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There are plenty of ways to discover new content on BitTorrent, but searching is still the preferred method for most people. What they are searching for should therefore give a good picture of what the latest trends are. Today we present the BitTorrent Zeitgeist 2010, a list of the 100 most searched for phrases and keywords on one of the most used public BitTorrent indexes this year.

Every year Google and other search engines produce a year’s end list of the most searched for phrases and keywords. Chatroulette and iPad were the fastest rising searches on Google and Kim Kardashian and Sandra Bullock were the top searches on Bing.

BitTorrent site Mininova also got a questionable mention in Google’s Zeitgeit list as one of the fastest falling searches in 2010, which follows the collapse of the site earlier this year. In 2006 things were going much better for the site as Mininova was one of the most searched for terms on Google.

Following this Zeitgeist trend we thought it might be a good idea to make a similar list for searches on BitTorrent indexes. Since BitTorrent searches are scattered across hundreds of sites it is impossible to get a full picture of what people search for on BitTorrent, but luckily one of the largest indexers agreed to cooperate.

KickassTorrents, one of the top 10 torrent sites in terms of visitors, was kind enough to share the most popular search terms of 2010 with us. With a few hundred million searches a year this data should give a clear indication of what people were looking for on BitTorrent in the last 12 months.

At the top of the list we find “Inception“, the movie that also appeared in our most pirated movies chart of the year. In addition, four other titles made it into the top 10; “Iron Man 2″, “Avatar”, “Despicable Me”, and “Clash of the Titans”. Movie related searches are clearly the most popular among users of the site.

Aside from movie titles we find “2010” in third place and “dvdrip” in seventh, two keywords that are also used to find movie related content. Another interesting keyword is “French” which shows that France’s anti-piracy law that went into effect earlier this year isn’t chasing many people away from BitTorrent. The top 10 is completed by the inevitable adult searches “xxx” and “porn“.

The first TV related search is “Dexter” which appears further down the list in 15th place. “Windows 7” is the first software related search keyword in 20th place, and for the first music related entry we have to go all the way down to “Eminem” which is listed as number 47.

A rather surprising entry in the top 100 is “axxo” in 17th place, since the last torrent file by the popular DVDripper was uploaded in March 2009. Axxo has been among the most popular search keywords on BitTorrent for years and it seems that old habits are hard to break.

Below is the full list of the 100 most entered search phrases on KickassTorrents. This list will be different on other BitTorrent sites, but we have to assume that the top searches will be popular on other indexes as well.

1. inception
2. iron man 2
3. 2010
4. xxx
5. french
6. avatar
7. dvdrip
8. despicable me
9. porn
10. clash of the titans
11. toy story 3
12. glee
13. salt
14. twilight eclipse
15. dexter
16. the sorcerer's apprentice
17. axxo
18. robin hood
19. prince of persia
20. windows 7
21. get him to the greek
22. predators 2010
23. the last airbender
24. shutter island
25. knight and day
26. the expendables
27. takers
28. dinner for schmucks
29. unstoppable
30. the book of eli
31. grown ups
32. true blood
33. alice in wonderland
34. movies
35. shrek forever after
36. supernatural
37. hindi
38. house
39. devil
40. step up 3d
41. megamind
42. harry potter and the deathly hallows
43. skyline
44. green zone
45. naughty america
46. iron man 2
47. eminem
48. predators
49. lost
50. the town
51. date night
52. the wolfman
53. smallville
54. the last song
55. torrents
56. how to train your dragon
57. fringe
58. dear john
59. toy story 3
60. red
61. the social network
62. weeds
63. noir
64. telugu
65. pc games
66. vampire diaries
67. the town
68. 2012
69. twilight
70. cop out
71. tamil
72. sex and the city 2
73. harry potter and the deathly hallows part 1
74. remember me
75. the walking dead
76. eclipse
77. due date
78. book of eli
79. fxg
80. true blood
81. avatar the last airbender
82. grown ups
83. ironman 2
84. entourage
85. sherlock holmes
86. how i met your mother
87. sex
88. microsoft office 2010
89. spartacus
90. the pacific
91. karate kid
92. the other guys
93. call of duty black ops
94. despicable me
95. chuck
96. ita
97. resident evil
98. wii
99.. due date
100. hot tub time machine

