DigitMemo.com

Pirate Bay officials think it is the overzealous Swedish government officials that will be walking the legal plank

The Pirate Bay’s enemies are circling it like a pack of hungry sharks, waiting for it to slip. First there is the Swedish government assault, led by prosecutor Håkan Roswall, who seeks to press charges against The Pirate Bay before January 31, 2008.  The planned charges will be against multiple pirate bay admins for allegedly supporting copyright infringement on a massive scale.

Click for more on Pirate Bay Officials Respond, Laugh Off Lawsuits, Prince »

Canadian-hosted torrent site is the next to fall in a series of takedowns

The world-wide crackdown on torrent sites has brought down another major torrent hub. After being forced to close its doors to Canadian users in September due to pressure from the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), Demonoid.com survived for only slightly more than a month before being having forced offline entirely today.

The previously bustling homepage has been replaced by a single line of text; bereft of much in the way of details, but leaving little doubt as to the fate of the website:

The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.

Click for more on Demonoid.com Shut Down Again »

The Pirate Bay is currently working on an OiNK replacement and will be released within a week and on the BOiNK.cd domain.

In an attempt to bring the hundreds of thousands of music albums back online that disappeared during the raid, the BOiNK site will be a little different from OiNK. For instance, the tracker will be public and it will start out with a lot less torrents than OiNK had when it was raided. The success of BOiNK will mainly depend on the former OiNK community, who will be asked to upload their old OiNK torrents.

Click for more on The Pirate Bay to Bring Back OiNK »

Wired has up an article with a man named Robert Anderson, who was recruited by the MPAA in 2005 to inform on people in the BitTorrent community.

In a tell-all interview with the site, Anderson explains how the powerful media organization encouraged him to obtain the information they were looking for:

According to Anderson, the MPAA told him: ‘We would need somebody like you. We would give you a nice paying job, a house, a car, anything you needed…. if you save Hollywood for us you can become rich and powerful.’ In 2005, the MPAA paid Anderson $15,000 for inside information about TorrentSpy — information at the heart of a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by the MPAA against TorrentSpy of Los Angeles. The material is also the subject of a wiretapping countersuit against the MPAA brought by TorrentSpy’s founder, Justin Bunnell, who alleges the information was obtained illegally.

Click for more on Hacker for the MPAA Interviewed »

Tests confirm data discrimination by number 2 U.S. service provider

Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

Click for more on Comcast blocks some Internet traffic »

The Minnesota woman who last week was ordered to pay the recording industry $222,000 for copyright violations related to sharing songs, has decided to appeal the verdict.

Thomas announced her decision Monday morning on cable news channel CNN and on her MySpace.com page.

Click for more on Minnesota woman to appeal $220,000 RIAA award »

She has been ordered to pay statutory damages of $220,000 or $9250 per song.

30-year-old Jammie Thomas lost big in the nation’s jury decision for a file sharing case.  The single mother of two was found liable in sharing 24 songs from six record companies and has been ordered to pay statutory damages of $220,000 or $9250 per song.

Click for more on Single mother loses big in music piracy case »

The TPB team is currently working on a more efficient Open Source tracker system that, among other things, will guarantee better protection against anti-piracy outfits.

Some of you might have noticed that the Pirate Bay trackers were down for a couple of hours today. The reason for the downtime is not related to an anti-piracy organization this time, on the contrary. TPB has moved its servers to a new datacenter and added some extra servers to their already pretty impressive server lineup. The tracker currently runs on 12 servers, and 4 brand new ones will be added later today.

Click for more on The Pirate Bay is Developing a New BitTorrent Tracker »

Demonoid.com has allegedly been taken offline by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA).

Both the tracker and the website have been unresponsive for nearly 24 hours now. As of now it is still unsure what exactly happened, but the popular Dutch news site nu.nl reports that the CRIA is responsible for the downtime.

Click for more on Demonoid Torrent Tracker Shut Down by CRIA »

The big record and movie companies are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy the site.

Thanks to the email-leakage from MediaDefender-Defenders we(TPB) now have proof of the things we’ve been suspecting for a long time; the big record and movie labels are paying professional hackers, saboteurs and ddosers to destroy our trackers.

Click for more on ThePrirateBay files charges against media companies »