This also appears to be happening with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature. A reader alerted us that, when he tried to access TorrentFreak, access was denied stating that a “suspicious” site was ahead.
Source: Comcast’s Protected Browsing Blocks TorrentFreak as “Suspicious” Site – TorrentFreak
In short, Steele admits that he and Hansmeier used sham entities to obtain the copyright to (or in some cases film) porn, uploaded it to file-sharing websites, and then filed “false and deceptive” copyright suits against downloaders designed to conceal their role in distributing the films and their stake in the outcomes. They lied to courts themselves, sent others to court to lie, lied at depositions, lied in sworn affidavits, created sham entities as plaintiffs, created fraudulent hacking allegations to try to obtain discovery into the identity of downloaders, used “ruse defendants” (strawmen, in effect) to get courts to approve broad discovery into IP addresses.
Source: Prenda Saga Update: John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits Entire Scheme | Popehat
The wheels grind slowly, my friends, but they do grind.
This paper proposes a new microblogging architecture based on peer-to-peer networks overlays. The proposed platform is comprised of three mostly independent overlay networks. The first provides distributed user registration and authentication and is based on the Bitcoin protocol. The second one is a Distributed Hash Table DHT overlay network providing key/value storage for user resources and tracker location for the third network. The last network is a collection of possibly disjoint “swarms” of followers, based on the Bittorrent protocol, which can be used for efficient near-instant notification delivery to many users. By leveraging from existing and proven technologies, twister provides a new microblogging platform offering security, scalability and privacy features. A mechanism provides incentive for entities that contribute processing time to run the user registration network, rewarding such entities with the privilege of sending a single unsolicited “promoted” message to the entire network. The number of unsolicited messages per day is defined in order to not upset users.
via [1312.7152] twister – a P2P microblogging platform.
“The agreements are noticeably devoid of any provision for the disposition of any revenues that could be obtained from verdicts or court orders of fees or costs upon success in court, suggesting a business model of using the information obtained from early discovery into the identities of individual defendants to negotiate quick settlements under the threat of embarrassing and expensive litigation without actually litigating claims on their merits,” the Judge explains.
via 2,919 Movie Pirates Walk Free as BitTorrent Trolling Scheme Falls Apart | TorrentFreak.
The Pirate Bay logs not only link Prenda to the sharing of their own files on BitTorrent, but also tie them directly to the Sharkmp4 user and the uploads of the actual torrent files.
The IP-address 75.72.88.156 was previously used by someone with access to John Steele’s GoDaddy account and was also used by Sharkmp4 to upload various torrents. Several of the other IP-addresses in the log resolve to the Mullvad VPN and are associated with Prenda-related comments on the previously mentioned anti-copyright troll blogs.
via The Pirate Bay Helps to Expose Copyright Troll Honeypot | TorrentFreak.
“One of the things is we get ISPs to publicise their connection speeds – and when we launch in a territory the BitTorrent traffic drops as the Netflix traffic grows. So I think people do want a great experience and they want access – people are mostly honest.”
via Netflix Says It’s ‘Killing’ BitTorrent Traffic | TorrentFreak.
The film in question grossed disappointing box office earnings, but these fresh lawsuits offer new revenue potential.
via “Killer Joe” Sues VPN-Using BitTorrent Pirates | TorrentFreak.
TorrentFreak asked both Leaseweb and SpotFlux what kind of information they will be able to share when the subpoena comes in, but we have yet to receive a response. In its privacy policy Spotflux explains that it will comply with court orders, but that the company keeps logs to a minimum.
This might be the first attempt to go after a VPN provider. If they rotated their logs properly there shouldn’t be any information to give or hide.
Just ask Twitter and Facebook, two major technology companies that rely on BitTorrent technology to distribute files across their networks.
via BitTorrent Launches Private and Secure Dropbox Alternative | TorrentFreak.
I didn’t know that about facebook and twitter. Bittorrent is a very useful protocol for certain use cases and I’m surprised other cloud storage providers haven’t adopted it yet.