TorrentFreak

This week, alleged game pirates in the UK have been condemned to the ruination of huge fines and misery. Well, not quite. See, if defendants don’t turn up in court, it’s easy to get a default judgment and huge damages because no-one contests the evidence. So what’s the truth and what evidence do the lawyers really have?

The Pirate Bay has decided to fight the decision of an Italian judge after it ordered ISPs to block access to the popular tracker. The blocks didn’t prove particularly effective as traffic from Italy only increased but nevertheless, The Pirate Bay is determined to reverse the decision.

While the British government puts huge amounts of pressure on ISPs to clamp down on file-sharers, it is doing some pirating of its very own. It seems that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own website is in serious breach of copyright, as it is based on a ripped-off Wordpress theme.

This week, close to two million people have downloaded the Olympics opening ceremony, which makes it the most pirated TV-show of the week - again. The International Olympic Committee is not too happy about it, and they are urging the Swedish government to take on The Pirate Bay.

In an official letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has asked for “assistance” from the Swedish government with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing to be shared on The Pirate Bay. The Pirate Bay, however, does not plan to take anything down, and renamed their tracker to The Beijing Bay.

The team behind the Shareaza client have recently had a tough time, having been the victim of a music industry conspiracy to steal their brand name and destroy goodwill. Undeterred they are fighting back and today proudly announce the development of a brand new filesharing client with BitTorrent support - Project Panthera.

The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “What Happens in Vegas” tops the chart this week.

In part one of our look into the anti-piracy efforts at universities, we saw that Missouri S&T used a simple home grown system, ignoring the favorites of the entertainment industry. In part two, we look at Ohio University, Texas A&M University, Tulane University and others that do use one of the methods preferred by the RIAA and MPAA.

BitTorrent’s popularity is increasing with new sites seemingly launched every day. Usniff is one such site, offering a fast real-time torrent search engine where users can search four of the most popular BitTorrent sites.

If you can’t beat pirates, join them. This is Playlouder’s philosophy, a music download service that allows subscribers to download music from BitTorrent and other filesharing networks, while reimbursing the copyright owners. The concept sure is interesting, but the current setup is naive, flawed and doomed to fail.

U2 manager Paul McGuinness, who wants file-sharers to be disconnected from the Internet, has something else to complain about today. Four songs from U2’s upcoming album ‘No Line On The Horizon’ have been leaked online after Bono played them too loudly on his stereo - and a fan recorded them.