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

After a lost legal battle, Mininova was forced to take drastic measures a year ago. The site’s founders removed of millions of torrents to avoid having to pay millions of dollars in fines. In addition, new uploads were restricted to approved publishers only, a choice that expectedly dwarfed the site’s traffic and user base in the year that followed.

November 2009 was a pivotal time for the BitTorrent landscape. Just a week after The Pirate Bay decided to shut down its tracker for good, number one BitTorrent site Mininova threw in the towel after losing a court battle with the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

The torrent indexer was told by the court to remove all infringing torrent files from its index. This was technically unfeasible according to the Mininova team, who were left with no other choice than to remove all torrent files uploaded by regular users and restrict new uploads to verified accounts.

This move resulted in the deletion of more than a million torrents, many of which were not infringing any copyrights at all. As expected, the consequences of this decision for Mininova’s traffic, as well as the number of searches and downloads on the site, were disastrous.

Today, a year later, we take a look at the unprecedented impact the decision had on the website. Right before going ‘legal’, Mininova was believed to be the leading torrent site in terms of traffic, with a massive 5 million visits a day. Today, the site has a few hundred thousand visitors at most.

The decrease in daily downloads is even more pronounced, dropping from more than 10 million a day to just 250,752 yesterday. Similarly, the daily search volume has decreased from 10 million to 694,345 a day. These numbers are of course still higher than hundreds of other torrent sites. But Mininova is no longer part of the top 10 most visited torrent sites, a list it led for two years in a row.

Content wise things have changed quite bit too. Previously, thousands of new torrents were uploaded by users daily, but in recent weeks the average number of newly submitted torrents is stuck at 35 a day. In total, Mininova now indexes just shy of 15,000 torrents, while most other torrent sites have several million active torrents, many of which ironically originated from Mininova.

An interesting conclusion that we can draw from the stats above is that the average number of downloads per torrent has actually increased now the site only features authorized content. 17 downloads per torrent today compared to about 10 last year.

On the other side, the searches compared to downloads also show that many people don’t seem to find what they are looking for on the site. A year ago the daily searches and downloads were both at 10 million, but today the searches are nearly three times as high as the downloads.

Although the unavoidable decision to limit new torrents to authorized publishers has had quite an impact on the site and its users, Mininova as a company still exists. Whatever their plans are for the future, the site’s founders are still owed credit for having inspired dozens of torrent sites that emerged in the last years.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Generation NT (US)

A Trojan Horse blocks The Pirate Bay and Mininova Generation NT (US) The sites which therefore become inaccessible are The Pirate Bay, Mininova and SuprBay. This third site is actually the TPB's official forum. … Mysterious malware blocks Pirate BayTHINQ.co.uk all 2 news articles »

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Last week movie studio Eyeworks won its lawsuit against Dutch Usenet community FTD. In the verdict, Judge Chris Hensen ruled that by allowing users to talk about a movie’s location on Usenet, FTD was effectively publishing the movie as if they had actually hosted it on their own servers.

The verdict was welcomed by local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, but several copyright lawyers and opponents at the other end of the copyright spectrum have heavily criticized it. The ruling sets a dangerous precedent for future cases and may very well lead to more control and censorship by the pro-copyright lobby at the expense of people’s freedoms, they argued.

Aside from the critique on the decision itself, the integrity of the judge who handed out the verdict has also been called into question. Immediately after the verdict people involved with the Dutch Pirate Party, which is on the ballot of tomorrow’s elections, pointed out that the judge might not be as objective as he could be.

