TorrentFreak

Last month, the Gnutella-based file-sharing client LimeWire was effectively outlawed after a U.S. federal judge granted a request from the RIAA to shut the software down. Now, not even a month later, LimeWire is back as good as new. Not only has a secret dev team reanimated the hugely popular client, but they have also made a few significant changes which make it better and more streamlined than before.

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Inception’ tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Scott Pilgrim vs the World’. ‘The Social Network’ completes the top three.

Have you ever wanted to have a live video chat with several friends while simultaneously sharing files with them? With the brand new Sifonr service you can. It’s beauty is that it is all supported by Adobe Flash’s latest P2P technology and easy to embed in any website. Sifonr has the potential to become the next generation communication tool on the web, but has to be careful that it doesn’t turn into a chatroulette on steroids.

In a response to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative, the MPAA has submitted a list of “notorious markets” for pirated goods located outside the United States. Among them are some of the world’s leading torrent sites including BTjunkie, Demonoid, isoHunt, KickAssTorrents and The Pirate Bay. Usenet service UseNext makes an appearance alongside file-hosters MegaUpload and RapidShare.

BitTorrent was first released by Bram Cohen back in 2001, but it took two years before the new file-sharing protocol gained a notable audience. In the years that followed millions of torrent files were downloaded and shared billions of times. In this article we will discuss five memorable torrent files that each broke a unique record, from the largest in size to the oldest that’s still alive today.

While BitTorrent veterans will have their own tried and tested methods of finding out when the latest releases land and where to go to get their hands on them first, many of these require the taming of an often off-putting learning curve. Thanks to a rather nifty web interface, that information is now at everyone’s fingertips. While some will complain, it’s just another natural development in the increasingly public and widespread file-sharing scene.

In recent months Rapidshare has aggressively targeted search engines and indexers that abused the company’s trademark and facilitated copyright infringement. These actions are part of their campaign to create goodwill with the entertainment industry, but by doing so RapidShare is also shooting itself in the foot. As a result of the domain seizures the site is no longer the leading file-hoster.

The Hollywood-backed anti-piracy outfit VAP has announced that it will apply for a court injunction to force a major Internet service provider to block a popular movie streaming portal. UPC, the ISP that has refused to cave into 3 strikes demands from the music industry in Ireland, says it will not block the site Kino.to on behalf of the movie industry. VAP says it hopes the test case will pave the way for further site blockades.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset has lost her re-retrial against the RIAA and is now ordered to pay $1.5 million for 24 songs she shared via Kazaa. The jury found her guilty of infringing the rights of Capitol Records and found a $62,500 fine per shared song to be an appropriate punishment. If recouped, the money will be invested in new anti-piracy campaigns.

The owner of a Romanian BitTorrent tracker has been the first person in the country to receive a jail sentence for his actions. Following complaints from the Business Software Alliance, Kartel.ro was closed in 2007 but it has taken three years for the case to come to a conclusion. The outcome is a 6 month suspended sentence and an unspecified fine.

As part of its ongoing punishment of any institute or company that defends copyright, Anonymous has now taken down the website of The United States Copyright Office. The group managed to take copyright.gov offline for half an hour. After that the website started to respond again slowly, with occasional outages.