Ever wondered how Ryu and Ken and all those street fightin’ street fighters of the game “Street Fighter” got their start? Well, director Joey Ansah’s “Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist” is going to tell you how. The series will be making its online premiere via Machinima, similar to Kevin Tancharoen’s “Mortal Kombat: Legacy” very soon. You can check out a teaser trailer for the web series below. As you’ll recall, Ansah actually started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for his vision of “Street Fighter.” I guess he got what he needed. I don’t know if selling the series to Machinima was what he had planned, but hey, it’s better than screening for bums in an alleyway, right? A thrilling, multilayered series, STREET FIGHTER: ASSASSIN’S FIST takes the audience back to the formative years of iconic characters Ryu and Ken as they live a traditional warrior’s life in secluded Japan. The boys are, unknowingly, the last practitioners of the ancient fighting style known as “Ansatsuken” (Assassin’s Fist). The series follows them as they learn about the mysterious past of their master, Gōken, and the tragic, dark legacy of the Ansatsuken style. Can their destiny be changed, or will history repeat itself? From the sounds of it, “Assassin’s Fist” will only concentrate on Ken and Ryu in the beginning, but like “Mortal Kombat,” it’ll probably expand its universe if the first series proves a hit with viewers. Ansah co-stars as Akuma, with Mike Moh as Ryu, Christian Howard as Ken, Togo Igawa as Gōtetsu, Akira Koieyama as Gōken, Gaku Space as Gōki, Mark Killeen as Mr. Masters, and Hal Yamanouchi as Senzo Until then, get over here — oh, wait, wrong videogame. Um, fight on?

In a tip of the hat to the fans who are eagerly awaiting news Disney have confirmed that principal photography on the new Star Wars film will commence on May 4th 2014. This day is known to fans as “Star Wars Day”, with the greeting “May the Fourth be with you” being exchanged across social networks. In the announcement of the date for filming to start Disney also advised fans that they would “see the return of some very familiar faces” who will join a trio of new lead actors. Many have taken this as a sign that Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford have all agreed to return and reprise their roles from the original movies. Many Star Wars fans were disappointed that the three original stars did not feature in the recent “prequel” movies, but the Screen Actors Guild longstanding boycott of George Lucas productions prevented them from appearing. Lucas selling the rights to Star Wars to Disney has meant the actors can now appear without breaking their union boycott. J.J. Abrams will direct the film, still known at this stage only as Episode VII. Abrams has in recent years garnered critical and commercial success – as well as the support of fans – with his re-imagined ‘Star Trek’ films. Star Wars Episode VII will commence filming on May 4 2014 at the famous Pinewood Studios in London, England. The studio is famous for being the place where nearly every James Bond film has been made, as well as the Stanley Kubrick films Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut. More recently the studio has provided sets for the films in the X-Men and The Hobbit series. The set date for the worldwide release of Star Wars Episode VII is 18 December 2015.

James Rebhorn, the busy character actor who played the father of Claire Danes' troubled CIA officer Carrie Mathison on the Showtime drama Homeland, has died. He passed away at his home on Friday, his agent Dianne Busch confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 65. Rebhorn also had a recent recurring role on the USA Network hit White Collar as Special Agent Reese Hughes, head of the FBI's Manhattan white-collar crime unit. During his prolific five-decade career, the Philadelphia native also was memorable as the district attorney that sent Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer to jail on the Seinfeld finale in 1998 and as the prosecution’s FBI expert automotive witness in the hilarious film My Cousin Vinny (1992). He also had stints as attorneys on the David E. Kelley shows The Practice and Boston Legal and recurring roles on Third Watch, The Book of Daniel, Law & Order and Big Lake. Rebhorn played the school's headmaster Mr. Trask in Scent of a Woman (1992) and was President Signoff in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000). His vast film résumé also includes Silkwood (1983), The House on Carroll Street (1988), Desperate Hours (1990), Regarding Henry (1991), Shadows and Fog (1991), Basic Instinct (1992), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Guarding Tess (1994), Independence Day (1996), The Game (1997), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Snow Falling on Cedars (1999), Meet the Parents (2000), Far From Heaven (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), Real Steel (2011) and The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012). Rebhorn was a mainstay of the Roundabout Theatre Company and most recently starred as a father stricken with Alzheimer's in Too Much, Too Much, Too Many, which opened in November at the Black Box Theatre in New York. He appeared onstage in the original production of I'm Not Rappaport in 1985 and in the revivals of Our Town, The Man Who Had All the Luck, Dinner at Eight, Twelve Angry Men and Prelude to a Kiss. He also was seen on the TV shows Kate & Allie, The Equalizer, Wiseguy, Enlightened and 30 Rock.

