Just a few days after The Pirate Bay raid the people behind Isohunt.to decided to come up with a temporary replacement, Oldpiratebay.org.

While the site’s operators are not affiliated with the original site, they wanted to offer a hideout for wandering TPB users. This hasn’t been without success as the site is now pulling in millions of visitors per day.

Despite its popularity the OldPirateBay still lacks many of the features The Pirate Bay had. There is currently no upload feature for example, nor is there a moderator crew to keep the site clean.

The Isohunt.to team previously called on the community to improve the project. This has already led to several improvements through the OpenBay’s GitHub repository and with a big cash injection they hope to facilitate the development.

“In order to boost that process we are announcing an unprecedented move,” Isohunt.to announces today.

“$100,000 for developing OldPirateBay.org, are you ready for that?! Anyone can take part in the website development and moderation which will result in public recognition. Also addition to your pay check would be a nice surprise,” they add.

The money will be shared through a contest. Starting next month $10,000 in cash prizes, paid in Bitcoin, will be awarded to the developers who contribute to the top features.

From March 1, OldPirateBay will have upload and moderation capabilities. This will include a ranking system where the top contributors and moderators can divide $5,000 in Bitcoin per group each month.

“The idea behind this message is to empower the community to create OldPirateBay.org as they see it. And we’re ready to reward the most active participants along the way,” the Isohunt.to team notes.

While the site was started as a temporary replacement it will remain online if the Pirate Bay does indeed return next week. This creates an interesting situation as OldPirateBay already outranks the original site in Google’s search engine.

The people behind OldPirateBay believe that the community should decide the long-term fate of the site. If there’s enough interest to keep the site growing then they are willing to stimulate this process.

“The main idea is that community should develop the site in the way they want. So if there will be enough initiative the site will be developed by people. We just want to stimulate it,” Isohunt.to concludes.

A full description of the contest details is available at the Oldpiratebay.org site.

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

Alongside the United Kingdom, Italy is the most aggressive country in the world when it comes to blocking websites on copyright infringement grounds.

Over the past several years dozens of domains have been censored locally and a new operation has upped that tally significantly following a complaint from a major broadcaster.

Sky Italia is a digital satellite television platform owned by Sky Plc, the TV company founded by Rupert Murdoch. 21st Century Fox owns a controlling 39% of the shares in Sky Plc and with a turnover of more than £7.6 billion ($11.41 billion) it’s one of the largest media companies in the world.

To protect its bottom line, in 2014 Sky Italia filed a complaint with authorities against more than 120 websites said to broadcast sporting events, concerts, music, plus film and television works without rightsholders’ permission.

A subsequent investigation was coordinated by the Public Prosecutor of Rome and entrusted to deputy prosecutors Nello Rossi and Eugenio Albamontes. Assistance was provided by the Special Unit for Broadcasting and Publishing (Nucleo Speciale Radiodiffusione Editoria).

Authorities say that pirate content was offered by the sites in a number of ways but streaming in particular, both of live events and via on-demand. Many provided helpful schedules to assist users with planning.

With all sites operating outside Italian territory, local authorities decided to take action to render them inaccessible in the country. A sweep was ordered by magistrate Gaspare Sturzo and this morning 124 websites are reported blocked via local Internet service providers.

The names of most sites hit in ‘Operation Match Off’ have not been released but authorities have pointed out that ‘sportlemon.tv’ was registered in the name of Gottfrid Svartholm. It seems unlikely that the Pirate Bay founder had any operational connections to the site but the domain was registered by PRQ, his former company in Sweden.

In common with previous cases, advertising is being blamed for the revenue generated by these unauthorized sites. The Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the law enforcement agency responsible for dealing with financial crime and whose Special Command Unit carried out the operation, said site users were met with aggressive ads and click-fraud techniques.

Italy has been working hard to counter the rise of advertising on pirate sites. Last summer a Memorandum of Understanding between the online advertising industry (including Google) and the music and movie industries signaled the creation of a central body to tackle the piracy issue.

But despite the agreement it was found that “known brands” were still advertising on the now-blocked sites. As a result authorities are now conducting an investigation into the agencies that placed the ads for companies in the financial, real estate, betting, retail and communications sector.

