Torrentfreak: “BitTorrent Zeitgeist: What People Search for in 2014” plus 2 more |
- BitTorrent Zeitgeist: What People Search for in 2014
- Here’s Where “The Interview” Pirates Are Coming From
- Talos Principle Traps Pirating Gamers in An Elevator
| BitTorrent Zeitgeist: What People Search for in 2014 Posted: 31 Dec 2014 01:32 AM PST
These lists give insight into recent trends, and in 2014 Robin Williams, World Cup and Ebola were the top trending searches on Google. But what about torrent search engines? With billions of searches every year it's worth taking a look at the most-entered keywords on the dominant file-sharing network. A few years ago we started the BitTorrent zeitgeist tradition with help from one of the largest torrent sites around. Based on a sample of hundreds of millions of searches, this list should give a decent overview of what people are looking for. 2014’s number one query is the same as last year’s. YIFY is the name of a popular movie release group that many people follow to see what new pirated titles are available. The term 2014, often used to find recent movies, comes in second place, followed by 1080p in third. Last year “1080p” was in 42nd place suggesting that people were increasingly looking for high definition video. The sixth and eight place for newcomers YIFY 720p and YIFY 1080p confirm this trend. In fourth place we find NeZu, another popular movie release group that is listed in the top 50 for the first time this year. The first content related search query is Guardians of The Galaxy in ninth place. Other popular movie searches are Lucy and Dawn of The Planet of The Apes taking the 23rd and 24th spots respectively. TV content is also popular with Game of Thrones in 12th and The Walking Dead in 16th place. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no searches related to music titles in the top 50. The only music related term is Discography in 11th place. Finally, a game release group made it into the top 50 this year. The query Nosteam, referring to the ^^nosTEAM^^ group, is one of the highest newcomers and is listed in 15th place. Below is the full list of the 50 most-entered search queries on one of the most popular torrent sites on the Internet. — 1. yify Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Here’s Where “The Interview” Pirates Are Coming From Posted: 30 Dec 2014 02:40 PM PST
By Sunday the movie had been sold two million times, which isn’t a bad result at all. However, in the dark corners of the Internet just as many copies were traded without permission. Via torrent sites alone the movie was shared an estimated 2.5 million times and that number could double when illicit streaming sites and cyberlockers are added to the mix. One question that remained unanswered until now is where all these pirates are coming from. To find out, TF gathered more than 7,000 IP-addresses of people who shared pirated copies via BitTorrent throughout the past 24-hours. The data, presented in the table below, reveals that most of the pirates come from parts of the world where there’s no legal avenue to see the film. With 17.6% the United States is still leading the list, but this isn’t a big surprise considering the size of its population. If we take a look at which countries have most pirates relative to their population size then the Netherlands (17 million) and Australia (23 million) come out on top. In total Canada, Australia, the UK and the Netherlands are good for 30% of all downloads, but these countries have less than half of the U.S. population combined. While this data gives some more insight into The Interview’s popularity worldwide it’s hard to draw any strong conclusions, as piracy rates depend on a multitude of factors. Would there have been less pirated downloads if the movie was sold everywhere? Most likely, but the high percentage of U.S. downloads shows that there’s still plenty of piracy even where the film is available. Finally, it’s worth mentioning that there were no downloads from North Korea in our sample. This doesn’t come as a surprise of course, not least because Internet connectivity has been down recently. Sony Pictures, meanwhile, is targeting torrent sites with DMCA takedown requests hoping to hinder the distribution of pirated copies. Whether that will have much of an effect has yet to be seen as there are still plenty of pirate copies around. —- Note: downloaders who use VPNs may appear to be in a different country.
Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Talos Principle Traps Pirating Gamers in An Elevator Posted: 30 Dec 2014 06:45 AM PST
The same is true for Croteam’s latest release The Talos Principle. A few days ago a pirated copy of the puzzle title surfaced online which initially appeared to work as a regular game. However, the fun didn’t last long as the developers had previously embedded a feature that traps free-riding pirates in a virtual elevator. “When I unlocked the 2nd floor on the tower, all the elevators have stopped working. Whenever I want to get somewhere, it just stops in the middle of the way and I can’t do anything,” J.K. wrote on the Steam forums. The measure had many pirates puzzled, but in a thread on Neogaf the purpose of the “bug” soon came to light. While bugs in “cracked” games are a regular occurrence, in this case it’s clearly an intentional anti-piracy measure. As can be seen below, the QR code visible in the elevator clearly references the scene release group SKIDROW, who are responsible for many pirated game copies.  Croteam acknowledged the feature on social media by retweeting a mention of the puzzled Steam user, which must have been good for a few laughs among the developers. Even more so, it probably led to a few extra sales as well. Apparently some pirates were hooked enough to get a legit copy of the game on Steam, to continue playing without any hassles. “I hit the bug where the elevators stopped working correctly, so I bought the game on Steam and was able to import my save,” an anonymous user wrote on a popular torrent site, adding that it’s been worth the money. “I did lose some progress, possibly a side effect of the elevator bug, but I was able to get back to where I was pretty quickly. I just finished the game (one ending, at least) and it was totally worth the purchase price.” So the developers managed to punish pirates and get paid. That’s a pretty good outcome to say the least. As Kotaku mentions, this isn’t the first time that Croteam has come up with a rather creative form of DRM. Three years ago the developers added an invincible scorpion to Serious Sam, making it impossible for pirates to progress. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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