On The Pirate Bay's blog, the decision is pitched as a step forward, away from centralized trackers to newer, decentralized systems like DHT and PEX:

Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It's the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well.

Which is all well and good, but DHT support isn't in all torrent clients yet, and many cheaper routers choke on the added connection load. It remains to be seen how smoothly the transition will go—the main site is still up and searches still work, so you can go judge for yourself—but there's little doubt that The Pirate Bay, as precariously positioned as they are as a company (read: owned by a bunch of incredible sketchballs), was under external pressure to get rid of that giant, 25 million+ torrent liability of theirs.

And because we're all People On The Internet here: Godspeed, I guess. [TorrentFreak via Lifehacker]

The other major bit they're missing—where to get torrents where the policies are a little, um, flexible—we've got you covered. If you've got more tips, shower the comments with 'em. [Maximum PC]

So says a new survey out of the U.K., anyway. [The Independent via Boing Boing]

Given their earnest public defense of filesharing and aggressive posturing, I always assumed the Pirate Bay was just a couple of fellas, who happened to start a popular website, happened to get in trouble for it, and happened to become icons for a vocal, if misguided, movement against copyright. This, it turns out, is not the case: The real Pirate Bay is a shadowy property that's been passed from mysterious shell corporation to mysterious shell corporation, and seems awfully hard to get a read on, much less buy, according to Nate Anderson at Ars:

GGF wants to buy The Pirate Bay site from a mysterious company called Reservella, based in the Seychelles islands. Reservella has no known contact information, no website, and the company that helped it register in the Seychelles refuses to provide any contact information. The Pirate Bay's current admins claim to Ars that they don't even know who's behind the company. That's odd enough, but they also tell Ars that Reservella acquired the company from another unnamed company, who took it over in 2006 after the Swedish government seized some Pirate Bay servers.

The Bay's founders have "absolutely no connection" to Reservella, a "fact" which morphs this whole fiasco from a weird situation into an incomprehensible one.

On top of it all, Google has honored a DMCA complaint filed by a porn company called Evasive Angel, which alleges the Pirate Bay is hosting links to unauthorized content including Horny Black Mothers 8 and Big Butt Latin Maids 2. (No, really, it's in the filing.) Not that delisting the site from Google will stop anyone from going there, but still. UPDATE: The listings are back, and Google says the delisting was an error.

In short, the future doesn't look so great for anyone involved, be it the company that (still) wants to buy the Bay, the founders of the site, or people who use it regularly. Actually, no, scratch that: Everyone is screwed. [Ars Technica, BoingBoing Gadgets]

It kind of sux that even a monitoring app got banned. But, according to Apple:

…this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

So no torrent apps, at all, period. Right then.

Instructions on how to install µMonitor on a Jailbroken iPhone can be found here: [µMonitor via TorrentFreak]

Mininova's been working on a copyright filter for a while, but with the stakes so artificially high, it would need to be almost perfect to make operating the site worthwhile. This means that Mininova will either A.) Become the premier torrent indexer for Linux ISOs and public domain FLAC music, or B.) die.*

With two major torrent sites all but snuffed out in the last few weeks, there are only a few decent alternatives left. Although if you're of a hardier type, there's always Usenet. [Torrentfreak]

*Spoiler: It's B.

According to the site: "tracker.btarena.org" can be used to track new torrents.

The torrents available from the BTArena.net copy still carry the announce URLs from The Pirate Bay's tracker but since all torrents were updated with the OpenBitTorrent tracker, they will remain functional even when GGF's version of the site takes over at the end of this month

Remember: this is a torrent file index, not the petabytes of data they link to.

The anonymous uploader who compiled this huge torrent told TorrentFreak that he wanted to have a backup of the site in case all torrents mysteriously disappear after the site is sold. "I suppose I want us to have assurances. If the TPB deal disappoints us, we can just put it up again," he said.

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay is also hosting what it calls "the $675,000 mixtape"—a collection of the 30 songs that student Joel Tenenbaum was found guilty of sharing, and then fined that amount for.

[The Pirate Bay via TorrentFreak –Thanks Mark!]

There's an update at the end of the post from Global Gaming Factory X CTO Johan Sellström that's as bizarrely worded and unclear as their original announcement and press release, so who knows what it really means:

"We had discussed closing it down initially so I think that's why he said so. The plan is to use technology from Peerialism that makes bandwidth utilization more efficient and then it would not make sense to shut it down. Peerialism will modify the tracker but it will be backwards compatible. But all this is subject to change if for some reason it would not work. It is our ambition to do so.

So, um, if their new thing doesn't work, then they'll shut it down? Ooookay.

The idea, Sunde said, is that The Pirate Bay will live on whatever happens—but would shutting down the tracker and scattering to the wind be really living? I think not. I also think it's gonna take a few days to figure out what the hell is really happening.

