As has become customary in the past few weeks, the so-called Guardians of Peace hackers contacted TorrentFreak on Tuesday advising us of the latest release from their Sony hack.

The tone on this occasion was different. Threats of destroying Sony’s business had given way to suggestions of 9/11 style attacks on locations daring to show the now-controversial movie The Interview. Under increasing pressure, last evening Sony decided to pull the film.

“In light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film The Interview, we have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release,” Sony said in a statement.

While it’s believed the US government will officially point the finger at North Korea today, not everyone is scared of being associated with the movie. In fact, BitTorrent-loving, Pirate Bay-supporting, best-selling author Paulo Coelho is interested in buying the rights – and then some.

In a message to Sony this morning, Coelho – who offered to testify for the defense in The Pirate Bay trial of 2009 – laid down his offer.

“I offer @SonyPictures 100k for the rights of ‘The Interview’ I will post it free on my blog,” the author announced.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Coelho confirmed that if successful he’ll make the movie available for free using BitTorrent. But what made him want to get involved in the controversy?

“As a writer, freedom of information /distribution is important for me. You can’t bend to threats,” Coelho told TF.

“Worse, you can’t give an excuse that [Sony] decided to pull the plug fearing ‘terrorist attacks’. It is my understanding that what they really fear are email leaks.”

While the amount offered by Coelho is small beans against a movie that could end up costing Sony $100m (hack costs not included), it’s being offered by an individual who knows all about leveraging file-sharing to his benefit.

In 2007 Coelho sold in excess of 100 million books and since its release his novel The Alchemist has shifted more than 165 million copies. Extraordinary writing talent aside, Coelho is unusual in that he embraces piracy and is more than happy to let people download his work for free.

In an earlier interview with TorrentFreak the Brazilian said that he wanted people to have the opportunity to ‘try’ his books for free, but some of his publishers wouldn’t agree to that right away. So, taking matters into his own hands, Coelho put his books onto BitTorrent and hosting sites to achieve his aims.

“The ultimate goal of a writer is to be read. Money comes later,” he said.

In fact, BitTorrent distribution is helping Coelho’s sales today more than ever before.

“Adultery, my new book, broke all records this year, and I believe that one of the reasons was there being many copies on P2P sites,” the author says.

Coelho concluded his offer to Sony Pictures this morning by suggesting he should be contacted via the company’s Brazil division. Whether a response will be forthcoming will remain to be seen, but in any event it seems unlikely that The Interview will remain dark forever.

Although Sony has reportedly killed its theatrical and VOD releases and has “no further release plans” for the movie, in the piracy world forbidden fruit is always the sweetest. File-sharers are now very keen indeed to get their hands on the movie, which is known to be available in DVD screener format.

Should that leak – and copies usually do – then there will be absolutely nothing that anyone can do about that, North Korea included. It won’t land on The Pirate Bay of course, but Coelho doesn’t think that will be too much of a problem.

“Thanks isoHunt,” he concludes.

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

The Pirate Bay shutdown has once again shows how vulnerable the BitTorrent ‘landscape’ is to disruptions.

With a single raid the largest torrent site on the Internet was pulled offline, dragging down several other popular BitTorrent services with it.

A team of researchers at Delft University of Technology has found a way to address this problem. With Tribler they’ve developed a robust BitTorrent client that doesn’t rely on central servers. Instead, it’s designed to keep BitTorrent alive, even when all torrent search engines, indexes and trackers are pulled offline.

“Tribler makes BitTorrent anonymous and impossible to shut down,” Tribler’s lead researcher Dr. Pouwelse tells TF.

“Recent events show that governments do not hesitate to block Twitter, raid websites, confiscate servers and steal domain names. The Tribler team has been working for 10 years to prepare for the age of server-less solutions and aggressive suppressors.”

To top that, the most recent version of Tribler that was released today also offers ‘anonymity’ to its users through a custom-built in Tor network. This allows users to share and publish files without broadcasting their IP-addresses to the rest of the world (note: see warning at the bottom of this article).

