For BitTorrent trackers that are hosted in Sweden, these are indeed dark times. Once a safe heaven for torrent sites, Sweden’s BitTorrent tracker scene has been collapsing ever since The Pirate Bay lost their case in Swedish court. In addition to the bunch of private trackers that closed earlier, two more popular Swedish trackers have decided to shut down their operations; SoftMP3 and SweDVDR. Another popular site based in Sweden, TTi.nu, has undergone major changes fearing legal action - It looks as if TTi will refrain from tracking copyrighted content in the future.

We have quoted below some of the messages posted on these sites informing members of the shutdown/changes. Note that some of these are translated versions since the original messages were in Swedish/Hungarian.

Following is now displayed on the homepage of SoftMP3, a popular private tracker that specialized in music torrents:

It is with great sadness we inform our members that this tracker is closed indefinitely on grounds of safety.

And quoted below is a new post from SweDVDR – a large torrent site that tracked untouched DVDR releases of Swedish and English movies. They were apparently threatened by Swedish Anti-Piracy Agency with legal action:

2009-04-22 - Swedvdr's future
Most Swedish trackers including Swedvdr has received threats from the Anti-Piracy Office so torrent activity must stop.
Since I do not want litigation against me will be sadly Swedvdrs tracker and torrents disappear within a week.
Like Swebits page will still be evident, including the Forum remains. / / Soft

Popular General/0Day tracker TTi.nu too have undergone a shocking policy change ahead of the mass shutdown of Swedish trackers. Below is a message posted by TTi staff on site homepage:

The future of TTi
All of us in Staff just came back from a 1 hour long meeting regarding the future of TTi. The meeting is now over and we have finally come to a conclusion.
From now on, TTi will only concentrate on bands/artists that want to spread their material on the Internet and waiting for a record contract. As you might have noticed, we have had our own music releases with bands that want to be spread around the Internet, hoping for a record label to spot them for quite some time. Because of all the turbulence and insecurity about whether it's okay to run a tracker or not, we have now decided to go full out on bands that want to be discovered through the Internet.
The forum will stay as normal. We know how much you like our forum, and we will do everything we can to keep up the awesome spirit that we have today. We will however make some small changes, all for the greater good.
More things will come up, but more info about that will come up later on.
We of course realize that many of you are disappointed about this suggestion, but we have decided that this is the best for the future of TTi, because closing down the site completely is something that will never happen. We hope that you will still hang around the site and help us out keeping the site as good as we have always been!
Best regards,
TTi Staff

Meanwhile the elusive and well hidden general/0day tracker DarkSide (DS – not to be confused with the torrent index DarkSide_RG) too have decided to shut down. Unlike other sites mentioned in this article, DarkSide is not shutting down due to legal threats (Swedish law has no impact on DarkSide since it’s a Hungarian tracker). As far as we know reasons for DS closure include the bad behavior (Hit and Run, etc) and attitude of majority of the site’s users as well as a flurry of low quality releases uploaded to the tracker recently. Anyways DarkSide was a great tracker and it will no doubt be greatly missed by it’s loyal members.

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Yesterday we talked about how a bunch of private trackers closed down for good and today we talk about the birth of a new BitTorrent site. That’s how it is in the world of BitTorrent  - sites get shut down, new sites go online and the Hydra lives on. Dead-Skull.net is a brand new private torrent tracker that specializes in Horror movies. As you may not there aren’t many specializes horror trackers out there apart from a handful such as Scarethe.Net, The Horror Charnel, & Cinemageddon. Therefore, Dead-Skull has great potential for growth in this almost untouched niche category.

As mentioned above Dead-Skull is a new entrant to the BitTorrent scene. At the time this post is being written there are only 26 members and 5 torrents on this tracker. Before you say ‘duh!’, note that Dead Skull has only been online for 5 days - all new trackers start small so give it some time for the news to spread and user base and torrent index to expand.

Dead Skull seems to be a private tracker from Russia. The interface language and the indexed content (so far) however are all English. This tracker actually has a nice, uncommon layout which is easy to navigate.

 

At this point of time not much else can be said about Dead Skull since it’s so new. Like all new BitTorrent sites it’ll have to face the test of time and survive the early stages. The start however looks promising and if you are looking for a new horror movie tracker, check this site out (signups are open).

Site Name: Dead-Skull (http://www.dead-skull.net)

Signup URL: http://www.dead-skull.net/signup.php

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Over the past few years, Microsoft have released some really crappy software – this definitely isn’t one of them. Microsoft Photosynth is a cool, innovative app developed by MS Live Labs which lets you construct three dimensional views using a collection of related images. The official page describes the software as “In simple terms, Photosynth allows you to take a bunch of photos of the same scene or object and automatically stitch them all together into one big interactive 3D viewing experience that you can share with anyone on the web”.

It’s really not easy to describe the functionality of Photosynth in a simple blog post such as this – you’ve got to try it out to really get an idea of what it can do. Thankfully the software is free of charge and is not a huge download. A new build of PhotoSynth (2.0.109.0415.1554) was released just a day ago and we have included the direct download links to this version below.

Download

[Click Here] to download Microsoft PhotoSynth 2.0.109.0415.1554 from FileForum (10.5MB)

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After what seems like an eternity, Torrent Bully is open for public signups. Torrent Bully is a General/0Day private torrent tracker with movies, music, games, E-books and specially a lot of TV series and MMA/UFC content. Although you may have not heard about this tracker before, it’s a well established private trackers with an active community of its own. TB is several years old and there hasn’t been many public open registrations during this time.

