With millions of visitors per day ExtraTorrent is one of the largest torrent sites on the Internet. Founded in 2006 the site has been around for a while, steadily growing its user base.

Over the years ExtraTorrent users have downloaded billions of files, and this week the site revealed the top 20 most pirated files of all time. The data gives a unique insight into the downloading habits of torrent users and comes with a few surprises.

While no exact download counts are provided the ExtraTorrent team told us that the top ten were downloaded at least 10 million times. This number represents the downloads of the .torrent files from the site where different releases of a music album or movie are counted as one.

One of the biggest surprises is that the top three is made up of music. Drake’s album ‘Nothing Was The Same’ is listed in first place, followed by the Maroon 5 track ‘Payphone’ and Jay Z’s album ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail.’

Iron Man 3 is the most pirated movie in fourth place, followed by The Expendables 3, which leaked onto the Internet three weeks before its theatrical release this summer.

The rest of the top 20, all music and movies, are listed below. While this data only applies to ExtraTorrent it’s a decent representation of what’s popular on other torrent sites as well.

1. Drake – Nothing Was The Same (Mp3 Album)
2. Maroon 5 – Payphone (feat.WizKhalifa Explicit) (Mp3 Track)
3. Jay-Z – Magna Carta Holy Grail (Mp3 Album)
4. Iron Man 3
5. The Expendables 3
6. Fast And Furious 6
7. The Hunger Games
9. The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug
9. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
10. The Amazing Spider-Man
11. Beyonce – 4 Deluxe Edition (Mp3 Album)
12. The Wolf of Wall Street
13. Rihanna – Unapologetic (Mp3 Album)
14. Lil Wayne – No Ceilings (Mp3 Album)
15. Justin Timberlake – The 20/20 Experience (Mp3 Album)
16. Daft Punk – Get Lucky
17. Kick (Bollywood movie)
18. Ariana Grande – Problem (ft. Iggy Azalea) (Mp3 Track)
19. Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides
20. Avengers XXX – (XXX)

The most pirated files include a lot of relatively new files. This can be attributed to the fact that ExtraTorrent has grown significantly over the years.

ExtraTorrent released the ten most downloaded files as part of a contest in celebration of the site’s 8th birthday. The rest of the top 20 was provided to TF exclusively.

With the contest the person with the most correct answers could win an iPad Air. Perhaps not a surprise, but none of the 3,000 contestants could name all titles.

The winner guessed seven of the ten correctly, but missed the top three. Most lists were heavily based on movies. For example, Drake’s ‘Nothing Was The Same’ was only mentioned in one entry, while Maroon 5 and Jay-Z weren’t listed at all.

Finally, it’s worth nothing that there are no TV-shows and only one porn title in the top 20. While both categories are relatively popular these downloads are usually spread over more files compared to movies and music.

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

Facing harsh criticism from copyright holders, Google is gradually changing its attitudes towards sites and services that are often associated with piracy.

A few weeks ago the company implemented a major change to its search algorithm, aimed at downranking sites that often link to copyright infringing material.

Another drastic move came today when Google began removing many Pirate Bay related apps from its Play store. The apps in question include “The Pirate Bay Proxy,” “The Pirate Bay Premium,” “The Pirate Bay Mirror” and “PirateApp.”

The apps targeted by Google offer mobile optimized web-browsers for The Pirate Bay. In addition, many of them used proxy sites so users could easily circumvent local ISP blockades.

The apps appear to have been removed proactively as there is no mention of a DMCA takedown notice. According to an email sent to the developers, the apps in question are violating the intellectual property provisions of Google’s content policy.

“REASON FOR REMOVAL: Violation of the intellectual property and impersonation or deceptive behavior provisions of the Content Policy. Please refer to the IP infringement and impersonation policy help article for more information,” the email reads.

The developers are further informed that they received a “policy strike” which may lead to the termination of their accounts, if similar problems arise in the future.

TF spoke with Gavin, the developer of “The Pirate Bay Proxy” app, which has 900,000 downloads and 45,000 active users per day. He is disappointed with Google’s decision and has filed an appeal hoping to get his software reinstated.

