Author: Ernesto

With more than 150 million active users a month, uTorrent remains the leading torrent client, by far.

Despite its popularity, the introduction of new features has stalled in recent years. In fact, some of the more prominent changes date back five years, when uTorrent launched its long awaited 3.0 version.

Among other things, this release introduced a commenting and rating feature. This allowed users to rate the quality of torrents and discuss their contents from within the application.

Both the comments and ratings were shared via trackers, which means that they were not centrally stored but distributed among peers, just like the download itself.

“µTorrent 3.0 adds an extension message for distributing comments within the swarm. All clients that support this extension message store all comments they have seen, per torrent,” uTorrent’s engineering team informed TorrentFreak at the time.

A handy addition, which was appreciated and used by millions of users in recent years. However, out of nowhere, the uTorrent team has decided to ditch the feature in their latest versions.

uTorrent comments and ratings

While it’s up to uTorrent’s parent company BitTorrent Inc. to decide what to do with their client, it’s at least a bit odd that users haven’t been informed about the change. There is no mention in the release log of the stable version either.

The only reference we could find was listed in the release log for the beta version a few weeks ago.

Hoping to find out more about the motivation to retire the feature we contacted BitTorrent Inc a few days ago, but thus far without response. The company doesn’t seem very keen to speak about uTorrent, as our inquiries about the hacked forum also remained unanswered.

Disable Rating

The above leaves us with no other option than to speculate about the mysterious removal. Perhaps BitTorrent Inc. decided that the feature was no longer relevant, or maybe the system was flooded by spam comments?

On the other hand, perhaps there’s a legal reason why the company doesn’t want users to rate and discuss potentially infringing content from within the client?

Without an official comment from BitTorrent we’ll never know what the true reason is. It’s clear, however, that users who want to comment can no longer do so from the uTorrent application itself.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Online pirates are increasingly turning to streaming sites to watch the latest TV-shows and blockbusters.

Aside from going to these sites directly, there are also dedicated communities where people help each other to find high-quality copies of recent releases.

The popular social networking service Reddit is one of these places. The site has various “subreddits” dedicated to streaming the latest entertainment, often from unauthorized sources.

Hollywood is not happy with this type of sharing and this week Warner Bros took action against BestOfStreamingVideo, a popular subreddit with 45,838 readers who are interested in “free” entertainment.

In a DMCA takedown notice the movie studio accuses the subreddit of infringing the copyrights of the popular 2015 movie Interstellar. A link to a pirated copy on videorev.cc was added two days ago, and Warner Bros now wants it to disappear.

The notice in question was not sent to Reddit, but Google, who was asked to remove the main subreddit page from its search results. Google, however, decided not to comply with the request which means that the page remains present in its search results.

Interstellar on /r/BestOfStreamingVideo

One of the reasons for Google’s refusal may be that the request is too broad, as it doesn’t list the main URL of the Reddit submission. Alternatively, the company may have decided that Reddit is better off handling takedown requests for their own platform.

In any case, the moderators of BestOfStreamingVideo are happy with the result. Moderator xosfear tells us that they simply offer a platform for users to share links, and that they don’t control what’s added.

“The sub was made as a way for our users to share streaming video, and as Reddit is a platform for free speech it is out of our control as to what our users post,” xosfear tells us.

Instead of sending takedown requests, the moderator believes Warner Bros would be better off focusing its efforts on building a centralized platform where movie fans can watch all of its movies for a fair price.

“In my opinion, if Warner Brothers spent all the time and money they spent on trying to control piracy on building a centralized platform for users to own their own movie library for a cost-effective price, they would make millions,” xosfear says.

“Look at what Steam has done for Valve and video game piracy. Of course, that would mean co-operating with other movie studios, and I doubt they would put aside their greed to do that.”

It’s unclear whether Warner Bros has also asked Reddit itself to take down the subreddit. For now, the subreddit remains online, including the link to the pirated copy of Interstellar.

Interestingly this is not the first time that the BestOfStreamingVideo has been targeted. In 2014 movie studio LionsGate sent a similar takedown request, also without result.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Earlier this month the second season of Mr. Robot premiered.

The TV-show, which portrays and appeals to a subculture of nerds, hacktivists, hackers and technology insiders, has become an instant cult hit.

Aside from classic hacker groups, the makers of the show were inspired by The Pirate Bay founders. Last year Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail admitted that the main character Elliot is in part modeled after the illustrious trio.

