TorrentFreak

A man who uploaded Super Mario Bros. for the Wii before its commercial release has agreed to settle with Nintendo. The 24 year-old, who uploaded the game to the Internet in November 2009, has agreed to pay the games giant $1.3m in damages.

In 2008 Olympic torrents were hugely popular. The opening ceremony was downloaded more than 2 million times in the first week, outraging the International Olympic Committee. With Vancouver 2010 starting later this week, several broadcasters have declared war on Olympic pirates.

Should copyright holders be allowed to get the identities of Internet users behind an IP-address for private prosecutions, or should that ability be left solely with the police? That’s the key question behind a pivotal hit movie camcorder case which is set to move amid an unusual amount of secrecy to Norway’s Supreme Court.

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Avatar’ tops the chart this week followed by ‘Sherlock Holmes’. ‘Daybreakers’ completes the top three.

Following a lengthy legal procedure the Court of Bergamo has once again ruled that Italian ISPs have to censor their networks and prevent customer access to The Pirate Bay. Millions of Italian Internet users will be denied access to the popular torrent site in an attempt to prevent copyright infringement.

DigiProtect has shot itself and its business model in the foot during a recent court hearing. The notorious anti-piracy outfit refused to open its books for scrutiny during a case where it claimed compensation against a file-sharer. The judge consequently ruled that the defendant didn’t have to pay the majority of the claim against him.

Last week the gaming giant Ubisoft announced their latest DRM invention. In order to play purchased games customers have to be connected to the Internet at all times. Game developers are skeptical of this new anti-piracy solution, but could it actually be a step in the right direction?

Some of the newer LG TVs have USB support, allowing consumers to hook up an external drive to their screen in order to view photos, listen to music, or enjoy a movie. In the manual that comes with these devices, LG doesn’t try to hide the most popular use for this feature as they show customers how to play a pirated movie.

In November 2009, an indie movie received unprecedented worldwide attention after becoming a massive hit on BitTorrent networks. ‘Ink’, which was downloaded well in excess of 400,000 times, shot into the top 20 movies on iMDb. In a new interview, the creators talk about their experience and the future of movie distribution.

The 2010 Oscar nominees were announced yesterday, inspiring many people to fire up their BitTorrent clients. Each year we take a look at the availability of the nominated films online. This year there is a downward trend as only 79% of the films have leaked online in DVD quality.

A few hours after Avatar received nine nominations for the upcoming 2010 Oscars race, a DVD screener of the film leaked online. The leak, which presumably originates from a screener copy sent out to one of the Academy members, is expected to be downloaded by millions of people before the Oscars winners are announced.