Possibly unrelated, but The Pirate Bay is down at the moment. [Torrent Freak - Thanks Brenden!]

Yates was working at the Burbank distribution company hired to cut promo reels for talk shows when he made a copy of the DVD and uploaded it to the internet. Of course, he blamed his grandmother.

When confronted, Yates accused co-workers and Paramount employees of putting the contraband copy on the Internet. But videotaped footage showed Yates making the unauthorized copy of "The Love Guru" at work before leaving the building and then going into his car, Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik M. Silber said. Yates subsequently blamed his grandmother, saying that he showed the movie at her birthday party and she then gave it away to a cousin who gave it to a friend who was the former roommate of the man who is believed to have uploaded the movie, but has not yet been charged. In his plea agreement, Yates confessed to making a copy of the comedy and later distributing it to others.

A true american hero! Keep fighting that good fight! [WSJ via Gawker]

Think about it: Even if they hunt all the Torrent directories and search pages down, they will keep appearing and people will still publish things online, no matter what. Torrents torrents everywhere, and Google as the mega-Pirate Bay it already is.

When will the labels and record companies attack the main search engines? I don't think their cannons are big enough. It's time someone figured out how to marry bittorrent to some official distribution model. [The Pirate Google—Thank you Sable]

The drop was measured by Netnod, a Swedish web tracking firm, who found that traffic fell from 120GB/s to 80GB/s on the day the law went into effect.

Christian Engstrom, VP of Sweden's Pirate Party (love it) is not concerned, however. He told the BBC:

"Today, there is a very drastic reduction in internet traffic. But experience from other countries suggests that while file-sharing drops on the day a law is passed, it starts climbing again. . .One of the reasons is that it takes people a few weeks to figure out how to change their security settings so that can share files anonymously," he added.

The law is catching a lot of flak for effectively letting corporations enforce anti-piracy code with lawsuits, rather than leaving them to the police to deal with offenders on a criminal basis. Copyright holders can no go straight to the uploader's ISP, get his IP address and identity, and sue him up good.

From the country that gave us the Pirate Bay, though, I'm sure someone will figure out a way to subvert this. [BBC]

This guide is intended for folks who understand the basics but may have only just started to scratch the surface of what BitTorrent clients are capable of. If you're even more hardcore than the tips here, feel free to drop some knowledge (and links!) in the comments for everyone's use. Spread the love.

Throughout this guide we'll be using two of the most popular multi-platform BitTorrent clients, Vuze (formerly called Azureus) and µTorrent. Both apps take two fundamentally different approaches: Vuze packs in just about every feature you could imagine, including a search tool, social-networking-like sharing among friends, a content guide, and much more. µTorrent on the other hand is the opposite: sleek, simple and barebones. The choice is yours.

Lots of our pointers here will take advantages of some of Vuze's newest features, but we love µTorrent too. Where applicable, we'll highlight standalone applications that can help bring some of Vuze's integrated functionality to µTorrent fans.

Set up Your Router's NAT and Transfer Limits
This is, without a doubt, the single most important thing you can do to ensure the highest possible BitTorrent performance. And it's also something often overlooked by casual and even intermediate Torrenters.

BitTorrent clients pipe all of their network traffic through a single "port" on your network. But your router likes to partially or fully block traffic that doesn't come through on all the "standard" ports (like port 80 for web traffic, for instance). So you want to make sure your computer has a clear and open channel to all that data you're going to be sucking down by setting up "port forwarding," which lets your router know to which computer on the network it should send traffic on certain ports instead of blocking it. Make sense?

1. In your Torrent client's preferences under the "network" or "connection" heading, find out which TCP/UDP port it's using. Keep the default, but for the record, you can choose basically any number you want (but read Vuze's "Good Port Choices" article first) and if you have multiple machines on the same network using BitTorrent you'll want to choose unique port numbers for all of them.

2. Now, open up your router's admin page. This is pulled up by going to your router's IP address in a web browser (commonly 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1). Sometimes you'll have to enter a username and password; Google around for your model's default name/password if you can't remember it. Users of Apple's AirPort routers should use the AirPort Utility app.

3. Now, the terminology for what you're looking for is called different things by all the router companies. Some call it "port forwarding," others call it "virtual servers" or "port mapping"—the terminology is surprisingly varied, but it's usually listed under an "advanced settings" tab if there is one. The site Portforwarding.com can help you locate yours if you're having trouble.

4. Once you've found where this all goes down, enter the port number from your client in step 1 for BOTH UDP and TCP fields (you'll enter the same port number for the "private" or "local" UDP/TCP fields). You'll also enter your current machine's IP address (found in Network preferences on both OS X and Windows).

