The Pirate Bay is currently the most widely known file-sharing site on the Internet, but this certainly wasn’t the case ten years ago.

At the time the notorious torrent site had just launched. It was available in Swedish language only and hosted just a few hundred torrent files.

Needless to say, the site has evolved quite a bit since, but interestingly enough several of these early uploaded files are still alive and well. In fact, the oldest Pirate Bay torrent with at least one seeder turns ten years old today.

TF asked the Pirate Bay team to find out what the oldest surviving uploads are and a “Top Secret Recipes E-books” torrent come out on the top of that list. As can be seen below, the torrent in question was uploaded March 29, 2004 by a user named Wallis.

Pirate Bay’s oldest active torrent

At the time the file was uploaded The Pirate Bay looked more like this, and it’s quite remarkable that the file is still being seeded after all these years.

The same torrent, in Pirate Bay’s 2004 design

The second oldest Pirate Bay torrent that’s still actively seeded is an “Italian Teens Home Video.” This file was uploaded on March 30, 2004 and currently has three seeders. The third place goes to a pirated copy of “Revolution OS”, a documentary covering the history of Linux, GNU and the free software movement.

Revolution OS director J.T.S. Moore previously told us that he has mixed feelings about this achievement. He doesn’t support the unauthorized distribution of his work, but said that it’s good to know that so many people are still interested in it.

“It’s definitely a problem, but I guess there’s some satisfaction in knowing that REVOLUTION OS still has appeal for some people twelve years later,” Moore told TF.

Below is the top five list of oldest torrents on The Pirate Bay with at least one confirmed seeder at the time of writing. It will be interesting to see is any of these are able to survive another decade. That is, if The Pirate Bay is still around by then.

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TPB’s longest surviving torrents

#	Torrent	Uploaded	Seeders	Peers
torrentfreak.com
1	Top Secret Recipes E-books	2004-03-29	7	0
2	Italian Teens Home Video	2004-03-30	3	0
3	Revolution OS	2004-03-31	46	2
4	LotR – War of the Ring	2004-03-31	2	3
5	Complete Idiots Guide to Amazing Sex	2004-04-03	2	0

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In the early days of 2013 it became clear that after years of wavering, Russia was finally going to get tough on Internet piracy. Despite outcry from Internet giants such as Google, and Yandex, the country’s largest search engine, the government pressed ahead with its plans.

On August 1, 2013, a new law was passed which would allow sites to be blocked at the ISP level if they failed to respond to copyright infringement complaints in a timely fashion. But despite the legislative teeth, file-sharing sites were not blocked, with many simply complying with takedown demands as required by law.

In January 2014, however, the government said that the law was actually having the required effect, with the number of Internet users purchasing legal content going up by 30%. But at the same time there were complaints.

The founder of IVI.ru, the country’s leading source of Hollywood-licensed video, said that his company had not benefited from the law. And now it seems that the law’s lack of success is being admitted be people right at the top – the very, very top.

During a meeting with members of the House of the Federation Council, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the legislation introduced in August 2013 had failed to meet its objectives.

“This is an extremely important area, and we still have very much to do here,” he told the meeting.

“Even after we have adopted these solutions for intellectual property protection in the field of cinema, recent analysis has shown that it does not work as effectively as we expected.”

Putin added that despite the new law, pirate movies can appear on websites anywhere and completely undermine the framework.

“The effect is that all of our protection is reduced to zero,” the President said.

But even though things aren’t working, there are no signs of any retreat. Instead the Russian government is looking to get even more aggressive.

“It is necessary to consider additional steps to protect intellectual property rights,” Putin concluded.

Work is already underway to expand the current legislation to encompass all content since right now only video is protected. The government is also looking at introducing fines for errant hosting providers and wants to find a way to permanently close sites persistently engaging in piracy.

“Sites engaging in piracy professionally (it’s their business) should be closed,” said Vladimir Medina of the Ministry of Culture.

But the idea that closing sites will solve the problem was dismissed by a representative from the body in control of .ru domains. Noting that she is reminded of the “Streisand Effect”, where suppressed information only leads to wider dissemination, Olga Alexandrova-Massine said people will find a way to access blocked content.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

There are many factors responsible for people illegally downloading content from the Internet. Of course, some just like the idea of something for nothing, while others may not have the means or ability to pay, but pricing is only part of the story.

After a decade-and-a-half of consumers crying out for content to be made available online in a timely fashion, only now are there truly encouraging signs that the entertainment companies are at least on the right track, with the music industry making better progress than most.

But with its emphasis on keeping theater, PPV, DVD and other revenue channels sacred and in a pretty strict sequence, Hollywood has other ideas. The studios are still years away from debuting all movies online and in theaters on the same day which inevitably leads to piracy.

This week, however, an MPA-affiliated anti-piracy group claimed that having an early online release only leads to movies being pirated more.

The debate surrounds the Lars von Trier movie Nymphomaniac [trailer:NSFW], a controversial two-part drama starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and featuring Christian Slater, Uma Thurman and Willem Dafoe. It documents the decades-long destructive sex life of its lead character, Joe.

The movie had its theatrical release in its native Denmark on Christmas Day 2013 but no copy appeared on torrent sites. Usually a movie would then get released in theaters in other countries, but instead it appeared on the U.S. version of iTunes on March 6, 2014. Shortly after the movie appeared illegally online, and quickly became a bit of a hit.

Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance said it hired US-based MarkMonitor to track downloads of the movie and discovered that in the first two weeks after airing on iTunes, the movie was illegally downloaded more than 283,600 times. By March 24 that number had increased to almost 349,000 downloads.

