On June 25th 2005, the homepage of the EliteTorrents.org tracker displayed an ominous message. Thousands of members trying to log in to get a sneak peak at a leaked copy of Star Wars: Episode 3 were surprised and confused in equal numbers. Had the FBI really raided one of the largest BitTorrent communities and put up a badly made Word document, or

Historically, the EliteTorrents case is an important one. Many BitTorrent trackers used to be hosted in the United States, but had been essentially scared or pressured to leave, largely due to direct or indirect MPAA pressure. Right up until the…

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A jury has convicted EliteTorrents admin Daniel Dove of conspiracy and felony copyright infringement. Since the MPAA supplied much of the evidence for the case (saving law enforcement time and labor), both parties are likely to continue “collaborating” to take file sharers down.

According to the DoJ, the jury was presented with evidence that Dove was in charge of a small group (known as the "Uploaders"), recruiting members with high-speed Internet connections to seed illegal content to the…

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First it was TorrentSpy and now this.
A US court has convicted Barry Gitarts, from Brooklyn, New York of music piracy who now faces a fine of $250,000 and five years in jail. He is 25 years old.
The court in Eastern District of Virginia found Gitarts guilty of criminal copyright infringement. According to the details he was a…

aPC was a major MP3 warez organization founded by two individuals known under the pseudonyms acid^rain and Viper in May of 1997. aPC operated well into the mid 2000s and was subject to raid during Operation Fastlink ' a coordination of four…

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A 31 year old file-sharer escaped prison this morning when he received a heavy fine and a suspended sentence for uploading music and movies. The court refrained from putting the defendant in prison, saying that the music industry needs to take some responsibility for the current situation.

First of all let me say from Sweden that Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask is a total bitch who has long since been bought up by the MAFIAA and her views on filesharing have been pretty open and one sided to the industry. She has been trying for…

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UC Berkeley graduate journalism student James Karl Buck was arrested on April 10 without any charges in Egypt for photographing a demonstration. He used his mobile phone to twitter the message Arrested? to his 48 followers, who contacted UC Berkeley, the US Embassy and a number of press organizations on his behalf.

disclaimer: I love Twitter, I just think that as a crowd we still haven’t the right skills or tools to sip what’s right from the firehose of twits that gushes in our face when we “follow” hundreds of…

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