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While torrents will work without them, trackers are very handy for quickly finding other BitTorrent peers with the same content. They’re also essential for those who have DHT and PEX disabled in their clients.

Often run by people with an interest in the technology, public trackers are incapable of generating funds in their own right. This means that from a financial perspective there’s almost no incentive to run one.

The important thing to remember about trackers is that they carry no infringing content whatsoever, they merely direct torrent client traffic to a particular torrent hash. Nevertheless, this doesn’t stop tracker operators from getting copyright-related headaches.

In early 2016, a new stand-alone tracker was born. Operating from zer0day.ch, the tracker grew quite quickly in the first few days of life after ETRG (ExtraTorrent’s release group) added the tracker to its releases.

But with its first 10,000 torrents tracked, the problems began. The tracker was hosted in Germany and soon its host ran out of patience with mounting copyright infringement claims. After moving to Romania, history repeated itself when the tracker’s host suspended its server.

“They didn’t want to hear that running a tracker is not illegal,” zer0day’s admin informs TF.

Late April, the tracker moved again, this time to a Latvia/Sweden setup. From there the tracker’s popularity went through the roof after an important development. Unknown to the tracker’s admin, The Pirate Bay began adding zer0day as one of the default trackers in its magnet links.

Now coordinating millions of peers, zer0day became an important player but in August the site had yet more trouble. The tracker’s server went offline again, this time without any prior notice and despite the fact that in eight months of operation not a single DMCA notice had ever been directly filed with the tracker.

With a fourth server secured elsewhere, zer0day continued with its business but more aggravation was on the horizon. Early this month, Swiss domain registry Switch told the site’s operator that his .CH domain was in trouble.

According to Switch, someone had tried to send some documents to the domain owner by snail mail and the documents had not reached the address mentioned in the WHOIS. Zer0day’s admin was given 30 days to prove his identity (with residency papers, for example) or face his domain being deleted.

While keeping the .CH domain would have been preferable, Switch didn’t make anything easy. They blocked the domain from being transferred to a third party and refused to say which agency had tried to contact the tracker’s operator.

Frustrated, the tracker’s admin decided to jump ship after a friend donated a server and a new .to (Tonga) based domain. At the time of writing the tracker is doing well, reporting 1.21m torrents and 4.44m peers (3.04 M seeders + 1.40 M leechers) on its main page.

Speaking with TF, the tracker owner says that while the ride has been a bumpy one, things got much worse after Pirate Bay began adding his tracker URL by default, something he had no control over.

“Things went from bad to worse after TPB added the tracker to their magnet links. [That knowledge] might help ease someone’s efforts to run a torrent tracker in the future,” he concludes.

As mentioned earlier, trackers aren’t absolutely essential for the functioning of BitTorrent transfers. However, their existence certainly improves matters and sites like zer0day are happy to contribute, even if their work mainly flies under the radar.

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

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Ein Windows-Update wiegt die Nutzer in Sicherheit, haben sich die Hersteller des Erpressungstrojaners Fantom wohl gedacht. In diesem Fall ist jedoch besondere Vorsicht geboten. (Ransomware, Virus)

Kim Dotcom geht vor Gericht gegen die drohende Auslieferung an die USA vor. Derweil hat das FBI wieder einmal die Kontrolle über eine der beschlagnahmten Megaupload-Domains verloren. (Kim Schmitz, Malware)

Wie sicher ist die eigene Internetseite? Der Test mit einem neuen Tool von Browserhersteller Mozilla könnte für viele Betreiber ernüchternd sein. (Mozilla, Firefox)

From a networking perspective most Internet providers are generally not very happy with BitTorrent users.

These users place a heavy load on the network and can reduce the performance experienced by other subscribers. In addition, the huge amount of data transferred outside the ISPs’ own networks is also very costly.

Some ISPs are trying to alleviate the problem by throttling or otherwise meddling with BitTorrent traffic, but there is a more customer-friendly solution.

Instead of working against their torrenting subscribers, various Internet providers in India have found a win-win solution. They help users to download content faster by linking them to local peers in their own network.

ISPs such as Alliance Broadband, Excitel, Syscon Infoway and True Broadband, have been offering accelerated torrents for a while. Some have had their own custom ‘caching’ setups but increasingly they are teaming up with the torrent search engine Torbox.

While not well-known in the rest of the world, Torbox is a blessing for many Indians who are lucky enough to have an ISP that works with the site.

Through Torbox they can download torrents at speeds much higher than their regular Internet connection allows. This is possible because Torbox links them to peers in the local network, which means that the traffic is free for the ISP.

Most people who visit Torbox will see a notice that their ISP doesn’t have a peering agreement. However, for those who have a supporting ISP the torrent site returns search results ordering torrents based on the proximity of downloaders.

