Last week we reported that the operator of YTS, one of the most visited torrent sites, resolved a piracy lawsuit that was filed against it by movie outfit Wicked Nevada.

In a consent judgment, the YTS admin agreed to pay $150,000 in damages. In addition, he promised not to share torrents of the film “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile.”

What is most unusual about the agreement is that the torrent site itself remains operational. This means that, aside from the hefty damages award, YTS can continue its business as usual. However, that doesn’t mean that its users can’t be targeted.

Soon after our coverage, we noticed that Wicked Nevada filed a new lawsuit together with several other movie companies including Dallas Buyers Club, Bodyguard Productions, and Rambo V Productions. This complaint is also related to YTS, but targets alleged users of the site over alleged copyright infringement.

The movie companies list a group of Doe defendants and a Hawaiian man named Harry Beasor. According to the complaint, all defendants registered an account with the YTS website using their email address. In addition, their IP-addresses were linked to pirating films of the movie companies that filed the suit.

While lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates are not new, this complaint stands out and raises quite a few concerns.

Apparently, the movie companies know the email addresses for some registered YTS users. Not only that, but they also know which torrents were downloaded from the site using the accounts and what IP-addresses were used, as the complaint makes clear.

“Defendant Harry Beasor used the YTS website to download torrent files associated with Plaintiffs’ Works from Internet Protocol (‘IP’) address 91.207.175.82 associated with his VPN service,” it reads, specifically mentioning the movies London Has Fallen, Mechanic: Resurrection, and I Feel Pretty.

“Defendant Harry Beasor used the IP address of the VPN service because he knew that he was copying the Works without a valid license and therefore in violation of Plaintiffs’ exclusive rights,” the complaint adds.

The movie companies point out that YTS openly advertises the use of a VPN. According to the torrent site, it’s a good option for users to protect themselves from expensive lawsuits.

TorrentFreak reached out to the attorney of the filmmakers, Kerry Culpepper, to find out how this private user information was obtained from the site. He informed us that, at this moment, he cannot comment on the matter in public.

This leaves us with little more than speculation. A likely scenario is that the YTS operator gave up the user information as part of the negotiations. This would not be unprecedented, as the developer of the app CotoMovies shared similar information with the film companies in the past.

We contacted YTS for a comment on this possibility, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

What is clear is that the movie companies linked emails that were used to register with YTS to actual IP-addresses. All the Doe defendants are users of the ISP Spectrum, who the copyright holders hope to expose through a subpoena. Mr. Beasor used a VPN, which appears to have been Private Internet Access, but the rightsholders already have his name and no additional subpoena is requested.

The complaint doesn’t make it clear how the movie companies tracked down the name of Mr. Beasor. The most likely scenario is that the email address gave this away, but we were unable to confirm this independently.

While clear details are not available, the lawsuit shows that using a VPN is not very helpful if there are other leads that point to one’s identity. If someone uses an easily identifiable email which can be linked to a VPN address that was used with the same account, even the best VPN doesn’t protect one’s privacy.

That said, the movie companies’ case is certainly no shoo-in. People who register an account with YTS don’t have to confirm their email address, so anyone can sign up with a random address, including those of other people.

In addition, most VPN IP-addresses are used by dozens or hundreds of people at once, so it’s impossible to prove without a doubt that one person shared a single file at any given point in time. Especially since many VPN providers don’t keep logs that could help to identify a single user.

That said, the fact that the movie companies are going after YTS users, claiming to have access to details that are only supposed to be available in the torrent site’s user database, is quite worrying, to say the least.

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A full copy of the complaint, filed by Fallen Productions, Inc., Criminal Productions, LHF Productions, Millennium Funding, Bodyguard Productions, Hunter Killer Productions, HB Productions, Rambo V Productions, TBV Productions, Colossal Movie Productions, Venice PI, Colossal Movie Productions, Headhunter, Dallas Buyers Club, Definition Delaware, and Wicked Nevada, obtained by TorrentFreak, is available here (pdf)

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With tens of millions of visitors per month, MangaDex is a real force in the manga community.

The site’s status as an unofficial provider of manga ‘scanlations’ (scanned copies with translations) is valued by fans, many of whom are keen to experience harder-to-find content in languages other than their native tongue.

Last week, however, MangaDex fans had to go without their usual fix. The site went down with staff reporting that a server migration and database maintenance were underway. The platform eventually returned yesterday but not under its usual .org domain.

According to an announcement by moderator ‘Zephyrus’, MangaDex was forced to switch to MangaDex.cc due to legal issues.

“Our .cc domain is temporary for now,” he writes. “Our .org domain was acquired via our reseller, who has removed us from CF and have stopped supporting us due to legal pressure.”

‘CF’ is a reference to Cloudflare, the US-based CDN company utilized by millions of regular sites as well as large volumes of ‘pirate’ sites and services.

While MangaDex was down, TorrentFreak discovered that during December 2019 the site was targeted in a DMCA subpoena filed by attorney Evan Stone on behalf of VIZ Media, LLC, mentioning a chapter of ‘Boruto’.

