Martin ◢◤

Google Translation: Newcomer assignment 1. Assessment period: 30 days 2. Upload requirements: 30G 3. Download requirements: 30G 4. Magic requirements: 6000 5. Seed ratio requirements: >= 5 Note: The assessment time is unchanged for 30 days, the upload volume and download volume are increased from 25G to 30G, the bonus points are increased from 5000 to 6000, and the seed ratio is increased from 3 to 5. The new rules are implemented from 2018.11.07.

DONATIONS / SUBSCRIPTIONS As some of you are aware, we are currently having issues with subscriptions being cancelled. We kindly ask that you use "One Time Donations" to donate at this current time. Donations help the site stay alive so we can continue to bring you the content you desire and are greatly appreciated by all staff and members alike. Once the issue is resolved we will post another update and possibly a PM to all users. Thanks for your continued support as always!

We've opened applications again for a short time. Now is your chance to tell us why you want to be part of our community!

Scheduled Downtime Progress: 99% Internal review & Account initialization Get ready for account initialization. You won't be able to login yet, but you will be asked to confirm your account defaults (i.e. your country) and a new password will be set for you. This will make your acount ready for the new system. You will also be able to join and idle on the IRC while we finish the work on the Site itself. ANX The test of ANX (tracker) has been completed. ANX and its status page remain online. A note on tracker responses: "Passkey inactive (613)" means a disabled account. "Passkey unknown (614)" means an unknown account (i.e. erased). If you account is disabled you're welcome to contact us and discuss your case. Best if you do it now before things become hectic due to the new Site launch. Next? Account initialization in a week or so. Public Beta 1 is still on schedule and will be launched sometime in June. Please be patient. Downtime donations? Donations are needed. If you wish to help please let us know at the support email. Support: xbtmusic@protonmail.ch (PGP public key) ...and another haiku for you: the long road taken, difficult and exhausting; blissful rest is near

Tracker's Name: The-Torrents Genre: MOVIES / TV / GENERAL Sign-up: http://the-torrents.org/signup.php Additional information: The-Torrents is a ROMANIAN Private Torrent Tracker for MOVIES / TV / GENERAL

Tracker's Name: TakeaByte-Nordic Genre: 0DAY / GENERAL Sign-up: http://takeabyte-nordic.org/signup.php Additional information: TakeaByte-Nordic is a NORDIC Private Torrent Tracker for 0DAY / GENERAL

Tracker's Name: ScenePalace (SP) Genre: MOVIES / TV / GENERAL Sign-up: https://scenepalace.info/signup.php Additional information: ScenePalace (SP) is a Private Torrent Tracker for MOVIES / TV / GENERAL

Tracker's Name: Wrestling Desires Torrents (Ultimate Wrestling Torrents) Genre: PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING / MMA Sign-up: http://ultimatewrestlingtorrents.com/signup.php Additional information: Wrestling Desires Torrents (Ultimate Wrestling Torrents) is a Private Torrent Tracker for PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING / MMA Welcome to the community, if you have any questions feel free to ask in shout or the forums. If your account was made using a vpn or proxy or disposable email you may get a message saying account disabled, if this is the case please make a new account with your vpn disabled and use a valid email address that you will have access to. Once you are validated by staff you may use a vpn and may also change your email if you wish. If you are having problems accessing your account you may also register at http://wrestlingdesires.com/forum.php and ask, and you may wish to look around and visit there, it is also an awesome community and has loads of media.

There will be a software maintenance plan starting from Monday April 22nd, 2019 00:00 (UTC) which will not last long as expected.

Google Translation: Freeleech 24-hour freeleech.

