About The German Wind plan by Xirvik is a semi seedbox. It features900 GB of storage space, a 100Mbps connection and hasunlimited bandwidth. You are allowed to run unlimitedsimultaneous torrents. The seedbox is hosted in Germany. Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit Xirvik

About The Cheap-b0x plan by b0x.es is a dedicated seedbox. It features1 TB of storage space, a 100Mbps connection and hasunlimited bandwidth. You are allowed to run simultaneous torrents. The seedbox is hosted in Germany. Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit b0x.es

About The Seedhost 2G plan by SeedHost.net is a dedicated seedbox. It features 1 TB of storage space, a 100Mbps connection and hasunlimited bandwidth. You are allowed to run simultaneous torrents. Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit SeedHost.net

About The Gourmet Box 2 plan by ByteSized Hosting is a shared seedbox. It features 900 GB of storage space, a 1Gbpsconnection and has unlimited bandwidth. You are allowed to run unlimited simultaneous torrents. The seedbox can be hosted in Luxembourg, Holland and France. Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit ByteSized Hosting

About The Value Xlarge plan by Pulsed Media is a shared seedbox. It features 920 GB of storage space, a 100Mbps connection and has unlimited bandwidth. Fair share bandwidth policy up to 15 TB. You are allowed to run unlimited simultaneous torrents. The seedbox is hosted in France. This seedbox comes with a Service-level Agreement. Public trackers are allowed Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit Pulsed Media

About The D-1T plan by YourSeedbox is a dedicated seedbox. It features 1 TB of storage space, a 100Mbps connection and hasunlimited bandwidth. You are allowed to run unlimitedsimultaneous torrents. Public trackers are allowed Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit YourSeedbox

About The D-VB plan by GBox is a dedicated seedbox. It features 1 TBof storage space, a 100Mbps connection and has unlimitedbandwidth. You are allowed to run unlimited simultaneous torrents. Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit Gbox

S-100G (torrentCloud) by YourSeedbox About The S-100G (torrentCloud) plan by YourSeedbox is a shared seedbox. It features 1.25 TB of storage space, a 1Gbpsconnection and has unlimited bandwidth. You are allowed to run 25 simultaneous torrents. Public trackers are allowed Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit YourSeedbox

10gbit-max by Seed.ST About The 10gbit-max plan by Seed.ST is a shared seedbox. It features1.5 TB of storage space, a 10Gbps connection and hasunlimited bandwidth. You are allowed to run unlimitedsimultaneous torrents. The seedbox is hosted in France. Features FTP SFTP SSL Shell VPN WebDAV Visit Seed.ST

With anti-piracy outfits and dubious law-firms policing BitTorrent swarms at an increasing rate, many Bittorrent users are looking for ways to hide their identities from the outside world. To accommodate this demand we'll give an overview of 5 widely used privacy services. With an increasing number of BitTorrent users seeking solutions to hide their identities from the outside world, privacy services have seen a spike in customers recently. Below we’ve listed some of the most-used services that allow BitTorrent users to hide their IP-addresses from the public. The services discussed in this post range from totally free to costing several dollars a month. The general rule is that free services are generally slower or have other restrictions, while paid ones can get you the same speeds as your regular connection would. VPN Hundreds and thousands of BitTorrent users have already discovered that a VPN is a good way to ensure privacy while using BitTorrent. For a few dollars a month VPNs route all your traffic through their servers, hiding your IP address from the public. Some VPNs also offer a free plan, but these are significantly slower and not really suited for more demanding BitTorrent users. Unlike the other services listed in this article, VPNs are not limited to just BitTorrent traffic, they will also conceal the source of all the other traffic on your connection too., Torguard and PrivateInternetAccess are popular among BitTorrent users, but a Google search should find dozens more. It is recommended to ask beforehand if BitTorrent traffic is permitted on the service of your choice. BTGUARD is a proxy service that hides the IP-addresses of its users from the public. The service works on Windows, Mac, Linux and as the name already suggests, it is set up specifically with BitTorrent users in mind. Besides using the pre-configured client, users can also set up their own client to work with BTGuard. It works with all clients that support “Socks V5″ proxies including uTorrent and Vuze. In addition, BTGuard also includes encryption tunnel software for the real security purists. After these words of praise we’re obligated to disclose that BTGuard is operated by friends of TorrentFreak, but we think that should be interpreted as a recommendation.