In addition, Mr. Robot also includes various nods and easter eggs for the technology inclined. For example, the first episode of the second season included an online trail for people to follow in the real world.

In the most recent episode, pirates were saluted during a short scene. Without giving away any spoilers, the main character Elliot was shown playing a pirated movie via his PLEX media server.

The movie in question, The Careful Massacre of the Bourgeoisie, is “fake” but that’s not true for the other pirate references displayed.

uTorrent / PLEX and pirate groups (large)

As the screenshot above shows, Elliot uses a recent version of the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent, showing a house ad for an upgrade to uTorrent Plus.

In the “movies” folder, which is also shown, we can see various other movies complete with release group tags such as YIFY, PRiSTiNE, DiPSHiT, RARBG and CRiTERiON.

It is safe to say that these were not included by accident but as a nod towards the pirates in the audience. The same can be said for the iconic FBI warning that’s shown when the movie starts playing.

FBI warning (large)

The mention didn’t go unnoticed by the pirate groups in question. We reached out to YIFY, who quit after running into legal trouble last year, and he appreciates the mention.

“Makes me feel like a little bit of a ‘bad ass’, even though it’s a pretty minor thing in the show still a cheeky smile came about,” YIFY told TF.

“I do like the fact that the producers of Mr Robot specifically do try to get an accurate reflection of today’s real world online.”

While the names of the pirate groups are indeed accurate, there may be room for improvement. A member of another release group pictured in the episode, who commented on condition of anonymity, questioned Elliot’s BitTorrent client preference.

“I find it hard to believe that the main character in the show – a pro hacker – is using a non-open source software to download or stream his torrents,” the group member said.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

More than a week has passed since KickassTorrents (KAT) was shut down by the U.S. Government, following the arrest of the site’s alleged owner.

Soon after the official site went offline various mirrors and copies were launched to take its place. While none of these sites have anything to do with the original site, they do attract hundreds of thousands of users.

One of the more popular mirrors is KAT.am. The site was featured in several news reports with some suggesting that it’s an official reincarnation of the original KickassTorrents site.

While that is certainly not true, the instant success of this ‘copyKAT’ was enough to get Hollywood worried. Especially because its operator also started to add new torrents to the site.

It therefore came as no surprise that the Motion Picture Association, representing Hollywood’s major studios, sent KAT.am’s owner a stark warning.

“This Notice requires you to immediately (within 24 hours) take effective measures to end and prevent further copyright infringement. All opportunities provided by the Website to download, stream or otherwise obtain access to the Entertainment Content should be disabled permanently,” MPA’s email reads.

Part of MPA’s mail

TorrentFreak spoke to operator of the mirror, who informed us that he has no intention of backing down. However, he noted that the MPA(A) pressure did lead to a suspension of the domain name.

“The MPAA coordinated with the Armenian registry and got the domain deleted,” KAT.am’s operator said. “We are making continuous attempts to bring it back, utilizing all the legal channels available.”

At the time of writing KAT.am remains offline. However, the mirror has already launched two new domains, kickass.cd and kickass.mx, from where it continues to operate.

KAT?

Operating a KAT mirror is not without risk, given the fact that the original site is the target of a criminal investigation by the U.S. Government. That doesn’t seem to bother the operator in question though.

“We are not worried, because if it’s not us, someone else will keep the game running. If not the alleged owner, it can be us. If we are not there, still there will surely be someone else. This never ends,” he tells us.

For some KAT users the “mirror” situation is rather confusing. They believe that the mirrors are somehow connected to the original site and some may attempt to login, which isn’t possible as these sites don’t have a copy of the user database.

Login attempts are risky, as some rogue mirrors may harvest personal information for nefarious purposes. Previously, the original KAT community team warned against such mirrors, urging former users to avoid these sites.

The operator of the former KAT.am mirror says that his site is completely safe. He’s also considering adding a notice to clarify that it is not related to the original KAT, to clarify the situation.

That said, just like those who operate the mirrors, former KAT users should consider themselves warned too.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Last week Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder of KickassTorrents.

The arrest resulted in the shutdown of the site, which came as a shock to millions of KAT users and the torrent community at large.

The Polish authorities acted on a criminal complaint from the U.S. Government. In the indictment, the 30-year-old Ukrainian is charged with criminal copyright infringement and money laundering.

These charges are similar to those lodged against Megaupload and Kim Dotcom. With this in mind, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Vaulin has decided to retain the same lawyer.

