TorrentFreak

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TorrentFreak
File:Torrent Freak Logo.png
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Screenshot
TorrentFreak 2011-01-16.png
TorrentFreak frontpage on 26 January 2011
Web address torrentfreak.com
Type of site
 Blog
Available in English
Owner Lennart Renkema PhD[1]
Created by Ernesto Van Der Sar
Andy Maxwell
Rickard Falkvinge
Ben Jones (modified WordPress)
Editor "Ernesto Van Der Sar"
Launched November 12, 2005
Revenue Advertisements
Alexa rank
 Increase 2,832 (December 2014)[2]

TorrentFreak (abbreviated TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing.

The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchman using the pseudonym "Ernesto Van Der Sar".[3][4] He was joined by Andy "Enigmax" Maxwell and Ben Jones in 2007.[4][5] Regular contributors include Rickard Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party.[6] The online publication eCommerceTimes, in 2009, described "Ernesto" as the pseudonym of Lennart Renkema, owner of TorrentFreak.[7] TorrentFreak's contents are free content under a Creative Commons Attribution license.[8][9]

Their lead researcher and community manager is the Pirate Party activist Andrew Norton.

Specialist Areas

According to Canadian law scholar Michael Geist, TorrentFreak "is widely used as a source of original reporting on digital issues".[10] Examples are The New York Times,[11] The Guardian,[12] CNN,[13] The Wall Street Journal,[14] and the Flemish newspaper De Standaard.[15][16][17]

Frequent areas of reporting include:

And other news affecting 'copyright, privacy and everything related to file sharing'[24]

Notable History

On August 17, 2007 TorrentFreak reported that Comcast had begun throttling its upload bandwidth, specifically against BitTorrent users. This made seeding, which is an essential part of the BitTorrent protocol, effectively impossible.[25] It was later determined that Comcast was using Sandvine products which implement network traffic shaping and policing, and include support for both blocking new and forcefully terminating established network connections. Comcast has denied these claims whenever they have been asked to comment. A guide, for customer service representatives when asked about Comcast's BitTorrent throttling, was leaked to The Consumerist on October 26, 2007.[26]

In October 2008 through to March 2011 TorrentFreak ran short lived video news service titled 'torrentfreak.tv directed by Andrej Preston, founder of torrent site Suprnova made available for streaming and download on Mininova.[27][28]

On August 21, 2013, Comcast threatened TorrentFreak for writing about publicly available court documents.[29][30] The underlying document links a Comcast subscriber with the Prenda Law firm.[31] The court case where the document was filed was a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by AF Holdings for alleged infringement of an adult movie.[32][33]

In August 2013 web blocking technology implementation by Sky Broadband blocked the site for UK customers after EZTV manipulated its DNS servers[34] and was blocked once again by the controversial parental filter system in January 2014.[35]

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Profile. Rick Falkvinge, torrentfreak.com.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported
  9. ↑ Copy CC at bottom of all pages
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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