As I sat down this morning to begin working on a few small news items, Torrent Freak had dropped a bomb on my RSS: the Pirate Bay has been sold for just under $8 million US.

Swedish gaming giant Global Gaming Factory X will become the new owners, and The Pirate Bay as you and I know it will change forever. A necessary evolutionary step, according to Peter Sunde (brokep).

"We've been working on this project for many years. It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!"

Why would a legitimate company want to purchase TPB? For starters, it's one of the top 100 most visited sites on the internet. While I'm not in the habit of referring to $8 million purchases as a bargain, it's hard to imagine being able to pick up any of the other 99 sites on the list for that kind of money.

It was only a matter of time before the P2P community came up with some workable options for anonymizing our activities. Sure, Tor has been able to do it for quite some time, but torrenting is very taxing on the network and transfers can be painfully slow. Recently, however, three new services have appeared that could provide the privacy protection we've been waiting for.

iPredator VPN - We've known this one was coming for a while. The beta launch date got pushed back quite a bit, but that little courtroom skirmish may have slowed things down a little. In a blog post yesterday, the iPredator team announced that the first 3,000 beta invites have been sent out. If you're in the queue, don't start drooling just yet. There are 179,999 others names lined up.

Furk (pictured) - Find a torrent, paste it into Furk, and you're provided a direct download link. Even with the free account, I still averaged about 275k/s, which isn't much slower than what I typically manage on a straight torrent download (thanks to my ISP). Download links are also passed to you with SSL encryption. Just don't use it to download stuff like what's in the capture - it's there for illustration purposes only, of course...

Paid accounts are just under 10 Euros a month or 24/three months.

BitBlinder - Jay posted about this service the other day. The open source project aims to anonymize not only torrent downloads but also your web browsing. How does it work? Think of your Internet traffic as the fruit in a smoothie. Now take all your friends' fruit, chuck it all into a blender, and press 'liquify'. Pour it into a glass, and all you see is smoothie - you can't tell what's your fruit and what belongs to your friends.

As with iPredator you may be waiting a while to get your invite and download link.

There are a few widely-accepted ways to anonymize your browsing or torrent activity, but they all have their drawbacks. TOR is free, but it's poor etiquette to use it for torrents and put a strain on the bandwidth of the nice folks who run TOR servers. Not to mention that it's incredibly, stupefyingly slow. You could get a VPN, but that'll cost you. So, what's the solution to making your torrents free and anonymous, without a huge drag on your transfer speeds? A new open source project called BitBlinder might be the ticket.

BitBlinder is sort of like a private tracker for your anonymous data. A private tracker requires you to upload a certain percentage of data compared to what you download, in order to keep using it. BitBlinder works the same way, requiring each person on the network to anonymize a certain amount of data for others in order to have their own data anonymized for free. To keep your IP address safe, it's passed through several peers before it reaches your target website, but each computer only receives the address of the next peer in the chain, not the address the request is coming from. That way, you don't know who anyone else is, and nobody else knows who you are, which makes it difficult for anyone to track what each person on the network is doing.

BitBlinder isn't just good for torrents, though. It can also be used to hide your browsing activity and get around blocked sites at work or school. BitBlinder comes with an anonymous browser, built on Firefox. It's worth noting that BitBlinder will be a bit slower than browsing without anonymity, but still faster than TOR. It's planned as a cross-platform project, but the Mac version isn't ready quite yet. Registration is required, and there are currently a limited number of slots available.

[via TorrentFreak]

Torrents have gained some infamy as a way for users to share resources and quickly download large files, but their potential as a way to watch streaming video is comparatively almost unknown. StreamTorrent is a Windows app that taps that potential to let you watch online TV, including HBO, the BBC, and plenty of sports channels. It works the same way torrent downloads work, with a collection of users "seeding" parts of the video to other users as they watch.

It might not be practical unless you've got a lot of people watching and seeding, but you could theoretically stream your own channel over StreamTorrent. Users would only have to search for it to connect. This could prove to be an affordable way of providing large video files when you don't have the cash to pony up for high bandwidth fees, and it can, at least in theory, stream to an unlimited number of users.

[via gHacks]

Who wants to wait until July 1st to try out Microsoft Office 2010? Heck, even if you do want to wait and register your name, you still might not be chosen as a tester.