Note: If your machine is a laptop and you're frequently connecting and disconnecting from the network, you'll want to set up a static local IP address so you don't have to switch your router's settings every time you Torrent.

5. Hit save, and you should be good to go. Your BitTorrent client will have a network test built in somewhere in the preferences—use that to make sure your connection is clear.

6. Now, the final step, is setting a limit to your uploading speeds. As you know, BitTorrent simultaneously uploads to other peers while you're downloading, and to ensure solid download speeds you must upload. But you don't want these uploads to take over your limited upload bandwidth, especially if you're on a cable connection. To be safe, cap your uploads around 20 kb/s. This is a good general ballpark that'll ensure good download speeds and won't clog your pipe. If you're on FIOS you may want to kick that up a bit, but play around.

Vuze has a tool that can help you auto-configure your speeds too—probably worth experimenting with in the prefs.

Cover Your Ass
All the regular disclaimers apply: don't be an idiot when you're downloading stuff you probably shouldn't. Here are some tools and strategies to make sure you keep yourself virus- and subpoena-free. But like always, no guarantees! Proceed at your own risk! Etc.

1. Don't seed more than is absolutely necessary. The RIAA/MPAA/NARC's number one priority are heavy uploaders. Not to say that the downloading part is any less illegal, but if you stop seeding and delete your .torrent file after it's done downloading, your odds of staying safe are significantly higher.

Note: If your carefully crafted code of online morals compels you to continue uploading beyond the amount you shared during the download, feel free, knowing that it increases your odds of getting a friendly note from your ISP. And, please, do seed any files that are intentionally being distributed via BitTorrent, like a Linux distribution or Creative Commons licensed stuff from friends like Nine Inch Nails. You can't get hurt by that.

You could make an argument that Torrenting is mainstream enough to survive on many thousands of people seeding very small amounts (ie: the amount uploaded while they're downloading), or you could make an argument about the double (triple? quadruple?) paradoxes that surface when contemplating the morals of consuming vis a vis sharing in the gray to grayish-black Torrent market. But I'm not your dad—what you do is up to you.

2. Go for torrents with a lot of seeds and good comments. If hundreds of people are seeding a file, the odds of it being of good quality and virus free are higher. I know this may seem contradictory to point #1, but you're not in this for the geek cred. You're in this for you. So go with the herd. Also, comments on torrent sites will often have some shreds of useful info—if a lot of people report strange behavior with the downloaded file or a mysterious password lock, skip it.

Also, seeking out the geek legends of the Torrent community will go a long way to ensure good downloads. Choose people like aXXo's Torrents where possible.

3. Use the Bluetack IP filter to keep known baddies out of your life. The folks at Bluetack maintain a list of IP ranges of known spammers, virus seeders, and undercover snoops like Media Defender who might bust your ass. To add the list to Vuze, go to Preferences -> IP Filgers and type in the following URL into the auto-fill field: http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/level1.zip

Update: Someone who should know has advised us against using Bluetack for a whole litany of reasons, most shocking of which is that Bluetack is some elaborate ploy to mess with P2P networks from the inside. Over my head, but for what it's worth, maybe don't use Bluetack.

4. Look at private torrent sites. Even though Oink's hallowed days are over, there are still a number of good, private BitTorrent sites, where your odds of getting hit with random malware or a federal subpoena are lessened. But they may take some conniving to get invited to, and you'll likely be forced to upload a certain amount to keep your membership.

5. Moderation, moderation. When you can, watch on Hulu, or heaven forbid, buy from your favorite artists. And the less massive your bandwidth usage, the less likely you are to draw the ire of your ISP (or their monthly bandwidth cap).

Autodownload Your Favorite Shows via RSS
For serialized stuff like TV shows, you can easily set up Vuze to subscribe to popular series via RSS and auto-download them every week. It's nice. µTorrent lovers should check out TED, a cross-platform standalone app that does the same thing.

1. In Vuze, search for your favorite show. Once you've found the newest episode and added it to your download list, click the orange RSS button under "Subscribe." The subscribe window can also look at other files in your library and subscribe to those too.

2. You'll see a lot of different options, all seemingly the same. Choose HD where possible, and if there's an EZTV option, choose that—it's a reliably source of good torrents. Then, new episodes will appear in your Subscriptions area automatically, and you can pull them down.

Stream to Your Game Console or Transcode For Your iPod/PMP/Phone with Vuze
The newest version of Vuze added a seriously useful transcoding and streaming tool—just when you thought there couldn't be anything else crammed into this app. But it's great, and works perfectly to auto-detect a PS3 or Xbox 360 on your network and stream your downloads to your TV without any annoying configurations.

1. Enable the streaming add-on under the "Devices" option in the left pane.

2. If your PS3 or Xbox 360 is on and connected to your network, it will automatically show up as a device. Simply drag a file from your library to the icon for your console, and it will be available in the expected area (in the Video menu of the PS3's XMB and the My Video Library, as another PC, on the Xbox 360).

