Over the past year pirate streaming sites have conquered the masses, but that doesn’t mean torrent sites are going away.

On the last day of the year, we had a virtual sit-down with Pirate Bay crew member Spud17 to see what’s in store for the site and how it measures up to the competition.

While TPB has had its rough patches, the site is once again the most-visited torrent site. Although occasional downtime is unavoidable, it’s not going away anytime soon.

“TPB will be around for the foreseeable future, and until the next big thing is invented, torrent sites will continue to grow in popularity, as will streaming sites,” Spud17 says.

The TPB crew believes that streaming has its place in the piracy ecosystem, especially for live events. However, torrents are preferred for those who like to actually share something.

They see non-P2P streaming of regular pirated TV-shows and movies as a ‘selfish’ act, in a way, since the users themselves are not contributing.

“Streaming will continue to be popular with sports fans, but torrenting and sharing with your peers has always been the way forward. I personally see streaming as a selfish act, but when you torrent, you’re sharing with others and helping to stick it to the man.”

According to the TPB crew, there is still plenty of corporate greed to revolt against in the year to come.

They note that some people may want to stick it to the BBC for the staggered release of Planet Earth 2, and releasing the series BluRay/DVD boxset before the final episode aired, after which they complained about pirating fans.

“Or to Sky for committing daylight robbery when charging £20+ to watch a boxing match, or to the giant publishing houses which charge £500 for one academic journal,” Spud17 says.

“As long as their greed continues, us sharing files with one another will continue,” she adds.

The TPB crew also notes that lessons have been learned from the shutdown of various large torrent sites, including KickassTorrents (KAT).

“KAT shutting down was a shock to everyone, and people quickly realized the foolishness of putting all your eggs in one basket,” Spud17 says.

As a result, they’re now trying to set the right example by allowing uploaders to promote their releases on other sites in TPB’s official forums. In addition, they wish the KAT staff all the best with the new site they just launched.

Even though some may see large torrent sites as competitors, the TPB crew sees cooperation as a way forward. In any case, TPB will always remain special, if only for its persistent refusal to take down copyrighted content.

“The one thing that still sets TPB apart from others is, of course, its refusal to comply with DMCA takedown notices,” Spud17 concludes.

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

Following a joint investigation with licensing outfit PRS for Music, last year officers from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) and Merseyside police raided an address in Everton, Liverpool.

They arrested Wayne Evans, a local DJ who was involved in the online distribution of digital music. Known online as OldSkoolScouse, Evans uploaded packs of the UK’s current Top 40 Singles to torrent sites each week. They included at least 200 uploaded to KickassTorrents.

After pleading guilty during an earlier hearing, this month Evans was sentenced for copyright infringement and fraud. The 39-year-old, who had no previous convictions, was jailed for a year.

Both police and rightsholders celebrated the conviction, describing the 12 months sentence as a deterrent to others considering music piracy. But of course, among file-sharers the long-term detention of Evans was less well received and has been widely criticized online.

Now, the team behind the resurrected KickassTorrents have added their dissenting voices, slamming the sentence as a waste of time and money.

“We find the 12-month sentence of OldSkoolScouse which the judge ruled a ‘deterrent to others’ offensive in the extreme and an irresponsible waste of taxpayer resources,” the team told TF in a statement.

“One questions the motivations of the agencies and resources assigned in regards to copyright infringements whilst actual criminals walk free. Is this what our legal systems have now become?”

While Evans undoubtedly knew that what he was doing was illegal on some level, it’s unlikely he’d have expected a knock on the door from the UK’s most elite anti-piracy unit followed by a major conviction for fraud. Undoubtedly a show of force and a stern warning would’ve ensured no more uploads, but clearly the police and PRS were out to prove a point.

But herein lies the problem. Whether copyright holders like it or not, the general public simply does not see infringement as a serious crime, so when hefty sentences like this are handed out, the numbers are rarely seen to add up.