Fortunately, your friends at the Internet have got your back once again. Yes, the Office 2010 technical preview - like every build of Windows 7 that ends with an odd or even number (or zero) has been leaked to torrent trackers.

This time, Wzor.net didn't just share screenshots of the leaked apps, they've actually provided links to the torrent files themselves.

I don't mean to sound like a broken record, but remember: if you do decide to download the leaked ISOs, make sure you take the necessary precautions. No, that doesn't mean putting on your tin foil hat.

Thanks, Sandip!

update (5/16/09 7:17 ET): screenshots coming up after the break - stay tuned!

Many of you are probably already downloading your torrent files directly to an external hard drive. Looking for a slick, portable client for torrenting on the go with your drive? Vuze has a new app for that.

Called Vuze to Go, the version makes use of Ceedo's application virtualization and costs $9.99. Because of the way it's packaged, VTG will run even on systems that don't have Java installed. All the functionality of the original open source client is there - meaning you can fire up your hard drive at a buddy's place at stream your movies to a PS3 or Xbox 360 right from your HDD.

While there are free portable torrent alternatives (like uTorrent), Vuze's added media functions may make it a useful purchase for some. Vuze Marketing Director Chris Thun told Torrent Freak "we believe that if we're solving a real problem in an elegant way, our users will be willing to pay for it."

[via TorrentFreak]

Things in the P2P world continue to change in the wake of the Pirate Bay trial. Today, Mininova announced a new feature designed to make the removal of copyright-infringing works easier for users of their content distribution service.

Mininova's content checker utilizes a third-party recognition system, and the crew hopes that it will allow artists and producers to better control their own content.

Will it make a difference? Eventually, perhaps. The screenshot above illustrates pretty clearly that this 1) isn't going to impact all Mininova's torrents and 2) won't change things instantly.

As you would expect, user response to the announcement has been largely negative. Apart from the "way to make your site suck" comments, one user posted "Bad move. By being active in copyright control you're opening yourselves up for even more lawsuits, just like YouTube."

The bottom line? It's a tough gig running a torrent site today, and it's only going to get tougher.

[via TorrentFreak]

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Today's cat: starting torrent downloads on your computer from a remote location!

The first two options require 1) your home machine's address and 2) a forwarded port on your router. If you're on a dynamic IP connection like me, a DDNS updating service like Dyndns.org makes finding your machine much easier - it gives you an easy-to-remember, permanent address likemycomputerathome.dyndns.org. Not too sure how to set up port forwarding on your router? Check out PortForward.com for help with just about any brand or model.

If you'd rather not mess around with port forwarding and dynamic dns, you might want to try setting up Hamachi or Comodo Easy VPN on your machines. Either one will provide you LAN-like access to your main computer with minimal fuss (apart from installing and configuring a new program).

Or you could skip the zero-config VPN software and check out the last two options after the break - neither of which require you to know your home system's address or change any router settings.

Now let's get started!

Using Your Client's WebUI (pictured above)

uTorrent, Transmission, and Deluge all offer a web-based control panel for their clients. Getting remote access is as simple as opening the appropriate port on your router and then opening the right address in your web browser.

For uTorrent, you may need to download the webui.zip from their forums and save it to your %appdata%\utorrent folder.

When I last wrote about the Pirate Bay's new feature that enabled sharing torrents through Facebook, Facebook hadn't yet responded or acted to stop the Pirate Bay from using the social network as a link repository. Now they have. Facebook is blocking incoming links from The Pirate Bay, according to TorrentFreak.

Not only can you no longer use the "Share on Facebook" buttons located on Pirate Bay torrent pages, but you can't even manually share a Pirate Bay URL. Facebook says that they won't allow "Share on Facebook" buttons on any site that contains infringing content, even if there's legitimate content mixed in. Whatever small minority of artists were using Pirate Bay to push legal torrents won't have Facebook's help in doing it. As for the blanket measure of blocking all TPB links, even the ones manually entered by Facebook users, Facebook is doing it to punish the torrent site for failing to remove its Facebook buttons.

In the aftermath of their trial in Sweden, leading torrent site The Pirate Bay is getting a bit cheeky. Lee already told you how they've concocted a new VPN called IPREDATOR, that will make Pirate Bay traffic harder for authorities to track, but now they've set their sites on one of the Internet's sacred cows. Yep, it's Facebook.

