For a long time Spain has had a reputation for being easy on copyright infringement, but this lenient stance shifted last year. After continued pressure from entertainment industry groups, new copyright law amendments were passed which outlaw sites that link to pirated material.

The changes expose site owners to massive fines of up to €600,000 if they fail to respond to takedown requests in time. This liability also applies to non-profit sites that only use advertisements to cover their costs.

Today the changes officially go into effect and already they’ve resulted in two prominent casualties. Popular sports streaming links site Wiziwig.tv and torrent index Elitetorrent.net have both stopped linking to copyrighted material effective immediately.

With hundreds of thousands of visitors per day Wiziwig is the goto site for many sports fans who can’t watch their favorite teams through legal channels.

According to the owner the site was specifically setup in Spain, where linking sites were declared legal in the past.

With the new amendments, however, the site can no longer operate from Spain without risking potential bankruptcy.

“Today is a sad day for all fans of live sports streaming, as we at Wiziwig have to announce that we’re forced to close our website, at least for now. This due to new laws in Spain,” the site’s owner writes in a statement.

“Failing to comply with the new reform puts us at risks of fines being as high as €600,000,- and also losing our domain, hosting and other necessary stuff to operate wiziwig,” he adds.

The founder of Elitetorrent.net also took drastic measures in response to the new legislation. His website, which is ranked among the 100 most visited sites in Spain, didn’t shut down completely but removed all torrents.

“I have always shown to be operating within the law, so I regret that after 11 years elitetorrent.net has to remove all links to downloads that are copyright protected, to suit the new legislation,” Elitetorrent’s Juan José says.

“Despite having fought battles for years against powerful forces, this last battle is very unequal and impossible to win. While the powerful use an army with tanks and warplanes, I can only fight with a stick,” he adds.

Elitetorrent.net remains open without links to downloads, but the owner is encouraging visitors to stay on board. He plans to transform the site into a lively community of movie and TV-fans, with news, trailers and other information.

Wiziwig.tv will shut down completely with the site’s owner deciding to push official content instead of unauthorized streams. He’s joined a new project, GetYourFixtures.com, a website providing information and official links to live sports events.

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

On December 9 The Pirate Bay was raided at the Nacka station, a nuclear-proof data center built into a mountain complex near Stockholm.

Two weeks later the domain became responsive again, waving a pirate flag and a counter that kept track of the time that had elapsed since the raid.

During the weeks that followed there were a handful of changes to the site, including a link to a pirated copy of “The Interview” and various cryptic messages.

Today, there’s another update that gives Pirate Bay users hope that the site may be working on a comeback.

As of a few hours ago the counter stopped counting up and began counting down. This suggests that something is going to happen on February 1, although it’s not officially confirmed what that will be.

In addition to the updated counter the javascript used to display fireworks on the site also has a promising name, “allishere.js.” Sources previously told TF that there were issues with Pirate Bay’s backups, but the “allishere” reference may suggest otherwise.

A source close to The Pirate Bay team informs TF that more exciting news and an official announcement will follow in the near future.

Stay tuned for more news.

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

Car rentals are big business. According to Car Rental Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 – 2019, the global car rental market was valued at $36.89 billion in 2013. In the US alone an estimated 2.07m vehicles are available for hire.

Over in Europe, the second largest market next to North America, a storm is brewing. Up in the north of the continent Swedish music rights outfit and car rental company Fleetmanager are locked in dispute over the latter’s business, specifically how the company provides car rental customers access to music.

STIM (Svenska Tonsättares Internationella Musikbyrå) is a collecting society for songwriters, composers and music publishers. It demands license fees whenever its members’ music is broadcast or transmitted, and collects sizable revenues from music streaming service Spotify. STIM also ensures that its members are paid when their music is played in public and this is at the heart of the dispute with Fleetmanager.

Each car rented out by Fleetmanager contains a stereo radio and CD player so that the customer can enjoy broadcasts of all kinds, including music. STIM says that to do so legally Fleetmanager needs to obtain a license but to date has failed to do so.

