should be explained in much broader terms, to encompass the reality of the file-sharing landscape and to acknowledge the status of the majority in the middle. Let’s not delude ourselves. There are people out there who won’t pay for any media, literally none whatsoever. If it’s not nailed down it’s getting downloaded. They won’t even pay for their cable TV and if a cloned modem or other hacked box is available, they aren’t paying for Internet access either. Equally, there are some crazy people in the entertainment industries who think that some day it will be possible, given enough force, aggression, technical measures and political pressure, to force everyone to pay for every single last piece of media, not just once, but time and again. Given these opposing standpoints with a veritable Grand Canyon between them, it’s little wonder that the file-sharing problem has turned into a war. But, in common with all wars, there are millions caught up in the middle who while tending to take sides, neither want nor deserve to be subjected to a massively polarized situation brought on by the feuding and unmoving factions on either side. The other reality is that, to a greater or lesser extent, the millions stuck in the middle of this war are all pirates to some degree. It’s very difficult to go about our daily business without infringing someone’s rights in today’s environment. Many millions will also download music and a movie here and there, or take the opportunity to grab a TV show from BitTorrent that aired at an inconvenient time or in another country. But these very same people buy and finance media too. They are consumers of regular TV, they go to the movies and pay for music in a dozen different forms, they go to concerts, buy products from ads with the latest Beyonce track in the background and make straight purchases from iTunes. They buy DVDs, they buy software, they buy magazines and they buy books. Last year someone helping with one of my articles commented “you must be the biggest pirates in the world at TorrentFreak”, and then responded with surprise when I revealed how much I spent on all sorts of media and entertainment in the previous 12 months. Just because people have the means to pirate, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they do. Nevertheless, for those who supplement their paid purchases with a visit to The Pirate Bay once in a while, the entertainment industries’ uncompromising stance means that they too are labeled in terms close to that of sub-human scum, but as millions of us know the piracy battle lines are nowhere near as clear cut as the industry lobbyists would have governments believe. But we aren’t on the brink of disaster either. As long as the overwhelming masses continue to understand that they can’t pirate everything all of the time and that a reasonable amount of money has to be made on media in order for it to exist, things will be just fine. However, if the entertainment industries continue with their current position – that they are absolutely entitled to their untold billions at any cost, that there is no middle ground, that all file-sharers are simply evil and should expect their activities to be monitored, throttled and legislated against – they should expect fewer moderates and more extremists in the future. Peace lies in the middle with the moderates being treated as such, but if the extremists on both sides have their way we will all be dragged into the persistent fighting of a war that simply cannot be won. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This week there are five newcomers in the list. The Green Hornet is the most downloaded movie of the week for the second week in a row.
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