tech news and opinions
As is usually expected with Windows releases the latest Windows 7 Beta ISO has hit torrent trackers. I’m not going to link to it here for legal reasons but it isn’t too difficult to find.
Windows 7 Beta ISO leaked on torrent trackers – Download Squad.
Torrent2exe is a pretty amazing web utility that turns .torrent files into .exe files that are self contained BitTorrent downloaders. This allows you to download bittorrent files without having to have a BitTorrent client installed on your computer.
It is really easy to use too, all you do is download the .torrent file from whatever site you get it from, upload the .torrent file to torrent2exe.com, click the download button and you are off and running with an executable file. When that executable is ran it opens up a download window and starts to download the source file to the directory that the .exe is located in.
If you want to skip a couple of steps you have the option of entering the URL to the .torrent file.
This looks like a really good way of getting your friends into BitTorrent that have had some trouble wrapping their heads around the idea of it.
Torrent2exe (via DownloadSquad)
The popular bittorrent tracker Demonoid has reportedly been shut down by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. TorrentFreak contacted some of the Demonoid administrators and they are not exactly sure what happened, it seems that Demonoid’s Canadian ISP pulled the plug because of pressure from the CRIA however I haven’t been able to really find any hard evidence to confirm this.
This is not the first time that Demonoid has suffered major down time, in June they had to move their ISP from the Netherlands to Canada after the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN filed a subpoena against Demonoid’s ISP in the Netherlands.
Demonoid is the second largest bittorrent tracker in the world, behind The Pirate Bay. This is a huge hit to the bittorrent community and my guess is Demonoid will have to relocate again to get back online.
[via TorrentFreak]
TorrentSpy has decided to block the US from searching its site for torrents. The decision was made because it was either this or they were going to have to start tracking all of the ip address of those downloading. Luckily this decision was made right on the heels of SuprNova.org reopening so no need to worry. All you bittorrent users will still be able to illegally download TV shows, movies, etc.
One giant torrent tracker goes down another comes up, that is just how it is. There is no way for the RIAA or the MPAA to stay on top of it. TorrentSpy is clearly not as evasive as The Pirate Bay (TPB) is, I’m amazed that no one has been able to bring down TPB because they have just been taunting the RIAA and MPAA for soooo looong.
I talked about The Pirate Bay relaunching SuprNova.org and they finally have. SuprNova.org is officially back in action.I have never used SuprNova.org before so this was my first time. The site looks really good however I don’t know how close the design is to how it was back in its prime. I downloaded some legal items and I seemed to be getting much faster speeds then I ever have using any other bittorrent tracker (maybe it was psychological but it did seem fast).
The domain name “suprnova.org” was donated to The Pirate Bay by its owner. SuprNova.org was once the largest bittorrent tracker out there and most people believe to be the best ever. I don’t really have to go through the entire history of SuprNova, all you have to know is that it is coming back and a lot of people are excited.
With the donated domain name, The Pirate Bay is set to relaunch Suprnova.org. According to TorrentFreak the site will look almost exactly like it used to, which is getting a lot of former Suprnova users excited for the launch.
I actually don’t remember suprnova at all, I never used bittorrent at that time and never gave the site a first glance let alone a second one. So with that said I’ll point you to TorrentFreak for more information on the topic.
TorrentFreak – The Pirate Bay About To Relaunch Suprnova.org
Bittorrent has started a movie and tv show portal where you will be able to rent movies and buy TV shows and download them using bittorrent. In the TV show space they have launched with Comedy Central, G4, Fox, Logo, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, etc. They also have a couple of high profile movies for rent, Jackass 2, Superman, and Saw III. This looks pretty cool and the fact that the downloads are bittorrent downloads. This will help tremendously with the price of bandwidth. This sounds to be a great idea and may end up as one of the bigger movie download services.
The service requires the BitTorrent Client, Internet Explorer 6.0, Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Media Player 10 or higher, they say that different configurations may work but what they list is all they support. So that means it will probably work under Vista but they just don’t support it yet.
It seems the RIAA doesn’t want to do anything but make people angrier and angrier. Now they have posted a list of the top 25 Colleges that pirate, well at least those that pirate and get caught doing it. This is just one more thing to make you think, hmm, why aren’t they making it easy enough for people to listen to the music they want to cheaply, then people wouldn’t pirate because if it is easier to pirate then it is to legally buy music and do with it whatever you want (similar to a CD with less cost) then people will do it. And don’t even get me started because then I will go off on a tangent on how much they say the music that is pirated is worth. Why can’t they just make the people pay $15 for every month that they have pirated or listened to pirated music and then make them buy a Zune. Wouldn’t that make everything better?
[List Via Engadget]
Copyright notices sent out in the 2006-07 academic year.
Torrent Freak said yesterday that the first Blu-Ray movie was up on bittorrent. I do not condone pirating movies however this is a very important moment in time to prove that no encryption can ever be left un-cracked.
The torrent is of Ice Age 2 in 1080p and is found on HDbits.org however you need to be a member to login. Check out TorrentFreaks post here.
On the AzureusWiki they have a list of ISP’s who have been thought to have blocked bittorrent. There are over 50 ISP’s on the list so if you are having problems with bittorrent you may want to check out the list to find out if you are using one of those ISP’s. Check out the list here.