Despite fears that too many super hero films will leave fans bored, Disney and Marvel have scored – with the critics at this stage at least – another hit with Captain America : The Winter Soldier. Reviews of the film so far indicate that all the high octane action sequences you would expect are in the movie, but at heart the film is a complex conspiracy theory like thriller. The film, directed by Anthony & Joe Russo, takes place not too long after the events of the blockbuster film The Avengers, a movie that showed Thor, Hulk, Black Widow and Iron Man team up with Captain America to save New York and the planet from alien invaders. The Winter Soldier features Black Widow, once again played by Scarlett Johansson, team up with Captain America (Chris Evans) to tackle what appears to be another out of this world threat. Critics have described the great maturity and depth given to the movie as being a sign that so-called “comic book movies” really have come of age. Whilst Disney could have arguably just put out a standard action film and still scored a box office success, that the makers have clearly put a lot of work into the plot and character dynamics suggest they intend to make a film that will have a lasting legacy beyond box office success. Much of the film’s success is being credited to the performance given by Robert Redford. Whereas some A-list Hollywood stars have been known to give poor performances in return for a large fee for appearing in a blockbuster, here Redford brings all the skill and craft to screen as he did in films like Three Days Of The Condor and All The President’s Men. Captain America : The Winter Soldier opens worldwide during March 2014. It is the last scheduled character film prior to the much anticipated Avengers sequel, which is due to be released in 2015.

Days after the Supreme Court denied Kim Dotcom access to evidence held by the FBI, the Megaupload founder's legal team were back in court seeking other documents in connection with a compensation claim. During the hearing, however, a Crown lawyer took the opportunity to complain about Dotcom's use of Twitter. dotcom-laptopLast week the Supreme Court handed a significant blow to Kim Dotcom and his associates with a ruling confirming they would not be entitled to receive any more than a summary of the claims in the extradition case against them. Just days later and the Megaupload and Mega.co.nz founder’s legal team were back in court in connection with their huge compensation claim against the New Zealand police and the government’s GCSB spy agency following the raid on Dotcom’s Coatville mansion in 2012. The claim, for breaches of the Bill of Rights Act and the Government Communications and Security Bureau Act, spans not only Kim Dotcom but also his wife Mona, three of his Megaupload associates, plus one of their wives. On the basis that the surveillance leading up to the raid was carried out illegally, and that the raid itself was executed by the police using excessive force, the claim for compensation has reached around NZ$5m (US$4.27m) In the High Court in Auckland this morning, Dotcom lawyer Paul Davison said that he believed that additional documents being held by the government should be revealed as part of the discovery process. Should such documents exist, Davison said, then he would ask that Justice Winkelmann orders their disclosure. However, Crown lawyer David Boldt said there was nothing left to hand over. “The defendants at least have discovered thousands of documents in this proceeding and have been extraordinarily diligent in scouring records for relevant material,” Boldt said. “What I can say is, if that material existed, it would have been discovered, and we’ve sworn affidavits to the effect that this is all there is.” The Crown also took the opportunity to attack Dotcom’s use of Twitter, a service used by the Megaupload founder to give his followers a window into his private life. Dotcom posts tweets several times every day, sometimes giving his 350,000 followers updates on his family but on other occasions referring to his ongoing legal battles with both the United States and New Zealand governments. That has included the posting documents connected to his case Crown lawyer Kristy McDonald said that through his actions on Twitter, Dotcom had demonstrated “considerable disregard” for court processes and suggested that any documents obtained by Dotcom might end up getting published on the social networking platform. “Is this about obtaining documents so they can be put out in the public arena?” McDonald questioned. The notion was dismissed by Dotcom’s lawyer. This is the second attack on Dotcom’s use of Twitter. In December 2013, the U.S. Government claimed that the entrepreneur’s use of the social networking site made his defense less credible. Dotcom’s legal team, however, suggested that government attempts “to widely disseminate a one-sided, cherry-picked set of facts” threatened to “infect the jury pool before defendants are afforded any opportunity to present their side of the story.” In the meantime, Dotcom’s tweets continue. Although not mentioning anyone by name, Dotcom today criticized former security staff for “leaking family secrets” and demanding large sums of money. He said that rumors suggesting he treats his staff badly are untrue. Dotcom Tweets The compensation hearings, which will continue in the High Court tomorrow, will see Dotcom’s lawyers argue that the manner in which the 2012 raid was carried out breached his human rights. Earlier this year the Court of Appeal decided that the warrants used in the raid were not in themselves unlawful. Dotcom’s appeal to the Supreme Court in that matter is pending. Torrentfreak

