Network congestion is causing tracker timeouts; please be patient we are working on it

Dear IPT Users, Our tracker has had some issues and we have made some changes. These changes have caused disconnects and timeouts in your currently seeding torrents. We need you to make this change to your passkey to get your torrents seeding and running again. Select all your IPT torrents. Right click and select properties A window opens with your passkey in Replace the first section of your passkey with this :- http://tracker.iptorrents.com:9144/ Click ok and your torrents will automatically start seeding again. Regards IPT Staff

VietTorrent Review 2013 Tracker Name : VietTorrent Tracker URL : http://viettorrent.vn/ Tracker Genre : General / HD Tracker Speed : 8/10 Tracker PreTime : 7/10 Tacker Content : 7/10 VietTorrent as name states is a Vietnamese tracker. They have their own internal groups that concentrate mainly on HD contents. This is more of a general tracker which has TV shows, Games, Softwares, Music, Images etc although they prioritize on HD movies. The internal groups are Trim, VT Team Sub ,VTMT, WOG, IVT, VTBT, VAV, Internal HDBits. And they bring famous encodes of various HD trackers as well. Tracker Access : SignUps are open but needs activation to download Tracker Home Page Tracker Categories[search] Tracker Torrents List Internal HDBits Upload Page Requests Top Torrents Forum Bonus System Account Activation Page Rules FAQs All pages are google translated. And it took a while to put it all together and did while i was at some work. So don't know if i missed anything. But am sure haven't missed anything important. So anything noticeable juz let me know if needed to be changed. Got activated my account today so thought to do a review. **The tracker seems not bad. It seems open for signup but needs activation to download which i think could be done if invited (not sure) or else an exchange of 1000 bonus point one can activate on monthly basis so far i could figure. Guess needs more active and has to keep seeding to make bonus for upcoming months. Don't know if there is any other way of activation. Thank you for visiting this!!!

Details: It's retro month! Let's take a moment to remember when class looked like this and now it looks like this. Now to get down to business, in order to avoid any era related questions all TV shows uploaded with an air date before 1980 will count towards this months contest. Did I forget to mention bonus prizes? Top three participants will receive voice on IRC for one whole month! Don't forget about the bonus prizes listed below all you need to do to win one is upload one torrent! Good luck and have fun! Rules: 1: Uploads only count if it's retro - Example 2: For every episode you upload you will gain 1 point. 3: For every season pack you upload you will gain 'x' amount of points where x is the number of episodes in the season pack. 4: At the end of the month we will tally up the five users with the most amount of points and they will win prizes shown below. 5: You must tag contest uploads with 'retro' for them to count. - They will appear in this list if tagged correctly 6: The torrent must be alive at the end of the contest so keep seeding! 7: Portable encodes of existing shows WILL NOT COUNT 8: Re-encodes / transcodes WILL NOT COUNT 9: You MUST post in this thread that you are participating, so we can tally your scores 10: You MUST post in this thread with the episode/season (including how many episodes are in a season) name AND supply a link to EACH of your uploads. Keep all entries to one post please! 11: Read our Uploading Rules if you have any questions come to #BTN-Support and ask them. You CAN upload a season-pack of the same show in A DIFFERENT FORMAT (so long as its not a re-encode/transcode) during the competition. Single episodes for seasons that have finished airing are no longer allowed to be uploaded. Partial packs are not to be uploaded either unless given staff approval. Prizes: 1st) A 30 day SeedMyBox seedbox, class promotion, 3,000,000BP, and our retro badge 2nd) A 30 day SeedMyBox seedbox, 2,000,000BP, and our retro badge 3rd) A 30 day SeedMyBox seedbox, 1,000,000BP, and our retro badge 4th) 750,000BP 5th) 500,000BP !One lucky participant will receive 100,000BP !Two lucky participants will receive 50,000BP !Three lucky participants will receive custom titles

Dear all IPGamerz members, First of all welcome to IPG and thanks for coming back It is our pleasure to announce that IPGamerz is back online and everything is functional. If you had a chance to see us on our forum IPGamerz.tk it is still online, however it will not be so for long We would like to thank all of our members for their kind patience through the long downtime we had. We had a few donors before the site went offline, if you were one of them, please send Master a PM when you register and we can return your status as 'VIP' We are also recruiting uploaders. Any previous uploader will be promoted immediately, just send a message to Master. We are working on getting applications set up, as a temporary solution send a message to an admin if you wish to apply. Finally, we are aware of some issues with the current site, such as the faq and rules not being updated, and other minor issues. We are working hard on getting everything back to normal. Regards, Staff