Twitter has informed TorrentFreak that another tweet from us has been removed. Apparently, a link to a news article was somehow making pirated software available. Strange, since the request was sent on behalf of movie studio Warner Bros. Apparently, there's still room to improve the accuracy of these takedown noticesLast week there was quite an uproar when Starz deleted one of our tweets, which linked to a news article about several prominent TV-show leaks. As reasons for the takedown, the DMCA notice mentioned “images of the unreleased episodes” and “information about their illegal availability,” something that’s generally seen as fair use. Making matters worse, Starz also sent takedown requests to several people who tweeted links to the article where we complained about the first takedown. This then generated a lot of criticism from journalists, legal scholars, and the public at large. Starz eventually retracted some of the DMCA notices and apologized for the “misunderstanding” in a public statement. We have yet to hear back from the company directly, despite multiple requests, so we decided to move on. There’s more news to report, after all. However, a few days after the DMCA notice from Starz, Twitter contacted us with a similar complaint, again from an American media giant. Apparently, Warner Bros. had also asked the social media platform to remove one of our tweets. The takedown notice, sent by Warner Bros’ anti-piracy partner Marketly, accused us of posting a tweet that made “computer program(s)” available “for copying through downloading,” without permission of the copyright owner. “We hereby give notice of these activities to you and request that you take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the material described above, and thereby prevent the illegal reproduction and distribution of this software via your company’s network,” the notice added. At TorrentFreak we simply report news, and looking at the “infringing” tweet in question, we fail to see a link with software piracy. Instead, it’s simply a link to our news article about the previously convicted admins of the movie pirate sites Kinox.to and Movie4k.to. Still a bit puzzled, we looked back at the DMCA notice again and noticed that it didn’t list any software, but movies and TV-shows instead. That made more sense, but the takedown notice still doesn’t. We assume that Warner Bros. isn’t happy with Kinox.to and Movie4k.to, which is understandable. However, removing a tweet to a news article that discusses a newsworthy event related to these sites goes too far. Especially when you consider that our article doesn’t even link to these sites. The tweet does, ironically, but those links are automatically generated by Twitter. We didn’t put those in. Yet, we are punished for it, adding a copyright ‘strike’ to our Twitter account. We assume that this is yet another misunderstanding and we kindly request Warner Bros., via Marketly, to sort this out. While we’re at it, we will ask about the mysterious pirated software, because we still haven’t located that either. Incidents like this show that there is surprisingly little attention paid to the context of potentially infringing content. This was also fairly obvious last week with the Starz drama, which hasn’t been completely resolved yet. On the contrary. Some of the tweets linking to our reporting about the leaked TV shows remain unavailable at the time of writing. This includes a tweet from ‘FCT,’ who complained about the situation repeatedly. We requested clarification from Starz on this issue earlier this week but haven’t heard back. Starz did remove some of its most recent takedown requests, including one directed at our original tweet. However, at the same time, it also reversed several DMCA notices for content that does appear to be infringing, as shown below. It looks like they’re not paying much attention at all. Source:TorrentFreak

The latest episode of Game of Thrones has leaked online several hours before its official premiere. The leak comes from the German version of Amazon Prime, where it was put online early. Since then it's been widely shared on various pirate sites.Several hours before its official premiere, the second episode of the latest Game of Thrones season is already widely available on torrent and streaming sites. According to reports from several viewers, the German version of Amazon Prime accidentally made the episode available on the platform a few hours ago. Apparently, the second episode of the season simply started playing after the first one finished.After this mistake, it didn’t take long before someone ripped the show, and soon after many links to pirated copies started to appear on the usual torrent and streaming sites. This isn’t the first time that a Game of Thrones episode has been released early. The popular HBO series has a long history of leaks. The most prominent one dates back to 2015 when the first four episodes leaked from a promotional screener. In 2017 a Game of Thrones episode leaked with a “Star India” watermark. This eventually led to the arrests of four people. Today’s leak appears to be a mistake by Amazon, but the result is ultimately the same. Pirates will get an early viewing of the latest episode, before those who pay, and spoilers are being widely shared online. For several years in a row Game of Thrones has been the most pirated TV-show, and this year the interest is overwhelming once again. Data published by piracy tracking company MUSO earlier this week showed that the first episode of this season was pirated 54 million times in just one day. Source:TorrentFreak