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. ‘47 Ronin’ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ 'The Pirate Fairy' completes the top three. 47ronin.jpgThis week we have three newcomers in our chart. 47 Ronin is the most downloaded movie this week. The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart. Ranking (last week) Movie IMDb Rating / Trailer 1 (8) 47 Ronin 6.5 / trailer 2 (…) The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug 8.2 / trailer 3 (…) The Pirate Fairy 6.9 / trailer 4 (2) Anchorman 2 (Webrip) 6.9 / trailer 5 (1) The Wolf Of Wall Street 8.5 / trailer 6 (5) Frozen 8.1 / trailer 7 (3) 12 Years A Slave 8.4 / trailer 8 (…) 300: Rise of an Empire 7.0 / trailer 9 (4) Bad Country ?.? / trailer 10 (9) Gravity 8.2 / trailer

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The new theme is finished and finally released thus ending the BETA stage. For those which you wanted something a little bit brigter, you can now select the "Bright SFZ" theme, from the menu. We look forward to receiving your feedback by clicking the link bellow: http://scenefz.net/forum-vt17244.html This is an announcement it has been sent to all members of this site..

Congratulations to gogetlost and his awesome logo ripoff design! Everyone seems to love it. Great job! * Wait times for new users have been removed. We said f*%# that stink and got rid of it. End of story. * Currently we have opened up signups for the weekends only. Go tell someone about it I guess. * The sitewide freechy freechness called freeleech is still going on! How long will it last? Who knows. Collect some Extreme content! * FreeWeb has its own format now. There is no need to add "[FREEWEB]" in the title of torrents.