2013.06.03 - CHDBits原盘DIY小组诚意招募原盘DIY制作和特效字幕制作人才 　　为了广大会员能够更好的享受原盘资源，经管理层研究决定，现面向所有高清爱好者招募原盘DIY制作人员和特效字幕制作人员。 　　CHDBits的原盘DIY小组有着经验丰富的制作人员，softfeng、shhaclm、greyfeeling、ermangwy、moto……诸多会员耳熟能详；他们也为广大会员带来了许许多多优秀的作品，如变形金刚系列、魔戒系列、加勒比海盗系列、007系列、复仇者联盟、泰坦尼克号等等。 　　如果您有兴趣加入CHDBits的原盘DIY团队，请发邮件至：[email protected] 　　招募要求： 　　一、年满十八周岁，有完全民事行为能力（如果还在求学期间，请慎重考虑！）。 　　二、对原盘DIY制作和特效字幕制作发自内心的热爱，有固定且较宽裕的业余时间，有责任心，能够服从任务分配，我们拒绝三分钟热度！ 　　三、拥有4M或以上宽带的网络条件。 　　四、视频源获取可提供ftp下载方式，或自行在站内获取。 　　福利待遇： 　　一、我们不以商业盈利为目的，所有工作均凭个人爱好兴趣，暂无任何金钱回报！ 　　二、原盘DIY制作人员级别升为uploader！ 　　三、其他相关数据福利！ 　　应聘的会员发邮件请直接附上以下内容，无需上传文本附件 　　一、固定的在线时间： 　　二、个人情况： 　　1、年龄： 　　2、网络条件： 　　3、联系方式（QQ）： 　　4、邮箱： 　　5、PT用户名： 　　三、原盘DIY制作人员请简要介绍自己的DIY经历和自己拥有的DIY技术。 　　四、特效字幕制作人员，打包一个自己的特效字幕作品附带10张左右截图，以附件形式上传。 　　如果您符合我们的要求，我们会尽快与您联系。 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　=========CHDBits管理组========= 2013.06.03 - CHDBits original disk group We recruit the original disc DIY DIY production and special effects production talent subtitles 　　In order to be able to better enjoy the general membership of the original disk resources, the management decided that now recruiting for all HD enthusiasts original disc subtitles DIY production personnel and special effects production staff. 　　CHDBits original disc DIY group has experienced production staff, softfeng, shhaclm, greyfeeling, ermangwy, moto ...... many members familiar; They also provide our members have had many excellent works, such as the Transformers series, Lord of the Rings series, Pirates of the Caribbean series, 007 series, Avengers, Titanic and more. 　　If you are interested in joining CHDBits the original disc DIY team, please email: [email protected] 　　recruitment requirements: 　　one, 18 years of age, have full civil capacity (if still in school period, please consider carefully!) . 　　Second, the original disk subtitling DIY production and special effects from the heart of love, a fixed and relatively ample spare time, responsible and able to obey task allocation, we reject heat for three minutes!　　Third, have 4M or more broadband network conditions. 　　Fourth, the video source can provide access to ftp download, or on its own in the station access. 　　Benefits:　　First, we do not trade for profit, all the work are based on personal hobbies and interests, no any money in return! 　　Second, the level of the original disc DIY production staff promoted uploader! 　　Third, other relevant data benefits! 　　Member candidates please submit the following email content, uploading text attachments without 　　a fixed-line time: 　　two, personal circumstances: 　　1, age: 　　2, network conditions: 　　3, contact (QQ): 　　4, E-mail: 　　5 , PT Username: 　　three, the original disc DIY production staff please briefly describe their experiences and their own DIY DIY technologies. 　　Fourth, the effects subtitling personnel, packing an own effects subtitle works with 10 or so shots, upload an attachment. 　　If you meet our requirements, we will contact you shortly. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Management Group ========= ========= CHDBits

敬告广大会员： To All Dear Members: 1、目前站点已支持http和https两种方式登录，tracker也可以通过http和https两种方式更新，对于之前站点变动未能提前通知大家造成不便表示歉意。 1, Now you can login the site with http and/or https, the SSL certificate is available now. The tracker can support both http and https also. 2、这次站点上线以来，由于服务器在国外，很多问题不能够及时妥善解决，请各位会员见谅。三个月的等待的确漫长，感谢大家的不离不弃，希望大家能够一如既往的支持我们。 2, It is very difficult to solve the server problems because it is oversea now, sorry for the inconvenient. Thanks for all members are waiting for us and supporting us as always. 3、自从三月底HDWinG承载着大家对HDChina怀念与期待上线以来，还有很多会员不知道新站点的地址，请大家告知身边的朋友，不要让他们找不到回家的路。 3, Since our new site sets up,there are some members still do NOT know we are back. Hope you guys can inform old members about this and introduce more members also. 让我们一起见证HDWinG的成长与飞翔。 Let us grow up and fly with HDWinG.

考核对象：全体会员 考核内容：总上传量达到10G（即帐号上显示的上传量需要超过10G） 2013年6月15日凌晨0点，系统将全面清理所有上传量不足10G的帐号。 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Evaluation subjects: all members Assessment content: The total amount uploaded reach 10G (ie, upload content displayed on the account requires more than 10G) At 0:00 on June 15 2013, the system will be fully cleaned all uploaded less than 10Gaccount.

Tracker name : PlanetQ Tracker URL : http://bt.planetq.net Category : HD / DVD/Bluray Signup : Invite Only

BlackCats-Games: Sp and Promotion disabled Sp and Promotion disabled While i work on the sp, ive disabled the script so i can try pin whats wrong down. Please keep the torrents active as i need all the data i can get to find the error. This will also affect promotions. I'll try keep disruption to a minimum so shouldnt be to long.

opinions abouth the inhearit of megaupload :)

Posted 1 day ago. 사이트 초대장 발송을 일시 중단 합니다. 모든 회원들의 초대장 발송을 일시 중단 하며 Translation [ google translator ] Site invitations to suspend the shipment. - Invitation to suspend shipment of all members and If the change can be shipped via announcements inform.

