TorrentFreak

Soulseek is one the greatest music sharing communities that most of the world has never heard of. Covering all genres, Soulseek is an active network specializing in electronic music, where many of the members are musicians themselves. The music industry, however, sees the filesharing application as a threat, and will go after Soulseek in court.

Seven Hollywood studios including Paramount, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros and Disney have teamed up to sue iiNet, Australia’s third largest ISP. iiNet is accused of doing little to stop its subscribers from sharing copyright works via BitTorrent. The ISP denies the accusations.

Overreaching corporate claims are nothing new, certainly when it comes to copyright. Toyota vastly over-reached recently, requesting all images containing their products be removed from a wallpaper site, citing copyright issues. Finally, Toyota responds.

BitTorrent’s popularity is on the rise in India, and with a massive increase in broadband subscribers just around the corner, it is the number one growth market for BitTorrent sites. With a population of over 1.1 billion people and only 4.5 million broadband subscribers, there is huge amount of untapped potential.

Mininova, one of the leading BitTorrent sites, is testing a new technology which allows content producers to include subtle ads in their videos. By providing more opportunities to monetize free content, Mininova hopes to attract even more premium publishers.

After going after thousands accused of sharing video games in the UK, lawyers Davenport Lyons are now branching out into other areas. This week sees them start going after those it accuses of sharing the movie “Army Fuckers”, hardcore gay porn featuring ‘farm boys’ and Gestapo officers. Accusing the wrong people this time could prove very costly indeed.

TV shows are by far the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?

Mininova, the leading BitTorrent search engine, has been offline for most of the day. Inevitably, BitTorrent addicts having been getting nervous, worrying about what is happening at the same time as they long for their daily fix. We have good news for them, the wait is almost over and when the site returns it will do so, fully prepared for the future.

Amassing over a million downloads in under seven days, ‘The Dark Knight’ is by far the most pirated movie of this week. Earlier this year, Cam and DVD-screener versions of the latest in the Batman series already found their way onto the Internet, making this blockbuster the most pirated movie of 2008.

In this episode we talk about Obama’s victory speech getting torrented, Quantum of Solace getting pirated, Finnish kids admitting to downloading, The Pirate Bay tracking 25 million peers and of course TV-show statistics.

A hacker has successfully changed the nameservers of the popular BitTorrent meta-search engine Torrentz.com. For a few hours the site was replaced with an Adbrite ad, and a link to a warez forum. To top it off, the hacker then contacted the Torrentz admin to brag about his hacking abilities.