usic industry group IFPI released its latest Digital Music Report this week. The report includes some mandatory pages on the continuing piracy problem and claims that pirate site blockades are hugely effective. According to the music group it's now time to expand the blockades to other countries, and censor mobile networks too. stop-blockedIn recent years blockades of “pirate” websites have spread across Europe and elsewhere. In the UK, for example, more than 30 websites are currently blocked by the major ISPs per court order. Opponents of this censorship route often warn that the measures inhibit free speech and risk overblocking. However, music industry group IFPI disagrees, pointing out that the rights of creators to protect their work trump these concerns. “Despite misrepresentation by some anti-copyright campaigners, courts have consistently found that the blocking of sites providing illegal content achieves an appropriate balance of fundamental rights,” IFPI writes in its latest Digital Music Report. IFPI points out that the ISP blockades in several European countries are having effect. Drawing on information supplied by data intelligence firms comScore and Nielsen, they report that “BitTorrent usage” decreased 11 percent in countries where pirate sites are censored, while it increased elsewhere. “Website blocking measures implemented by ISPs have been effective. Between January 2012 and July 2013, European countries where blocking orders are in place saw BitTorrent use decline by 11 per cent, while European countries without such orders saw BitTorrent use increase by 15 per cent.” tpbblockade The data further shows that this blockade effect is most pronounced in Italy and the UK, where the most torrent sites are blocked. In Italy BitTorrent traffic dropped 13 percent and in the UK the decline was even larger, 20 percent. The report doesn’t make it clear whether actual BitTorrent traffic was measured, or only page views at popular torrent sites. Regardless, IFPI notes that there’s still plenty of work to be done. The blockades are currently limited to fixed lines, for example, and should be expanded to mobile networks as well. In addition, IFPI says that the blockades should be expanded to other countries worldwide. “The industry believes that website blocking is an effective tool to help tackle digital piracy and should be available in more countries worldwide. It also needs to be extended to cover mobile networks,” IFPI reports. The music industry group doesn’t name any countries, but perhaps they are hinting at the RIAA to push for “voluntary” blockades in the United States. In any case, if it’s up to IFPI the number of ISP blockades around the world will continue to increase. The results reported by IFPI run contrary to a decision from the Dutch Court of Appeals earlier this year, which concluded that the Pirate Bay blockade was “disproportionate and ineffective.” As a result, Dutch ISPs were allowed to lift the access restrictions.

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Hi ! I decided to stop DEVILOID. Since several months now i'm a little bit fed up about people insulting me, cheating, creating multiple accounts, etc and etc... Having to rebuild 6pix elsewhere was the straw that broke the camels back. I do not have the courage to do it, as i do not have the courage to continue deviloid anymore. I will not renew the hosting for APRIL. The tracker will be turned into FREELEECH until the END, take all you need till it's possible. I also increased all download slots to 1000. Thank you very much to all the uploaders, the donors and the seeders. Thank you very much to the mods for helping me. image host closed down by host, admin gives up, freeleech until the end.