Enzo Mazza, chief of FIMI, Italy’s answer to the RIAA, said the action against the domains was welcome.

“The Fiscal Police from Rome carried out a very sophisticated operation including the economic angle of the case. This is the largest criminal action involving site blocking ever carried out,” Mazza told TorrentFreak.

“Some sites were also offering music concerts in addition to soccer and sport. We congratulate the special unit of the Fiscal Police and the public prosecutor from Rome for the operation.”

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

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Interstellar 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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(…)	Interstellar (DVDScr)	8.8 / trailer
2	(2)	American Sniper (DVDscr)	7.6 / trailer
3	(…)	Taken 3	6.3 / trailer
4	(1)	The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (DVDscr)	7.7 / trailer
5	(…)	John Wick	7.3 / trailer
6	(4)	Into The Woods (DVDscr)	6.8 / trailer
7	(3)	Fury	7.8 / trailer
8	(7)	Gone Girl	8.4 / trailer
9	(…)	American Heist	5.6 / trailer
10	(5)	The Judge	7.5 / trailer

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

During the Spring of 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm.

The policemen had instructions to shut down the largest threat to the entertainment industry at the time – The Pirate Bay’s servers.

The raid was successful, but while various copyright holder groups claimed a major victory, the Pirate Bay team wasn’t sitting still.

Thanks to a backup made by Fredrik Neij at the last minute, The Pirate Bay returned online in three days. Seemingly unimpressed by the raid, TPB renamed itself to “The Police Bay” complete with a new logo shooting cannon balls at Hollywood.

A few days later this logo was replaced by a Phoenix, a reference to the site rising from its digital ashes.

Last December The Pirate Bay was raided for the second time. This time around there was no quick comeback, but a new update that was added to the site today suggests that it’s coming.

After nearly nine years the Phoenix is once again present on the site’s homepage, offering hope to estranged Pirate Bay users.

Although nothing has been confirmed officially, this is by far the most concrete hint that TPB is working hard on a comeback.

The counter that’s still running down suggests that TPB will return in full glory February 1st, so we should know more within a week. Tick tock, tick tock…

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

Somewhere in a datacenter in Austria there’s a dedicated machine that has only one mission: download and share the 100 most popular files on BitTorrent and turn these bits and pieces into a piece of art.

The machine in question belongs to artist Nicolas Maigret and his Pirate Cinema project. Pirate Cinema has been on display for nearly two years in various venues, but this week the circle was completed when the piracy composition made its online debut.

TF caught up with Maigret to learn more about the background and purpose of Pirate Cinema. He tells us that after completing several projects where the proposal was to represent networks in a physical form, he wanted to visualize how they’re used by millions of people around the world.

“That’s where the Pirate Cinema concept started,” Maigret says.

Over the past several years Maigret has worked on bringing it to life in various forms and this week Pirate Cinema started streaming online for the first time. Those who check out the stream see chunks of popular videos flashing by, gathered from around the globe in real-time.

Pirate Cinema (live here)

The video bits include the IP-address of the source, partially masked, and the country of origin. This is not without purpose. Maigret specifically includes this info to show how public these transfers are, and how easily they can be monitored.

“On one hand this is in response to omnipresent users surveillance going on the Internet. More specifically here, on the file sharing networks, where people are monitored daily, resulting in real life lawsuits,” Maigret tells us.

But Pirate Cinema is also a tribute to the Copy Culture that developed in the latest generations of computer users. The Copy Culture that is more common today than it has ever been before.

“For the last 15 years, P2P networks have served as a great resource for mainstream content, but also for valuable rarities and unknown content that is hardly accessible otherwise,” Maigret says

“File-sharing has been central in the access to culture worldwide. The Pirate Cinema tends to make those activities and dynamics tangible,” he adds.

Aside from the online display there is also a live audio-visual performance. This live show is composed of 6 acts that each monitor a specific selection of torrents, such as the rise of porn on BitTorrent and the oldest torrent alive.

Those interested in learning more about the project can check out the official site. Taking part in the online art project is also an option, but that comes at a risk.

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