Now each individual torrent page on the Pirate Bay has a "share on Facebook" link, making it a cinch to sneak (mostly) illegal downloads into a space where all your friends can have easy access to them, too. The torrent links that will show up on your profile will start the downloading in your default torrent client immediately, without ever setting foot on the Pirate Bay's website. The Pirate Bay never asked Facebook about this new feature, but so far they've received no complaints -- either from Facebook or from copyright holders.

[via TorrentFreak]

You probably know that installing a copy of the new iPhone 3.0 firmware that you grabbed off a torrent site is illegal, but you should also know that it's a royal pain in the butt. Users on iPhone forums are discovering the hard way that a copy of 3.0 is no good unless you're a registered developer, so it can be unlocked on your device. Otherwise you're in for a world of hurt, with hacky workarounds that require you to turn off your Internet connection every time you want to use your phone with iTunes.

Once you've gone to 3.0 without registering, it turns out to be really hard to go back. Users having trouble downgrading back to the current version of the firmware are all over iPhone forums, annoying legitimate developers (or their friends -- each dev can apparently sign up 100 devices) with questions about restoring to the old version. Meanwhile, the iPhone just throws a bunch of errors at them. I'm sure a way to restore will pop up soon, but if it doesn't, you could be holding a brick until the official release. Is it really worth all this trouble to avoid waiting a few months for copy and paste?

Note: Gizmodo has a step-by-step guide to downgrading.

It's no April Fools' prank. On April 1st - the same day that Sweden's Draconian new intellectual property legislation (IPRED) goes into effect - the Pirate Bay will debut their new IPREDATOR VPN service.

Where IPRED aims to make it easier for copyright holders to get their hands on ISP log files to investigate suspected transgressors. With IPREDATOR, a user can give "the man" a swift kick in his digital groin and sneak away unscathed while he's doubled over in agony.

No log files are maintained, and all traffic is tunneled, making it more difficult to track activity to a specific user.

Initially, the service will be opened to a select group of 500 testers. Once the kinks have been worked out, IPREDATOR will be available world-wide for a modest 5 Euro monthly fee.

Those who are interested and want to roll the dice in hopes of getting in early can register for the beta at ipredator.se.

[via TorrentFreak]

You're probably using a bittorrent client to download the occasional movie or episode of The Office by now. If you're looking to make the process of going from torrents to remote viewing a little more hassle-free, you might want to take a look at the newest version of Vuze. After conducting a user poll, it was clear that Vuze users wanted easier access to their downloads on devices like the iPod Touch, PS3, and Xbox 360.

The development team has delivered, with beta support for those devices. Turn on device support, and adding a file to iTunes requires only a simple click-and-drag - Vuze takes care of conversion. PS3 and Xbox users, your content is automatically ready to stream from your desktop to your console.

CEO Gilles BianRosa states in the official blog post that "Vuze has always supported open platforms and technologies, and we've designed our device support to embrace as many of the devices you asked for, as possible. Expect more to follow soon." Based on the results of the poll, Wii users should be next in line.

Device support makes Vuze a very compelling option for media-heavy torrent downloaders, especially less technically savvy types that don't want to be bothered with having to convert files after downloading.

To try it out, grab the new version from Vuze's download page.

[via TorrentFreak]

Back in December 2008, Brad wrote about Littleshoot, a browser-based peer-to-peer application created by the developers of Limewire. A little over two months later, and the .90 beta release has seen several updates and the addition of one major feature: the ability to download .torrent files.

Install the Littleshoot plugin, visit any torrent site, and click on a torrent file and a new tab like the one pictured above will open in your browser. While savvy p2p-ers probably won't prefer Littleshoot to their current torrent manager, it's an excellent option for less experienced users (like the ones you provide with free troubleshooting).

Littleshoot also makes it easy to share what you're downloading on social sites, with quick links to popular ones like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg.

And don't forget, Littleshoot is also a great way to search Flickr and YouTube - you know, in case you want to check out some interesting photos or videos while your downloads finish.

The memory footprint has been reduced, at least on the Littleshoot plugin itself - it's currently using about 60mb on my Vista x64 machine, which isn't out of line with other combination Gnutella/torrent applications. Firefox, however, seems to be having some trouble coping: its ram usage is up to about 430mb.

[via TorrentFreak]