Ira Rothken confirmed to TorrentFreak that he will lead Vaulin’s defense working in collaboration with local counsel. Besides his familiarity with criminal copyright charges, Rothken also knows the ins and outs of torrent sites, as he previously represented isoHunt in a civil case.

While it’s still early days, Rothken believes that they have strong arguments to have the criminal complaint dismissed.

“We believe the US criminal complaint lacks merit. Torrent sites and trackers are devoid of any content files. If any infringement occurs it happens offsite and leaves Kickasstorrents behind,” Rothken informs TorrentFreak.

“This type of copyright theory is known as secondary copyright infringement and there is no United States criminal statute for secondary copyright infringement – that type of theory is at most a civil liability issue.”

The same arguments are also being raised in the Megaupload case, which is still pending after nearly half a decade.

Rothken and Kim Dotcom (credit)

Last December a New Zealand District Court judge ruled that Dotcom and his former Megaupload colleagues can be extradited to the United States. This decision was immediately appealed and a new series of hearings is scheduled to take place in a few weeks.

As noted by ARS, who first reported the news, Vaulin remains in a Warsaw jail pending his extradition request. However, Rothken hopes that the alleged owner of KickassTorrents will be able to fight his extradition outside of jail.

“We are working with local Polish counsel to try to get Artem out of the Warsaw jail so he can assist with his defense,” Rothken tells us.

The KickassTorrents website, meanwhile, is still offline. Although there are numerous mirrors available, it is unlikely that it will come back in the near future.

The KAT “community,” however, has been revived and remains active.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

A decade ago online video streaming was still a relatively new phenomenon. YouTube had just celebrated its first anniversary and Netflix hadn’t even rolled out its streaming service.

The piracy landscape also looked quite different at the time. Streaming sites were pretty much non-existent and the vast majority of all movie and TV-show piracy was torrent related.

This has drastically changed in recent years. According to a new report published by piracy tracking outfit MUSO, streaming sites have taken over as the prime source of video piracy.

New figures released publicly this week are part of the company’s annual report, which shows that nearly three quarters of all movie and TV-show traffic now goes to streaming sites.

The data from MUSO covers visits to 14,000 of the largest global piracy websites from 226 countries. In total, the company recorded 141 billion visits to pirate sites last year.

More than half of these visits relate to video piracy, which includes movies and TV-shows. The vast majority of these, 57.84 billion (74%), are visits to pirate streaming sites.

According to MUSO, there is a clear transition away from P2P sites and services to streaming. This can in part be explained by improved Internet connectivity across the globe.

Despite the availability of legal services, the United States tops the list of video pirates, representing 12% of total traffic, which is good for nearly 10 billion visits.

Torrent site traffic is slowly declining, for video content at least. Roughly 17% of the traffic went to torrent sites, and MUSO reported a clear downward trend during 2015. Direct download sites account for 8% of video piracy visits, which is relatively stable.

The data further reveals that both streaming pirates and torrent users predominantly use desktop machines to visit these sites, 72 and 77 percent respectively. This means that mobile piracy remains relatively small.

Visits to streaming sites by device (Muso.com)

The movie and TV-show figures are in line with the overall trend MUSO revealed earlier, where pirates move away from torrent sites to other distribution platforms.

“Piracy audiences are becoming better connected, more tech savvy, and know what they want, which is why so many of them have chosen to stream infringing content, rather than download it illegally,” MUSO’s CCO Christopher Elkins says.

Overall, MUSO’s report concludes that the piracy ecosystem is rapidly changing. It will be interesting to see how the reported traffic trends develop during the years to come.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Last week the alleged owner of KickassTorrents (KAT) was arrested in Poland, where he faces an extradition request from the United States.

The news came as a shock to many of the site’s users and also had a profound impact on the torrent ecosystem at large, particularly in the short term.

TorrentFreak discusses the events and repercussions with several experts on a special episode of Steal This Show. Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is one of the guests, and he finds it quite odd that the long arm of the United States can reach deep into Europe.

“For me, it’s weird that Poland is arresting someone on the orders of the United States where the person has not been,” Sunde says.

“I have an issue with a country having that much power. I don’t care if it’s the United States, Russia or whatever, but one country shouldn’t be able to just grab people from anywhere in the world just because they do something on the Internet. That’s insanity.”

Sunde and the other Pirate Bay founders had their own criminal prosecution in Sweden several years ago, for which they all served jail time. Their case was also spurred on by U.S. influence, he believes, but it was prosecuted on their home turf instead.