According to SVD, STIM is arguing that the inside of Fleetmanager’s cars contain members of the public and therefore amount to public places. On this basis the company needs to obtain a public performance license. Fleetmanager disagrees, noting that any music played inside a car is only heard by a limited circle of people.

STIM disagrees. The collection society says that previous cases involving hoteliers have ended with licenses being obtained which enable hotel guests to listen to music while on the premises. Furthermore, other car rental companies in Sweden have already agreed to pay a per-stereo levy so Fleetmanager should also pay, STIM argues.

This is not the first music-related copyright case to hit the car sector this year. In July, the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies launched a class action lawsuit against Ford and General Motors over the CD-ripping capability of their cars. In November the group followed up with fresh legal action against Chrysler and technology partner Mitsubishi.

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

May 31, 2006 was a momentous day for everyone involved in the BitTorrent scene.

The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s most famous torrent sites, was smashed to its knees. Dozens of police, acting on information provided by the global entertainment industries via local anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran, raided Swedish datacenter PRQ and seized all of the site’s hardware.

But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, three days later The Pirate Bay was back online utilizing a backup that Fredrik Neij, aka TiAMO, had made of the site. In a public speech heralding the site’s return, Neij excited gathered crowds in Sweden.

“It’s a pleasure to announce that the Pirate Bay is back online. In your face, Hollywood,” the Swede declared. TPB was back.

TPB Back online in 2006 – Image from TPB AFK

In the years that followed The Pirate Bay grew in size and reputation, an apparently unstoppable behemoth supported by a hard-core following renewed determination.

But while the masses enjoyed the spoils of the site for years to come, in November 2014 history caught up with Neij when he was arrested at the Laos/Thai border, shipped back to Sweden and locked in a prison cell.

Several weeks later, on a December morning more than eight years after the original raid, Antipiratbyran – now known as Rights Alliance – showed the world that they also have extremely long memories when it comes to The Pirate Bay.

Following a new investigation and presentations to the authorities, police descended on a datacenter in Nacka and once again ripped The Pirate Bay offline.

The events of 2006 and the Megaupload case aside, never before had so much attention been focused on the shutdown of a file-sharing site. Tens of millions of worried Pirate Bay users sat in disbelief as the hours passed by. Some thought the downtime was related to technical issues. Others believed news of a fresh raid was a hoax. It was neither.

As file-sharers and interested observers absorbed developments, one train of thought persisted through most conversations. Hadn’t The Pirate Bay become raid-proof? Wasn’t its virtual server setup immune to the attentions of the police? Who was in charge of making the backups this time around and why isn’t the site back online already?

The days passed and it became increasingly clear – this wasn’t The Pirate Bay of 2006. Times – and people – had changed.

The team that had driven the site to glory during the last decade had long since parted ways and the collective defiance of Piratbyran (the Pirate Bay’s founding group) had dissipated following a decade of pursuing still unsurpassed culture sharing ideals.

“We were not that surprised by the raid. That is something that is a part of this game. We couldn’t care less really,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TF in the wake of the shutdown.

“We have however taken this opportunity to give ourselves a break. How long are we supposed to keep going?”

So what could be done to fill the vacuum before any Pirate Bay return? Interestingly it was previous efforts to limit the availability of The Pirate Bay in countries such as the Netherlands, United Kingdom and elsewhere that provided the springboard.

Sites and domains that previously acted as mirrors and proxies to TPB suddenly transformed themselves into clones of the famous site. Some early efforts were controversial, with fears over impostors and malware unsettling the masses. Others (such as ThePirateBay.com.ua) became the closest representation of what the site once was, with user names and a high percentage of comments now restored.

But despite the claims and suggestions, not a single one of these sites is the real Pirate Bay resurrected. Nevertheless, many have flourished simply by virtue of similar looking domains and a half decent torrent index. However, one of the most interesting developments was launched by the team responsible for launching isoHunt.com clone, isoHunt.to.