Hey everyone! We have decided to close open reg for around 48 hours. Invites will still work if you want to use that on someone though. Also, everyone it that time would have full access to the request system. //staff

HBO Gets Google to Remove H33T Homepage The homepage of the popular torrent search engine “H33t” has been removed from Google after cable network HBO sent a DMCA takedown request for the series Band of Brothers. Google honored the request and has de-listed h33t.com from its search results. H33t’s owner is not pleased with this latest censorship attempt and informs TorrentFreak that he will submit a counterclaim to get the homepage reinstated. Every week copyright holders send millions of DMCA takedown notices to Google, hoping to make pirated movies and music harder to find. As a result more that 100 million links to copyright-infringing content are no longer available through Google’s search results. One of the latest additions to this growing list is the homepage of H33t, one of the top 10 most visited torrent sites. Those who type “h33t” into the Google search box will see that the homepage listing for the site has disappeared. At the bottom of the page Google explains that the listing was removed following a DMCA notice, which came from the cable network HBO. In the notice HBO asks Google to remove thousands of links pointing (in)directly to their shows. The H33t homepage is listed under “Band of Brothers,” which was probably listed there at one point, but has since been replaced by other links. HBO lists h33t TorrentFreak caught up with H33t’s owner, who is not happy with the de-listing by Google. However, he also tells us that H33t is not being harmed too much by the homepage removal, as only a tiny fraction of his visitors use Google to access his site. “Considering possible damage to the site, historically H33t has not been driven by search traffic. About 1 out of 10 people use Google in a search that ultimately brings them to H33t. These are not random searches, people are searching for specific content and clicking a link that brings them directly to the details page of that content,” H33t’s owner says. “These people are not interested in the homepage. If you know the name H33t then you already know the site, you don’t just accidentally type “h33t” then discover the site’s homepage. You also cannot discover H33t by searching for “torrents downloads whatever” because we were never high ranked for those terms,” he adds. That doesn’t mean that H33t is going to let this pass. The site’s owner plans to take a stand, if only to defend his principles and to voice his growing concerns over how the DMCA notification system operates. “I cannot ignore this latest censorship just because it doesn’t particularly make much of a difference to me and my site. The inversion of the burden of proof, H33t is guilty before trial, is a serious issue, and it is so easily done as Daniel Nazer of EFF said this year: ‘The takedown procedure of the DMCA provides a quick, cheap, extra-judicial way to get speech removed from the internet’,” he tells TorrentFreak. In addition to freedom of speech issues the takedown procedures have also become quite costly for site owners, who have to employ personnel to go over them. Therefore H33t charges $50 per takedown on its own site. “Freedom of information, free speech, human rights are wonderful concepts but have little meaning until they are no longer there. Money is like that, money doesn’t matter until you don’t have any. For the anti-sharing lobby it is all about the money,” H33t’s owner explains. “The matter of costs is central, with the DMCA the costs are all ours, we pay the ultimate price as a society, we pay for their broken business model that needs propping up by censorship and our loss of rights.” For the HBO notice H33t will send a counter-notification, but whether that will be successful has yet to be seen. There are still other infringing links present on the homepage and Google has previously refused to reinstate sites in a similar position. Whatever Google decides, H33t’s owner doesn’t seem particularly worried. “We shall see what happens but I am not going to get upset if the homepage isn’t reinstated. As John Gilmore said way back in 1993, ‘The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it’.” “H33t is not in the race to be the biggest baddest torrent site, it is just me and a bunch of like-minded friends with attitude. Millions and millions of friends. You know what? Getting knocked off Google might just be our passing grade in relevance.” “We are relevant! Fukin Awesome,” H33t’s owner concludes.

Private trackers level level 9 : [the rarest and the hardest trackers ever almost impossible to get ] FSC EXIGO HDBITS.org AOM skittles level 8 : [extremely hare to get and the invite usually by staff or by application] HD-Spain ITS MagicTorrents FTN Pedro's BTMusic DB9 TS-Tracker level 7 : [very hard to get] SceneHD Bitvault TheVault BitHumen CrikeyM8 x264 CHDBits level 6: [not easy to get] ScienceHD NorBits What.CD DVDSeed level 5 : BitMe SCC TranceTraffic nCore BTN EotW (TTG (TorrenTGui UK-Two HDChina PolishTracker PassThePopcorn CartoonChaos Lztr PTN MusicVids Fuxor HDRoad HDStar HDWing level 4 : RevolutionTT LW / LosslessWorld TorrentLeech HDcenter BitMeTV Thor's Land Sparvar HDCorea GFT Waffles FFFFound HDFrench level 3 : SDbits HD-torrents TheDVDClub KG TranceRoute TehConnection FinBytes TTi iPlay Goem TopHos DesiTorrents BlackCats Games AwesomeHD PreToMe LFM level 2 & 1 : [easy to get] 3dTorrents, AcidLounge, Adultcinema, AnimeBytes, Audionews, Audiozone, AVLossLess, BeatHau5, BeyondHD, BitHDTV, Bithq, Bithorlo, BitSeduce, BitSoup, BitSpyder, Blu-evolution, Bmtorrents, BTGigs, BTNext, BWTorrents, Brokenstones, CartoonBits, CCFBits, Cheggit, CinemaGeddon, Cinematik, , Clover [tcluver.w-wmc], CMCT-PT, CNHDTV, ComicBT, DanishBits, DataScene, Deli.sh, Designspiration, Diffusethe.net [DTN], DigitalHive, DimeaDozen, Diwana, DocsPedia, EBooksShares, Elbitz, ElektroBits, EliteBits, EuTorrents, ExtremeBits, Fano.Lv, Fatal tracker, FileBits, FileList.ro, FileMP3, FilmBits, FLO, Formula-Monkey, Freshon.Tv, FunFile, GazelleGames, GFXNews.ru, Goem, Gormogon, HDBits.Cn, HDBits.ro, HDME, HDCity, HD-MKV, HD-Space, HD-Shares, HD-Torrents, HDVNBits, ILoveTorrents, IPlay.Ro, IPTorrents, Jpopsuki, Karagarga, LearnBits, Libble, Midnight-scene, MMA-tracker, MMA-torrents, Movie-torrentz, Music-Eye, MyAnonamouse, NTorrents, PianoSheets, PirateDay, PlanetQ, PolishSource, Pornbytes, Postfile.org, PowerScene, ProAudio-T, PT.cm, PussyTorrents, Racingfor.me, RDS-Zone, Rockhard lossless, ScateTorrent, SceneFZ, ScenePalace, SceneProject, SceneRush, SceneTime, SceneTracker, SDBits, Secret Cinema, ShareReactor, SoftTorrents, Soundandme [sAM], SoundDamage, Speed.cd, SuperTorrents, TheBox, TheSharingZone, Thetorrents.org, TheInternationals [TTI], TorrentBits.ro, TorrentBytes, TorrentDay, TorrentLeech, Torrentshack, TorrentTech, TorrentVault, TorrentZilla, Torrent-Damage, TranceBooster, TVJunkies, TVTorrents.com, TV.Torrents.ro, TV-Vault, UKNova, UndergroundGamer, VIPv2, VNBits, Worldwrestlingtorrents[WWT], XBOX-Sky, XtremeZone, XW Torrents Note : i will add more trackers and update the thread if you knew any thing else plz add it

