Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most eagerly anticipated PC game releases of 2015 and this week the tension was finally over. For most the wait for desktop version of the 2013/2014 smash hit was totally worth it, with overwhelmingly positive reviews circulating online.

For others, however, the week has been one of tooth-gnashing, nail-biting tension, largely spent worrying over whether the mighty DRM-defeating piracy overlords would find it in their hearts to throw a cracked version to the masses.

And in parts it was a pretty ugly thing to behold.

Endless warez and torrent forums (and more public affairs such as Reddit) were flooded with requests for a cracked version of the iconic game, leading to anger over the umpteenth duplicate thread among those who’d answered the same questions dozens of times already.

But the real desperation was to be found in numerous chat channels occupied by people hoping to get an early heads-up on where to find the first free (and functioning) online copies.

On the day of the game’s release TF spent time in a few of them and for the most part it was an absolute car crash, largely due to people posting links to all manner of bogus content.

While the pictures of crack (cocaine) and the odd meme weren’t particularly hostile, the links to renamed .exe files and people running them there and then, with no apparent concern for the well being of their computers, was something to behold.

“Don’t forget to disable your anti-virus before running,” was the sterling advice given on a number of occasions.

At least twice people claimed to have received errors on their screen after running what they thought was a genuine crack, only to immediately disappear from chat, never to return. With the air thick with schadenfreude, much dark hilarity ensued among the link spammers.

By Wednesday it became clear that Chinese group 3DM would probably be the first to put out a crack for the popular title and sure enough a few hours later the much-anticipated code began to propagate. Suitable only for Windows 7 machines in the first instance, a later version claimed to cater for Windows 8 installations too.

But for some the few hours wait between official GTA V launch and the subsequent crack release had been too much. With a level of impatience not often seen in the gaming world, countless users publicly declared “enough is enough” and reported buying the game on Steam instead. They’re probably still stuck in Los Santos now, robbing and killing their way to infamy.

Nevertheless, many thousands more with either more patience, less disposable income, or both, proceeded to obtain the game and its crack through less official channels. By very early Thursday at least 20,000 people had obtained the game using BitTorrent, a not inconsiderable feat considering the huge size of the files involved.

While the updates and cracks weighed in at less than 400mb, the game files themselves were changing hands in archives ranging from 40GB to 60GB, with warnings that the compressed version could take four hours or more to decompress and install, even after the mammoth download.

But despite the waiting and hoop jumping, by early Thursday a staggering one petabyte of data had been exchanged on the most popular GTA V torrents, an amount equal to all U.S. Internet traffic during a single day in 2000. Or, to put it another way, more data than was consumed by the million Game of Thrones pirates who downloaded the first leaked episode in the hours following last week’s surprise release.

Nevertheless, even after all the head-scratching, waiting, downloading, decompressing and other shenanigans, many users are still having problems running the cracked version of the game. Others, on the other hand, report no problems at all and have heaped praise on 3DM for their amazing work.

“I love this game! Is there any way to donate to 3DM?” a user on one site asked.

“How about sending money to the Rockstar devs instead?” came a dry response.

And indeed, some pirates intend to do just that.

“It’s definitely impressive [to have cracked the game] in such a short time. I appreciate the efforts a lot,” wrote one.

“My only real goal was to gauge how well it runs on my PC before I plunk down $60 for it. Now that I know it runs fine I’ll be buying it after work today.”

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

Slowly but surely things are returning back to normal at the beleaguered Pirate Bay.

After weeks of downtime the site came back online late January, recovering from a raid that hit the site hard. The notorious torrent site has burned through several hosting companies since its return but the site is now relatively stable.

With many of the old moderators back on board the spam problems are under control as well. All this time, however, there was still one major feature missing from the site. Users were not able to register an account so they can publish content.

This last barrier was removed a few hours ago when TPB formally reopened user registrations.

“The registrations remained closed as a security precaution. But now that the mods are back and stable, new accounts won’t flood the site with fakes,” Pirate Bay’s Winston tells TF

Registrations are open

Over the past couple of months the moderator team undertook a thorough cleanup of all suspicious user accounts. Pretty much all fakers and scammers were removed, a number that ran into the thousands.