It turns out that the movie company lawyer Dirk Visser, the same person who also scored a victory for BREIN against Mininova, has been organizing a course for copyright specialists where Judge Hensen was once of the teachers. This prompted the Pirate Party politicians to doubt the objectiveness of the judge. Sweden’s Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge, who’s currently supporting his Dutch colleagues in the election run, has been the most vocal about the issue.

“It’s stories like this that show why today’s politicians simply must be kicked from office,” Falkvinge told TorrentFreak in a comment. “If they don’t see a problem with this — and apparently, they don’t — then it’s absolutely critical to the integrity of society and faith in the justice system that, quite frankly, some heads roll in tomorrow’s elections in favor of the Dutch Pirate Party.”

“Every time something like this happens, you think the copyright lobby has fallen to a moral rock bottom. Then as soon as you turn your back, they take out a jackhammer and start digging.” Falkvinge added. “I expect this will boost support for the Dutch Piratenpartij, and for good reason. Today’s politicians need to learn that their seats aren’t taken for granted,” Falkvinge added.

In the current polls the Dutch Pirate Party is still lacking enough support to be able to scoop a seat at the local parliament, but there’s still a day to go for them. Undoubtedly, stories about conspiring copyright lobbyists and possible biased judges may help to give that final push.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

RLSLOG has grown out to be the authority when it comes to news about, and links to, scene releases. Millions of readers visit the site every month, looking for the latest releases that are posted daily by the site’s editors.

After being pulled offline by a complaint from Universal Music in April, the site moved to a new host in The Netherlands. Initially it seemed that this move had ended the trouble but it turned out to be just a temporary reprieve.

“Shut down again, although we never hosted any files or copyrighted data on our server. Our site is strictly informative,” a message just posted at the site’s home page reads.

TorrentFreak spoke with RLSLOG founder Martin who told us that he’s working on getting the site back online as soon as possible, the first step being the discovery of a suitable hosting provider. After being thrown out by a German and Dutch host, he will now try his luck elsewhere.

The current hosting company refused to forward the actual complaint to RLSLOG, so it is unknown who is behind the request. Martin was told by the webhost that the “German government” and a local anti-piracy organization are responsible, but he has been unable to verify these claims.

RLSLOG has been targeted by rights holders several times over the last year. Previously, Web Sheriff sent a complaint to RLSLOG’s former host who then took the site offline and a few weeks ago Universal Music also managed to take the site offline.

RLSLOG, however, sees no wrong in what it does as the site does not host any copyrighted files on its servers. Although the site appears to operate in a gray area when it comes to copyright, a website doesn’t have to store any copyrighted files in order to be seen as a copyright infringement facilitator by the courts.

The court cases against isoHunt, Mininova and The Pirate Bay have shown that linking to files can be enough to be found guilty of, or liable for, infringements. As we’ve said before, RLSLOG might actually have an even worse case since the ‘links’ are selected and published by the site’s editors.

Thus far RLSLOG’s problems are only limited to finding a host that would allow the site to operate despite any complaints that might roll in. If everything goes well, the site should be back online in a matter of days.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Earlier, Dutch movie studio Eyeworks applied for a court injunction to stop Usenet community FTD from “making available to the public” their movie Komt een vrouw bij de dokter (A Woman At The Doctor).

In this case the “making available” wasn’t hosting or storing the movie, nor was it offering torrent or NZB links to it either. FTD allows users to report (or ’spot’) the locations of files which exist on Usenet. It is the publication of this information which Eyeworks was seeking to stop, an activity it believes is tantamount to publishing the movie itself.

In early May the case was heard at a court in The Hague. FTD lost the case and the court issued an ‘ex parte injunction’ (one handed down without any FTD involvement) which banned the site from ’spotting’ the Eyeworks movie.

Through its lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet, FTD filed an objection on the basis that the provisional measure should not have been issued under Dutch law. That objection was heard and the decision was delivered yesterday – FTD lost again.

