After nearly 9 years of seeding The Pirate Bay’s oldest working torrent is still very much alive. Interestingly, the torrent is not a Hollywood classic nor is it an evergreen music album. The honor goes to a pirated copy of “Revolution OS”, a documentary covering the history of Linux, GNU and the free software movement.
One of the most enduring questions in the history of online file-sharing asks whether something bad will come from downloading and/or sharing a particular product. Will the the recording and movie industries come knocking? Will the police or even the FBI take an interest? Are the evil bottom-feeding trolls watching my torrents? It’s a complex area, but one that’s fairly easily understood.
More than half a year has passed since Demonoid went offline but many of its former users still haven’t lost faith. They cling on to every string of hope and this has led some to believe that the site returned as a meta-search engine under the new domain Demonoid.mk. While most people who are familiar with the old Demonoid know that the new site just trades on the brand of the famous torrent tracker, quite a few believe it’s a legit incarnation.
A new copyright infringement case filed this week looks set to cause a fresh round of controversy. Copyright trolls from Switzerland, who say they are part of a non-profit organization, are about to shake down thousands of alleged pirates who shared the 50 Cent movie All Things Fall Apart. However, in addition to the usual subscribers of ISPs such as Verizon, Comcast and AT&T, the trolls are trying to obtain the identities of individuals located at universities around the United States.
The homepage of the popular torrent search engine Torrentz disappeared from Google this week after Hollywood studio Paramount sent a peculiar DMCA takedown request. Paramount claims in the notice that the URL links to infringing content, but there are no links to torrents or even other torrent sites on Torrentz’ homepage. The meta-search engine has filed a counterclaim and is waiting for Google to respond.
One of the founders of huge newsgroup concern Giganews has lined up both Dropbox and Kim Dotcom’s Mega for criticism. Ron Yokubaitis, who is also co-founder of Golden Frog, the company behind Dump Truck and VyprVPN, says that Dropbox has a number of shortcomings including too much reliance on Amazon’s infrastructure in the United States. Courting more controversy, Yokubaitis also says that Mega’s customers are being “taken for a ride” by a company that has “little respect for governments.”
A few days ago two computer science students hacked a billboard in the center of Belgrade, Serbia, and replaced its standard message with a meters-wide Pirate Bay logo. The ‘hackers’ said they wanted to show that security of IT-systems is often lacking and their message didn’t fall on deaf ears. The manager of the billboard company thanked the pair for their efforts and rewarded them with a 4G iPad Mini each.
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Left Quote“The Pirate Bay has been one of the most important movements in Sweden for freedom of speech, working against corruption and censorship.
Peter Sunde Left Quote
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