“The public was beginning to lose the battle for Internet freedom, but today we are proud to be able to present an attack-resilient and censorship-resilient infrastructure for publishing,” Dr. Pouwelse says.

After thorough tests of the anonymity feature earlier this year, it’s now built into the latest release with end-to-end encryption. Tribler implemented a Tor-like onion routing network which hides who is seeding or sharing files. Users can vary the number of “hops” the client uses to increase anonymity.

“Tribler creates a new dedicated network for anonymity that is in no way connected to the main Tor network. By using Tribler you become part of a Tor-like network and help others become anonymous,” Dr. Pouwelse says.

“That means you no longer have any exposure in any swarm, either downloading or seeding,” he adds.

The downside to the increase in privacy is higher bandwidth usage. After all, users themselves also become proxies and have to relay the transfers of others. In addition, the anonymity feature may also slow down transfer speeds depending on how much other users are willing to share.

“We are very curious to see how fast anonymous downloads will be. It all depends on how social people are, meaning, if they leave Tribler running and help others automatically to become anonymous. If a lot of Tribler users turn out to be sharing and caring, the speed will be sufficient for a nice downloading experience,” Pouwelse says.

Another key feature of Tribler is decentralization. Users can search for files from within the application, which finds torrents through other peers instead of a central server. And if a tracker goes offline, the torrent will continue to download with the help of other users too.

The same decentralization principle applies to spam control. Where most torrent sites have a team of moderators to delete viruses, malware and fake files, Tribler uses user-generated “channels” which can be “liked” by others. If more people like a channel, the associated torrents get a boost in search results.

Overall the main goal of the University project is to offer a counterweight to the increased suppression and privacy violations the Internet is facing. Supported by million of euros in taxpayer money, the Tribler team is confident that it can make the Internet a bit safer for torrent users.

“The Internet is turning into a privacy nightmare. There are very few initiatives that use strong encryption and onion routing to offer real privacy. Even fewer teams have the resources, the energy, technical skills and scientific know-how to take on the Big and Powerful for a few years,” Pouwelse says.

After the Pirate Bay raid last week Tribler enjoyed a 30% increase in users and they hope that this will continue to grow during the weeks to come.

Those who want to give it a spin are welcome to download Tribler here. It’s completely Open Source and with a version for Windows, Mac and Linux. In addition, the Tribler team also invites researchers to join the project.

Warning: It’s worth noting that since Tribler users route traffic of others, people may receive infringement notices for content they haven’t downloaded personally. While tracking companies may not see what you download, they can in some cases see what traffic you transfer for others.

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

More than a week has passed since The Pirate Bay’s servers were pulled offline, and now the same is happening to the site’s official Facebook page.

With more than 470,000 likes TPB’s Facebook page had quite a reach, although the last status update dates back to last year. Since then the page was mostly used by ‘fans’ to share TPB related news stories, and most recently links to Pirate Bay alternatives.

Those who try to access the page today are out of luck though, as Facebook informs them that “the page isn’t available” and that it “may have been removed.”

It’s unclear what the reason behind the removal is. It could have been initiated by The Pirate Bay crew itself but it’s also possible that Facebook was asked to shut it down for alleged links to copyright infringing material.

If The Pirate Bay crew deleted the page the motivation may have been to cover its tracks. Swedish authorities have confirmed that there’s a new criminal investigation ongoing into the site’s operators, which may have prompted some to cut their ties.

That said, TPB’s official Twitter profile, which hasn’t been updated since December last year, remains online.

The Pirate Bay crew have remained pretty much silent over the past few days. Earlier this week a message was relayed through “Mr 10100100000″ who suggested that no decision has yet been made on a potential return.

“Will we reboot? We don’t know yet. But if and when we do, it’ll be with a bang,” Mr 10100100000 said.

Meanwhile, most of the site’s users are flocking to the Pirate Bay copies that are floating around, or one of the other popular torrent sites. This mass migration caused trouble at ExtraTorrent yesterday, who were briefly offline due to a “sudden increase in user traffic.”