For instance, take the woman who smashed a glass into another woman’s head in an unprovoked nightclub attack in May. This November, she also received a 12-month sentence.

Another man, who regularly tortured his girlfriend and subjected her to waterboarding sessions, got the same sentence in August.

Worse still, over the past 15 years many convicted terrorists in the UK have been released after serving just 12 months in prison.

It’s no surprise at all that the public has difficulty equating the seriousness of file-sharing to these violent and obnoxious crimes and it’s hard to imagine a time when that will change. However, the authorities have clearly drawn a line in the sand, so if they wanted a deterrent, then they definitely have one here.

Finally, the KickassTeam call for solidarity and wish Evans all the best for the future.

“We urge OldSkoolScouse to appeal the case and allow justice to prevail. Now is the time for the community to show its full support and put an end to corporate greed, bullying, ransom and censorship.

“We wish OldSkoolScouse a positive outcome and know that there are millions of people globally who support you,” they conclude.

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

Day in and day out copyright holders are bombarding Google with DMCA takedown notices, pointing out links to pirated content.

The majority of these requests are sent by the music and film industries, targeting hundreds of thousands of different websites.

In recent years the volume of takedown notices has increased spectacularly and in 2016 new records were shattered again.

Over the past 12 months, rightsholders asked Google to remove more than a billion links to allegedly infringing content, nearly twice as much as the 558 million it received last year.

Thanks to a new update to Google’s Transparency Report we now know for the first time how many of these were actually deleted. According to Google’s records, 89.8 percent of the requests were, resulting in 914 million removals.

Looking at the number of sites that are highlighted we see that it’s not just a few usual suspects that are causing problems. In total, rightsholders targeted content on 351,000 different websites.

Google takedown requests (past 12 months to December 29)

There is a great variety of copyright holders too. The UK music industry group BPI is at the forefront as usual, with more than 80 million requests, but Fox, NBC Universal, HBO and Microsoft are also among the top senders.

While the number of notices has steadily increased over the past several years, there are some early signs that they may level off in 2017. Over the past six months, the overall volume hasn’t increased, with the number of weekly takedowns hovering around 20 million.

Still, it’s clear that the major rightsholder groups and Google have different views on the DMCA takedown procedure and how to move forward.

The MPAA, RIAA, and other industry groups are calling for extensive revisions and don’t want Google and others to “hide” behind their safe harbor protections. Among other things, they want a ‘notice-and-stay-down‘ policy to ensure that, once deleted, content doesn’t pop up elsewhere.

Google, however, sees this an unworkable solution and believes that the current system is capable of dealing with infringing content.

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

After bursting onto the file-sharing scene to wave of publicity, Popcorn Time has settled down to become another established way of obtaining and sharing video content.

Often referred to as the Netflix For Pirates, Popcorn Time has seen more than its fair share of controversy, with several forks and developers having been targeted and in some cases shut down by the MPAA. One fork, however, is still going strong.

Popcorn-time.to remains one of, if not the most popular variant of the software. Its tagline from the beginning has been “This Popcorn Time service will never be taken down” and thus far it has lived up to that billing.

With 2016 drawing to a close, TorrentFreak caught up with its developers to listen to their thoughts and plans for 2017. What we didn’t expect was a broadside against what they refer to as the “US Content Monopolies [USCM],” aka the MPAA.

Noting that copyright is a relatively new framework, the team say that fast Internet and digitized media has enabled groups such as the MPAA to “tax end-users” in order to feed their “monstrous appetite.” Content is expensive, they say, and not everyone can afford to buy it.

“It’s obvious that watching one’s favorite TV series chapter as soon as it’s released, or buying a VOD, is cool, extremely convenient and fun. But it costs. US$99 (average) monthly in the US and more in Europe. The average monthly salary in the developed countries is between US$10,000 to US$1,200. In third world countries it’s significantly less,” the team says.