Forking out for every premium media service around is a hugely costly affair but some people are getting them all for just pennies each. That's thanks to so-called account generating platforms, where access to Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, HBO, Xbox Live, EA Origin, TIDAL, WWE, and UFC, among dozens of others, cost next to nothing. Gaining free access to copyrighted material is not a difficult task in today’s online world. Movies, TV shows, music, games, and eBooks are all just a few clicks away, either using torrent, streaming, or direct download services. Over the years, however, the growth of piracy has been at least somewhat slowed due to the advent of official services. Where there was once a content vacuum, official platforms such as Netflix, Spotify, HBO, TIDAL, Steam, and others, are helping users to find the content they want. While most services present reasonable value, subscribing to them all would be a massive strain on even the most expansive of budgets. But what if there was a way to access every single one of them, for just a few dollars a year – in total? Believe it or not, such services exist and have done for some time. Described as ‘Account Generators’, these platforms grant members with access to dozens of premium services, without having to pay anything like the headline price. The main ones often major on access to a Netflix subscription as a base, with access to other services thrown in on top. How much a year? The screenshot above shows one ‘generator’ service as it appeared this week. On the far right is a Netflix offer for $2.99 per year or $4.99 for a lifetime ‘private’ account (more on that later). That is of course ridiculously cheap. On the near left is the ‘All Access’ plan, which offers access to Netflix plus another 69 online services for just $6.99 per month or $16.99 per year. The range of services available is impressive, to say the least. Movies and TV Shows: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO Now, Crunchyroll, DIRECTV/Now, Stream TV Live, CBS All Access, Funimation, Slingbox, Xfinity. On the sports front: BT Sports, Fubo.tv, F1 Access, MLB.TV, NBA League Pass, NFL Game Pass, UFC Fight Pass, WWE Network. For music, access is provided to Spotify, Deezer, Napster, Pandora, Saavn, SoundCloud, and TIDAL. A small selection of the services available How these services gain access to all of these accounts is shrouded in a level of secrecy but there’s little doubt that while some are obtained legitimately (perhaps through free trials or other account sharing), the roots of others are fairly questionable. For example, when these services talk about ‘shared and ‘private’ Netflix accounts, the former often appear set up for someone else, with individual user accounts in other people’s names and suggestions for what to watch next already in place. In other words, these are live accounts already being paid for by someone, to which these services somehow gain access. Indeed, there are notices on account generator platforms warning people not to mess with account passwords or payment details, since that could alert the original user or cause an account to get shut down for other reasons. “Origin brings you great PC and Mac games. Play the latest RPGs, Shooters, Sim games, and more. These accounts are private (1 per person), however you MUST NOT change passwords,” one warning reads. Since Origin has just come up, it’s probably a suitable juncture to mention the games services on offer. In addition to EA’s offering, one can gain access to Xbox Live, ESL Gaming, Good Old Games, League of Legends, Minecraft Premium, Steam (game keys) and Uplay. And it doesn’t stop there. Need a BitDefender key? No problem. Access to Creative Market? You got it. Want to do some online learning? Queue up for Chegg, CourseHero, Lynda, Mathway, Udemy, and more. There’s even free access to NYTimes Premium. As the image below shows, thousands of accounts are added all the time. Thousands of accounts, all the time… While these generator platforms are undoubtedly popular with people on a budget, almost everything about them feels wrong. Staring into someone’s private Netflix account, with what appear to be family names, is unsettling. Looking at their private email addresses and credit card details feels flat-out criminal. Quite how these services are able to prosper isn’t clear but perhaps the big question is why the platforms whose accounts are being offered haven’t noticed some kind of pattern by now. Maybe they have, but it’s probably a pretty difficult task to sweep up the mess without a lot of false positives, not to mention the risks of ensnaring those who pay for their accounts officially. The video below, from late 2016, gives a decent overview of how an account generator platform works. Even for many hardcore pirates, especially those who demand privacy and respect the same for others, parts of the viewing will be uncomfortable.

Tracker's Name: XKTorrent (XK) Genre: MOVIES / TV / GENERAL Sign-up: https://xktorrent.com/register Additional information: XKTorrent (XK) is a FRENCH Private Torrent Tracker for MOVIES / TV / GENERAL

Tracker's Name: Sharewood Genre: MOVIES / TV / GENERAL Sign-up: https://www.sharewood.tv/register/null Additional information: Sharewood is a FRENCH Private Torrent Tracker for MOVIES / TV / GENERAL