So the big fun story of last week was this streaming movie app called Popcorn Time. Essentially, it aggregated torrent links and packaged them with artwork and a nice interface that allows one-click streaming of movies. Popcorn Time is incredibly illegal almost anywhere, but it’s also almost impossible to stop people from using it without ISP intervention. Even though the original version of the app has been killed off, the project has already been forked and replicated by a new group. Now that the concept is out there I doubt it will ever go away completely — whatever iteration may come. The absolutely lovely irony here is that Popcorn Time is doing for distribution of pirated movies exactly what the movie industry needs to do for itself. Torrents are confusing and a mess. My mom could not download a torrent app, find a torrent that was not a virus and download a movie on her own with no help. But she could definitely download Popcorn Time. As fast and available as torrents are, they’re still fragmented, dangerous and complicated. They require a modicum of technical familiarity and engender some risk every time you place your trust in an un-verified link. Popcorn Time unifies them under one roof — in exactly the agnostic, friendly way that the movie industry in aggregate has been so unable to do for its own products. In contrast, streaming movies with one click is a much more complicated and tortuous affair. Titles are split across a strata that include a variety of creators, distributors, technologies and pay gateways. There is no such thing as a one-price-plan that offers unfettered access to any movie you want to watch, and even if you want to rent an item you’re going to have to have at least 2-3 accounts on services from Apple, Netflix, Amazon or half a dozen others in order to guarantee the flick you want to see will be available when and if you want to see it. The torrent landscape — the illegal download market — has its own crumbling architecture of groups and sites risen and fallen. But the pirates are out-innovating the studios — and apps like Popcorn Time prove that the movie industry is not being held back because of technology, it’s the lawyers. Because the technology exists to make this happen easily. Services like Ultraviolet are proof of that. Many main-stream companies have even turned to torrents for use in delivering updates. If you’ve played World Of Warcraft in the past few years you’ve likely utilized torrents to get updates, whether you realize it or not. The other major media business — music — was struck by a very similar bombshell with Napster. Never before had the main stream been able to one-click download a song or album as easily — even if they wanted to pay. The point isn’t that Popcorn Time marks the first time that you can download movies illegally — but it is drop-dead simple. It democratizes movie piracy in the same way Napster did for music. Also, as my colleague Ryan Lawler pointed out to me when we were chatting about this, broadband connections have gotten a lot faster since Napster made its debut. Downloading a movie can take as little as 15 minutes, about the time it took to download an album back then. The music industry underwent a series of changes as a result of Napster. Albums broke into singles, digital surpassed disc and that has all culminated in the rise of the subscription over the pay-per-play model. Then Apple came along and essentially formalized the Napster model — throwing the labels a lifeline in their distressed and desperate hour. Content deals in the media business are made on 5-10-year cycles, and always have been. These included fractured elements like video on demand windows, theatrical release, streaming rights and broadcast rights — all of which are promised to separate entities with their own ‘middle man’ businesses. And each of those businesses have lawyers whose job it is to negotiate those deals in the most binding, most profitable way. Look at how technology has changed life in the last 10 years. Thanks to smartphones and easily available high-speed wireless internet, it’s unrecognizable. So we’re still beholden to content deals made for — quite literally — a different culture. I don’t even have anything with a disc drive in it besides game consoles — and I only buy discs when I know I might play them once or twice through and then sell them. Last night I was watching Shark Tank — and two young co-founders presented them with a business that rented e-textbooks, called Packback Books. College students are able to rent textbooks by the day when they need to reference them, adding up to a couple hundred dollars in savings per semester. These guys had exactly the kind of product we talk about every day on TechCrunch. 4/5 of the sharks 100% did not get it, at all. Kevin O’Leary especially was insistent in talking about why the powerful incumbent textbook publishers would never let this happen — largely informed by his years of negotiation and frustration with those publishers. Which only served to make it that much more evident that those same publishers are ripe for someone to undermine their way of doing business, in a way that could change the industry. I haven’t done any due diligence on Packback and or Popcorn Time, and this is not an endorsement. But it strikes me that this is exactly the kind of thing that will need to happen for the movie industry to come to its senses. There will be no major shakeup of the back-room deals (though powerful people like Apple’s Eddy Cue have been at it for years). Instead, someone will find a way to make those deals obsolete entirely. I’m not a piracy advocate, and never will be. I have friends in the movie and media business who are technicians, craftsmen — not high rollers. Their salary, like it or not, is directly related to you paying for a movie. It’s not the paying — it’s the way you pay. It’s not the renting — it’s the way you rent. It’s not the profits — it’s the greed. Something has to give. It may start somewhat innocuously, with a revenue share rental model — or perhaps Netflix’s backdoor content creator strategy will tip the scales. Or maybe an app will make it so easy to pirate films that the aging carapace of a hundred years of the movie business will slough away for a new model. But, sooner or later, it will happen.

In late February, FrostWire — a popular BitTorrent client — made news in the bitcoin community for including bitcoin-related features into an experimental build of the client. Today — the company announced they’ve released the latest version of the software (5.7.1) with all of the bitcoin goodness include, which should make bitcoin enthusiasts who run the software very happy. The concept is simple: torrent uploaders are able to include a bitcoin address for donations, allowing the public to tip them if they enjoy the upload. As an example, the feature could be useful for artists looking to get their records out to the masses, giving downloaders the opportunity to throw them a small amount of bitcoin (also litecoin and even dogecoin) in support of their work. The system could also work wonders for, say, freely-available software like Ubuntu project — allowing for the funding of distribution via torrent.