Legalities aside, Peter Sunde believes that the shutdown of KAT shows how vulnerable the torrent ecosystem is. The majority of users rely on a very small group of torrent sites, which are all major targets for law enforcement.

A more distributed system would be much better, according to Pirate Bay’s founder.

“I think maybe people now understand that we shouldn’t just have a few sites. Because everything depends on these sites. That’s the thing I always wanted, a large hybrid of lots of smaller sites instead of one big target like KickassTorrents or Pirate Bay.”

Just setting up basic mirrors isn’t going to cut it in this case. At the moment there are still dozens of KAT copies online, but since they don’t have access to the backend of the original site, uploaders can’t use their accounts.

Also, many smaller torrent sites were relying on KAT’s database of torrents, and these have been faced with a similar problem since last week. A lack of new content.

“If one of the big sites goes down a lot of smaller sites are hit as well because they are just a copy of the original database. We need lots of sites that federate all the data instead of having to depend on the higher-ups,” Sunde notes.

So what’s the alternative? According to Pirate Bay’s founder, more innovation and decentralization is required.

There are already plenty of new technologies that could make torrent sites more decentralized. Zeronet and IPFS, for example. However, according to Sunde the large torrent sites such as TPB don’t really have the urge to innovate.

“IPFS is really good and if everyone started using that instead it would be great. It would be working perfectly with less centralization. The problem is that the big sites like TPB and KAT are not really good at using new technology.”

Without a userbase these new technologies don’t catch on, so that keeps the current status quo intact. The only way to change this is by bringing in something fresh, Sunde says.

“If you look at the big sites, name one of them that has an up-to-date user experience or uses new technology at all. It’s the same shit that’s been around for 10, 15 years. There is no innovation whatsoever that’s visible on these sites.

“We need new voices, new people, new activists and new ideologies in the piracy scene,” Sunde adds.

Millions of people now rely on TPB and KAT to just be there for them. However, that makes the ecosystem very vulnerable without any incentive to innovate. This is why Sunde and others who were involved early, wanted to shut down the site on its 10th anniversary. To make room for something better.

“I’ve been saying for years that I want The Pirate Bay to shut down, and now with KickassTorrents being shut down I hope this will actually inspire people to do something fresh, innovative and something new.”

“To be honest, it’s not really hard to run a torrent site, or set one up,” Sunde says.

—-

You can hear more from Peter Sunde in the latest episode of Steal This Show (not all comments cited here appear in the episode), which was published earlier today. The episode also features isoHunt founder Gary Fung and U.S. Pirate Party founder Andrew Norton.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

With an active community and millions of regular visitors, KickassTorrents was much more than a site to leech the latest torrents from. Many considered it to be their virtual home.

This ended abruptly last week, following the arrest of its alleged founder in Poland. A criminal complaint from the U.S. Government revealed that the entire operation had been compromised by the Department of Homeland Security.

Although not all domain names and servers were seized, the site quickly disappeared and after nearly a week there is still no sign of life. At least, not at the original site.

Over the past few days, several members of the KAT team have regrouped in an effort to get the community part of the site back up. Since then they have launched Katcr.co, which hosts a forum where several staffers are present.

Speaking on behalf of the KAT-team that’s left, Mr.Black says that the criminal investigation won’t be the end of the community.

“We need to remember that Kickass Torrents is not simply about uploading, the heart and soul of KAT is our members, which are family and family is important as we all know. Nothing can ever take that away and no matter what happens we will not let our community down.”

“We guarantee that KAT will continue in one form or another and we will come back stronger than ever,” Mr.Black adds.

The forum, created by Mr.Prairi3DoG, has already gathered thousands of visitors over the past few days and continues to grow. While many of the original team members are present, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the original site will be restored as well.

KAT forum

TorrentFreak has learned that remaining “KAT team” doesn’t have access to the original code. They are mainly people who kept the site clean and in order, in the role of moderator or administrator, and who have no contact with the alleged site owner.

However, if the “owners” of the site would like to make a comeback, they will have the support of the KAT team that’s now trying to keep the community alive.

“Should the business owners choose to revive KAT then they will have our full support,” Mr.Black says.

He further notes that the site was taken down “under dubious circumstances” and calls the charges against the alleged operator “murky” at best. “No copyrighted material was ever stored on Kickass Torrents and the site was fully DMCA compliant,” Mr.Black says.

