__NOTOC__ TorrentFreak (TF) is a

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the

BitTorrent BitTorrent is a Protocol (computing), communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a Decentralised system, decentralized manner. The protocol is d ...

protocol and

file sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include ...

, as well as on

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of Copyright#Scope, works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the c ...

and

digital rights Digital rights are those human rights and Natural and legal rights, legal rights that allow individuals to access, use, create, and publish digital media or to access and use computers, other Consumer electronics, electronic devices, and teleco ...

. The website was started in November 2005 by a

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

man using the pseudonym "Ernesto van der Sar". He was joined by Andy "Enigmax" Maxwell and Ben Jones in 2007. Regular contributors include

Rickard Falkvinge Rick Falkvinge (born Dick Greger Augustsson, 21 January 1972) is a Swedish politician who founded the Pirate Party (Sweden), Pirate Party, serving as its leader until 2011. Early life and career Falkvinge grew up in Ruddalen, Gothenburg, a ...

, founder of the

Pirate Party Pirate Party is a label adopted by various Political party, political parties worldwide that share a set of values and policies focused on Civil and political rights, civil rights in the digital age. The fundamental principles of Pirate Partie ...

. The online publication eCommerceTimes, in 2009, described "Ernesto" as the pseudonym of Lennart Renkema, owner of TorrentFreak. TorrentFreak's text is

free content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software program, or any other creative content for which there are very minimal copyright and other legal limi ...

under a

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

Attribution-NonCommercial version 3.0 license. Their lead researcher and community manager was the

activist Andrew Norton, from 2007 to 2022. TorrentFreak is incorporated in the Netherlands, with an office in Groningen and a mailing address in Manchester, United Kingdom.

Specialist areas

According to Canadian law scholar

Michael Geist Michael Allen Geist is a Canadian academic, and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He is the editor of four books on copyright law and privacy law, and he edits two newsletters on Canadian infor ...

, TorrentFreak "is widely used as a source of original reporting on digital issues". Frequent areas of reporting include: * The

City of London The City of London, also known as ''the City'', is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county and Districts of England, local government district with City status in the United Kingdom, city status in England. It is the Old town, his ...

Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is a unit of the City of London Police, the national lead force for fraud. It was established in 2013 with the responsibility to investigate and deter serious and organised intellectual property ...

United States Trade Representative The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is an agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government responsible for developing and promoting Foreign trade of the United States, United States ...

and

Notorious Markets A notorious market is a website or physical market where, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), large-scale intellectual property infringement takes place. Officially termed Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting ...

reports * Anti-piracy web blocking *

Torrent tracker A BitTorrent tracker is a special type of server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. In peer-to-peer file sharing, a software client on an end-user PC requests a file, and portions of the requested f ...

news *

VPN Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not c ...

and

seedbox A seedbox is a high-bandwidth remote server for uploading and downloading of digital files from a P2P network. The bandwidth ranges generally from 100 Mbit/s to 20 Gbit/s. After the seedbox has acquired the files, people with access to the ...

reviews *

File sharing File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include ...

website news *

Copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

law news *

Warez scene The Warez scene, often referred to as The Scene, is an underground network of piracy groups specialized in obtaining and illegally releasing digital media before their official release date. The Scene distributes all forms of digital media, incl ...

news As well as other news affecting copyright, privacy, file sharing and adjacent topics.

Editorial stance

In a 2021 article, Andy Maxwell outlined TorrentFreak's editorial stance. He wrote: "As a publication entirely dedicated to reporting on copyright, piracy,

torrent Torrent or torrents may refer to: * A fast flowing stream Animals * Torrent duck, a species of the family Anatidae * Torrent fish * Torrent frog, various unrelated frogs * Torrent robin, a bird species * Torrent salamander, a family of ...

, and streaming sites (plus all things closely related), here at TorrentFreak we aim to tell all 'sides' of the story. We do not shy away from reports that show that piracy hurts sales and we have no problem publishing research projects that show completely the opposite. It's called balanced reporting and it hurts absolutely no one."

History

On 17 August 2007, TorrentFreak reported that

Comcast Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...

had begun

throttling A throttle is any mechanism by which the power or speed of an engine is controlled. Throttle or throttling may also refer to: Fiction * ''Throttle'' (film), a 2005 thriller * ''Throttle'' (novella), a 2009 novella by Stephen King and his son Jo ...

its upload bandwidth, specifically against BitTorrent users. This made

seeding The term seeding and related terms such as seeded are used in several different contexts: *Sowing, planting seeds in a place or on an object *Cloud seeding, manipulating cloud formations *Seeding (computing), a concept in computing and peer-to-pee ...

, which is an essential part of the BitTorrent protocol, effectively impossible. 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.

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 ''Consumerist'' (also known as ''The Consumerist'') was a non-profit consumer affairs website owned by Consumer Media LLC, a subsidiary of ''Consumer Reports'', with content created by a team of full-time reporters and editors. The site's focu ...

on 26 October 2007. In October 2008 through to March 2011, TorrentFreak ran a short lived video news service titled 'torrentfreak.tv', directed by

Andrej Preston Andrej Preston (born 1986), also known under the pseudonym (meaning "little elephant" in Slovene), is the founder of the former BitTorrent site Suprnova.org.Jani SeverSlovenian Pirate, ''Vest'', August 25, 2007. Accessed November 7, 2008. The ...

, founder of torrent site

Suprnova Suprnova.org was a Slovenia-based website that distributed BitTorrent trackers for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Started in late 2002 by Andrej Preston (known as Slonček, Slovenian for "little elephant") and for a ...

made available for streaming and download on

Mininova Mininova was a website offering BitTorrent downloads. Mininova was once one of the largest sites offering torrents of copyrighted material, but in November 2009, following legal action in the Dutch courts, the site operators deleted all torrent ...

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

Sky Broadband Sky Broadband is the consumer internet service offered by Sky UK in the United Kingdom. History In October 2005, Sky UK agreed to purchase the ISP Easynet for £211 million. At the time, Easynet were one of two companies in the UK that had ...

blocked the site for UK customers after torrent site

EZTV EZTV is a TV torrent distribution group founded in May 2005 and dissolved in April 2015, after a hostile takeover of their domains and brand by "EZCLOUD LIMITED". It quickly became the most visited torrent site for TV shows. History Foundin ...

pointed its

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed name service that provides a naming system for computers, services, and other resources on the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various informatio ...

servers to TorrentFreak's

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...

and, in July 2014, the site was blocked by the controversial Sky Broadband Shield parental filter system.

References

External links

* {{BitTorrent, state=collapsed News websites File sharing communities BitTorrent Publications established in 2005 Free-content websites Copyright infringement File sharing news sites