Tracker name: Animebytes Nickname: AB URL: http://animebytes.tv Genre: Cartoons(Anime)/Music/XXX(Hentai)/Comics(Manga)/Live Action (Anime-based) Access: Application system/Invites Index: Search function & Categories: Browsing: Requests: Available series: Rules: Wiki index: Wiki/More rules & Info: User classes: Forum: IRC: Some stats: Speed: 6/10 Content: 8/10 Community: 7/10 Staff: 9/10 The tracker has some speed issues, but ratio is easy to build up along with it's bonus system (Yen), they have weekly anime's and music that are freeleech for an entire week, and a lot of the content has freeleech torrents available. Generally a very attractive tracker if you're interested in Anime, Manga, Hentai or Jpop/Kpop. Community is somewhat slow and silent, but the staff is very confident, nice and easy going.

Beware Of Malware! The US Industry Plans To Take Over Your Computer According to an 84-page long report, sent by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property to the US government, the entertainment industry is tired of all these “games” and is ready to go berserk on pirates. In other words, the industry proposes a new alternative: fill pirates’ computers with malware! Let’s take another look at what the American entertainment industry is asking. The commission believes that by infecting suspected infringers’ computers with malware – that’s a very wide range of viruses, including rootkits, spyware, and Trojans – they would back down? Well, let’s take another shot at this. The industry believes that pre-installed software would accurately establish whether someone (that someone being you while using your personal computer for, obviously, personal stuff) is doing anything illegal, specifically, downloading and/or uploading copyrighted content. The software would then block those files or the computer altogether, until the user (that’s you again) takes responsibility for his or hers actions. Here are just two paragraphs of the document: Software can be written that will allow only authorized users to open files containing valuable information. If an unauthorized person accesses the information, a range of actions might then occur. For example, the file could be rendered inaccessible and the unauthorized user’s computer could be locked down, with instructions on how to contact law enforcement to get the password needed to unlock the account. Such measures do not violate existing laws on the use of the Internet, yet they serve to blunt attacks and stabilize a cyber incident to provide both time and evidence for law enforcement to become involved. … While not currently permitted under U.S. law, there are increasing calls for creating a more permissive environment for active network defense that allows companies not only to stabilize a situation but to take further steps, including actively retrieving stolen information, altering it within the intruder’s networks, or even destroying the information within an unauthorized network. Additional measures go further, including photographing the hacker using his own system’s camera, implanting malware in the hacker’s network, or even physically disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network. The commission’s goals, as posted on their official website are to: - Document and assess the causes, scale, and other major dimensions of international intellectual property theft as they affect the United States - Document and assess the role of China in international intellectual property theft - Propose appropriate U.S. policy responses that would mitigate ongoing and future damage and obtain greater enforcement of intellectual property rights by China and other infringers While the organization’s proposal looks like a really bad tragi-comedy movie, other issues spring like mushrooms after a heavy rain. If, somehow, the US government agrees on such provisions, would this method apply to Hollywood’s studios as well? We only ask because there are plenty of hints that the entertainment industry itself (amongst other powerful organizations, including the FBI) is using peer-to-peer technology, and not just for downloading legal content.