It remains unclear whether that specific problem caused the downtime during the past few days but MangaDex has now confirmed the reason for the DMCA subpoena.

“To anyone paying attention to the news, the Boruto chapter in question was an official English rip. Uploading official chapters has always been against our rules, and we’d appreciate your continued assistance in reporting any content that breaks our rules in the future,” Zephyrus notes.

“Thanks to all our users for staying vigilant and reporting all official sources, early releases, troll chapters and all other content that breaks our rules.”

Interestingly, someone claiming to be a former admin of a manga fan group hit Reddit yesterday to issue an apology for triggering the DMCA subpoena. Claiming to be from ‘Boltmangacolor’, a group that has been coloring Boruto manga since February 2019, the individual said it was their colored upload that caused the problem.

“We used to upload our works on imgur, but then switched to mangadex because of efficiency reasons; we meant in no way to infringe any rules, we honestly didn’t know such a rule even existed, and that it could cause all of these problems,” the person wrote.

“Please note that this is in no way related to the Boruto community or the Boruto manga itself, but only to us admins who uploaded and chose the scans to color. We stopped working with the team a month ago, so stuff like this will never happen again. We are deeply, tremendously sorry.”

In the meantime, MangaDex says it’s still in the process of migrating content, meaning that some older chapters may not be available on the new server. In any event, the forecast is for the site to be back to its previous form in the early part of this week.

Additionally, MangaDex says it also has issues in respect of funding the platform. The alarm bells don’t seem to be ringing too loudly at the moment but Zephyrus says that due to its reseller terminating support for handling site donations, other avenues are being explored. If all else fails, ads may appear on the site “as a last resort.”

The site is currently operating relatively smoothly via MangaDex.cc but the scanlation platform believes that it will return to MangaDex.org when the “transfer to our new provider completes.”

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This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(…)	Maleficent: Mistress of Evil	6.8 / trailer
2	(1)	Joker	8.8 / trailer
3	(…)	Frozen 2 (DVDScr)	7.2 / trailer
4	(2)	Zombieland Double Tap	7.1 / trailer
5	(…)	Black and Blue	5.9 / trailer
6	(4)	Jexi	6.2 / trailer
7	(3)	Ad Astra	6.9 / trailer
8	(6)	Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood	7.9 / trailer
9	(9)	The Addams Family	5.8 / trailer
10	(8)	Ford v Ferrari (DVDScr)	8.3 / trailer

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People who run pirate sites and services tend to be pretty interesting individuals. Some are extraordinarily talented and smart, with technical skills that can leave one in awe. Some are funny and insightful too, while others are irritable and almost impossible to deal with.

Surprise. People who work at anti-piracy companies can be pretty interesting individuals too. They also tend to be talented and smart, with technical skills in abundance. In some cases they are some of the nicest people you will ever deal with while some are the nastiest characters around. Like their counterparts, they cover the usual spread of human traits.

In many ways, however, these warring groups of people are very similar, they just approach the same thing from different angles. The aim of pirates is to spread media and the aim of anti-pirates is to stop them from doing so. Put this scenario into a video game and its no different from a team deathmatch. It’s not personal either, it’s just business.

The point is that both ‘teams’ are on the same battlefield and as a result, can benefit from the same strategies. And it can be argued that there has been no greater strategist than Chinese general Sun Tzu, the credited author of The Art of War.

Despite being written 2,500 years ago, the wisdom of this work shines through today. So which of his teachings are most relevant to both sides of the piracy ‘wars’?

Perhaps the most obvious, which underlines the similarities between the factions, is that “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy“. On a basic level, by understanding your adversary deeply, you are able to think how he thinks. Stepping deeper, some ‘pirates’ on pirate sites are not pirates at all, even though they act like them.

“It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results.”

Perhaps one of the great ironies of starting a pirate platform is that if it fails quickly, the disappointment comes with a gilded edge – the enemy will never come. Great success, on the other hand, almost certainly means the opposite. Not considering this at the very beginning can be a recipe for disaster.

As Sun Tzu said: “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”

In 2019 this quote became relevant every time we wrote about small Kodi-addon developers in the UK being targeted by FACT and even the police. The majority of these people seemed to have miscalculated how important their software would ultimately become and, as a result, left a trail of digital breadcrumbs to their front doors.

When the authorities arrive with overwhelming force, a cascade of quotes inevitably follows, all centered around the imbalance of power and the pointlessness of self-sacrifice in an unwinnable battle. Importantly, they know that “supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

That’s what the strongly-worded cease-and-desist letters backed up with a credible threat of civil or criminal prosecution aim to achieve. They don’t want a war, you don’t want to lose, so be sensible and back away now, they say. Or as Sun Tzu put it “build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across” in the hope that the “the wise warrior avoids the battle.“

Of course, there is a valid theory that anti-piracy groups cannot take on the world so if everyone resisted they would be unable to cope with the workload. They know that better than anyone so they pick their fights wisely, in order to project an image of power and present a credible deterrent.