“People who struggle to support their families, cannot afford to pay cable, satellites, and VOD. They do manage to link to the internet. Thus Netflix, where available, P2P, Popcorn Time etc. are their only solution for content consumption. The USCM will never make a nickel from them, because their alternative is not to watch movies, TV shows or listen to music albums.”

The team says that while the MPAA fights people who can’t afford to buy tickets or pay for subscriptions, shutting down services like Popcorn Time or even regular torrents won’t solve that particular problem either. Where there’s no money available, no blood will come from stone, they say.

The team suggests that they’re providing a service to meet this demand, while at the same time providing a counter-balance to what they feel are the unfair business practices of a copyright-protected monopoly with power in high places.

“This brings about the conclusion that it is all about politics and political power and immoral tradeoffs between administrations and huge money interests,” they say.

“There cannot be any other reason for the Polish authorities keeping the Ukrainian citizen Artem Vaulin, the creator of KickAssTorrents, in custody, for almost six months, awaiting a decision to extradite him to the US, as if he was a war criminal.”

In addition to these tough words and the continued running of their own successful Popcorn Time project, the team are also bringing a valuable new addition to the file-sharing landscape in 2017.

Available now, the team has launched Popcorn Tracker, a brand new OpenTracker-powered public tracker, free to the masses.

Popcorn Tracker

Public trackers are in pretty short supply at the moment so a new one with capacity will be a welcome addition to the landscape. Of course, the platform itself is content-neutral, so anyone wishing to embed a tracker in a torrent of any kind will be able to do so without restrictions.

In closing, the Popcorn Time team see online sharing increasing next year, particularly since the content allowing that to happen is already out there, distributed among the public.

“The files containing content are out there, in huge numbers and throughout disbursed locations of sites, being the sites of sharing, P2P users,” they conclude.

Popcorn Tracker, billed as “A Public and Free BitTorrent Tracker That You Can Trust”, is available here.

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

Every week millions of people flock to torrents sites, searching for pirated copies of the latest blockbusters.

At the end of the year we take a look at what movies were pirated most often and this year ‘Deadpool’ comes out as the clear winner.

Pirated copies of the American superhero film first appeared early February triggering millions of downloads during the months that followed. Even today, thousands of people are still actively sharing it.

Superheroes and comics are doing very well on torrent sites this year, as the top three is completed by ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ and ‘Captain America Civil War.’ And further down the list we also find ‘X-Men Apocalypse’ and ‘Suicide Squad.’

While file-sharers may have a slight preference for geeky films, in general there’s a high correlation between piracy and box-office sales. That is, top grossing movies tend to do well on torrent sites too.

With this in mind, it’s no surprise that ‘Finding Dory’ makes an appearance as well. The Pixar movie sold most tickets at the box office in the US, and comes in second worldwide.

‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ is somewhat of an exception in this regard, as it secured a spot in the top 10 while being a relative flop in movie theaters, at least in the U.S. On the other side, ‘Zootopia’ is missing despite being the third-best grossing movie worldwide this year.

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Below we have compiled a list of the most-torrented films in 2016 (irregardless of their release date). The data is estimated by TorrentFreak based on several sources, including download statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers.

Note: we have decided to stop reporting download estimates in our yearly top lists. Due to various changes in the torrent index/tracker landscape it’s become more challenging to monitor downloads, so a ranked overview makes most sense.

Most downloaded Movies on BitTorrent, 2016

rank	movie	worldwide grosses
torrentfreak.com
1	Deadpool	$783,770,709
2	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice	$868,160,194
3	Captain America Civil War	$783,770,709
4	Star Wars The Force Awakens	$783,770,709
5	X-Men Apocalypse	$783,770,709
6	Warcraft	$433,125,655
7	Independence Day: Resurgence	$$387,644,286
8	Suicide Squad	$746,100,054
9	Finding Dory	$1,022,701,881
10	The Revenant	$532,950,503

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