InstantIdiocy

Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

This week there are two newcomers in the top 10. Oscar winner The Hurt locker is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent. The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the [...]

File-Sharing and Link Sites Declared Legal in Spain

Despite many rulings which have declared file-sharing sites legal if they don’t profit directly from copyright infringements, in recent years its become something of a custom in Spain for music rights groups to attempt to close down sites in advance of a full hearing to assess their legality. One such case involves eDonkey link site elrincondejesus.com [...]

uTorrent Accused of Unfairness, Banned by Trackers

One of the most significant changes in the new uTorrent is uTP, the ‘micro transfer protocol’. UTP is a new and improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol which is designed to be more network-friendly than its predecessor. With uTP, uTorrent has become more network aware as it will throttle itself if congestion is detected in [...]

IFPI Gives Up Trying To Force ISP to Block The Pirate Bay

In March 2009 the IFPI and several local movie studios began threatening Telenor, Norway’s largest ISP. Block your customers from accessing The Pirate Bay, they demanded, or we will take legal action and get the courts to force you. Telenor refused to comply and was taken to court. In November 2009 the verdict was handed down [...]

Oscar Win Boosts Hurt Locker’s Piracy Numbers

While BitTorrent’s Oscar went to District 9, the Academy members chose The Hurt Locker as the best picture of 2009. As was the case with most previous Oscar winners, the film’s overwhelming win encouraged many BitTorrent users to fire up their download client to see what all the fuzz is about. The day after the award [...]

Oscar Winner Wants Kids and ISPs Targeted to Prevent Piracy

The Film Distributors’ Association (FDA) is the trade body for UK theatrical film distributors. As a member of the UK’s Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), FDA is also engaged on-going initiatives to combat film piracy. FDA president and Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire producer (Lord) David Puttnam recently gave a keynote speech where he called for new [...]

President Obama Discusses Three Strikes Anti-Piracy Law

For years the entertainment industry has been lobbying for tougher measures against online piracy. In France this has resulted in the implementation of a ‘three strikes and you’re offline’ regime and many other countries are considering similar measures. Thus far the United States Government has kept relatively quiet on this issue, but that doesn’t mean that [...]

Pirate Bay Court Appeal Set For Just After General Election

In April 2009, all four defendants in the Pirate Bay trial were found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and a fines of $905,000 each. The defense didn’t accept the decision, and went on to file for an appeal. Their appeal is now expected to head to the Court of Appeal on 28 September [...]

Six BitTorrent Admins Arrested, Interpol Chase Two More

Although it wasn’t yet evident, December 2009 appeared to mark the beginning of an effort to shut down the Greek file-sharing scene. The Society for the Protection of Audiovisual Works (EPOE) conducted an investigation and moved in conjunction with the police to carry out the first action of its type against a file-sharing site in [...]

Comcast Funds BitStalker Anti-Piracy Research

For years the RIAA and other copyright holders have been sending copyright infringement notices to ISPs, requesting they forward them to their customers. ISPs including Comcast have always kindly complied with these requests, but remained a neutral party. It therefore came as a surprise when we found out that three major US ISPs – Comcast, Cox [...]