Ad-Funded Piracy Dissected In The UK David Lowery, a well-established musician, Martin Mills, founder of the Beggars Group, the BPI and several other representatives, including Theo Bertrand, representing Google in the UK, have discussed the delicate subject of ad-funded piracy. Two days ago, the aforementioned, plus Alexandra Scott, public policy manager at the UK-based Internet Advertising Bureau, James Barton, artist manager at The Blue Team and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab met at the University of Westminster (London) to address the thorny issue of ad-funded piracy. David Lowery, the 53-years-old songwriter, producer, label founder, and programmer, started by underlining that “I’m not unsympathetic to the views of the technology industry, because I’m a part of it.” However, he went on by explaining that, despite his deep understanding of how technology works, there are some problems hiding beneath the surface. “Artists have always been exploited… it wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now,” Lowery continued. He’s referring to the 1950’s, when artists were abusively “milked” by exactly those who were supposed to protect their rights – the labels. Ad-supported piracy is pretty much the same, the musician believes. “This new ad-supported piracy is kinda 1950s music business, except you don’t get the Cadillac! In fact, it’s actually worse than that. Cadillac, which is made by Chevrolet, actually exploits it.” While the entertainment industries, at least on US soil, blame Google for not doing enough in this war against online piracy, Lowery acknowledges that the search engine is not the “worst offender” when it comes to ad-supported piracy. “They’re just here to defend themselves!” he noted. To back his claims, Lowery gave three examples of how unlicensed music becomes a source of revenues. Type “Call me Maybe” (by Carly Rae Jepsen) in Google’s search bar, and a list of unlicensed websites will show. Six of these portals proved to currently have ad contracts with Google or DoubleClick, which also belongs to Google as a subsidiary company. In the case of iTunes, Lowery said: ”You don’t get legitimate sites. You don’t even get Google Play until the second play.” The artist went on to display examples of how ad-funded piracy can lead to a dangerous slope. “If the future of music really is access to songs rather than owning as many as we do nowadays, those services are all advertising-supported, and they’re competing with these illegitimate sites for these ads,” he continued. “Spotify and Pandora should have probably rightfully got that advertising money.” In his opinion, tech companies and entertainment companies, along with artists and content creators, should build a strong connection. “We should just think of this as a society.” “Just from the point of view of what is good for your country if you think of your country as a business.” Last but not least, Lowery brought up another interesting fact – tech companies’ revenues (Google, Apple, and Amazon specifically) between 2001 and 2012 went up, up, and away – 58.319% for Google, 3.396% for Apple and 2.0% for Amazon, while the US music industry felt a decisive drop in revenues – 64% between 2000 and 2012. Alexandra Scott had something to say as well. “This is a huge industry. We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of players here. It’s not always obvious to those players where that advertising is going. There’s a huge amount of work that we’re undertaking to address that.” Sam Shemtob, moderator of the debate, asked Alexandra why are there so many “middlemen” when it comes to online advertising. To that, Scott said: “Often those middlemen are helping to make advertising more efficient, more targeted and more relevant.” “I don’t think we want to do away with that, because that innovation is helping to drive the business… Obviously there are concerns about where that advertising is going to appear… It’s not something that’s easy to address: there’s no one-size fits all.” Feeling that there’s much to say about this, Lowery drew yet another interesting question: why aren’t companies like Apple or Coca-Cola showing up on pirate or adult-oriented websites? “If Apple does it, if Coca-Cola does it… There seems to be some way of controlling that. My take on this is that when things get more complex, it’s to insulate institutions and individuals from the liability of bad things that happen. In fact, usually what they say in the financial services system is complexity is fraud! Don’t you think that some of this complexity is to remove liability for the major corporations?” the musician asked. Scott answered: “No. I don’t think this is a way of people hiding behind things. If we look at advertisers, it’s their prerogative to say ‘I don’t want to appear against certain types of content’… Where there’s been a difficulty, particularly here in the UK, is what is an infringing site?” “Coca-Cola may say ‘we only want to work on a white-list basis, we only want to appear against certain publishers,” she continued, while admitting that there could be “huge reputational damage” for brands to pop-up on shady (read pirate) websites. “They don’t want to be going on these sites. They’re just not always aware of the issue. They don’t necessarily know it’s happening until there’s a crisis… I don’t think that people actively seek out these sites to go and advertise on… Eyeballs isn’t the only thing for advertising: it’s all about context,” Scott said. This is where Theo Bertrand (representing Google) felt compelled to add his opinion: “It does seem to me to be an entirely sensible way to tackle piracy… most people doing piracy are not some guy in his bedroom altruistically sharing music with his friends. It’s people making money out of piracy, and it’s big business: some of these sites have 2m visitors regularly, and they’re not doing a bad business from advertising.” How about YouTube and Blogger? “If people have got content up there that is unlicensed and infringing, that would be a breach of our rules,” he said, citing YouTube’s ContentID system – “which cost us about $30m to develop” – which matches music within videos to a library of licensed songs, for rightsholders to claim, and then either leave alone, make money from ads around it, or get it taken down,” Bertrand continued. “We’re seeing a huge rise in the number of takedown requests,” he said. “The BPI are still number one or thereabouts in the amount they take down.” As far as advertising is concerned, Google’s research (published last year in the UK) found that two thirds of the visited [by UK citizens, naturally] pirate sites are funded by advertising. “You can tell then that there is some work being done by the far bigger share of the industry that is adhering to industry codes to stop putting ads on these sites than those who pay no heed to these things,” Google’s representatives continued, while agreeing with Lowery’s idea that brands could constitute a good start. “Getting them to say ‘I’m going to be really clear with you: I don’t want you to put advertising on these sites, I do want you to put advertising on these sites’.” He went on to clarify that once an ad has been served, Google’s (and companies alike) obligation is to “take it down” when the case requires it. “We’re doing that at record levels, but we know we need to do more,” he said. As for Google’s search advertising, which is most of the company’s business, Bertrand said: “We capture people at a moment of intention. If I want to buy a set of new glasses, and I go on to Google and I put ‘wine glasses’ or ‘new tumblers’, the reason that’s of value to an advertiser is that Facebook might know lots about you – you’re somebody who drinks a lot of wine, likes glasses, but it can’t capture you at that moment where you’re looking to buy that thing.” “If you’re an advertiser, that is when you want to capture someone. So the value of search to advertisers is we are there at the moment of intent. I don’t know if you type in music, there’s lots of adverts that come down at the side… I don’t think the search advertising part is really the problem here.” “And the only way you get that scale is if you get the big brands.” In other words, brands should take responsibility. “If we manage to drain the swamp so it’s only the dodgy brands and the dodgy agencies that appear on the dodgy sites, I think we’ll have done enough to make sure it’s not a profitable business.” Lowery agreed. At the time being, it was Geoff Taylor’s turn to say something: “I think we’ve all been a bit slow to get to grips with this, perhaps because we were focused on other targets.” “We shouldn’t kid ourselves – as some of the follow-the-money advocates do – that this is going to make the problem go away,” he continued. “There’s lots of people running illegal pharmacies or illegal dating sites or gambling sites who’ll still provide a revenue stream for these sites.” You should also know that the British Phonographic Industry plans to introduce a “structured scheme” to counter the problem, but it’s unsure whether Google is willing to spend more on technologies such as ContentID. “It seems to me to be not beyond the technology capability,” Geoff said. “They know very well what sites are illegal, because we send them notices, a million a week… yet coming on to search, very often those sites appear at the top of search results. It’s great that the advertising industry is starting to work with us, Google are part of that… but hey, that can’t be where it stops.” “Is there a sort-of left-hand right-hand issue that Google can maybe work on, if you’re being served these takedowns?” the moderator asked Bertrand. “I am an optimist, in that search will get better, and be able to serve people with the results exactly that they want, and to do so utterly lawfully as well,” the representative replied. “I know the complexities can be seen as something to hide behind,” he continued. “It is easier to tell whether something is pornography than whether something is licensed or not… The legal basis for declaring a whole site unlawful in the UK at least still only applies to a relatively small handful of websites.” At this point, Taylor blew some steam and said – “Even those guys, you won’t remove!” – referring to the infamous Pirate Bay, amongst others. In response, Bertrand answered that: “If you do a Google search for these, and you got a link for Pirate Bay, if you click on it you’ll get an interstitial telling you this has been blocked, which I’d have thought is a pretty good thing for people to see that.” “Blocking websites, I don’t think is as effective as going after them as a business,” he continued. “The supply that was going to Megaupload had simply shifted to a whole new range of middle-ranking pirate sites… My worry is if we’re going after them one at a time with blocking, you start getting into the whack-a-mole thing.” In Google’s opinion, as explained by its representative, the fight against online piracy shouldn’t rely solely on some company’s shoulders, but instead be a unified effort. “It’s not Google’s job to go around the web to declare whether sites are legal or illegal, but if Coca-Cola comes to us and says here’s a list of 500 dynamic sites, and we don’t want you to place ads on those… that’s a slightly different thing. It’s almost a marketing thing for the brand,” Bertrand explained. The discussion went on with arguments from all sides. Lowery, for example, said that: “We sometimes conflate the search engine Google with the overall internet. Just because Google blocks certain websites, that’s not censorship. Google is a private company, it’s not censoring those websites.” “Either Google is the web, and therefore it’s a public property that belongs to all of us, and we get to tell it what to do. Or it’s a private company. You can’t have it both ways,” he continued. “The internet you see is censored all the time… sensibly. You could almost go after the hosts and not the individual websites, and then you’re talking about half a dozen is the majority of the traffic,” the musician concluded. A couple of glasses of water later, James Barton chipped in by saying: “How refreshing that finally in 2013 we’re able to have a conversation with members of big tech and big music industry where we can find common ground, and look for a pragmatic solution to the piracy problem.” “Still slightly missing from this: the conversation surrounding music is between big tech and the big music industry, and the voice that is missing is the voice of the fan, and the voice of the artist… The big next process is educating fans as to why they need to pay, the same as the brands in the damage they are doing to creators when they support these infringing sites,” he continued. The meeting was indeed interesting, and we can only hope that it will eventually lead to a common ground between content creators, the entertainment industries, and tech companies, for their and our (the consumers) benefit.