Commenting on the findings, lawyer and Rights Alliance chief Maria Fredenslund said that the large number of illegal downloads go towards dispelling the notion that people download less when content is made available quickly online.

“We often hear the story that if only the movies came out earlier in the legal market, then it would reduce piracy on the web,” Fredenslund told DR.dk.

“Here we see that the number of illegal downloads actually explodes while the film is being made available on the U.S. iTunes.”

But while there can be little doubt that the copies currently circulating online are from U.S. VOD sources, stating that an online release caused all this piracy isn’t really the full picture. What Rights Alliance didn’t mention was that the movie didn’t hit U.S. theaters until March 21, which left a two-week plus window in which piracy could thrive.

Also complicating matters is that distributor Magnolia Pictures only released the movie to 22 theaters on March 21, with just another 17 gaining access today. The rest will have to wait well into April, by which time part two of the movie will already be debuting.

But despite the doom and gloom coming out of Denmark, Magnolia Pictures says the movie is “doing very well.” Nymphomaniac’s budget was less than $5 million with Magnolia reportedly paying $2 million for U.S. rights.

Finally, it’s interesting that Rights Alliance admit that when they did their tracking of Nymphomaniac downloads they only came across 1,003 Danish IP addresses pirating the movie.

Did giving the movie to Denmark first contribute to that low amount? Or maybe it’s because Danes have become so familiar with obtaining foreign IP addresses to get around a 2008 blockade of The Pirate Bay and gain access to the U.S. version of Netflix, they have since disappeared into the crowd.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

To most consumers it is common sense that they can make a backup copy of media they own, but in the UK this is currently illegal.

After a public consultation and a thorough inspection of local copyright legislation, the UK Government decided to change current laws in favor of consumers. The changes have been in the planning stage for a few years, but this summer they will finally be implemented.

Starting in July people are free to make copies of DVDs, CDs and other types of media, as long as it’s for personal use. To inform the public about these upcoming changes the Government has just released a consumer guide, summing up citizens’ new rights.

“Copyright law is being changed to allow you to make personal copies of media you have bought, for private purposes such as format shifting or backup,” the UK’s Intellectual Property Office writes.

“The changes will mean that you will be able to copy a book or film you have purchased for one device onto another without infringing copyright.”

The UK Government stresses that the changes will make current copyright law more reasonable, and doesn’t expect that copyright holders will suffer any significant harm. However, the changes could generate extra revenue for the technology sector, increasing revenue by £31 million per year.

“This measure will benefit technology firms by removing barriers and costs and improving entry to technology markets which rely on consumers being able to make private copies,” the government concluded previously.

Under the updated law people will also be able to legally store copies of their music and movies in the cloud. However, the Government stresses that giving others access to your files will remain illegal.

“You will be permitted to make personal copies to any device that you own, or a personal online storage medium, such as a private cloud. However, it will be illegal to give other people access to the copies you have made, including, for example, by allowing a friend to access your personal cloud storage,” the guide explains.

Similarly, people are free to sell any media they purchase, but all backup copies will have to be destroyed.

The mismatch between the law and public opinion became apparent through a Government-commissioned survey, which found that 85% of consumers already thought that DVD and CD ripping was legal. More than one-third of all consumers admitted that they’d already made copies of media they purchased.

Besides the new private copying rights, the upcoming amendments will also broaden people’s fair use rights. For example, people no longer have to ask permission to quote from or parody the work of others, such as a news report or a book, as long as it’s “fair dealing” and the source is recognized.

From a public point of view the amendments are certainly a welcome change to the restrictive copyright laws that are in place currently, but they are also fashionably late. For those who are interested, a full overview of the upcoming changes is available here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

To many, uploading a music video of their favorite artist seems to be a relatively harmless act, but the major record labels clearly disagree.

Up until now “pirating” YouTube users would only get a slap on the wrist by Google, and have their YouTube accounts terminated at worst. However, it appears that the RIAA has had enough and is now going after the uploaders of two leaked Chris Brown tracks.

The RIAA’s quest started earlier this month when Vice President Anti-Piracy Mark McDevitt contacted YouTube personally to demand the takedown of the leaked tracks “New Flame” and “Die it For You.”

“We are asking you for your immediate assistance in stopping this unauthorized activity,” McDevitt wrote in a letter to the video hosting service.

“Specifically, we request that you ensure the removal of the infringing files from your system, or that you disable access to the infringing files, and that you inform the site operator of the illegality of his or her conduct,” he added.

YouTube was quick to comply, as both videos are unavailable at the time of writing. However, the RIAA didn’t stop there. Instead, the music group went to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to obtain a subpoena for the personal details of the uploader, or uploaders.

In their request the RIAA explains that it requires a subpoena to identify those responsible for the uploads. Among other things, they are looking for the IP-addresses and emails associated with the accounts in question.

“The purpose for which this subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity or identities of the individual or individuals assigned to this URL,” RIAA writes. “This information will only be used for the purposes of protecting the rights granted to our members, the sound recording copyright owners, under [the DMCA].”

The RIAA’s request for a subpoena was granted by a court clerk on the same day. This means that YouTube now has until April 15 to hand over the requested information, unless it decides to appeal.

RIAA subpoena to YouTube

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the RIAA has gone after YouTube users. Whether this is an isolated incident has yet to be seen, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if the record labels want to set an example.

The RIAA has been an active proponent of criminalizing those who “stream” copyrighted videos in the past. While that failed through the PIPA bill, this may be an opportunity for them to test the water under current copyright laws.

In any case, YouTube users should be aware that the RIAA and others can obtain their personal details on a whim.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.