jimmyLi's blog

Less than one month after isoHunt was shut down and its founder served with a $110 million fine, the BitTorrent site has triumphantly returned to the internet, resurrected by a web preservation group known only as ' ArchiveTeam .' The torrent index site - which provides users with links to illegally posted movies, music, video game, and software files – closed down earlier this month after more than a decade online. The announcement, quietly made in a court document filed October 17, also indicated that isoHunt’s Canadian founder, Gary Fung, would be forced to pay a $110 million fine to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for “inducing” copyright infringement. IsoHunt.to was officially re-launched on Tuesday. The site has the same layout and color scheme as the former incarnation of isoHunt. Perhaps most crucially, isoHunt.to also points users toward all kinds of media content which they would otherwise have to pay for. Approximately 75 percent of the los...

BitTorrent is used by millions of people every day, even in places where you wouldn’t really expect. New data suggests that employees at the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division are sharing movies and TV-shows with the rest of the world. Is the FBI gathering information on BitTorrent users, or could it be that the feds harbor in-house pirates? Online piracy is a serious crime according to the FBI. Over the past years the FBI has been involved in many piracy related cases. The high-profile Megaupload investigation for example, where a federal agent used an “undercover computer” to browse the file-hosting site. In this light it is quite a surprise that some employees at the FBI appear to be sharing copyrighted material out in the open, through BitTorrent. Based on public data from BitTorrent monitoring company ScanEye we found several BitTorrent “pirates” linked to IP-addresses that are registered to FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. ...

The Ukraine-hosted BitTorrent site came under scrutiny by the local authorities and was ultimately terminated last week, now the international hacking group vows a settling of scores. Anonymous has promised to bring down its wrath on the Ukrainian government after authorities were said to have taken down the file-sharing site Demonoid last week. "Last week, our generous green friend, the Demonoid, was met with a state sponsored Distributed Denial of Service attack...These illegal actions were then followed up with a raid by Ukraine authorities," the hacking group wrote in a blog post on AnonPR yesterday. "In retaliation for your criminal acts against us and the free flow of information, we have already begun an operation against those responsible. Lazers are already being fired." Ukraine-hosted Demonoid was taken down last week after local authorities contacted its Internet Service Provider Colocall. According to the BBC , officials then w...

The Ukraine-based file-sharing site -- once on the U.S. "Notorious Markets List" -- was taken offline earlier this month in a coordinated international effort. Three key Demonoid domains are now up for sale, less than two weeks after the BitTorrent site was taken down in a coordinated effort. The Ukraine-based site was taken offline earlier this month apparently when local authorities contacted its Internet service provider, Colocall, and forced the ISP to shut down the service's servers. Demonoid was among the Web sites included in the U.S. government's "Notorious Markets List," which was created to identify "markets, including those on the Internet, which exemplify the problem of marketplaces dealing in infringing goods and helping sustain global piracy." Three of its domains -- demonoid.me, demonoid.com, and demonoid.ph. -- are available for purchase on domain marketplace Sedo . Interpol and the International Federation ...

In a few months millions of BitTorrent users in the United States will be actively monitored as part of an agreement between the MPAA, RIAA and all the major ISPs. Those caught sharing copyright works will receive several warning messages and will be punished if they continue to infringe. Today the center responsible for administering the scheme announced its Executive Board, which surprisingly enough doesn’t include any neutral executives. Starting this summer, the Center for Copyright Information ( CCI ) will start to track down ‘pirates’ as part of an agreement with all major U.S. Internet providers. Last year the parties agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures, which includes slowing down the offender’s connection and temporary disconnections. The new plan was announced under the name ‘Copyright Alerts‘ last year and will be implem...

The war against hackers won't be won unless companies change the way they use computer networks. UPDATED with a comment provided by the FBI. FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry admitted to The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that despite recent arrests, the United States is not winning the war against hackers. As it stands now, the current private and public approach to fending off hackers is "unsustainable" because they're just too weak to stand up against these "talented" hackers. Henry, who plans to leave his position at the FBI after serving for over two decades, said that the best way to fend off hackers is to change the way companies use computer networks. Right now they're a risk to national security and the economy operating vulnerable networks. On a whole, they're unknowingly costing the taxpayer huge amounts of money. ...