According to Gavin, his app doesn’t do anything different than other browsers, Google Chrome included. It simply points people to a working proxy site and then acts as any other browser.

“The app is no different from Firefox or Chrome in that it’s a tool which provides access to TPB or any other web address,” Gavin says.

Gavin originally developed the app as a simple tool to bypass court-ordered ISP blockades. However, the app itself is now being censored as well, which is somewhat ironic.

“The removal has a sense of irony as the app is described as an anti-censorship tool,” Gavin notes.

Those who have already downloaded the apps can continue to use them, for now. New downloads from the Google Play Store are no longer allowed, but a copy of “The Pirate Bay Proxy” is available on the app’s website.

Alternatively, people can still use Google and the Chrome browser as these points of access remain uncensored for now.

Update: Gavin informs us that his appeal was denied.

“We have reviewed your appeal and will not be reinstating your app. This decision is final and we will not be responding to any additional emails regarding this removal.”

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

Founded in 2009 after The Pirate Bay shut down its tracker, OpenBitTorrent soon grew out to become a key player in the BitTorrent ecosystem.

Running on the beerware-licensed Opentracker software, the standalone tracker offers a non-commercial service which doesn’t host or link to torrent files themselves.

For several years OpenBitTorrent has been the most used BitTorrent tracker. The free service coordinates the downloads of 30 million people at any given point in time, processing roughly three billion connections per day.

About a week ago, however, the tracker suddenly stopped responding. Those who now try to download a torrent with help from OpenBitTorrent will notice that the connection to the tracker times out.

The problems appear to originate from missing DNS entries. The domain name is currently not linked to an IP-address which makes it impossible to reach.

Around the same time OpenBitTorrent went down, “sister” tracker PublicBT disappeared as well. The latter reappeared two days ago and is functioning as usual at the time of writing.

Hoping to get more details TF reached out both OpenBitTorrent and PublicBT earlier this week, but we have yet to receive a response.

It’s worth noting that former Pirate Bay operator Fredrik Neij is listed as the domain registrant for the OpenBitTorrent domain. Neij was arrested a few weeks ago and is currently imprisoned in Sweden.

Despite the largest tracker being down most BitTorrent users are still able to share files. In fact, it’s likely that the majority are completely unaware of the downtime.

Instead of using a tracker, most popular torrents work fine when they rely solely on DHT and PEX. This allows downloaders to get info on other peers from each other, instead of a central tracker.

Users of BitTorrent proxy services can experience more problems as they often have DHT and PEX disabled to prevent their real IP-addresses from leaking out. For this group there is no other option than to wait until the trackers return or manually add addresses of other trackers to their torrents.

We’ll update this article if we receive new information on OpenBitTorrent’s prolonged downtime.

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

Hounded by copyright holders all around the world for a decade, somehow The Pirate Bay manages to stay afloat. Today the site is doing as well as ever, despite the jailing of the now-famous individuals behind the project.

Faced with an adversary that to date has proven impossible to kill, entertainment companies have chosen what they believe to be the next best course of action. If the site itself can’t be stopped, then users must be stopped from reaching the site.

This has been achieved by court-ordered ISP blockades in various regions of the world, notably Europe. Today comes news of yet another blocking injunction, this time in France.

The legal process was initiated earlier this year by collection society and anti-piracy group La Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques, or SCPP as it’s more commonly known.

Late Thursday the organization, which represents in excess of 2,000 labels including Warner, Universal and Sony, announced victory in a short statement.

Welcoming a decision handed down by the Paris Court, SCPP said that French service providers will soon be required to “implement all necessary measures” to prevent consumer access not only to The Pirate Bay, but also “its proxy and mirror sites”.

“This decision is another step in the fight against music piracy and one that strengthens existing similar decisions in the EU and worldwide,” SCPP said.

Although the details of the injunction are still to be published, the introduction of a clause which orders the blocking of proxy and mirror sites could be a significant achievement for the labels.