Continuing a long-standing New Year’s tradition, today we present an up-to-date list of the world’s most-visited BitTorrent sites. At the start of 2014 The Pirate Bay continues to pull in the most visitors, followed by KickassTorrents and Torrentz. Household name isoHunt.com disappears after settling with the MPAA, but its replacement isoHunt.to is one of this year's newcomers. With 2013 now behind us, which torrent sites are pulling in the most visitors at the start of 2014? Traditionally, BitTorrent users are very loyal, which is reflected in the top 10 where most sites have had a consistent listing for more than half a decade. But in common with every year, 2014 sees a few movers and shakers, as well as several newcomers. The top three slots remain intact compared to last year, with The Pirate Bay in the lead despite several domain name changes. The most notable absentee this year is isoHunt. The site has been featured in the top 10 since 2006, but went offline in 2013 after it settled its legal dispute with the MPAA for $110 million. Last year’s newcomer H33t also fell out of the top 10 after it lost its domain name. The site relaunched after two months downtime at H33t.to but has lost most of its traffic. The first newcomer in the top 10 this year is YIFY-Torrents, which is also one of the youngest torrent sites after being founded in 2011. The site has grown tremendously over recent months, and by focusing on popular movie releases YIFY has evolved into Hollywood’s new nemesis. Isohunt clone/replacement isoHunt.to is the second newcomer, which is quite an achievement since the site only launched two months ago. RARBG is the last ‘new’ name, the site has been around for many years but is listed in the top 10 for the first time. Below is the full list of the top 10 most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. Only public and English language content sites are included. The list is based on various traffic reports and we display the Alexa and U.S. Compete rank for each. In addition, we include last year’s ranking for each of the 10 sites. Did we miss anything? Feel free to join the discussion below. People who want to increase their privacy may wants to use a proxy or VPN service. 1. THE PIRATE BAY To many people The Pirate Bay is synonymous with BitTorrent. The site was founded more than a decade ago and is still expanding, despite various legal troubles, domain hops and ISP blockades. The Pirate Bay currently has well over a billion page views a month. ALEXA RANK: 79 (EST) / COMPETE RANK: NA / LAST YEAR #1 2. KICKASSTORRENTS KickassTorrents was founded in 2009 and has quickly moved up in our top 10, settling into 2nd position this year. Responding to a looming domain seizure the sitemoved from its kat.ph domain to Kickass.to last August. Despite domain troubles and blockades by Internet providers in the UK and Italy, the site continues to grow. ALEXA RANK: 103 / COMPETE RANK: 452 / LAST YEAR #2 3. TORRENTZ Torrentz has been the leading BitTorrent meta-search engine for many years. Unlike the other sites featured in the list Torrentz does not host any torrent files, it merely redirects visitors to other places on the web. The site uses several domain names with .eu being the most popular. ALEXA RANK: 153 / COMPETE RANK: 1.377 / LAST YEAR #3 4. EXTRATORRENT ExtraTorrent continues to gain more traffic and has moved up again in the top 10, now placed as the 4th most-visited torrent site. This success didn’t go unnoticed by rightsholders groups such as the MPAA who recently called out ExtraTorrent as one of the top pirate sites. The site was forced to trade in its .com domain for .cc this year, after it was suspended by its domain registrar. ALEXA RANK: 363 / COMPETE RANK: 2,286 / LAST YEAR #5 5. YIFY-TORRENTS Roughly three years ago nobody had ever heard of YIFY but today the movie release group is one of the most recognizable movie piracy brands on the Internet. This reputation resulted in a court-ordered ISP blockade in the UK last year. ALEXA RANK: 809 / COMPETE RANK: 6,245 / LAST YEAR #NA 6. EZTV Unlike the other sites in the top 10, TV-torrent distribution group EZTV is a niche site specializing in TV content only. Because of its focus, EZTV’s traffic varies in line with the TV seasons. ALEXA RANK: 1,050 / COMPETE RANK: 10,790 / LAST YEAR #7 7. 1337X 1337x focuses more on the community aspect than some competitors. The site’s owners say they launched 1337x to “fill an apparent void where it seemed there was a lack of quality conscience ad free torrent sites with public trackers.” In common with most other sites in the top 10, 1337x.org is currently blocked by the larger UK Internet providers. ALEXA RANK: 1,382 / COMPETE RANK: 11,445 / LAST YEAR #6 8. ISOHUNT.TO Isohunt.to was launched last October, less than two weeks after isoHunt.com shut down. The site is not affiliated with the old isoHunt crew but copied the site’s design. This has not been without success, as the site now has millions of pageviews a day. ALEXA RANK: 1,550 / COMPETE RANK: NA / LAST YEAR #NA 9. BITSNOOP BitSnoop is one of the largest BitTorrent indexes, claiming to index a massive 21,437,061 torrent files at the time of writing. The site’s torrents list continues to grow steadily, as do the number of DMCA notices that it receives. ALEXA RANK: 1,714 / COMPETE RANK: 5,633 / LAST YEAR #8 10. RARBG RARBG, which started out as a Bulgarian tracker several years ago, is the third newcomer in the top 10. Together with isoHunt.to it is the only website in the list that hasn’t been blocked in the UK, which may in part explain its popularity. ALEXA RANK: 1,867 / COMPETE RANK: 13,238 / LAST YEAR #NA Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect and that Compete has plenty of flaws, but combined both do a pretty good job at comparing sites that operate in a similar niche. The Alexa rank for The Pirate Bay is estimated based on the ranking of the .sx domain and isoHunt’s Alexa ranking is based on the past month only.