Three Strikes For File-Sharing Fails to Halt Music Sales Decline For years, France’s adoption of the so-called graduated response for dealing with illicit file-sharing has been trumpeted by entertainment companies as a success story to be replicated around the globe. The only true barometer of success, however, is the sound of cash leaving customers’ pockets and into those of the entertainment industry. Just-released figures from the French music industry show that three strikes has done nothing to halt the decline – sales in 2013 are already down 6.7%. Last month a nine-member panel lead by former Canal Plus chairman Pierre Lescure produced a 700 page report advising on policies for advancing entertainment industries in the digital age. After the realization that it had not been effective, one of the report’s recommendations was to scrap the Hadopi agency, the body that currently administers the so-called “Three Strikes” anti-piracy system. The conclusion was that although a reduction in illicit file-sharing on P2P networks such as BitTorrent had been achieved, there had also been an increase in use of other services, including streaming, over which Hadopi has no control. More importantly – crucially, one might argue, the panel concluded that the three strikes mechanism had failed to benefit authorized services as promised. Syndicat National de l’édition Phonographique (SNEP), an industry anti-piracy goup that championed the uptake of three strikes, has just produced its first quarter results for 2013 and they seem to back up the panel’s findings. Somewhat predictably they show no halt to the slide in music sales. In the first three months of the year the wholesale market for recorded music was worth 107.9 million euros in France, down 6.7% on the same period last year. Overall in 2012, sales fell 4.4% In Q1 2013, physical sales (CDs etc) fell by 7.3% and for the first time ever digital sales (iTunes etc) were also hit – down 5.2%. SNEP lays the blame for the decline in digital revenues at the feet of a label deal that expired in 2012 and a YouTube agreement with rights group SACEM that was suspended until the second quarter of 2013. Without these “unusual” issues digital revenues would have been stable, SNEP says, but stability will be disappointing when compared to the 12% growth enjoyed in 2012. Stats on actual downloads show that the boom predicted by the industry once French Internet users began receiving their first, second and third strikes, has simply failed to appear. While downloads of albums demonstrated a little growth – 1.9 million albums were bought in Q1 2013 compared to 1.8 million in Q1 2012 – the singles market is suffering. During the first quarter of 2013 the number of downloaded singles was down 21% on the same period last year – 10.7 million tracks versus 13.7 million in 2012. Overall market share for digital content remained stable at 29%, versus a worldwide average of 35%. So, with the market still in decline, what next for France? Well, evidently “three strikes” won’t be missed. As highlighted by Numerama, France has actually experienced a greater reduction in sales than Germany (- 4.6%), Italy ( – 1.8%), the Netherlands (- 4.7%) and Great Britain (- 5.6%), none of which have a three strikes scheme. Hopes are now being pinned on a series of automated fines of 60 euros each for those sharing content without permission, with increases applied to those who don’t get the message. Why fines should be anymore successful than strikes is anyone’s guess, but SNEP like the idea – as long as the fines are more punishing. “Music producers clearly want the educational component but it must be accompanied by a sufficiently dissuasive sanction. A fine of 60 euros seems too low, it should be at least double!” says SNEP chairman, Guillaume Leblanc.

