Posted: 05 Dec 2014 03:20 AM PST

Founded in 2009 after The Pirate Bay shut down its tracker, OpenBitTorrent soon grew out to become a key player in the BitTorrent ecosystem.

Running on the beerware-licensed Opentracker software, the standalone tracker offers a non-commercial service which doesn’t host or link to torrent files themselves.

For several years OpenBitTorrent has been the most used BitTorrent tracker. The free service coordinates the downloads of 30 million people at any given point in time, processing roughly three billion connections per day.

About a week ago, however, the tracker suddenly stopped responding. Those who now try to download a torrent with help from OpenBitTorrent will notice that the connection to the tracker times out.

The problems appear to originate from missing DNS entries. The domain name is currently not linked to an IP-address which makes it impossible to reach.

Around the same time OpenBitTorrent went down, “sister” tracker PublicBT disappeared as well. The latter reappeared two days ago and is functioning as usual at the time of writing.

Hoping to get more details TF reached out both OpenBitTorrent and PublicBT earlier this week, but we have yet to receive a response.

It’s worth noting that former Pirate Bay operator Fredrik Neij is listed as the domain registrant for the OpenBitTorrent domain. Neij was arrested a few weeks ago and is currently imprisoned in Sweden.

Despite the largest tracker being down most BitTorrent users are still able to share files. In fact, it’s likely that the majority are completely unaware of the downtime.

Instead of using a tracker, most popular torrents work fine when they rely solely on DHT and PEX. This allows downloaders to get info on other peers from each other, instead of a central tracker.

Users of BitTorrent proxy services can experience more problems as they often have DHT and PEX disabled to prevent their real IP-addresses from leaking out. For this group there is no other option than to wait until the trackers return or manually add addresses of other trackers to their torrents.

We’ll update this article if we receive new information on OpenBitTorrent’s prolonged downtime.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Court Orders French ISPs to Block The Pirate Bay

Posted: 04 Dec 2014 11:04 AM PST

Hounded by copyright holders all around the world for a decade, somehow The Pirate Bay manages to stay afloat. Today the site is doing as well as ever, despite the jailing of the now-famous individuals behind the project.

Faced with an adversary that to date has proven impossible to kill, entertainment companies have chosen what they believe to be the next best course of action. If the site itself can’t be stopped, then users must be stopped from reaching the site.

This has been achieved by court-ordered ISP blockades in various regions of the world, notably Europe. Today comes news of yet another blocking injunction, this time in France.

The legal process was initiated earlier this year by collection society and anti-piracy group La Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques, or SCPP as it’s more commonly known.

Late Thursday the organization, which represents in excess of 2,000 labels including Warner, Universal and Sony, announced victory in a short statement.

Welcoming a decision handed down by the Paris Court, SCPP said that French service providers will soon be required to “implement all necessary measures” to prevent consumer access not only to The Pirate Bay, but also “its proxy and mirror sites”.

“This decision is another step in the fight against music piracy and one that strengthens existing similar decisions in the EU and worldwide,” SCPP said.

Although the details of the injunction are still to be published, the introduction of a clause which orders the blocking of proxy and mirror sites could be a significant achievement for the labels.

Guillaume Champeau of French news outlet Numerama informs TorrentFreak that SCPP previously pushed for automatic proxy-accommodating court orders, but without success.

While no announcements have yet been made, it’s likely that this action against The Pirate Bay and its mirrors won’t be the last for the French labels and their counterparts in the movie and TV industries. If earlier predictions hold out, more sites will quickly move onto the radars of outfits such as SCPP.

For an indication of what can happen one only needs to look a couple of dozen miles north to the UK. After several years of court action, all major ISPs are required to block most major torrent sites and even some private trackers.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Kim Dotcom’s Hong Kong Millions Unfrozen.. Momentarily

Posted: 04 Dec 2014 06:59 AM PST

In 2012, as Megaupload’s servers were being shuttered in the U.S. and Dotcom’s New Zealand mansion was raided by armed police, the German’s Hong Kong offices were being turned over by a reported 100 customs officers.

At the behest of the U.S. government, HK$330 million (US$42.55m) in assets were seized and have remained frozen ever since.

Earlier this year Dotcom and his associates took legal action against the Hong Kong government and in October applied for the restraining order to be set aside, accusing the secretary for justice of failing to provide a "full and frank disclosure" of the facts when the application for seizure was made.

According to Dotcom’s lawyers the prosecution withheld important information from the court when applying for the restraining order, including the fact that Megaupload could not be served with a criminal complaint in the United States as it was based entirely abroad.

In a new hearing in the High Court this morning, Deputy High Court Judge Mr Garry Tallentire set aside the restraining order. Celebrations, however, were short-lived.

At his discretion Tallentire immediately re-instated the lock on Dotcom’s assets, but it was not all bad news for the Megaupload founder.

The original restraining order was granted ex parte, meaning that the defendants in the case were not allowed to put their side of the story. The new modified order gives Dotcom’s legal team the right to contest the asset freeze.

The Judge also ordered the U.S. government to pay Dotcom’s legal fees as he continues his fight to have his assets unfrozen. The ruling pleased Dotcom, who took to Twitter to celebrate.

“Two court victories against the US government in a week. Glad that Hong Kong isn’t part of the US puppet show. This is the turning point!” he declared.

Earlier this week Dotcom maintained his freedom after the U.S. government failed to have his bail revoked following a three-day hearing.

He now faces an extradition hearing in June 2015.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

PirateBay

Torrentfreak: “World’s Largest BitTorrent Tracker Goes Down” plus 2 more

Torrentfreak: “World’s Largest BitTorrent Tracker Goes Down” plus 2 more