What is a TORRENT file? Torrents are files that have the extension .torrent. These files come in small sizes and contain information about the files they contain, the announce address of the tracker, the hash key, etc. For example, if you have the file I.Robot.2.(2008).torrent, it would contain all the important info about the archives it contains. To understand how the system works and learn how to open torrent files, you must know a few general things: Tracker – Is an application (or website) that indexes torrents in a database. It also keeps track of peers. BitTorrent Client – Is an application that allows users to open torrent files and download their contents onto the hard drive. This application stands on the idea that every user downloading a certain thing will be willing to share it while it is being downloaded (share the pieces) and after the download is finished. Seeder – A seeder is a person having the whole file downloaded (not just pieces of it) and keeps its client open so that others can download it. Leecher – A leecher is a user that is downloading the file. He has only pieces of the file so he can’t be a seeder. He becomes a seeder after the download is finished. Now that you have a basic understanding of the system, you understand that what you need is the BitTorrent client. It is the only one that can open a torrent file and allow you to begin downloading the goodies from the seeders. Let’s find a good client. Finding and downloading a good client You can search the Internet for BitTorrent clients and you will find plenty of them. They are all free. However, some are better than others. For Windows users, we recommend µTorrent. It is a small client and it is very easy to use. For Mac OS X users we recommend Azureus. Let’s assume you use Windows. The first step is to find the client. It is best to obtain it from the manufacturer’s website. In our case, you can find µTorrent here: http://www.utorrent.com/. Downloading from the developer’s official website protects your privacy and your computer. We will discuss this later in the tutorial. Here is how the website looks like: As you can see, this is a nice website with some cool features. It is very clean and you can instantly see where to go if you want to download their client. Before you start downloading, it would be great if you could visit the Guides page. You will find lots of useful information about how torrents work and on how to properly configure your new client. Here is how the Guides page looks like: After you have documented yourself, go back to the Home page and click Get µTorrent to start downloading. Here is the box that should appear: Click Save File and choose where to save it on your hard drive. Make sure you remember the path so you can find it with ease after the download is completed. Before proceeding to the actual installation, it is a best practice to save the file on a CD or DVD. This way, you will have it every time you reinstall your Operating System. Now that the file is saved, let’s proceed to the installation. Installing our new client Double click on the file you have downloaded (on the hard drive or on the removable media, it makes no difference). Here is what should appear: This is a security warning and it is here for a reason. Whenever you download a file from the Internet, you are putting yourself and your computer at risk. Always download from the developer’s official website. Otherwise, you might receive a file that is packed with viruses, worms, Trojans, and tracking software. These malicious pieces of code can steal confidential and private data, damage your data, or even damage your computer physically. If downloading a file poses these threats, imagine what running that file can do. This is why Windows is alerting you. However, as you can see, the Publisher is BitTorrent Inc and we know where the file came from. So we can run it without any problems. Go ahead and click Run: In this next window, we are being asked to select a location where to install the BitTorrent client. Although it is recommended to leave the path as it is, you can modify it by clicking Browse. Also, it is recommended to leave the 3 options (“Create Start menu entry", “Create Quick Launch icon", and “Create Desktop icon") checked. Once you are finished, click Install and it’s all done. You have successfully installed a tool that can open torrent files and allow you to download everything you like. Let’s see it in action. Go to your desktop and double click µTorrent.exe. Here is how the interface looks like: This is a very good design and very intuitive. All your torrents will appear under the Information Bar and you will be able to see their name, size, number of seeds, number of peers, download speed, and time remaining. These are the most important. On the left side your can keep track of your torrents and can choose what torrents to see: All, Downloading, Completed, Active, or Inactive. Now, let’s open our first torrent file. This is what we are interested in. Go to the toolbar and click File. Choose Add Torrent (Shortcut CTRL + O). As you can see, the only supported file type is torrent: I will open the only torrent I have in the folder. Here is what will appear next: You must first choose where to download the file. After you are happy with the location, click OK and the download will begin. Here is how the actual download looks like: My speed is small because the torrent just started downloading. You must allow 10-15 minutes to achieve a good speed (500-600 KB/s). You are now a master at installing BitTorrent clients and opening torrent files. Congratulations!

Quite a lot of companies use FTP-servers today so that their employees can access data from any computer. This article will tell you how to browse an FTP-server using your Mac. It is really easy. FTP clients – Two alternatives When it comes to FTP clients, there are two good choices for Mac OS X. One is free and one is not, but it is not expensive. CYBERDUCK Cyberduck is an open source project created by David Kocher. It is functional, easy-to-use and beautiful. Visit Cyberduck's homepage or download it now. If you find Cyberduck useful, consider donating a buck or two to David Kocher. TRANSMIT Transmit is another great FTP application for the Mac. It costs $29.95 which is a rather good price considering what you get. However, check what your needs are – if you are just going to download and upload files to a server, Cyberduck is probably enough. If you wish to download Transmit, go to Transmit's homepage.