Pirate Bay Celebrates “Independence Day” 7-Year Raid Anniversary Today, exactly seven years have passed since The Pirate Bay was raided by the Swedish police. While the entertainment industries hoped that this would be the end of their troubles, in hindsight they’ve created one of the most resilient websites on the Internet. The Pirate Bay has declared the raid anniversary “Independence Day,” alongside a determination to continue an ongoing battle worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster script. The Pirate Bay has undergone some drastic changes over the years, moving from a fully-fledged BitTorrent tracker to a trimmed down torrent index. First the tracker was removed, then the torrents followed and a few months ago the infamous torrent site canceled nearly all central servers as it moved to the cloud. In addition, the site switched domain names on multiple occasions. All these changes were carried out to make the site more resilient and less likely to be shut down by the authorities. This determination to escape the long arm of justice was first brought to the forefront seven years ago. Most of the site’s current users are probably unaware that without a few essential keystrokes in the site’s early years, The Pirate Bay may have not been here today. May 31, 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. While the police were about to raid the datacenter, Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid and Fredrik got wind that something was up. In the months before the raid they were already being watched by private investigators day and night, but this time something was about to happen to their trackers. At around 10am in the morning Gottfrid told Fredrik that there were police officers at their office, and asked him to get down to the co-location facility and get rid of the ‘incriminating evidence’, although none of it, whatever it was, was related to The Pirate Bay. As Fredrik was leaving, he suddenly realized that the problems might be linked to their tracker. He therefore decided to make a full backup of the site, just in case. When he later arrived at the co-location facility the concerns turned out to be justified. There were dozens of policemen floating around taking away dozens of servers, most of which belonged to clients unrelated to The Pirate Bay. Footage from The Pirate Bay raid In the days that followed it became clear that Fredrik’s decision to start a backup of the site was probably the most pivotal moment in the site’s history. Because of this backup Fredrik and the rest of the Pirate Bay team managed to resurrect the site within three days. The site’s operators were not impressed and renamed the site “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. Logos after the raid Instead of shutting it down the raid brought the site into the mainstream press, not least due to its amazing three-day resurrection. All this publicity resulted in a huge traffic spike for TPB, exactly the opposite effect Hollywood had hoped for. Despite a criminal investigation leading to convictions for the site’s founders, The Pirate Bay kept growing and growing in the years that followed. The site’s assets, meanwhile, had been transferred to the Seychelles-based company Reservella. Under new ownership two major technical changes occurred. In the fall of 2009 the infamous BitTorrent tracker was taken offline, turning The Pirate Bay into a torrent indexing site. Early 2012 The Pirate Bay went even further when it decided to cease offering torrent files for well-seeded content. The site’s operators moved to magnet links instead, allowing them to save resources while making it easier for third-party sites to run proxies. These proxies turned out to be much-needed, as The Pirate Bay is now the most broadly censored website on the Internet. In recent years ISPs in Denmark, Italy, UK, the Netherlands and elsewhere have been ordered by courts to block subscriber access to the BitTorrent site. Late last year The Pirate Bay made another important change to its infrastructure by switching their entire operation to the cloud. Serving its users from several cloud hosting providers scattered around the world saves costs, guarantees better uptime, and makes the site more portable and thus harder to take down. Finally, fearing a domain seizure by the Swedish authorities, TPB took action again last month. After hearing the rumors The Pirate Bay quickly switched to a Greenland-based domain, later hopping to Iceland, and eventually landing .SX domains as other problems became apparent. And so The Pirate Bay lives on, closing on its tenth anniversary later this year and celebrating the raid anniversary which it previously declared as “Independence Day.” “Our message is as it’s always been: We decide if the site dies or not, no one else. So today, 7 years after the raid, we celebrate our independence once again. Thank you for being a part of all this!,” Pirate Bay’s Winston writes today. If there hadn’t been a recent backup, things may have turned out quite differently.

