Lawyers from our primary ISP decided to pull our plug without any advance notice, as of 14:45 PST. No doubt related to our lawsuit brought by the MPAA, but we don’t have more information at this time until people responsible comes to work tomorrow. We will be back in operation once we sort out this mess with our current ISP, or we get new hardware ready at our new ISP. We’ll update here as the news change.Sit back and enjoy the rest of the internet in the mean time, while it last. For your torrent searching needs, try Google for now by searching for “SEARCH TERMS ext:torrent”.

If you wish to help us out financially, you can donate via Paypal from the button below. Due to prior dis-taste from certain individuals taking donations for their legal defense and run however, this is not a legal defense fund. Your donations will be used for the operational costs of our servers and development of our websites. You have our sincere thanks.

MySpace devotee Kary Rogers was expecting to see a gut-busting video when a friend from the popular online hangout messaged him a link.

First, though, he was directed to a page where he was supposed to re-enter his password. Rogers realized that someone was trying to steal his information, and he didn’t take the bait. At best, he would be spammed with junk e-mails; worse, the Web thief might steal his real-life identity.

“I immediately went back and changed my password,” said Rogers, 29, a network analyst for Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss.

One recent scam works this way: A spammer posts a number of phony profiles featuring pictures of cute women, often promising nude photos. A “friend request” with the woman’s photo is sent to hundreds of users.

Once the fake profile loads, a blue screen descends, saying the profile is protected by the “MySpace Adult Content Viewer.” Unsuspecting users who try to download the viewer instead get a worm that installs adware on their computers.

Two women used the online classified site Craigslist to offer sex with girls in exchange for “donations” or “roses” — code words for money, police said.

Tamara Cotton, 25, and Christina Holt, 19, were arrested separately and were not working together, Cook County Sheriff’s officials said Thursday.

Cotton was arrested Dec. 31 when an undercover officer arrived at her apartment and a 16-year-old girl offered to perform a sex act for $200, according to the sheriff’s department.

The Craigslist ads answered by the officers offered sex acts in exchange for “donations” or “roses,” police said. The ads featured photos of unidentified women.

In an e-mail to the Chicago Tribune, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster said the site prohibits illegal activity and intends its erotic services page for “legal escort services and sensual massage providers.”

As the anticipation about an Apple iPod-phone hybrid builds with a steady stream rumors and news stories, a new research study from the Toronto-based Solutions Research Group shows that an iPod phone has the potential to be a big hit with consumers.

Among key highlights of the research:

16% of Americans aged 12+ (about 40 million) say that an “iPod” phone is a “great idea” for them personally based on a description of its likely features. In comparison, 24% of Americans aged 12+ (or 28% of cell users) own a Motorola phone and Nokia is used by 17%.

An iPod phone would have the potential to increase Apple’s customer footprint substantially. Currently just over 20% of Americans 12+ (about 50 million) own an Apple product - within 18 months of the introduction of a new iPod phone, Apple’s footprint can increase to over 30% according to forecasts based on the study.

www.cellular-news.com

A cross-site scripting vulnerability revealed in Google’s Gmail was swiftly patched ove the holiday weekend, while the opening salvo in January’s Month of Apple Bugs proves to be significant for both Mac and Windows users.Apple’s QuickTime software has a highly serious bug that could leave Windows and Mac users open to attacks by malicious Web sites, according to a project aimed at disclosing Apple bugs throughout January.

The QuickTime flaw launches the Month of Apple Bugs (MOAB), which follows on from efforts such as the Month of Kernel Bugs and the Month of Browser Bugs. The bug was discovered by LMH, a MOAB organizer who hasn’t disclosed his name.

The flaw affects any Windows or Mac OS X bug with QuickTime Player Version 7.1.3 installed; previous versions are also probably vulnerable. The problem lies in the way QuickTime handles addresses beginning with “rtsp://”, and can be exploited to create a stack-based buffer overflow using HTML, JavaScript or a QTL file, LMH wrote.

www.techworld.com

Reports online claimed that the Gmail web mail service had a flaw which enabled anyone with a website to steal email addresses from visitor’s Gmail accounts as long as they were logged in to the service on their computers.

Google acted fast and has fixed the bug. This flaw was similar in nature to another flaw recently discovered in the Gmail service and was first reported by Googlified.