Torbox uses downloaders’ IP-addresses to determine who their ISP is and directs them to torrents with peers on the same network.

“It’s a highly sophisticated IP technology based on network proximity,” Torbox explains, adding that every ISP is welcome to sign a peering agreement.

“Then based on your IP address TorBox can estimate how well you are connected to peers who have the content in question. It’s quite a tough job but luckily it works,” they add.

The downloads themselves go through a regular torrent client and don’t use any special trackers. However, the torrent swarms often connect to dedicated “cache peers” as well, which serve bits and pieces to speed up the swarm.

Torbox itself doesn’t get involved in the traffic side, they only point people to the “peering” torrents. The actual peering is handled by other services, such as Extreme Peering, which is operated by Extreme Broadband Services (EBS).

TorrentFreak spoke with EBS director Victor Francess, who says that with this setup most torrent data is served from within the ISP’s own network.

“It all creates a very powerful user experience, so in fact just about 10-20% of all torrent traffic comes from the upstream and everything else is local,” Francess says.

As for the content, Torbox links to the torrents you would generally find on a torrent site. It even has a handy catalog page featuring some recent blockbusters and other popular videos. This page also advertises Strem.io as a service that can be used to stream video torrents directly.

TorrentFreak spoke to several Indian Torbox users at different ISPs, who are all pretty happy with the service. It allows them to download torrents at much faster rates than their regular Internet speed.

One user told us that his downloads sometimes reach a 10 MBps download speed, while his Internet connection is capped at 4 MBps.

The ISPs themselves are not too secretive about their peering agreements either. Excited previously advertised the Torbox peering on its main site and others such as Sifi Broadband still do.

Alliance Broadband still lists Torbox in its FAQ at the time of writing, describing it as a “local content search engine” through which subscribers receive files “at ultra-high speed from the other peering users.”

For most outsiders it’s intriguing to see ISPs publicly cooperating with a torrent site, but in India it’s reality.

The question is, however, how long this will last. In recent months piracy has become a hot topic in India, with Bollywood insiders linking it to massive losses and even terrorism.

Ironically, many ISPs have also been ordered by courts to block access to hundreds of piracy sites, including many torrent search engines. For now, however, Torbox remains freely accessible.

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

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With an impressive collection of more than 160 million items, the Library of Congress is the second largest library in the world.

The Library also serves as a legal repository for the copyright office. By law, everyone who publishes a copyrighted work in the U.S. is required to deposit two copies at the library.

This also applies to music and videos but up until now, content produced in an online-only format has been exempted from this mandatory deposit requirement.

However, now that digital is becoming the standard for more copyrighted works, the Copyright Office is considering a change. As a result, music publishers will be required to submit all digital works to the Library of Congress.

These files will then become freely accessible to the public through a secured system.

“Under any rule requiring mandatory deposit of online-only sound recordings, the Library would provide public access to such recordings,” the Copyright Office writes in its proposal.

“The Library currently has a system by which authorized users can access and listen to digitized copies of physical sound recordings collected through other means at the Madison Building of the Library of Congress.”

This proposal has been met with scrutiny by the music industry group RIAA, which states that it has “serious concerns.”

According to the RIAA, there is a risk that content hosted by the Library may be exploited by pirates, who could copy the music and share it on various pirate sites. This could then crush the major record labels’ revenues.

“It is well-established that the recorded music industry has been inundated with digital piracy,” the RIAA writes.

“If sound recordings available through the Library – whether on-premises or online – were managed in a way that patrons could use those recordings for uploading to pirate web sites and unlicensed streaming services or if the Library’s collection of sound recordings were made electronically available to the public at large, that could have a devastating impact on our member companies’ revenues.”

The RIAA further states that the current proposal lacks information on what security measures would apply to the storage of and access to sound recordings.

In addition to a general concern that the public could copy sound recordings in the library, the RIAA notes that there’s also a risk that the entire Library of Congress database could be hacked if people are allowed to access it over the Internet.

Should this happen, millions of digital sound recordings may leak to the public.

“In an age where servers are hacked on a regular basis, no electronic server is secure. Government servers are no different,” the RIAA writes.

“Given the inherent vulnerability of servers believed to be secure, we question the need for anyone to have remote access to a server that stores commercially valuable digital sound recordings.”

Since people have so many options to enjoy digital music nowadays, the RIAA sees no reason for the Library of Congress to allow electronic copying or distribution of the sound recordings of its members.

If the Copyright Office goes ahead, the RIAA urges it to consult the record labels to make sure that state of the art technological protection measures are deployed to secure their work.

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RIAA’s full comments are available here (pdf).

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