At the same time, groups using the “Anonymous” moniker claimed to have hacked both the Swedish Government and the New Zealand police in a retaliatory move, while a better known “Anonymous” group distanced itself from The Pirate Bay.

“We do not support the return of The Pirate Bay itself. We used to be the activist arm behind this website and what it stood for, but we feel like The Pirate Bay doesn’t represent our message anymore,” the latter group said.

And so the storm continues.

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

Without doubt the past seven days have shaken the file-sharing world to its core. Last Tuesday the Internet’s most famous file-sharing site, invincible according to many accounts, fell following a raid by Swedish police.

That kind of surprise can lead people to panic when other similar sites have downtime at the same time. For the past 24 hours concern has been growing over Icefilms, a movie and streaming portal with a strong online following.

Sometime yesterday morning, Icefilms disappeared offline. Visitors to the site reported various issues, from no page loading to redirections to another domain. Most, however, were confronted with the image shown below.

While much preferable to a law enforcement notice, the image itself has been causing concern among Icefilms users due to it being hosted on Amazon rather than the site’s own server.

But despite the worries a source familiar with the situation informs TF that there is nothing to be concerned about. Icefilms currently has hosting issues to overcome, hence placing the image on another server. The site itself should be back to its full glory within days.

Even when the Pirate Bay raid is disregarded, it’s easy to see why Icefilms users have been panicking. Firstly, the first few pages of Google are almost useless when it comes to getting information about the site. In fact, Icefilms itself is completely absent from Google search results.

However, if one turns to Bing then results are restored to their former glory. In fact, Bing even provides a convenient Icefilms search engine as the first result.

Only adding to the confusion is Icefilms’ inclusion in a recent blocking order. Last month the UK High Court ordered ISPs to block 32 domains following an application by the Motion Picture Association. In recent weeks the leading service providers responded by blocking access to Icefilms.info.

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

In many countries around the world The Pirate Bay has become a focal point for rightsholders seeking website blocking injunctions. Portrayed as the worst-of-the-worst, the site has been named in many ISP liability lawsuits.

But while the site disappeared last week, pending legal action concerning it has not. The most recent lawsuit was filed in November by Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry against Swedish service provider Bredbandsbolaget.

In papers filed at the Stockholm District Court, the plaintiffs attempt to hold Bredbandsbolaget liable for the copyright-infringing actions of its pirating subscribers. The entertainment companies say that in order to put itself in the clear the ISP should block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay and popular streaming portal Swefilmer.

Just over a month later and Bredbandsbolaget (Broadband Company) has now submitted its response to the Court. The ISP completely opposes the entertainment companies’ demand to block content and services.

“Bredbandsbolaget’s role is to provide its subscribers with access to the Internet, thereby contributing to the free flow of information and the ability for people to reach each other and communicate,” the company said in a statement.

Bredbandsbolaget says that its job is to deliver a broadband service to its customers, not control or block specified content or services. Noting that the company will not monitor the communications of its subscribers, the ISP says that it’s a fundamental principle of the “Open Internet” that carriers can not be held responsible for the traffic carried on their networks.

“Bredbandsbolaget does not block content or services based on individual organizations’ requests. There is no legal obligation for operators to block either The Pirate Bay or Swefilmer,” the company explains.

“There are other legal means to stop infringement of rights, but there is no provision in Swedish law that forces an Internet provider to block its subscribers’ access to services and content.”

While the motivation behind the lawsuit is to obtain a ruling that will ease blocking of additional sites in future, stopping Swedish users from accessing sharing services could prove more difficult than in other territories. The country has a long history of sharing files and services such as The Pirate Bay have become embedded in its Internet culture.

It’s also worth noting that at least for now The Pirate Bay doesn’t even exist so blocking it would be futile. Whether the entertainment companies will proceed with their case as planned if TPB stays down remains to be seen, but it’s certainly possible they might seek to include the many copycat sites that have appeared following the site’s demise.

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