Toronto-based hip hop band Aint No Love have booked a world first with their new BitTorrent / Bitcoin venture. Alongside their regular iTunes offering, this week the group began distributing their album 'Tears of Joy' for free on BitTorrent, using FrostWire's just-debuted in-client Bitcoin tipping feature. Following a December 2013 teaser, February builds of FrostWire’s Windows, Mac and Linux BitTorrent clients included a ground-breaking new feature. The Frostwire client, which can be used in the same way as uTorrent or Vuze for example, now includes a torrent creation feature which supports Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and PayPal donations. Once a torrent is created and loaded into FrostWire, downloaders are given a new set of icons indicating which crypto-currency donation options are programmed into the release. http://torrentfreak.com/images/frostbitc.pngClicking any of these takes the downloader to a custom donation page, meaning that there is a direct connection between a torrent and a monetization option, something that has been absent from torrents since their creation well over a decade ago. Although software and a music single were used as a demo for the tipping system, no band had taken the plunge and used it for one of their albums. A month later and hip hop band Ain’t No Love have made history, becoming the first ever band to offer a full album for free on BitTorrent, using an integrated Bitcoin tipping mechanism. http://torrentfreak.com/images/aintnolove.png“Using Bitcoin has definitely widened our reach to people who don’t necessarily listen to our type of music, but like that we get down with Bitcoin, and started listening to our music, which is a cool thing in itself,” says lead singer Saidah Conrad. Having worked hard on a Bitcoin implementation, FrostWire say they are pleased to welcome the band on board. “Ain’t No Love’s Tears of Joy comes to FrostWire during a very special time – as a first ever .torrent album to support crypto-currency donations such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin (as well as the more traditional PayPal),” the company said. “So if you love the band just as much as we do, be sure to check them out on Facebook, share the video, spread the news on Twitter or simply show some support by giving a little tip, whatever you can, any way you can.” The other neat thing is that all donations go directly to the band as there is no middleman, and FrostWire is promising to keep it that way forever. The torrent for Ain’t No Love’s Tears of Joy can be downloaded

Welcum to any Deviloid Refugees Secondly,I'm sorry you lost your home.Many of the users and staff here have lost multiple homes over the years and we know how much it sucks. So we wanted to find a way to make it less painful. I have started a competition for 100k Credits to create a CSS stylesheet to make Emp look a little more like Deviloid.It's not much but I hope it helps.If anyone wishes to enter, it can be found in this thread: 100k credits for a Deviloid stylesheet Also, for members in good standing on Deviloid who come to Emp, I wish to offer a Welcum Pack to help you get that ratio going again and to settle in. Any Deviloid member with an Empornium account less than 1 week old, I'm offering 10k credits and 2 weeks of personal freeleech on all torrents. To claim this please send a Staff PM to Mod+ with your Deviloid Account name and email address. We will be checking so please don't do the wrong thing. Also depending on numbers it may take a while to process them all. Please be patient we will do our best.

Site visit and red species problem has been resolved, please tracker modified before the membership change back the default tracker address (unmodified not change): ....Your passkey Sites these days instability for our members experience inconvenience, we apologize. Anniversary of free time extended to at 0:00 on March 28, to show compensation. Sites will open invitation after further stabilize the system, please be patient. If there Bug go to the forum feedback. Thank you for support, after the storm, is the rainbow. HDWinG Management Group

After 42mins of downtime, All is well, please report any (new) bugs to site staff via IRC or StaffBox msg. thanks again.

Dear members, As our birthday celebrations come to an end, we wanted to have a few parting words. Thank you to our dedicated users who have stuck with us through the past years! There have been many ups and downs and we are glad that so many of you are still with us. We would never have made it this far though without our amazing users. As a final birthday present, we have given every user who was active in the last month an invite to share with their friends. To ensure that majority of our users share the happiness and the joys of torrenting, Amateurs will be able to use their invites until Sunday, 29th March 2014, 1400 hrs GMT/UTC. Over the past year here at GGn we have seen many changes to the site, but not enough. We want to fix that. Hence forth, our fifth year of existence shall be known as the year of change. Why's that you might ask? Well here's just a small sample of what we want to accomplish this year: Grow our dev team and increase development Improve our torrent moderation levels to bring an even higher level of quality to our torrents Expand the blog and *hopefully* get some more original content and site-related posts Implement more of our users suggestions Modify some parts of the sites design to align better with our goals Increase our torrent count even further along with our upload initiatives and site-projects Foster game development initiatives here at GGn ... and much more We hope you enjoyed the birthday bash! Let the wild ride called year 5 begin! Game on, -GGn Staff

