Displaying items by tag: Torrent

The Italian Security firm Hacking Team is now admitting that their spying software is potentially in the hands of bad guys. After a hack that saw roughly 400GB of company information liberated from their systems they have been monitoring what is being released online. They have now concluded that there is sufficient source code for their monitoring applications to allow someone to mount the same style surveillance that they were providing to their clients.

According to recent reports The Pirate Bay has suddenly become available in the UK for almost all ISPs. The change happened when the Pirate Bay moved to CloudFlare and turned on HTTPS Strict. Once this was done things turned around for the notorious site. What is interesting is that ISPs that were previously blocking the site do not appear to be scrambling to get it back under control. The exact reason for the sudden reappearance of the site is unclear, but speculation is that using CloudFlare’s HTTPS Strict made all the difference.

Controversial torrent service Pirate Bay once again changed the domain. Latest  .sx domain the Pirate Bay was on, was registered in the Dutch part of the Caribbean island of St. Martin (Sint Maarten), was seized probably due to the commitment and the impact of BREIN, a Dutch organization for copyright protection.

Hotfile, one of the most popular services for sharing files has ceased their operations. In a recent court settlement Hotfile has agreed to pay a fine of $80 million for copyright infringement to several movie studios. It is the result of a lawsuit for copyright infringement started in March 2012. submitted by Disney, Fox, Universal, Sony Pictures and Warner against Hotfile CEO, Anthony Tito.

Irish subsidiary of Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music have called the local ISPs to start blocking service Kickass Torrents. At the same time they launched a legal action against this service in the Irish High Court.

Less than two weeks ago, BitTorrent tracker isoHunt has stopped working toward a settlement that led to the dismissal of long-term litigation at the district court in California. This is a complaint against isoHunt and its owner Gary Fung, which was started in 2006 by several American film studios due to multiple violations of copyright. But it did not take long for isoHunt to reappear.

Every so often demand for a product out paces people’s common sense. In the past we have watched as people have happily downloaded malware thinking they are getting something early or for free. It is not an unknown or uncommon happening. This time the product in question is GTA V for PC and the consequences for,… let’s call it eagerness, is not good at all.

The MPAA can score another victory in their ongoing (and lopsided) battle against file sharing on the internet as the popular Torrent search site ISOHunt has announced it is closing down. For the last few years site owner Gary Fung has fought the MPAA over allegations of copyright infringement. The case resembles the one that was thrown at The Pirate Bay several years ago in that ISOHunt did not actually store files on the site. The lawsuit brings many questions to mind about search engines in general and if systems designed to index the internet can be policed.

The most famous search engine for torrent files, The Pirate Bay, these days celebrated 10 year anniversary of successful operation, despite the efforts of many anti-piracy campaigns, organizations and governments of various countries to completely disable their function.

After having their ideas shot down by popular displeasure the Copyright lobbyists are now trying to make aggressive tactics ok. They have put together a report on the state of American Intellectual property theft and have managed to build up some of the old boogeymen like they always do. This time, they are starting to make more open suggestions about fighting fire with fire. In the past these reports have always centered on the commercial market and the state of individual piracy, product copying and other more economic concepts. These were enough to get higher mandatory fines, to criminalize certain fair use tactics and more. Now by subtly changing the report to show highlight the national security aspect the industry hopes to be given considerably more power to act.