Are you really sure your ISP is not throttling your P2P traffic, even though you may be only downloading Linux distros? If you won a trial against the RIAA, did you have any idea they may start saying your attorney's fees are too high, although they were trying to make you pay for some MP3 files like you had to buy the artists themselves for the rest of their lives? I know, there are a lot of things completely unfair about RIAA, and it seems the "copyright wars" continue...


<-120x240 Vertical Banner - left->First stop, the ISPs that don't live up to the users' expectations. Obviously, it's about those in the US. To be more specific, we're going to talk about Cox and Comcast, but they are not the only ones on the planet playing dirty with their users, unfortunately.

Some researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems got deeper into this issue, and their results are pretty interesting, because out of 1,224 ISPs they have checked, only 13 were blocking BitTorrent traffic. Unfortunately for those in the US, 9 of those 13 were ISPs which operate there.

While some companies claim they are only blocking or limiting P2P traffic at peaks hours, both Comcast and Cox admitted(or others managed to prove beyond any doubt) that peak hours is not the only time of the day when P2P traffic is blocked. In fact, for them, it doesn't matter the time of the day!

Ben Scott from Free Press, one of the groups trying to make the FCC take action against these policies, said "Consumers have no reason left to trust their cable company. These Internet experts have also unequivocally demonstrated that blocking is not limited to times of supposed congestion. Their sophisticated testing shows that Comcast and Cox block BitTorrent applications at all times of the day—not just at times of peak traffic. This research proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that consumers, Congress and the FCC must urgently pursue the complaints against network providers."

These being said, it's obvious that Comcast and Cox are silent, despite the requests from press to choose their position and speak out. Well, the facts show everything, so why bother? Keep going this way, guys, and you may find yourselves without subscribers, one day!

Second topic today, Tanya Andersen. If you never heard of her, you should know that she is one of the few that saw the case against them dropped by the RIAA, but it took no less than 2 years for this to happen. Since she was the prevailing party, the judge ruled that RIAA must pay the attorneys' fees. So far, so good, but...

...Tanya Andersen's lawyer asked to receive $298,995 for the time worked during the trial, while RIAA reckoned only about 10 percent of that amount! In the end, the decision goes she must get $107,834 in court costs and attorney fees from the RIAA.

Well, what about RIAA's requirements from those pursued in court for downloading some songs being "excessive"? Anyway, both sides have until May 27 to file any objections to the award, and I hope RIAA gets what everyone expects - a decision to make them think twice before sending people into court!

In the end, it seems TorrentSpy didn't managed to die with dignity, if I have to believe some of the readers that took their time to drop their comments, for which I have to send all my thanks, and I have no proof against their claims. Good, so maybe TorrentSpy compromised some of its users while going down, breaking their own promises, but what about downloading some music, movies, and even games from sites that won't give away your identity to the cops, won't ask you to give any donation to increase your ratio and, most important of all, won't turn you into a thief?


<-180x150 Small Rectangle - left->No, I am not on drugs! I am not even drunk. I am as sane as possible, and I am not dreaming with my eyes open and my hands on the keyboard! Before moving on, I have to warn you - this may not be a golden mine, and things are rather limited, because you won't see any Electronic Arts games or Microsoft operating systems available for download on the legal torrent trackers we're going to talk about, but you'll get 100% legal content, and some of the stuff you can get is high quality, so...

...first stop, as you probably figured out, if you visited their site at least once since they got the new logo, is LegalTorrents!

Currently in the Beta stage, the site offers only a small number of torrents, most of them(if not all) allowing you to download Creative Commons-licensed content.


If you look closer, you can even find 3 older games for Windows (The White Chamber, Facade and The Adventures of Fatman), 6 audio books, about a dozen music downloads, including some 1-2GB collections, a single wallpaper pack...but it's a site worthy of your attention, although you may not find enough reasons to come back, after a while.


PublicDomainTorrents is a site whose name says it all, but it's swarming with ads, and I think that browsing it is a gruesome task. Well, at least for me, but if you like diggin' for gold, you may find some interesting things. Only movies, from what I can tell...


Next on the list, we have Legit Torrents, a site currently having 6703 users and 1569 torrents. The content you can get here is covering a wide range of topics, from Linux distributions to games, including some new freeware titles, and even free MMORPGs like Archlord. The problem is that some torrents(most of them) don't have any description, so illegal downloads may appear here, but they are removed as soon as they get reported by someone.