TheOpenBay project is an attempt at open-sourcing a Pirate Bay-like site, and not without success. The initiative has resulted in hundreds of mini TPB clones and the sky-rocketing of the project to the top spot on developer platform Github.

OpenBay has real potential and provides an easier route into the torrent scene for budding admins, but ultimately this platform provides an alternative, not a replacement, to The Pirate Bay.

The disappearance of The Pirate Bay has been somewhat of a roller-coaster. Emotions have been running high all month, with hopes for a return and/or a worthy replacement at the forefront of millions of users’ minds.

Dreams of a grand return were boosted four days before Christmas when the original Pirate Bay domain – ThePirateBay.se – burst back to life. While the famous front page was missing, an elaborate pirate flag has waved on the site ever since. Alongside other cryptic hints, the flag is keeping the pirate spirit alive and hopes of a resurrection with it.

At the time of writing The Pirate Bay has been down a record-setting three weeks. In all of its history the site has never been offline for such a long time which raises some obvious questions. Will the site ever return or is the delay down to important technical issues which need to be overcome in order for the site to come back up and stay up?

Whatever the reason, it now seems that 2015 will begin without The Pirate Bay and if that is to be the case, somehow the community needs to come to terms with that. Will things ever be the same? Perhaps not. But file-sharing did not begin with The Pirate Bay and will not end with it either.

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

During December, all self-respecting search engines produce an overview of the most popular search terms of the past year.

These lists give insight into recent trends, and in 2014 Robin Williams, World Cup and Ebola were the top trending searches on Google.

But what about torrent search engines? With billions of searches every year it’s worth taking a look at the most-entered keywords on the dominant file-sharing network.

A few years ago we started the BitTorrent zeitgeist tradition with help from one of the largest torrent sites around. Based on a sample of hundreds of millions of searches, this list should give a decent overview of what people are looking for.

2014’s number one query is the same as last year’s. YIFY is the name of a popular movie release group that many people follow to see what new pirated titles are available.

The term 2014, often used to find recent movies, comes in second place, followed by 1080p in third. Last year “1080p” was in 42nd place suggesting that people were increasingly looking for high definition video. The sixth and eight place for newcomers YIFY 720p and YIFY 1080p confirm this trend.

In fourth place we find NeZu, another popular movie release group that is listed in the top 50 for the first time this year.

The first content related search query is Guardians of The Galaxy in ninth place. Other popular movie searches are Lucy and Dawn of The Planet of The Apes taking the 23rd and 24th spots respectively.

TV content is also popular with Game of Thrones in 12th and The Walking Dead in 16th place. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no searches related to music titles in the top 50. The only music related term is Discography in 11th place.

Finally, a game release group made it into the top 50 this year. The query Nosteam, referring to the ^^nosTEAM^^ group, is one of the highest newcomers and is listed in 15th place.

Below is the full list of the 50 most-entered search queries on one of the most popular torrent sites on the Internet.

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1. yify
2. 2014
3. 1080p
4. nezu
5. hindi
6. yify 720p
7. french
8. yify 1080p
9. guardians of the galaxy
10. 3d
11. discography
12. game of thrones
13. movies
14. tamil
15. nosteam
16. the walking dead
17. ita
18. dvdrip
19. telugu
20. android
21. malayalam
22. hindi 2014
23. lucy
24. dawn of the planet of the apes
25. nl
26. apk
27. ps3
28. lynda
29. 720p
30. 2013
31. need for speed
32. arrow
33. +18
34. batman
35. hercules
36. x art
37. pc games
38. how to train your dragon 2
39. 22 jump street
40. divergent
41. teenage mutant ninja turtles
42. edge of tomorrow
43. The fault in our stars
44. godzilla
45. mac
46. wwe
47. the equalizer
48. walking dead
49. maleficent
50. the flash

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