Using torrents, you can quickly download movies, films and other files to your Mac. A torrent is a file with the file extension .torrent. This article will explain how to download torrents on a Mac. Are torrent files legal? Torrent files are not illegal, but downloading copyrighted material is. However, there are many torrent files out there containing non-copyrighted material which is why we choose to publish this article. How torrent downloads work on the Mac Without going all geeky, we'll now try to explain how torrents work. SOMEONE DOWNLOADS A .TORRENT FILE The first thing that happens is that a user downloads a .torrent file. This file is very small and contains only a list of the files that are to be downloaded and some other stuff used by the user's torrent application. OPENING THE TORRENT The next thing that happens is that the person that downloaded the file opens it with an application designed to handle this kind of file (more about these applications later). This application will try to find other people trying to download the same file. The torrent application will now grab pieces of the file from the other computers and put them together into one file. The user's torrent application will in its turn start to share pieces that you have downloaded with other users. You get some and you give some. Torrent applications for the Mac There are various torrent applications available for Mac users. In this article, we'll tell you about our favorite application, Transmission. It's simple to use and free (we're not paid to say this). TRANSMISSION Transmission is a great torrent application for Mac. It's easy to understand, it works pretty flawlessly and it has most of the features that one wants. To download Transmission,click here (download will begin immediately). Adding torrent files to TransmissionCREATE A NEW DOWNLOAD FOLDER Okay, let's assume that you have downloaded Transmission and want to start downloading files. The first thing you should do is create a folder where your downloads will be put. For instance, name it "Downloads" and place it on your desktop. TELL TRANSMISSION THAT YOU WANT YOUR DOWNLOADS TO BE OUT INTO THAT FOLDER Now, open Transmission and go to the top menu. ClickTransmission > Preferences. In the preferences window, click the second tab labeled "Transfers". A drop-down menu is now available and from that menu, choose the folder where you want your downloads to be put (the folder you just created). GET A TORRENT FILE The next thing you do is download a .torrent file. You do this from your web browser. Find a web site that offers torrents and find a download button. When you click it, a .torrent file will be downloaded to your computer. OPEN THE .TORRENT FILE WITH TRANSMISSION Now drag the torrent file into Transmission and it will be visible in the list. All the files that you want to download will now be created in the Downloads folder. These files are useless and broken until Transmission says that the files are 100% downloaded. You can throw the .torrent file away after adding it to Transmission. Download problems that may occurTHE TORRENT DOWNLOAD WON'T START The problem with torrents is that they depend on someone seeding the file from his or her computer. Seeding means that you allow other users to download parts of the file from your computer. Sometimes no users are downloading or seeding the file and therefore it can't be downloaded. Try to find another file. Finding good torrents might be tricky, but have patience.