Interestingly, the bug appeared only after Google modified their Google Video service to make it easier for their users to forward the video links to their friends listed in their Gmail address book.

A Google’s spokesperson has confirmed that they have completed the implementation of fixes and this bug is no longer relevant for their users.

www.techwack.com

Google has fixed a security hole in several of its services that exposed the address books of Gmail users, the company said Tuesday.

An attacker could create a malicious Web site that would copy all the entries in a Gmail user’s address book, a potential treasure trove for spammers, according to a description of the problem on the “Googling Google” blog. The only condition is that the user would have to be logged in to Gmail or another Google service.

The issue came to light after Google watcher Haochi Chen probed a feature in Google Video over the weekend. The feature, called “Pick People to Email,” lets users select contacts from their Gmail address book to send them a video. However, the feature also opened up the address book to others, Chen discovered.

Chen alerted Google over the holiday weekend. Heather Adkins, an information security manager at Google, confirmed Tuesday that the company heard about the Google Video issue and fixed it within hours. The search giant later learned that the same problem also impacted other services and resolved those issues within a day, she said.

“To our knowledge, no one exploited the vulnerability and no users were impacted,” Adkins said in an e-mailed statement.

www.zdnet.com

One of Gmail’s biggest bragging points is that it offers an ever-increasing amount of storage. It’s a new year, though, and the times, they are a-changing (with apologies to Bob Dylan for that line). Gmail’s storage capacity appears to have leveled off at 2800 megabytes.

This might be only a temporary hiccup, but no one seems to know. An added point of concern for worriers: Google is usually pretty quick to fix these things, and the problem (if it can be called that) was first noticed early yesterday morning.

On New Year’s Day, Nathan Weinberg wrote, “Gmail remains frozen at 2800 [megabytes] of storage, which is plenty, and a reasonable enough number that it may even be by design. I’m guessing Google will either fix it and say nothing, or freeze the counter and declare 2.8 GB to be the new Gmail storage limit (so much for Infinity + 1).”

www.webpronews.com

Top 10 Torrents for 2006

The Top 10 torrents for 2006 might not only surprise the RIAA but also some of you. What would the Top torrent be and is it a movie, game or an MP3. Drum roll please…

Number 10:

System of a Down Discography

System of a Down (also referred to as S.O.A.D. or System) is a four-piece alternative metal band, formed in 1995 in Los Angeles, California. An MP3 collection from this group was download 1,328,646 time(s) for a total bandwidth consumption of 249,785 GB.

Number 9:

Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam, is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, and is considered one of the most influential bands of the 1990s. An MP3 collection of theirs was downloaded more than 1,371,404 time(s) for a total bandwidth consumption of 94,634 GB.

Number 8:

Depeche Mode

Depeche Mode, are an influential English electronic music band, formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. An Mp3 collection of theirs was downloaded more than 1,453,693 time(s) for a total bandwidth consumption of 49,424 GB.

Number 7:

King of the Hill

King of the Hill, is a satirical American animated television series created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels for the FOX Network. The movie was downloaded more then 1,480,848 time(s) for a total bandwidth consumption of 259,148 GB.

Number 6:

System of a Down Toxicity

System of a Down (also referred to as S.O.A.D. or System) is a four-piece alternative metal band, formed in 1995 in Los Angeles, California. An MP3 collection from this group was download 1,506,684 time(s) for a total bandwidth consumption of 67,700 GB.

Number 5:

The Girl Next Door

The Girl Next Door, is a 2004 teen film that stars Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert. The movie was downloaded 2,155,070 time(s) for a total bandwidth consumption of 1,400,795 GB. Almost one and a half million gigabytes!

Number 4:

Britney Spears Toxic Video

Britney Spears, is a Grammy Award-winning American pop singer, dancer, actress, author and songwriter. Her video was downloaded more than 2,195,204 time(s) for a total bandwidth consumption of more than 85,612 GB.

Number 3:

Pink Floyd - The Wall (Film)

Pink Floyd The Wall, is a 1982 MGM film by British director Alan Parker based on the 1979 Pink Floyd album The Wall. The video was downloaded more than 2,196,234 time(s) for a total bandwidth consumption of 608,432 GB.

Number 2:

Dark Water 2005 (Film)

Dark Water is a 2005 American horror film directed by Walter Salles and starring Jennifer Connelly. The video was downloaded more than 2,295,495 time(s) for a bandwidth consumption of 1,632,096 GB or more than 1,500TB.