“A lot of the dormant accounts have been used up now,” long time TPB moderator Agricola tells TF, noting that fakers and scammers are more prevalent than most people believe.

“In my time on The Pirate Bay I have 30,000+ kills on my name, which is how we refer to deleted accounts. You are talking hundreds of accounts a day.”

So while the reopened registration feature is good news for users who want to join the six million strong army of Pirate Bay users, it means all hands on deck for the moderator team.

According to Agricola this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, that’s what they have been doing all along.

“We’re pretty much going back to the way it was before the raid,” Agricola says.

Looking back at the past few months we can conclude that things have pretty much returned to normal at TPB. The site took a hit in terms of traffic and is no longer the most used torrent site, but the ship is still afloat.

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

Yesterday Wikileaks published a searchable database of the emails and documents that were released from the Sony hack.

While a lot of ground was already covered after the initial breach, some new information is now bubbling up to the surface.

One of the conversations that caught our eye mentions a request from MPAA boss and former U.S. senator Chris Dodd.

In an effort to get foreign policy makers onside, the movie group asked its member studios to help fund an upgrade of the screening rooms in various U.S. embassies around the world.

In an email from Sony Pictures Entertainment Head of Worldwide Government Affairs Keith Weaver to CEO Michael Lynton last March, Weaver explains that the studio had been asked for rather a sizable contribution.

“I wanted to make you aware of a recent MPAA request, as Senator Dodd may contact you directly,” Weaver’s email begins.

“Essentially, the request is for the member companies to consider upgrading screening rooms at U.S. Embassies in various countries (Germany, Spain, Italy, UK, and Japan)…”

These rooms could then be used by the ambassadors to show off Hollywood content to invited high-level officials.

“…the idea being that these upgraded screening rooms would allow American ambassadors to screen our movies to high level officials (and, thus, inculcate a stronger will to protect our interests through this quality exposure to our content),” Weaver adds.

In other words, the MPAA wants to pay for an upgrade of the embassies’ private theaters, to indirectly protect the interests of U.S. movie studios abroad.

It’s a rather interesting lobbying effort and one that doesn’t come cheap. The estimated cost for the project is $165,000 per studio, which means the total budget for the project is close to a million dollars.

Unfortunately for the MPAA, Weaver suggested giving the project a miss and in a reply Lynton agreed.

“While studios have supported efforts like this in the past, my inclination is that we pass on this financial commitment at this time (of course, applauding the idea/effort),” Weaver noted.

In an email a few months later the issue was addressed again with additional details.

In this conversation Weaver notes that the request is “not unusual” and that the studio supported a similar request years ago. “Apparently, donations of this kind are permissible,” Weaver writes.

Again, Lynton replied that he was not inclined to support the project. It’s unclear whether any of the other members chipped in, or if the plan has been canceled due to a lack of financial support.

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

As Internet users demand more freedom online alongside an ability to consume media in a manner of their choosing, tools allowing them to do so are gaining in popularity.

Notable has been the rise of VPN services, which not only provide an increased level of privacy but also allow users to appear in any country they choose. This opens up a whole new world of content availability – such as better service from Netflix – often at better prices than those offered on home turf.

While popular with consumers, this behavior is frowned upon by distribution companies that spend huge sums of money on content licensing deals specific to their regions of coverage. Losing customers to overseas providers isn’t part of their plan and now some are doing something about it.

Earlier this month media companies SKY, TVNZ, Lightbox and MediaWorks told several Kiwi ISPs that if they don’t stop providing VPN services to their subscribers, legal trouble would be on the horizon.

Within days one of their targets, Unlimited Internet, pulled its VPN service after receiving a letter from a lawfirm claiming breaches of the Copyright Act. However, CallPlus and Bypass Network Services have no intention of caving in to the media giants’ demands.