Dear Lifehacker, I keep hearing people talk about BitTorrent Sync, but I'm not sure why I should care about it. Isn't it just another file syncing service? Why would I use it instead of something like Dropbox?P BitTorrent Sync Keeps Your Files In Sync, Skips the Insecure Cloud If you've ever wanted a security-focused, Dropbox-like file and folder syncing option,…Read more Sincerely, Split TorrentP Dear ST, You're right, the usefulness of BitTorrent Sync isn't immediately evident. While it might look like a Dropbox replacement on the surface, that's not exactly how it works. So, let's talk about what it is and how it works before we go on to some of the uses for it. What BitTorrent Sync Does (and Doesn't) Do At a glance, BitTorrent Sync looks a lot like Dropbox, but that's not exactly the case. It is a file syncing service where you can sync files and directories across computers, but you don't have access to those files online like you do with Dropbox...and in some cases, that's a good thing. P BitTorrent Sync uses peer-to-peer file sharing to synchronize your files between computers. When you point the BitTorrent Sync app at a directory on your computer, you share those files with any other computer that you give a secret passcode to. The data only lives on your computer and the computers you share it with (or mobile phones). It's never uploaded to a third party server like other file syncing programs. Since you data is never uploaded to a server, your storage capacity is only limited to your own hard drive, and no one else has access to your files. P A beginner's guide to BitTorrent Click to viewDespite the fact that BitTorrent has been around for a good 6 years now, the lightning …Read more The downside to BitTorrent Sync is that your home computer must be on at all times if you want synchronize files. This is great as a security measure because your private data is never on a server, but it does make accessing files a bit of a pain. P Likewise, sharing is a bit more complicated with BitTorrent Sync than it is with most file syncing services. If you want to share files with other people, they'll need BitTorrent Sync software installed as well as a secret code you generate and send to them. P When You'd Want to Use BitTorrent SyncP BitTorrent Sync isn't quite as easy to use as something like Dropbox for everyday file backups, but it's still a solid option for file syncing. Most importantly, BitTorrent Sync is one of the most secure ways to sync files because your data never goes to a server. That means that nobody can peek in on your private files. As Wired recently pointed out, this is a key feature:P For the past 15 years, our software and data have steadily moved into the cloud, bringing massive gains in convenience. The cloud makes it easier not only to share data, among other things. But in some ways, it has also eroded our privacy. The NSA, it seems, has been tapping major cloud services in order to spy on users, and the revelations highlighted the dangers of using a file-sharing service like Dropbox. Indeed, some of the leaked NSA documents indicated that Dropbox had been specifically targeted. But in a departure from Dropbox, Sync doesn't store data in one central repository that can be tapped by the NSA and others. It connects machines via peer-to-peer networking, meaning they can sync without storing data on any server. That means an interloper can't access data without tapping each individual machine.P Besides the security, BitTorrent Sync is also great because it isn't limited by space—you don't need to worry about cloud storage limits, since the only limits are your own hard drives (which are likely much bigger than Dropbox's 2GB of space, or even Box's 50GB of space).P In addition, it's also one of the best ways to share a massive amount of files with someone. Since BitTorrent Sync is free it's easy to share project files with coworkers, large videos with friends, or any other massive folder you need to share. As long as they also have BitTorrent Sync, of course.P For example, if you're working on a movie with a partner, you probably have a folder with a couple hundred GB of video in it. With Dropbox, this would be expensive to store and share with your partner, but BitTorrent Sync keeps your computers in sync with each for free. Any time you need to send a massive file to someone, BitTorrent Sync will prove helpful. P Other Uses For BitTorrent SyncP Of course, like other file sharing services, BitTorrent sync can go beyond just syncing files. Most of our top 10 uses for Dropbox also apply to BitTorrent sync, and there are all sorts of other BitTorrent Sync-specific projects you can do too:P Top 10 Clever Uses for Dropbox Dropbox is an awesome service. You can back your files up to the cloud, sync them between…Read more Make your own Dropbox clone with a Raspberry Pi and BitTorrent SyncP Set up BitTorrent Sync on Your FreeNAS box (if you need help setting up FreeNAS our guide should get you there)P Use BitTorrent Sync to access your music from anywhereP Use Git with BitTorrent SyncP Generate easily shareable links to files with BitBoxP Create a Private Dropbox-style serverP BitTorrent Sync is still in beta, but it's worth downloading and messing around with if you're ever sharing large files or you're just worried about security. If nothing else, it's useful at least a few times a year when you need to share massive amounts of data with someone.

BitTorrent Sync is basically explicitly designed for people who need to move huge amounts of data back and forth between different devices. Now the service is getting support for the network attached storage these types are likely to use. Cloud-based syncing services like Dropbox, MediaFire, and Google Drive are incredibly useful for most most people but if you've got a huge amount of data or need to sync massive files it's not a terribly efficient way to move stuff between devices. BitTorrent Sync basically streamlines this by using the BitTorrent protocol to bypass the cloud altogether. A common use might be a video editor that needs to move large files between home and work computers. Until today, though, you've only been able to use the BitTorrent Sync App with mobile devices and your computer. Now, you'll be able to use it with NAS as well, which makes a lot of sense because if you've got so much data that the cloud is inconvenient, you're likely to need some networked storage for backup. At launch, NetGear will be the first partner, with support starting immediately, but BitTorrent told us that they'll have more partners soon.

The three largest BitTorrent trackers have banned the IP-ranges of several major hosting companies. The move aims to make it harder for anti-piracy outfits and other information gathering outfits to snoop on file-sharers. Unfortunately, the changes also mean that users of some VPNs, proxies and seedboxes can no longer connect. OpenBitTorrent, PublicBitTorrent and Istole.it are the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, coordinating the downloads of tens of millions of file-sharers every day. The non-commercial services don’t host or link to torrent files themselves. The trackers provide a useful function for the public, but are also used by copyright holders to track down pirates. This includes the companies that are used for the various “strikes” initiatives around the world, and various copyright trolls. To make these increasing snooping efforts more difficult, the tracker operators have decided to take a drastic measure. The three top trackers have all implemented a ban list which includes the IP-address ranges of many of the larger hosting providers, which are frequently used by anti-piracy firms. The operator of one of the trackers informed TorrentFreak that the measure will help to keep anti-piracy monitoring firms at bay. At least, those who use services of large hosting firms such as Leaseweb. However, there is also a downside to the measures. Since many VPN services, proxies and seedboxes also use these hosting providers, they are banned as well. The tracker operators are aware of these consequences, but note that there are ways to circumvent the ban. Also, affected services and users can still connect to DHT and PEX, which essentially makes the trackers obsolete. By using DHT, BitTorrent users are creating their own peer-to-peer trackers. The tracker operator we spoke to recommends enabling DHT whenever possible. “Trackers are really not needed anymore for torrents to work. All BitTorrent users should switch to DHT primarily,” he says. One of the collateral damage victims of the ban is torrent download service Put.io. They have quickly enabled DHT and PEX to ensure that torrents can still be downloaded, and will take measures to ensure that the trackers can be used through a separate server in the future. “Right now turning on DHT and PEX brought some relief, but this limits our speed in finding peers and in general, our options. We will try our best to first get off those lists and then find a way to route the announce traffic over another server so this doesn’t happen again,” Put.io’s Hasan Yalcinkaya informed us. Of course, anti-piracy outfits could take similar steps to bypass the ban. However, several are believed to rely solely on trackers for the time being. How effective the IP-address blacklist will be in the long run has yet to be seen. The measure is not the silver bullet that will stop all anti-piracy outfits, but it’s certainly not making it any easier monitor file-sharers. So for once, they will be the ones who have to circumvent a blockade.

