pirating

Can The Pirate Bay exist without torrents? The future of the Swedish torrent tracker arrives on the last day of February, which is when the site administrators have announced that they will be phasing out torrents in favor of magnet links.

Although it sounds like The Pirate Bay will be closing, the move is designed to ensure that the site continues on. A magnet link is like a torrent container, but instead of using the name of the torrent to identify itself, it relies on a hash code that uniquely identifies the torrent. Basically, it's a torrent that's … Read more

Apple supplier Foxconn now has another crisis on its hands.

A group of hackers known as Swagg Security is taking credit for a breach of Foxconn network security, resulting in the theft of usernames, passwords, and other private information.

In a series of Twitter posts yesterday, the group boasted that it publicly released the information on the Pirate Bay Web site as well as on Pastebin. The attack grabbed the credentials of every Foxconn employee, according to 9to5Mac, including Terry Gou, CEO of parent Hon Hai Industries.

Beyond damaging Foxconn internally, the stolen information could also create trouble for some … Read more

Simpsons fans in Los Angeles are meeting up today to kick off the Ultimate Fan Marathon Challenge in an effort to beat the world record for consecutive TV watching currently set at 86 hours, 6 minutes, and 41 seconds. On today's show, we'll discuss the challenge and propose one of our own that may be a little more difficult to achieve.… Read more

The top 10 most pirated movies in the world are either fantastical, involve superheroes, or have some serious fight scenes ("The Hangover" might have all three).

According to data collected by TorrentFreak, tens of thousands of movies are pirated every day using either BitTorrents or some other type of file sharing.

Say what you will about people downloading pirated movies, but according to TorrentFreak's list of the top 10 pirated movies these downloaders seem to have strikingly similar taste to those who go to the box office. (See IMDb's list of top 10 box office grosses … Read more

Semi-automatic shotguns, body armor, and accusations of police brutality and acts of terrorism are common in stories about Mexico's drug wars or the fighting in Afghanistan.

So what are those terms doing in technology stories about copyright and online file sharing? A recent arrest of MegaUpload's founder by 70 armed police officers as well as cyber attacks on media executives and government officials by Anonymous indicates that the gloves have come off in the copyright conflict.

Against this backdrop, BTJunkie, one of the top BitTorrent index sites, has decided to shut down. BTJunkie posted a note on its … Read more

The Buzz crew talks about Facebook's historic IPO, and the challenges the company will face moving forward. Zynga is smiling, and so is the invite-only Pinterest. We've figured it out, and it's the new social network for girls or metrosexuals. "Into it, Not Into it" brings us vacuum-sealed couples, and that's all you need to know.

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Three of The Pirate Bay's founders won't be able to argue their case before the Sweden Supreme Court.

Earlier today, the court announced that it won't hear an appeal by Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundstrom, meaning the jail sentences and fines imposed by the lower Swedish Court of Appeals will stand.

Torrent Freak was first to report on the news.

The trouble for the men started in earnest in April 2009 when a Swedish court found them guilty on charges of making 33 copyright-protected files available for illegal file sharing on The Pirate Bay. The … Read more

The Pirate Bay, one of the world's most infamous online piracy and file-sharing sites, is now hosting a type of mock-up file that allows your 3D printer to create physical objects.

The group announced yesterday via its blog, as first reported by GigaOM, that users can now search in a new category called "Physibles." … Read more

Do you pray to the god of file sharing? If so, you might want to move to Sweden. The Church of Kopimism--a group with roots in file sharing and the notion that everything should be free--is now an official religion there.

Kopimism is the brainchild of philosophy student Isak Gerson, who founded the church in 2010 to protect his beliefs that copying and sharing information is a good thing. (If Kopimism has a Ten Commandments equivalent, I'm guessing "Thou shall not steal" didn't make the cut.)

Before you dispute Kopimism as hogwash, there are some things to consider. According to TorrentFreak, the movement has a couple thousand followers, and the number is expected to rise with its official status. … Read more