“I am flabbergasted by the court’s reasoning,” Engelfriet told TorrentFreak. “It is established caselaw that publishing hyperlinks or torrents (Mininova, Pirate Bay) is *not* the same as a publication. FTD does *less* than what Mininova or Pirate Bay does, but according to the court we are more liable than they are?”

In coming to its decision, the court drew heavily on the earlier Newzbin case.

“They say that FTD is doing the same thing, and since the English courts held Newzbin liable for infringement, FTD must be liable too,” Engelfriet explains. “This completely ignores the technical differences between Newzbin and FTD. Newzbin is an NZB search engine through which you find codes to directly download from Usenet. FTD is a forum where people ’spot’ movies using messages in ordinary Dutch.”

FTD had argued that it was not guilty of “making available” because copyrighted files on Usenet are not under its control – it does not control the servers and it has no influence over potential downloaders. The court decided that this is irrelevant. What is important, it said, is “whether the behavior of FTD allows users to download copyrighted files (in an easier manner) and thus makes such files available to the public.” The court ruled that it did.

“This is a collaboration between FTD and its users where they knowingly provide access to unauthorized files,” BREIN director Tim Kuik said in a comment. “It’s clear that this is more than just talking about files like FTD wants people to believe.“

In October this year FTD will face another court case. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN says that FTD “organizes and promotes” Usenet content, most of which is illegal, and wants the entire site shut down.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For the music and movie industries, the blocking of file-sharing websites and/or the filtering of links they carry is fast becoming a fashionable weapon of choice. Perhaps the most famous example was the assault on Mininova, which culminated in the site having to remove huge numbers of torrents which may (or indeed may not) point to copyright content.

That action was forced by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN who are making more than their fair share of headlines recently, and who are about to make even more. While successfully demanding that Mininova remove links to infringing content, BREIN have never really made inroads into getting the actual infringing content removed from the Internet – but all that could be about to change.

In a fairly bold move even by their standards, the anti-piracy group headed up by Tim Kuik has initiated legal action to force a Usenet service provider, much like Giganews or Newshosting, to start proactively filtering content from the worldwide newsgroup system.

The small seven-employee Usenet company News-Service.com is being sued by BREIN on claims that it facilitates copyright infringement and is demanding that the company ceases to offer copyright material or face fines of 50,000 euros per day.

Technical director of News-Service.com Patrick Schreurs strongly refutes BREIN’s claims and says that his company only provides access to Usenet and maintains that it is a mere conduit of information.

“BREIN’s move is comparable to suing a postal service for shipping illicit goods,” he said.

Schreurs’ assertion that trying to check up to 20 million daily Usenet messages is an impossibility raises a very real concern. If a legal requirement to filter perfectly, as was the case with Mininova, is implemented against News-Service (on pain of 50,000 euros per day in fines) the company could not carry this burden for long. If BREIN gets their way, Schreurs says the company will have to stop providing Usenet access.

News-Service already operates a Notice-and-Takedown system but, as was the case with Mininova, BREIN is not satisfied with its scope or performance.

“We were under the assumption that with this procedure we met the wishes of BREIN and that we would work on a solution together,” said Schreurs. “We regret the fact that BREIN has chosen a different course with this [legal] action.”

The case, the first of its type against a Usenet provider in The Netherlands, was heard on April 19th and the judge is expected to announce his decision early next month.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Popularity: 1% [?]

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Isohunt Ordered to Remove Infringing Content Wired News The injunction targeting Isohunt follows similar rulings against competing pirate sites like Mininova and The Pirate Bay, although the Bay has thus far … US District Judge orders torrent site IsoHunt to shut downGeek.com isoHunt to Shed Torrent IndexSlyck US Judge: isoHunt Must Remove Copyrighted MaterialZeropaid National Post (blog) -Ars Technica -Techdirt all 16 news articles »

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