An adult media company's hiring of an anti-piracy outfit to blitz the Internet for content infringing on its webcam copyrights has produced ridiculous results. Takedowns have been issued for content hosted at NASA, eBay, The Daily Mail and coding site Github. The 'best' target? A 'pirate' newspaper from 1871 published on the Library of Congress. While many content creators believe that taking down pirate links will make their material harder to find, the value of this endless task is often questioned. As content spreads like a virus, links often reappear elsewhere as fast as they are taken down. The response has been to send more and more takedown requests and the end result of that has been mixed to say the least. While the music industry does a pretty accurate job despite sending tens of millions of notices, smaller players tend to embarrass themselves regularly with ridiculous claims against clearly non-infringing domains. Today its the turn of DMCA Copyright Enforcement, an anti-piracy company working on behalf of adult media company Cybertania Inc, the claimed operators of the myfreecams.com website. DMCA Copyright Enforcement started sending DMCA notices to Google on Cybertania’s behalf on May 13. It didn’t go well; the first 999 URL notice was rejected in its entirety by Google. The notice that caught our eye, however, shows just how bad things can get when an anti-piracy company sets its dumb bots loose but fails to properly check on their work. First up to be accused of hosting pirated cam content, The Library of Congress. So what pirated and filthy content is to be found behind this innocent looking URL? The Charleston Daily News apparently – from October 7, 1871. Pressing on with their anti-piracy crusade, DMCA Copyright Enforcement’s bots thought they’d found evidence of yet more cam-focused infringement, this time on that well-known rogue site, NASA.gov. The bots homed-in on two allegedly infringing links – here and here – both NASA datasets and definitely not porn. With a fuse clearly blown, the bots’ next stop was the profile page of The Reverend Alicia R. Forde at the Unitarian Universalism religious movement. Judging by the number of camgirls by the name of “Alicia” (and close variants) in the DMCA notice, it seems pretty clear what the poor Reverend’s crime was. Now out of control, the bots headed off to Google’s product forums and a page on Ripoff Report for no apparent reason, stopping by at Newspapers.com to try and censor copies of The Kane Republican from May 14, 1958, the El Paso Herald-Post from May 1962 and the Miami Daily News from November 1941. And a copy of Farmer’s Wife from 1921, just for good measure. Things then got really weird when the bots attacked some technical sites including Website Informer, Domain Tools’ DNS reporting service DailyChanges.com and Github. After hitting search results on eBay (because they contained the name “Sonia”) this hugely embarrassing URL on The Daily Mail was up next, a clear attempt by the anti-piracy outfit to turn the site’s own search engine against itself. The worst part of this sorry episode is that the items detailed above do not amount to a fully comprehensive report on all the disasters present in this single notice, there are many, many more. In fact, since the middle of May around 15 notices containing approximately 1,000 URLs each have been rejected completely by Google with only eight making it through relatively unscathed. According to Google, four notices were so bad as to be marked as a potential abuse of the DMCA process. Needless to say, DMCA Copyright Enforcement and Cybertania have got some serious problems to sort out before their bots cause any more damage. TorrentFreak

