Torrent

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has confirmed that US ISPs including Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable will start implementing policies designed to discourage customers from illegally downloading music, movies and software starting July 12.

The RIAA hopes that this could become the most effective antipiracy program ever. Seeing that ISPs are the Internet gatekeepers, the Association believes that network providers will be in the best position to fight illegal filesharing.

The Pirate Bay announced more than two years ago that it would stop supporting .torrent files in favor of magnet links. Today TBP made the change official.

TorrentFreak said it used the YouHaveDownloaded.com site to find instances of IP addresses within the RIAA and the DHS linked to downloads of copyrighted content from BitTorrent.

Six RIAA IP addresses were linked to downloads of music by Jay-Z ("American Gangster") and Kanye West ("My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy"), as well as the first five seasons of "Dexter," a "Law and Order SVU" episode and tools for converting audio and tagging MP3 files, according to TorrentFreak.

Attackers hijacked two popular Bittorrent websites and tampered with their download mechanisms, causing visitors trying to obtain file-sharing software to instead receive malware.

The hacks on bittorrent.com and utorrent.com replaced the sites' standard software downloads with a piece of fake antivirus software known as Security Shield, an advisory warned. Anyone who downloaded and installed software from those sites between 4:20 a.m. California time and 6:10 a.m. should scan their systems immediately for infections.

The administrator of a file-sharing related site has seen his sentence upheld by the Court of Appeal. The man, who was arrested back in 2007, operated a site which didn’t offer links but provided users with hints on keywords which would help them find movies and TV shows. He has received a one year suspended sentence, fined 3,000 euros and ordered to pay 130,000 euros ($185,000) in damages.