Movie2K Down: The Mystery and Possible Reincarnation Revealed Earlier this week the hugely popular Movie2K streaming movie portal disappeared off the face of the Internet without a trace. No official explanation has been given for the site’s demise but following the trail of digital breadcrumbs reveals quite a few interesting developments over the past two weeks. Is the site gone for good, or about to make a huge comeback? While the world’s largest torrent indexes tend to grab most of the headlines, a relatively new range of sites have been scooping up huge numbers of users during the past few years. Avoiding the relative complexity of torrent clients, streaming portals offer movies and TV shows in a YouTube-like environment, with video embedded in a page and ready to watch – no traditional downloading required. Offering all the latest movies and TV shows for immediate viewing after just a couple of clicks, Movie2K was one of the most popular streaming sites around. Back in February it was the 240th most popular site in the world and in Germany ranked 19th, making it more popular than Twitter, Amazon, Apple, PayPal and Microsoft. Movie2K – gone However, on Wednesday Movie2K became unresponsive. We were first alerted to the problems by the operators of PirateReverse and ProxyBay, sites which set themselves up to reconnect users with Movie2K after the UK Hight Court ordered it blocked earlier this month. Something was clearly wrong – Movie2K first began redirecting to Google and then later to 127.0.0.1. We emailed Movie2K immediately but after receiving no response we began asking questions elsewhere, starting with the site’s former host. Romanian host shut down Movie2K Voxility is a Romanian-based company that houses quite a few file-sharing related websites. It is also the last known host of Movie2K so we wrote to the company and asked them what had happened to the site. Voxility failed to respond to our questions, but we weren’t about to give up. What we do know is that Movie2K had been doing business with Voxility for a long time using the IP address 109.163.226.18. The records for that IP address have now been changed and allocated away from Movie2K and back to ‘reserved’ status with Voxility. We spoke with a person familiar with Voxility’s operations who told us that ‘reserved’ indicates that the server has been canceled by the host and is no longer in use. Was Movie2K raided or was the shutdown voluntary? Ever since Movie2K disappeared earlier this week there have been rumors that the site (or its admin) had been raided. Most seem to be based around a statement last week by anti-piracy group GVU that a former top uploader to the now-defunct Kino.to had been raided in Germany. The individual, said to be called “Hologram”, is alleged to have uploaded more than 100,000 movies. GVU said that he was “cooperative” and later “confessed.” The raid took place early on May 22 according to GVU, but TorrentFreak received an email later that evening from the Movie2K admin, so it seems moderately unlikely he was raided that same morning. However, what we do know from a source inside Voxility is that the operator of Movie2K voluntarily closed down the server this week and canceled his business with Voxility. And in the past few minutes there are suggestions that there might indeed be some connection, not necessarily directly though, between the shutdown of Movie2K and the raid last week. While stating that they don’t really know why Movie2K has disappeared, GVU are suggesting that the site’s operators may have seen the ongoing Kino.to investigation and decided that enough is enough. That’s possible of course, but we still aren’t finished. Updated DNS entries – Movie2K used to operate via many different domains such as .com and .net, but the prime URL for the site over the years has been Movie2K.to. Now, .to is the top-level domain (ccTLD) of the island kingdom of Tonga and is handled by the Tonic domain name registry. Tonic have a policy of keeping domain registrants’ information secret so there is no traditional WHOIS that will reveal names and addresses etc. There is however a limited search that can be done to find out DNS entries etc, which revealed something interesting. An update this morning… Domain: movie2k.to Created on: Tue Aug 31 05:07:54 2010 Last edited on: Fri May 31 08:28:53 2013 Expires on: Thu Aug 31 05:07:54 2017 Primary host add: 87.106.42.187 Primary host name: dns1.piratenpartei.de Secondary host add: 62.48.67.66 Secondary host name: ns2.pop-hannover.net Piraten Partei is the German Pirate Party and the addresses listed above certainly match the party’s DNS server addresses. So, are they involved? “We have nothing to do with this and our DNS servers do not serve this domain,” Markus Drenger of the Pirate Party’s press team told TorrentFreak. So with the Pirate Party denying knowledge we will have to wait a short time to see what happens next with the Movie2K domain. Tonic update their nameservers once a day at (GMT +13) so the next move might become apparent then. However, . com updates sooner…. Movie2K is dead, long live…..Movie4K? Visitors to Movie2K.com are now being redirected to a server in the Virgin Islands playing host to a new site called Movie4K. There’s nothing there at the moment but there are signs that something might be about to burst into life. The DNS entries for that domain were updated last evening. Domain: movie4k.to Created on: Sat Dec 03 00:50:01 2011 Last edited on: Thu May 30 21:11:00 2013 Expires on: Sat Dec 03 00:50:01 2016 Primary host add: 89.32.145.101 Primary host name: pns1.cloudns.net Secondary host add: 62.75.145.77 Secondary host name: pns2.cloudns.net So will Movie2K reanimate itself into Movie4K this weekend and become fully operational once again? All the indications suggest that we won’t have long to find out. In the meantime, GVU may have to put their champagne back on ice.

Dear all OpenCD Members!! We are very pleased to inform you that we currently are having an active contest running in the International Chat Forum. There are great chances to win some Bonus Points as well as Invites. Please do remember that the rules in terms of trading and selling invites still applies!! You can find much more information about contest here: Music Video Contest We encourage everyone to parcipate and support such a contest, a great chance to meet other members and have some fun. Hint: Every member that joins the contest and participates are guaranteed Bonus Points. Yeah that's right!!! Looking forward to see your answers and participation.

Grab yours now! Those trial seedboxes are valid for 48h, and you can choose between 3 plans. Just make sure to choose rutorrent. Login | SecureBoxes

Tracker name : Rarat.org Tracker url: https://rarat.org/login.php Signup: invites only Tracker IRC: irc.freequest.net Port: 6667 Channels: #rarat ....#rarat.support

How Does it Work? Simple - Invite as many people as you can. Standard Invite Rulles Apply but the rules in the invite thread DO NOT Apply so anyone can post for more invites. But selling / Trading accounts will still get you banned as will posting about or giving out invites on public trackers! When Does it Finish? 1 Month From now so on the 1st July this thread will be locked off and all invites removed - The Winner will be judged there and then by the person at the top of the leader-board.