Thanks to the "six strikes" program, leading ISPs in the U.S. now hold databases containing allegations of infringement against their customers. That data was supposed to be private, but now the most prolific filer of copyright lawsuits in the U.S. is trying to obtain information from Comcast in order to build a case against an alleged porn pirate. comcastIn just a few days time the controversial Copyright Alert System (CAS) will have been operational for 15 months. A cornerstone of the system sees the major labels and movie studios sending notices of infringement to ISPs which they in turn forward to their subscribers. Records of these notices are then held in a database, which copyright holders in the six-strike scheme may subsequently use in legal action, if they feel that is appropriate. “The Content Owner Representatives [MPAA / RIAA] or any other member of the Participating Content Owners Group may use such reports or data as the basis for seeking a Subscriber’s identity through a subpoena or order or other lawful process,” the agreement reads. Trouble is, any data on file is at risk of being accessed by a third party if they can convince a judge they have good reason to obtain it. And that’s exactly what the largest filer of copyright complaints in the United States is now attempting to do. Malibu Media is well-known as a filer of many lawsuits against alleged file-sharers. Indeed, earlier this week the company was featured in an article which confirmed its status as the most prolific filer of copyright lawsuits in the entire United States. In a case which has been documented by FightCopyrightTrolls since its initial February 2013 filing, Malibu has been struggling to pin an infringement on Kelley Tashiro, a middle-aged female nurse from Indianapolis. Faced with an uphill battle, Malibu has now turned to Tashiro’s ISP, Comcast, to find out what information it holds on her. Perhaps inevitably, Malibu is attempting to find out whether or not the IP address allocated to Tashiro has ever been subject to infringement allegations by other copyright holders. In addition to details of any DMCA notices forwarded, Malibu has asked a judge to order the release of data being held as part of the Copyright Alerts System. “DMCA notices and six strike notices are relevant because these notices may prove a pattern of infringement or notice that infringement is occurring or both,” Malibu writes in its motion. In an indication of just how desperate Malibu has become, the company also wants details of Tashiro’s bandwidth consumption, as if that somehow indicates whether she is an infringer or not. “Bandwidth usage is relevant because people who are heavy BitTorrent users use significantly more bandwidth than normal internet users,” the company’s sweeping generalization reads. In summary, Malibu points out to the court that without this and other items of information from Comcast they have no chance of winning the case, another indication of how flimsy IP address-only evidence is now being viewed. Whether Comcast will comply or not remains to be seen. A similar case in April 2013 which demanded information from Verizon was subsequently dropped.

The UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) seems to be continuing its attacks on domains related to file-sharing, as it has recently closed down the very first search engine. After the BPI demanded it to be blocked by the UK broadband providers, the file-host search engine FileCrop was taken down as part of a PIPCU investigation. Aside from FileCrop, the sports streaming service Cricfree.tv was shutdown as well. PIPCU works on the recommendations of international anti-piracy outfits, but is financed by the taxpayers of the United Kingdom. The activities of the authority began with the sending of notifications around the world, warning users that non-compliance with police requests would result in further action – domains seizure, reported disruption of advertising revenue, and even physical raids. PIPCU has apparently proceeded to “further action”: for example, file-sharing website FileCrop disappeared from the Internet, its main page being replaced by the PIPCU notice. What is interesting about this case is the nature of the FileCrop operation: it wasn’t a non-responsive torrent site, nor was it a file-hosting website containing illegal material. FileCrop was just a search engine seeking for content hosted on many file-lockers, like RapidShare, Mediafire and Mega – services that all have strict notice-and-takedown procedures. Although such target seems unusual, as FileCrop did respond to takedowns, the move doesn’t come as a complete surprise. Last year, the British Phonographic Industry began preparations to have another batch of domains blocked by local Internet service providers, and FileCrop.com was included in that list. The search engine is mostly inaccessible in the United Kingdom: according to the Alexa chart, the blockade had quite an effect on its popularity. Although the move suggests a UK presence for the engine’s owners or operators, its WHOIS entries show that those are located in Ukraine. Another strange thing is that the website apparently causes relatively few problems for copyright owners. For example, the search giant Google received over 659,000 complaints in April against Fileshut.biz, a functionally similar service, while the search engine has received only 37 complaints per week against FileCrop.

Remember Prenda Law? They were a gang of attorneys who attempted to squeeze instant settlements from hundreds, maybe thousands, of people by threatening to accuse them publicly of illegally downloading dirty movies from the Web. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright of Los Angeles delivered the most telling blow against Prenda last May, when he labeled the firm part of a "porno-trolling collective" operating under a "cloak of shell companies and fraud." We covered the amazingly bizarre and convoluted case here. The newest member of the fan club is Judge David Tatel of federal circuit court in Washington, D.C., who wrote Tuesday: "Sometimes individuals seek to manipulate judicial procedures to serve their own improper ends. This case calls upon us to evaluate -- and put a stop to -- one litigant's attempt to do just that."The case before Tatel involves AF Holdings, one of the ostensible owners of the porn-movie copyrights allegedly infringed by more than a thousand Internet users being sued in his court. Judge Wright found last year that AF had been formed by the principles of Prenda Law -- John Steele, Paul Hansmeier and Paul Duffy -- "for the sole purpose of litigating copyright-infringement lawsuits." Prenda itself has formally disbanded since Judge Wright's broadside, but Judge Tatel had no difficulty connecting the dots between Prenda and the lawyers appearing in his case. Tatel collected examples of the disdain with which his fellow jurists regarded lawyers associated with Prenda, including the finding of a federal judge in Illinois who wrote that Prenda's principals showed "a relentless willingness to lie to the Court on paper and in person, despite being ... sanctioned by other courts, and being referred to state and federal bars, the United States Attorney in at least two districts, one state Attorney General, and the Internal Revenue Service." Tatel's ruling involved subpoenas issued by AF Holdings to Internet service providers Cox Communications, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T and Bright House Networks. The subpoenas sought the names of more than 1,000 customers AF said had illegally downloaded, and therefore infringed its copyright on, a porn film entitled "Popular Demand." The subpoenas seemed to follow the Prenda pattern, in that AF had no real evidence that the customers whose names it was seeking actually committed the offense. The Prenda strategy suggests, as Tatel concluded, that AF didn't really intend to sue them; its typical practice was to scare the target customers into forking over several thousand dollars each to make the threat go away quietly. As it turned out, three of the five ISPs had no subscribers in Washington, D.C., where the subpoena applied. AF Holdings, Tatel wrote, "clearly abused the discovery process." If nothing else, you have to give these lawyers props for tenacity in the face of grave professional jeopardy. Their antics have gotten them cited for discipline in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and now possibly in Washington, D.C. (Judge Tatel said he would leave possible sanctions up to a lower court in his jurisdiction.) But why shouldn't they keep at it as long as they can? Despite all those referrals for professional discipline, at least some of the attorneys are still practicing law, if you can call it that. As recently as March, federal Judge David Herndon of Illinois slapped Steele, Hansmeier and Duffy with a contempt citation for (among other things) submitting "suspicious" financial documents to support a claim that they couldn't afford to pay a previous financial sanction. In a recent article about the two defense attorneys who helped bring down Prenda in California, the ABA Journal called the Prenda saga "part of legal folklore." That's nothing for the profession to be proud of.