As a side note, let me add something - sites like the BitTorrent download store or Azureus' Vuze may provide some good free content, but they are swarming with DRM-protected material, as well as stuff you have to pay for, so...thanks, but I'll pass. Anyway, you may want to check it out, so feel free to do it, if you have the time and patience required to browse through their extensive media libraries.

Ooooh, yeah! Losless music, anyone? Etree is the place to go! As its front page clearly says, this site's only purpose is to help fans by "sharing the live concert recordings of trade friendly artists."


Now, you're probably thinking there are only anonymous artists to be found here, but hear these names and think again: Los Lobos, Radiohead, The Grateful Dead or Primus. Unfortunately, if you're not into live recordings, this site may not be your thing, but if you think the above sounds interesting, this site is heaven - updates are frequent, and there's an impressive collection of torrents to be browsed!

No, I can't give you any torrent sites where you can download the latest Madonna album, or the "Iron Man" movie, but that's life. Some things are worth paying for, while others come for free, and since I mentioned this fact once again, I can't conclude this article without showing you the path to the largest Linux torrents archive on the Web, available at Linuxtracker.

These being said, I hope you will drop me as many comments as possible, because I am sure there's more to have from the free torrent world, so if you know one legal torrents site worth checking out... you know what to do! I will be waiting...

Sometimes, I think it's better to leave the kids play on the computer various games, even silly ones like Counter Strike or Lineage (it's my opinion, so don't kill me!), instead of guiding them into learning something useful. I know it doesn't sound like a serious way of thinking, but I would rather have a computer games addict than a hacker as my kid! Anyway, today it's about someone who managed to break the Chilean government sites and grab a lot of data, a person which still remains unknown...


The hacker, who calls himself "Anonymous Coward," reported on a Chilean tech blog that he managed to get his hands on no less than 6 million confidential data sets corresponding to the same number of Chileans. To imagine as far this has gone, it's enough to say that one of those having the personal data revealed is one of President Michelle Bachelet’s two daughters!

Despite the fact that the original posting on the Fayerwayer.com site was promptly deleted, a lot of other blogs got the news and carried it on. According to PC World, the Anonymous Coward said "If you’re going to extract data from a server, it’s recommended to make a script that doesn’t connect directly to the server, but rather via [anonymous proxies]," and continued with a direct reference to the president's daughter:"Bachelet’s daughter has a school pass, although it’s not given to many people because their parents have earnings above a certain threshold."

As we speak, the investigation continues, and 6 million people should be afraid of having their names, phone numbers, addresses and identity card numbers turned into public domain information...

The fact that the European Comission plays hard with Microsoft is nothing new, but it seems Bill Gates' company is not just a sitting duck, after all. Anyway, it's their fault for not complying with the requirements of the European Comission, but that is already a part of the past. The case is not over yet, because Microsoft is appealing against the record fine they got on the 27th of February...


If you don't remember that old story, there's no need to look for it, because the amount Microsoft has to pay is enough to cover the rest of the details with a cloud of smoke - $1.39 billion, or 899 million EUR, that's it!

According to a statement coming right from the Santa Clara giant, "Microsoft today filed to the (EU) Court of First Instance an application to annul the European Commission decision of February 27."

It is funny to see how Microsoft claims to be on a "constructive effort to seek clarity from the court." Well, I would also call "constructive" and effort of shaking a pretty severe fine off my tail, but I can't see how would this be "constructive" for the rest of the world. I may be wrong, but I only see this as a selfish move from Microsoft. What do you think?

For a few years, TorrentSpy has been one of the most popular BitTorrent indexing sites, with more than one 1,000,000 torrents indexed back in August 2007, and a few thousands new ones being added daily. The battle against it was long, and the first successful move was made back in May 2005, when the site was forced to remove all torrents of Star Wars: Episode III, after a stolen workprint of the film was leaked to the Internet. Anyway, it seems now this is all a part of the past...


<-120x240 Vertical Banner - left->...because on May 7, a federal judge decided that TorrentSpy should pay the Motion Picture Association of America no less than $110 million, and despite the fact they may not be able to recover this amount from TorrentSpy's principles Justin Bunnell and Wes Parker, who have filed for bankruptcy, the message is clear - MPAA is on a killing spree, and the hunt is not over yet!

In the end, it's good to see that TorrentSpy went down with dignity, without betraying its users, and that's something more important than MPAA's victory. Here's the message present on the site now:

"Friends of TorrentSpy,

We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.

The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.

Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.

It was a wild ride,

The TorrentSpy Team"

These being said, I have no other words than "Rest in Peace, TorrentSpy. You may be gone, but you'll never be forgotten!"