3. The tool will also transcode to iTunes in sizes optimized for iPods, iPhones and Apple TV using the same process. Just drag the file from your Vuze library to the iTunes icon, and after a somewhat slow conversion time, it will be copied to your iTunes library. Pretty sweet.

Next Steps
There are plenty of places you can take it from there. Like setting up a dedicated, always-on torrrent machine, either with a spare PC or a standalone NAS box with a built-in Torrent client. Then you can take advantage of web-only interfaces to access and manage your downloads from the road.

Sounds like pretty good fodder for a future how to, doesn't it? Keep your eyes peeled.

So that's about it! Like we said before, if you have more tips and tools to share, please drop some links in the comments—your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Have a good weekend Torrenting, everyone!

Image courtesy of, you guessed it, Jason Chen.

At least one of the major sites (Pirate Bay, Minonova, Demonoid, etc) should return results, and you can then pick a torrent to send to your PC at home to start downloading. The app is a response to the "Android Bounty", which is an initiative from a few users to band together and offer a cash reward for a torrent app. It got up to an astronomical $90 before Torrent Droid claimed the prize. [Torrent Freak]

The first person up was Kristoffer Schollin, via telephone, who's a lecturer in IT law with a focus on file sharing. He's also written a paper on DRM. Here's what he had to say:

• Essentially, TPB is an "open database" of .torrent files, like a BBS, making it harmless. After all, you can find more .torrent files with a Google search than with a Pirate Bay search. And hey, lots of legit companies use BT for perfectly legal uses!

• He also noted the difference between a site, like The Pirate Bay, and a tracker. He said that people know about sites, but trackers operate behind the scenes and regular people don't know about them.

• Explaining how torrents are created, he described how most of the process takes place offline with nothing to do with TPB. Only after it's been uploaded to the internet does TPB come into play, and Google can index it at that point.

• When the prosecutor asked him questions, he challenged many of their figures, like that TPB is responsible for 40% of internet traffic and that 50% of all torrents are hosted there.

The next witness was Roger Wallis, a media professor, composer and Chairman of the Swedish Composers of Popular Music and is involved in other outfits dedicated to the rights of musicians.

• He, again, said he didn't see the difference between The Pirate Bay and search engines such as Google and criticized the industry for being so slow to adapt to new technology, bringing up the backlash against cassettes in the 70s.

• When asked if piracy damages sales in the music industry, he said that downloading increased the sales of concert tickets and that, while CD sales have dropped, they'll go back up soon because people who download tend to buy more CDs.

• When the prosecution started questioning him, they immediately went after his credentials, asking if he was a proper professor. "Have you no better questions to ask?" asked Wallis. Later, he asked "Can you use Google? Then you could easily find my CV." Oh, snap!

After Wallis left the stand, Peter Sunde of TPB showed an 8 minute video explaining how BitTorrent works, since the prosecution still doesn't seem like it understands.

And that was a wrap. Fun times! [TorrentFreak]

Here are the revelations from International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's Mr. Kennedy:

• The music industry was happier than a pig in bacon-sprinkled shit about winning the Grokster and Kazaa cases, but the Pirate Bay rising out of those ashes peed on their party.

• The damages they've been seeking against companies and people are "justified and maybe even conservative, since the damage is immense." YOU'RE KILLING A WHOLE INDUSTRY GUYZ.

• The music industry is dying.

• The music industry is dying.

• No really, you guys are killing it like a baby endangered seal with diamond fur.

• Oh ho ho, surprise, Kennedy has no idea how BitTorrent or even, hahahaha, The Pirate Bay actually works and doesn't know why the IFPI hasn't sued file sharers themselves, a la the RIAA's outrageously successful campaign in the US.

• If Google had not declared themselves to be a partner of the IFPI—whatever that means—the IFPI was going to sue them too. Earlier, he'd said the difference between The Pirate Bay and Google is that TPB gives you 1000 filtered results of all pirated material, whereas Google gives you 40 million results, mostly legit, to sort through.

• Swedish Film Institute dude reveals that the way they calculate damages from file sharing is stupid: If there are say, 1 million downloaders total, they use a movie's real marketshare in theaters to estimate how many of that 1 million downloaded the movie, and then guesstimate the damages.

• Apparently, the Swedish dude crossed his fingers when he took the oath, reports brokep himself via Twitter.

• If you didn't catch it, Threat Level reports the prosecutors changed the charges again to make it more likely they'll get a conviction, so they won't have to prove all of the elements they originally proposed. Sneaky.

So what did we learn today? The music industry peoples are broken records (har har) and Google is almost as bad The Pirate Bay, except it has a lot more zeroes in your search results. Good times. [TorrentFreak]