“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill,” Sun Tzu said. “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”

But for some pirates, giving in has never been an option and one needs to look no further than The Pirate Bay to see how Sun Tzu’s teachings have applied again and again. Every single time that site or the people behind it have been targeted, the response has been the same – this will not work and we will never stop.

Host targeted, we have another – and another. Domain targeted, we have a dozen more. Blocked by ISPs, here are a thousand proxies. Or as Sun Tzu wrote, “Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you. This will diminish his enthusiasm.”

Tying up disproportionate resources in one battle is not prudent, particularly against a resilient enemy such as The Pirate Bay. “If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak,” Sun Tzu taught. “By reinforcing every part, he weakens every part.”

The Pirate Bay, however, is a unique case. Having lost so many battles, they now operate from a position of strength. The site isn’t invincible but there are many softer targets that produce more bang for content providers’ buck – and less embarrassment when it all comes to nothing – again.

When everything is said and done, setting out to achieve anything significant in piracy is a gamble. Sun Tzu probably has something to say about that too, but a Chinese proverb explains things perfectly. It’s a plan that should never be deviated from, if survival needs to be ensured.

“If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.”

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In terms of popularity, torrent sites have been surpassed by streaming sites in recent years. However, they remain very popular.

As we enter a new year we see that The Pirate Bay has taken the lead once again, moving up from the third spot last year.

After a turbulent time, the site has been relatively stable over the past twelve months, although it still doesn’t allow new users to sign up.

Looking more broadly we see that the entire list has remained relatively intact this year. A few sites have switched places but none of the major sites disappeared, which by itself is already quite an achievement.

This year’s overview includes two newcomers. The game-oriented ‘Fitgirl Repacks’ enters in ninth place and the Indian site Tamil Rockers closes the list in tenth place. These two replace TorrentDownloads and Zooqle, which both saw a significant traffic dip and dropped outside the top 10.

We traditionally limit our overview to torrent sites that are targeted primarily at an English or international audience. This means that RuTracker, TorrentWal, Rutor, Dytt8, and Etoland aren’t included even though they would qualify in terms of traffic.

Below is the full list of the ten most-visited torrent sites at the start of the new year. The list is based on various traffic reports and we display the Alexa rank for each. In addition, we include last year’s ranking.

Most Popular Torrent Sites (domains) of 2020

1. The Pirate Bay

After more than 16 years, The Pirate Bay remains afloat. After suffering substantial downtime in 2018, last year went relatively smoothly. The site closed registrations a few months ago but remains open to the public. It’s also still operating from its .org domain but it’s uncertain if that will remain the case in the future.

2. YTS.lt

YTS.lt is the unofficial successor of the defunct YTS or YIFY group. The site focuses on movie releases which are popular around the globe. YTS has been the target of three lawsuits in the US recently. While the operator signed a consent judgment to pay damages to one filmmaker, the site itself remains online.

2. 1337x

1337x keeps its spot in the top three. Unlike some other sites, it has a loyal group of uploaders that provide fresh content on a daily basis.

4. RARBG

RARBG has remained steady over the past year. The site operates from several popular domain names, but only the one with the most traffic is taken into account for this list. RARBG was founded in 2008 and specializes in high-quality video releases.

5. NYAA.si

NYAA.si is a popular resurrection of the anime torrent site NYAA. While there is fierce competition from alternative pirate streaming sites, the torrent portal continues to do well, climbing one position compared to last year.

6. Torrentz2

Torrentz2 launched as a replacement for the original Torrentz.eu site, which voluntarily closed its doors in 2016. The site doesn’t host any torrent files but remains a popular meta-search engine.

7. EZTV.io

The original TV-torrent distribution group EZTV shut down after a hostile takeover in 2015, with new owners claiming ownership of the brand. The group switched to a new domain last year and was inadvertently blocked in the Netherlands because it shared an IP-address with The Pirate Bay.

8. LimeTorrents

LimeTorrents has been around for more than ten years. Like many other entries in this list it is blocked by ISPs in countries around the world, which seems to hurt overall traffic somewhat.

10. Fitgirl Repacks

Fitgirl Repacks is by no means a traditional torrent site. It is the home of a popular group that releases slimmed down cracked versions of popular games, which keeps download times to a minimum. They publish torrents on other sites but also offer magnet links of their own, which is why we included the site here.

10. Tamil Rockers

The torrent site TamilRockers is infamous in India, where it has its homebase. However, as it’s available in English, the site is used worldwide. Despite several enforcement actions and arrests of alleged admins and operators, the site is thriving.

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Disclaimer: Yes, we know that Alexa isn’t perfect, but it helps to compare sites that operate in a similar niche. We also use other traffic metrics to compile the top ten. Please keep in mind that many sites have mirrors or alternative domains, which are not taken into account here. We don’t encourage the use of any of these sites, the yearly list is published as an informational / news resource.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.