KAT spirit is still alive

For now, the forum will give estranged KAT users a place to get together once again. However, many are also still looking for alternatives, with various KAT mirrors growing in popularity.

The KAT team has noticed this as well, but warns that none of these are connected to the old team, urging people to proceed with caution.

“Please be aware that there is no legitimate fully-working KAT site available so be cautious and never attempt to login to any fake sites that may appear online,” Mr.Black warns.

Meanwhile, the alleged operator of KickassTorrents faces extradition to the United States. As far as we know he still remains in Poland, but the authorities haven’t announced any new information since last week, while the court case remains sealed.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

X-Men: Apocalypse, which came out as HDRip with Korean subtitles, is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(10)	X-Men: Apocalypse (Subbed HDRip)	7.7 / trailer
2	(1)	Central Intelligence	6.9 / trailer
3	(…)	Batman: The Killing Joke	7.3 / trailer
4	(2)	Warcraft (subbed HDRip)	7.7 / trailer
5	(3)	The Purge: Election Year (subbed HDRip)	6.3 / trailer
6	(…)	Ghostbusters (TS)	5.3 / trailer
7	(5)	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice	7.0 / trailer
8	(…)	The Secret Life of Pets (HDTS)	6.8 / trailer
9	(4)	The Legend of Tarzan (HDTS)	6.9 / trailer
10	(9)	Independence Day: Resurgence (HDTS)	5.6 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) was the largest file-sharing site in the world.

In fact, shortly before the site went offline it was the 69th most-visited site on the entire Internet, beating Craigslist, Alibaba and the BBC.

Today, however, the site is still offline and there haven’t been any signs of an imminent comeback. This means that KAT’s millions of users have to find a new home to get their daily torrent fix.

The Pirate Bay appears to be one of the prime alternatives. The notorious torrent site has been operating steadily recently, aside from some occasional downtime, and is still seen by many as the Godfather of all torrent sites.

At the end of 2014 many Pirate Bay users moved to KAT, when the site suffered more than a month of downtime. To get the latest torrents and discuss the latest developments, among other things. Now many KAT users are likely to switch in the other direction.

TorrentFreak spoke with TPB staff member Spud17, who has seen some increase in forum traffic in recent days. She says they will welcome homeless torrenters with open arms.

“When both TPB and its forum went down, we had overwhelming support from KAT users on their forum, and our staff were able to keep the communities updated on important news and announcements thanks to the help and messages of support we received.

“Reciprocation is only right and we hope KAT staff will keep us informed of any official news/announcements so that we can help to inform,” Spud17 adds.

As for the future, the TPB staffer believes that the KAT community is strong enough to survive one way or another.

“Personally, I think KAT will be back, their community is too strong to just fizzle out, much like the TPB community seeking refuge on IRC meant it stayed together during downtime, I’m sure the KAT community will keep the faith,” Spud17 notes.

Another refuge for KAT users is ExtraTorrent, which was already the third largest torrent site before the KAT takedown. TorrentFreak spoke to an operator of the site who said that they’re seeing a significant traffic spike.

“So far we got 200% signup, and 300% traffic increase at ExtraTorrent,” ET’s SaM told us a day after KAT went down.

Similar to KAT, ExtraTorrent has an active community and forums, which makes it one of the most natural alternatives.

Despite the traffic boost, ExtraTorrent’s operator is not happy to see another site going down. However, he is not willing to throw in the towel and believes that the “torrent community” will survive this setback.

“It is sad to see an iconic site go this way, and it shows how the torrent community is targeted by all means. But, I guess torrenting will prevail and this doesn’t mean the death or end of this era,” SaM says.

Another operator of one of the top torrent sites, who spoke with us on condition of anonymity, reports a traffic increase as well, albeit a small one. The site in question targets a different audience, which may explain the limited effect.

“We’re seeing a small traffic increase, but then again we were never the KAT type of site. So KAT’s users will not move to us,” the operator says.

Despite from the traffic spikes, some torrent sites were adversely affected this week. The popular torrent caching service Torcache.net went offline at the same time KAT did, which is likely related.

As a result, torrents on 1337x.to, Monova and other sites that use the same service are not loading at the moment. Time will tell if and how these events are connected.

It is safe to say, however, that the KAT downtime has had a significant effect on the torrent community. But as history has shown time and time again, it’s doubtful that it will stop many people from sharing files in the long run.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.