The top 10 most downloaded DVDrips on BitTorrent, “Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead” tops the chart this week.

We do not link to actual torrent files because linking to files that link to files that may be copyrighted is something that might get us in trouble.

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of April 02, 2008…

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk13)

A recent survey among Swedish musicians has found that 38% of the artists want filesharing to be be legalized. The artists argue that sharing their files on p2p-networks could promote their work, especially in the early stages of their career.

There is a difference in age when it comes to the outcome of the survey, which was conducted by Sydsvenskan. Older artists who have been around for some years, long before filesharing even existed, tend to be more critical, saying they’ve lost 80% of their sales with no increase in revenue from another sources.

Younger artists that broke through in the era of filesharing are more positive and see it as something that actually helps their career. One of the artists said: “Where I am now, filesharing is positive and makes good PR. If I were to get bigger, I believe it would affect me negatively.”

There are older artists who think that filesharing could benefit them, one of them noted: “You can look upon filesharing as a way of promotion, a way of putting new stuff out there.”

One of the Swedish artists who definitely profited from file-sharing is the Swedish glam rock band “Lamont”. The band was featured on on The Pirate Bay frontpage last year. Not without success, over 100,000 people downloaded their album in less than 24 hours, numbers that other artists can only dream of.

At the time Brokep told TorrentFreak that they love to support bands who are willing to share their music using BitTorrent. And indeed, a little later The Pirate Bay supported Familjen, which resulted in a Grammy win for the band.

Perhaps these might be two extreme examples, but there is ample evidence that most artists actually profit from filesharing, even without The Pirate Bay.

The survey further found, and this might also come as a shock to the record labels, that a majority of the artists, 59%, admit to having downloaded copyrighted music themselves.

Although nearly half of the respondents had a favorable opinion towards filesharing, 58% of the artists still think that that sharing copyrighted material should be illegal.

One of the artists was rooting for a pirate crackdown, as he said: “My wish is that the punishment will be harder and that it will become easier to catch filesharers. I think all musicians should go to parliament and grab those politicians.”

The survey further showed that a majority of the participants in the survey are angry at the record companies. One of the musicians said: “For 50 years, the sole purpose of record companies has been trying to grab as much money away from the artists as possible. Now, suddenly they’ve become some kind of interest group for the artists and that’s not true.”

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Swedish Artists Want to Legalize Filesharing

It isn’t just on April Fool’s Day that people will be tricked into paying money for otherwise free BitTorrent related stuff on the internet. Ever wondered exactly what’s inside these guides that promise to speed up your torrents? Read on, as we turn the tables on those charging for freely available information.

There can’t be many people in the BitTorrent community who haven’t seen the various sites scattered around the web that promise to speed up your torrents by ridiculous amounts - for a cash payment, of course.

One such site is HighSpeedTorrent.com and they are offering:

Speaking of ads for such sites, the admin of BTJunkie previously told us: “I don’t allow it on our site because it’s a scam. It’s like a bad infomercial for torrents.”

So what is in this great guide that supposedly allows you to increase speeds by 500%?

Chapter 1: The Different Torrent Clients­ Reviewed

Really. This chapter is dedicated to ‘reviewing’ torrent clients. After mentioning uTorrent, BitTorrent, Azureus and BitTornado, uTorrent is declared the winner. yay.

Coolest feature: Utorrent gives you charts which show what pieces of a torrent you’ve already downloaded and which ones are on their way to you right now.

The guide explains about the importance of opening ports to get fast transfers - and then fails to tell the purchaser of the guide how to do this. Instead it points the user to portforward.com - a FREE resource on all port-forwarding issues. Genius.

And so it goes on. The guide completely fails to realize that its target audience is the BitTorrent novice as it regularly uses terms they won’t understand, while offering advice about choosing ports, only to contradict it later on, with settings based on the author’s “256K connection”. Nice

Statements like “If you have a firewall you may want to set it to allow your file sharing program to have access to the internet” along with advice to ask your ISP if you don’t know your routers password, don’t exactly inspire confidence.

Chapter 3 lists software to “Help Boost Your P2P Download Speeds” and are all a complete waste of time.

The main problem I have with such guides is the way that they target the complete novice, while completely failing to give them something they can actually use. They play on the new BitTorrent user’s inexperience and charge them money for sub-standard guides which will never give purchasers the ability to increase their speeds by anywhere near the amount they claim.

And all this for $49.95 - well, actually, the guide is on special offer for $9.95 right now - if you hurry (these offers always suggest that they are time limited).

Or, if you’d rather get the great HighSpeedTorrent guide for free, simply click here - it’s openly available, right from the HighSpeedTorrent site.

Do you really want to increase your download speeds for free? If so, help yourself to some of our guides, hints and tips. There’s 20 more of the best right here.

All 100% free. Now that’s the TorrentFreak guarantee.

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

Don’t Be a BitTorrent Fool Today

As part of their efforts to fight against ever increasing restrictions regarding intellectual property in Sweden, the Pirate Bay has moved from their long-time home in Sweden for pastures new.

Their new residence is the rolling dunes of the Sinai. In a blog posting they explain the move “Due to the new copyright legislation that are going to take effect from today we had to move all of the system outside of Europe.”

“We decided to move to the desert of Sinai in Egypt since we feel that we’ll be safe there.” Connectivity in Egypt should be uncongested, with only about 1 in 13 of the population regular net users, despite modern infrastructure investments by Telecom Egypt. Meanwhile, the sun should do wonders to counter the typical pasty-faced stereotype of the typical computer addict.

In other news, there’s egg on the face of ABC, as a pre-air episode of the popular TV-show “Lost” hit the net. Apparently, the episode is from a DVD screener, and proves, yet again, that the problems come from members of the industry, who are often claimed to be the victims.

There is more breaking news today, as the popular OiNK replacement Waffles.fm now accepts new members. For months thousands of users have waited to get an account at the popular private BitTorrent tracker, and today this may become reality.

Unfortunately, things have not been so rosy for all BitTorrent sites. BT-chat, a popular torrent site has closed it’s torrent operations, to concentrate on its Bluetooth based IM client.

BT-Chat owner NBtX told TorrentFreak “ Server costs we’re starting to get too much, and the ads were making everyone mad. We have since then decided to stop providing torrents, and focus solely on the Bluetooth instant messaging program.”

However, the worst news comes for users of the private BitTorrent tracker BitHQ. Like EliteTorrents before them, they have been raided and shut down by US Federal Officers. No comment from any party involved has been forthcoming so far.

What a day….

This is an article from: TorrentFreak

The Pirate Bay Moves to Egyptian Desert Island