“To receive without warning a grossly threatening legal letter like that from four of the largest companies in New Zealand is not something we are used to,” wrote Bypass CEO Patrick Jordan-Smith in a letter to the media companies.

“It smacks of bullying to be honest, especially since your letter doesn’t actually say why you think we are breaching copyright.”

Pulling no punches and describing his adversaries as a “gang”, Jordan-Smith likens the threats to those employed by copyright trolls in the United States.

“Your letter gets pretty close to the speculative invoicing type letters that lawyers for copyright owners sometimes send in the US ‘pay up or shutdown or else were are going to sue you’! Not fair,” he writes.

“We have been providing the Global Mode facility for 2 years. In all that time, none of your Big Media Gang have ever written to us. We assumed they were OK with Global Mode and we continued to spend money innovating the facility and providing innovative NZ ISPs with a service that their customers were telling them they wanted – a service that lets people pay for content rather than pirate it.”

The response from Bypass hasn’t been well received by the media companies who now say they will carry through with their threats to sue over breaches of copyright.

“Our position has not changed and unless they remove the unlawful service we will begin court action in the next few days,” says TVNZ chief executive, Kevin Kenrick.

“Each of our businesses invests significant sums of money into the rights to screen content sourced legitimately from the creators and owners of that copyrighted material. This is being undermined by the companies who profit from promoting illegitimate ways to access that content.”

Claiming that the action is aimed at defending the value of content rights in the digital world, Kenrick says that the legal action is not consumer focused.

“This is not about taking action against individual consumers or restricting choice, indeed each of our businesses are investing heavily in more choice so New Zealanders can have legitimate access to the latest TV shows and movies,” the CEO concludes.

While the commercial position of the TVNZ chief is understandable, his claim that this legal action isn’t aimed at reducing choice simply doesn’t stack up. Kiwis using Netflix locally get access to around 220 TV series and 900 movies, while those using a VPN to tunnel into the United States enjoy around 940 TV series and 6,170 movies, something which Bypass Networks believes is completely legal.

“[We provide our service] on our understanding that geo-unblocking to allow people to digitally import content purchased overseas is perfectly legal. If you say it is not, then we are going to need a lot more detail from you to understand why,” Jordan-Smith informs his adversaries.

“Simply sending us a threatening letter, as frightening as that may be, does not get us there and is not a fair reason for us to shut down our whole business.”

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

Fredrik Neij, also known as Tiamo, was one of the key operators of The Pirate Bay and often referred to as one of the site’s co-founders.

In 2010 Fredrik received a prison sentence for his involvement with the notorious site, which he initially avoided.

Last November he was eventually arrested by Thai immigration authorities and later transferred to a prison in Skänninge, Sweden.

Under the circumstances, Fredrik has been doing relatively well. However, prison life lacks distraction and entertainment, not to mention a digital connection to the outside world.

To kill time The Pirate Bay’s former operator put in a request to play games on an old Nintendo 8-bit console. Not the most advanced gaming experience, but a real treat for someone with virtually no access to entertainment.

Unfortunately, however, Fredrik’s request was outright denied by the prison administration. While gaming isn’t against the rules, they state that there’s no way to open the box to check it for concealed items.

“The console is sealed in such a way that it can not be opened without the machine being destroyed,” the prison wrote in a reply.

In light of this, the institution can’t implement the necessary control of the game console and it is therefore impossible to ensure that it does not contain prohibited items.”

Fredrik doesn’t agree with the decision decided to appeal the case before the administrative court.

Pirate Bay’s former operator doesn’t believe that a game console from the 80s without any network connectivity poses a threat, and points out that the prison only has to buy a simply screwdriver to check the box.

“That the institution lacks a screwdriver which costs 100 kroner can not be considered reasonable,” Fredrik writes.

“One has to wonder how many other victims there are when all video-game units of the brand Nintendo have the same screwdriver,” he adds.

This isn’t the first time that Fredrik has appealed a decision from the prison. Earlier this month he filed an appeal after the institution denied a request to print three documents.

TF note: The Nintendo case can actually be opened with a pen and a cigarette lighter

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