Guillaume Champeau of French news outlet Numerama informs TorrentFreak that SCPP previously pushed for automatic proxy-accommodating court orders, but without success.

While no announcements have yet been made, it’s likely that this action against The Pirate Bay and its mirrors won’t be the last for the French labels and their counterparts in the movie and TV industries. If earlier predictions hold out, more sites will quickly move onto the radars of outfits such as SCPP.

For an indication of what can happen one only needs to look a couple of dozen miles north to the UK. After several years of court action, all major ISPs are required to block most major torrent sites and even some private trackers.

Update: Nextinpact has a copy of the verdit which includes the following domains.

Main site:
ThePirateBay.se

Redirects:
piratebay.net
piratebay.org
piratebay.se
piratebay.vg
thehydrabay.net
thehydrabay.org
themusicbay.com
themusicbay.net
themusicbay.org
thepiratebay.cc
thepiratebay.com
thepiratebay.net
thepiratebay.org
thepiratebay.qa
thepiratebay.se
thepiratebay.sh
thepiratebay.tw
thepiratebay.vg

Mirrors:
proxybay.eu
Proxybay. De
ThePIrateBay.se.byud.net

Proxies:
51tsj.com
bayproxy.me
bayproxy.org
bich.in
dieroschtibay.org
filehound.co.uk
kuiken.co
lanunbay.org
malaysiabay.org
piratebaybyproxy.com
piratebayproxy.se
piratebayunion.com
pirateblay.com
pirateby.info
pirateproxy.net
pirateproxy.nl
pirateproxy.se
piratereverse.info
pirateshit.com
pirateshore.org
proxybay.fr
proxybay.net
quluxingba.info
theproxybay.biz
tpb.5gg.biz
tpb.arnaudcornu.com
tpb.cryptocloud.ca
tpb.derp.pw
tpb.fattylewis.com
tpb.genyaa.org
tpb.kleisauke.nl
tpb.madfedora.site40.net
tpb.me
tpb.ninja.so
tpb.occupyuk.co.uk
tpb.par
anoia.net
tpb.partipirate.org
tpb.piraten.lu
tpb.pirates.ie
tpb.pirati.cz
tpb.qwertyoruiop.com
tpb.roylenferink.nl
tpb.skit.kiev.ua
tpb.skit.org.ua
tpb.unblocked.co
tpbproxy.cremoznik.si
tpbproxy.net
tpbunion.com
battleit.ee/tpb
bayproxy.com

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

In 2012, as Megaupload’s servers were being shuttered in the U.S. and Dotcom’s New Zealand mansion was raided by armed police, the German’s Hong Kong offices were being turned over by a reported 100 customs officers.

At the behest of the U.S. government, HK$330 million (US$42.55m) in assets were seized and have remained frozen ever since.

Earlier this year Dotcom and his associates took legal action against the Hong Kong government and in October applied for the restraining order to be set aside, accusing the secretary for justice of failing to provide a “full and frank disclosure” of the facts when the application for seizure was made.

According to Dotcom’s lawyers the prosecution withheld important information from the court when applying for the restraining order, including the fact that Megaupload could not be served with a criminal complaint in the United States as it was based entirely abroad.

In a new hearing in the High Court this morning, Deputy High Court Judge Mr Garry Tallentire set aside the restraining order. Celebrations, however, were short-lived.

At his discretion Tallentire immediately re-instated the lock on Dotcom’s assets, but it was not all bad news for the Megaupload founder.

The original restraining order was granted ex parte, meaning that the defendants in the case were not allowed to put their side of the story. The new modified order gives Dotcom’s legal team the right to contest the asset freeze.

The Judge also ordered the U.S. government to pay Dotcom’s legal fees as he continues his fight to have his assets unfrozen. The ruling pleased Dotcom, who took to Twitter to celebrate.

“Two court victories against the US government in a week. Glad that Hong Kong isn’t part of the US puppet show. This is the turning point!” he declared.

Earlier this week Dotcom maintained his freedom after the U.S. government failed to have his bail revoked following a three-day hearing.

He now faces an extradition hearing in June 2015.

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