Nearly all of file-hosting service Rapidgator's pages have been wiped from Google's search results, including many that don't link to infringing content. This is the second time that Rapidgator has been censored by mistake, and thus far the company has not been able to get the URLs reinstated. Every week Google processes millions of DMCA takedown requests, submitted by copyright holders from all over the world. In most cases the requests are legitimate, but every now and then they also target pages that don’t link to pirated content. As a result some websites have their URLs removed from Google in error, which in turn leads to a decrease in visitors. This has now happened to Rapidgator.net, one of the largest file-hostings sites on the Internet. For the past few weeks the site has had nearly all its URLs de-listed, including its homepage. The request responsible for this overbroad censorship was issued by the Publishers Association, a UK-based trade group. Aside from the Rapidgator URLs, the takedown notice in question lists several other pages that have nothing to do with their copyrighted works. Hoping to get its URLs restored Rapidgator submitted a counter-notification to Google, but several weeks have passed since and the problem remains. TorrentFreak spoke with Rapidgator operator Mike, who is concerned about the lack of response and the ease at which sites can be removed from Google. “With the procedure Google has in place now any website can be de-listed by anybody,” Mike says. “When Google receives a DMCA notice they remove URLs within a day, but if you want to have them restored it can take weeks or months. We think that they should restore URLs in the same timeframe as the original removals,” he adds. Rapidgator’s operator understand that Google can’t process every URL manually due to the massive amount of DMCA notices. However, he believes that they could at least flag requests to remove the homepages of websites so these can be manually verified. This isn’t the first time that Rapidgator has lost nearly all its listings in Google. The same thing happened late last year and on that occasion it also took several weeks before Google took action, leading to a dip in search traffic for the site. TorrentFreak asked Google for a comment on the counter-notification process but the company couldn’t say anything about the number of requests it receives, or what the average response time is. For Rapidgator there’s no other option than to wait until Google responds to its inquiry. In the meantime, only five Rapidgator pages remain indexed by Google.

It's that time again, The Vault needs some extra hands on deck to keep things running smoothly so we'd like to give a warm welcome to our latest staff recruits Hightower, Phoenix07 and MrZenek. Congrats guys your contributions to the site haven't gone unnoticed and we look forward to having you aboard

Half-Priced Memberships! After much interest by our community on our EliteVIP program, we thought we'd bring back the fun. We have made room for many more members to receive one of these prestigious accounts for an entire year or forever if you so desire, and thought what better way to spread the love that these fantastic accounts bring, than to make them available for our entire community for only half-price. For a very limited time, you can grab any EliteVIP membership package you want for only half-price and do not need to be a current VIP member. This spectacular offer will not last long, so act fast, as when it's over, EliteVIP memberships will be locked down again just like normal and you'll only be able to get one if currently a donor and at full price. Here are some of the advantages of being an EliteVIP member! Exempt from all Ratio Rules & Stats Upload Counts but not Required Immune to H&R under 9.6GB Account can not be Suspended for Inactivity ...and much more

No matter how organized you are, it can be hard to sift through a giant downloads folder for what you're looking for—especially if you don't know what the file's name is. Sort your downloads folder by date to solve this problem.P This isn't something everyone will need, but it's something I've found immensely useful lately. When I download a file (via BitTorrent, especially), I don't know what the file name is, which makes finding it difficult. So, I've started sorting my Downloads folder by "Date Created." That way, the file I just downloaded is always at the top of the list—no searching or scrolling needed. Note: in Windows, you may have to create this column by right-clicking on the sorting headers.1P If you keep your Downloads folder cleaned up, this won't be necessary, but for heavy torrenters (or those that seed everything they download), it's quite convenient.