uTorrent isn’t free to download on the PC alone. The popular “Goliath” of peer-to-peer file sharing also has an extremely popular Android version. uTorrent on Android is just as free and just as good (well, almost). A recent major update to uTorrent’s Android version has added some great features to the torrent-file manager. First and foremost, it’s worth noting that uTorrent users can now select individual files within a torrent. Previously, this option was not available to Android uTorrent users. Additionally, multiple quality-of-life improvements have been introduced to uTorrent’s latest Android version, such as the ability to delete torrents, files (or both), change a download’s location even after the download started, as well as multiple bug fixes and performance tweaks. uTorrent has been gaining public attention for years now, mainly because it’s easy to set up, the client size is extremely small, and the client performs exceedingly well. The Android version of uTorrent works flawlessly and allows users to access the same amount of content that would normally be reserved for PC or Mac users. Download speeds are great (of course, these are still limited to 4G or Wi-Fi connections), and uTorrent’s resource management is top-notch. A free download of uTorrent is available on the Play Store, so if you want to reap the benefits of a quality, mobile-optimized peer-to-peer client free of charge, uTorrent Android is the number one choice.

The verdict is in. On March 20th, a federal jury in Manhattan found the former MP3tunes founder and CEO, Michael Robertson, and MP3tunes, a now non-existent digital music storage locker, liable for copyright infringement. The court awarded damages to EMI (a British multinational music recording and publishing company), that could very well amount to over $60 million when the final decision on damages is reached. There were 2,100 copyright infringements listed in this case. In the report by Reuters, the jury found the company liable on various claims that they infringed on copyrights associated with several artists including The Beatles, Coldplay and David Bowie. The jurors also found that MP3tunes was willfully blind to copyright infringement on its website, which was, as a lawyer for the recording companies suggested before the verdict, the first ruling by a jury of its kind. While the jury largely sided with the EMI recording and publishing companies, they sided with Robertson on some claims, including by deciding not to hold him liable for MP3tunes' failure to remove files from users' online "lockers" the website provided users to store music. EMI brought the copyright case against MP3tunes in 2007, which happened to be the same year that Viacom sued YouTube. This case, Capitol Records vs. MP3tunes, was considered to be a very involved and complex case due to the various aspects involved, and also largely in part that it was the first of its kind case for a digital music storage locker. This case has been followed very closely by the entertainment industry and copyright advocates. In 2005, Michael Robertson founded MP3tunes, which operated two websites. The first one was mp3tunes.com, which offered personal online storage lockers for music. Users could upload music to their lockers from their computer hard drives, or from third party websites by providing a URL. The second website, sideload.com, was a search engine that would find links to free music files on the internet. Sideload.com used an index of websites known to host free music files, and the index grew from the third party websites that mp3tunes.com users copied music from. MP3tunes filed for bankruptcy in 2012, due in large part to this lawsuit. Robertson has a long standing history fighting legal issues regarding MP3tunes, and the final decision on damages being held in a separate trial is expected to take two to three days. This is a huge win for the music industry, and it's the type of win Viacom was hoping for in its battle with YouTube which was recently settled out of court after seven years.

Another long-running hub for music piracy is no more. Over the last twenty-four hours, the popular leak site known as The Last Disaster has been forced to shutter its piracy blog after seven years of sharing music with the world. Updates posted by the owners of the site to Facebook indicate that those in control were locked out of their datacenter, which essentially brought their entire operation to a halt. This is not the first time a long-running piracy outlet has been shutdown seemingly out of the blue, and to be frank we hope it’s far from the last. Artists, especially smaller acts like those featured on sites such as The Last Disaster, depend on financial support from fans to survive. If you want your favorite scene to thrive it requires more support than a few tweets every time something new is released. Dig deep and do whatever you can to pay for the music you love. You’ll feel better, the artists you love will be able to create more, and who knows? The music may even sound a bit better because you know you acquired it through honest means.