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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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S-100G (torrentCloud) by YourSeedbox

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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

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10gbit-max by Seed.ST

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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.

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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.

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.