Number 1:

Fallout 2 & Fallout 1 (A Game)

Fallout 2 is a critically-acclaimed computer role-playing game published by Interplay in 1998. It was downloaded a whopping 1,165,564,987 time(s)! That is correct a game was the most popular torrent for 2006. It was downloaded more than 1 billion times! The bandwidth it consumed was a staggering 1,468,611,883 GB!

WOW!!!

Was You tube an overpriced baby? Reading the article from ITWire I wonder if this is possible. The latest survey of 2,500 odd people which was interviewed showed that 69% never go to the video-sharing site. 22% used YouTube for less than an hour a week, while just under 2% used it for more than five hours a week.

While those numbers might be a slight exaggeration — videos from YouTube can easily be embedded in other sites, so it’s possible that consumers are accessing the site without being aware of it — they do demonstrate that YouTube has yet to achieve the mass reach of the television networks it is often said to be poised to destroy.

YouTube, which was purchased by Google in November for $US1.65 billion, has experienced enormous growth through its combination of amateur video, music clips and television extracts. It has come under increasing pressure to police copyright violations on its site, though it has had some success in negotiating deals with major record companies and US TV networks to use their content.

Other consumer-generated media did not fare much better in the study. MySpace was used regularly by 27% of consumers, and the same number said that they regularly read blogs. The figures all ranked slightly higher for gay and lesbian consumers, who were the original focus of the research.

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8337/53/

People are downloading more porn for free using P2P networks than downloading legal video downloads, according to research by analysts at the NPD Group.

NPD tracks digital video activity on the home computers of more than 12,500 US house who agree to install NPD’s software.

Figures from this research show that 8% of households are downloading from P2P networks, while only 2% are paying to download video files.

Astonishly, Apple’s iTunes counted for 90% of paid-for video downloads, followed by Vongo, Movielinke, and CinemaNow with less than 1%.

Only 6% is movie content; the majority is TV downloads at over 60%.

From the files downloaded via the 8% who are using P2P sites, 60% are adult-film content, while 20% are TV shows and 5% are mainstream movies.

“While video P2P downloading is less pervasive right now than for music, it is a crucial issue for the film industry to keep track of,” said Russ Crupnick, VP for The NPD Group. “Even though right now the majority of downloaded video content is adult-film content, the amount of intellectual property stolen from mainstream movie studios, networks, and record labels will continue to rise, unless strong and sustained action is taken to prevent piracy.”

www.pocket-lint.co.uk

I liked the article written by Google on their blog about how you can get paid to do something that you enjoy. Maybe NGO’s should take a leaf from Google and relise that people need hand ups and not hand outs.

It is all about how Adsense furthers small communities across the globe with their payouts and how this filters down to the broader economy. Very interesting read.

Read more »

Over the past couple of years, a bunch of ISPs have started (usually quietly) applying traffic shaping efforts to slow down your high bandwidth applications like BitTorrent. This is part of what the whole network neutrality debate is about, but this has more to do with the ISPs trying to keep out services that use up more bandwidth then they budgeted for.

What it really represents is the inability of ISPs to recognize a simple fact: if you offer people bandwidth, they’ll figure out ways to use it. The ISPs got into this big race with each other, and all promised unlimited bandwidth at cheap prices, making the calculation that the demand for bandwidth wouldn’t increase very much, and most people wouldn’t use very much at all.

Read more »

The legitimate BitTorrent video store will be launched in February, according to yet another interview with well-traveled BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin. We lost count of the number of recent interviews given by Navin as the company aims to rebrand itself from a piracy tool to a legitimate distribution platform and content seller.

The legal wranglings of various file-sharing developers has created several common response patterns from those unfortunate enough to face litigation from the RIAA (Recording Industry Associate of America.) If you’re of the LimeWire, your response may be to stay and fight. If you’re from the BearShare clan, you may wish to settle. Then there’s the Ares Galaxy option; a tactic that focuses on apathy in the face of potential litigation and carrying on business as usual.AllofMP3.com appears to have chosen the third option in response to a lawsuit filed by the RIAA on behalf of its member companies. The complaint was filed on December 21, 2006, against Media Services (the company which owns AllofMP3.com) in a lawsuit of unprecedented value in the file-sharing realm.[see full story for more]