Torrent Bully currently has close to 8500 members and tracks 3500+ torrents. It’s a general tracker but as mentioned above they’ve given a lot of focus to TV shows and MMA/UFC related events. Popular torrents are well seeded, usually by over 50 seeders.

One of the downsides with this tracker is that it does not have many exclusive release or packs. There are some UFC packs but these seems to have been obtained from TorrentBytes tracker and are not exclusive. However, there is no shortage of 0day torrents here.

As mentioned earlier the site has opened signup after a very long time. A notice is posted on homepage regarding the open signups:

We are briefly opening up the site to let in some new blood, so to all our new members welcome!

In order to ensure high speeds for all our users we enforce a strict seeding policy here. Every member must seed every torrent they download to a minimum of 1:1 or for 72 hours failure to do this will result in an instant ban. Also any spoilers regarding ufc events either in the shoutbox or forums will also result in an immediate ban.

If you are looking for a General/0Day private tracker, check this out.

Site Name: Torrent Bully (http://torrentbully.com)

Signup URL: http://torrentbully.com/account-signup.php

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Until recently, Sweden was a popular safe heaven for both public and private BitTorrent trackers. However, the outcome of the recent Piratebay trial and the introduction of the IPRED law seems to have changed this perception. Soon after the Pirate Bay lost in court, several private BitTorrent trackers hosted in Sweden have decided to voluntarily shut down their operations fearing legal action. Some of these sites have entirely closed down while some have shut down only the BitTorrent tracker.

Over 10 Swedish private torrent trackers have so far closed their doors during the few days since TPB verdict was given. Popular trackers such as Swebits, Nordicbits, Swepiracy, ZineBytes, Piratebits, Wolfbits, Swebay, MP3Nerds and even the popular ratio free tracker Seedit are among those that have shut down. Talks of a possible shut down have surrounded the HD torrent tracker SceneHD as well (EDIT: SceneHD is not closing down).

Following message is quoted from Nordicbits homepage:

We have to shut down the site now due all circumstances. We don.t have time to do anything to the code, we don.t have interest to it, we don.t have any more money and the biggest reason is The Pirate Bay info.
We want to say thanks to everyone who made NordicBits possible, users, uploaders, seeder, moderators and administrators.
Hopefully the page will come back online late, but we new design, new information.
Thanks for us and keep the leeching up!
RIP Nordicbits (2005-04-10 - 2009-04-17)

And the following news post can be found on Swepiracy:

Honored members!
Swepiracy is now one of several filesharing sites shutting down the tracker after the conviction of The Pirate Bay. Of course we are all very sad making this decision, but as you can understand, none of us want to risk that much for a non-profit activity that Swepiracy always has been.
The site will remain, but the tracker will for now be closed. Maybe we one day are able to open it again!
We want to thank all faithful members which have been supporting us with donations and making the activity possible.
Yours sincerely Staff

Meanwhile Seedit have released a torrent with all info related to the shutdown (RiP.SeedIT.We.Have.always.been.the.best.of.the.best.Love.love.love.XXX-RIP) . Following is a partial translation of the text included in the torrent:

Today April 20, 2009, we at Seedit.org Down because of piratebay's conviction.
I (Vearstingen) would like to thank all other staff members for a wonderful fun & nice cooperation.
All days and nights we worked hard together to get all our secrets, which eventually dissolved.

Similar messages are posted on several other sites that have shut down/planning to shut down. Some trackers however have completely closed down by now and are not accessible anymore.

This does not mean that Sweden no longer hosts private torrent trackers. Some of the large and well established sites hosted in Sweden such as SweDVDR and RARBG continue to function normally. Ironically, the site involved in the case that triggered mass shutdowns, The Pirate Bay, too is still online.

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When it comes to PC security software, Kaspersky Lab’s products usually kick ass both in terms of usability and effectiveness. Heads up if you are interested in new Kaspersky product releases – new beta builds of both Kaspersky Anti Virus 2010 and Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 have been released. These new builds however are still in early beta testing stages and are nowhere near the final release. In case you are willing to install and try these new versions out, we have included direct download links at the end of this article since they are still not available via the official web site.

I have not yet had the time to test KAV 2010 or KIS 2010 betas extensively. Some of the differences over v2009 that were noticeable included a new revamped user interface as well as improvements in manual scanning time. More information about v2010 beta releases can be found on KIS/KAV2010 beta testing thread on Kaspersky Labs forums.

Download

Kaspersky 2010 series beta products are still not available for download via the official web site (I could not find them there). We have however included direct download links for both KIS and KAV 2010 products below.

[Click Here] to download Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 V9.0.0.313 Beta

[Click Here] to download Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 V9.0.0.313 Beta

Note that these builds are still in beta and you might run into undiscovered bugs or glitches while using them. Proceed at your own risk.

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From the responses we get to our comics related posts, we know that a lot of comic fans read this blog. This posts goes to them. Out of the 1000 odd private torrent trackers out there, there are hardly any dedicated comics trackers. Take FILEnetworks Blog for example – we have reviews of over 150 General/0Day trackers but of only one comics tracker. Good news is that a new specialized comics tracker has stepped in to fill this void. It’s simply named Comics Torrent Tracker, or CTT. CTT has not been around for that long but the site certainly looks promising.

For those concerned with statistics, CTT currently has over 1200 members and tracks over 900 active torrents. Some of the torrents that are indexed use external trackers such as TPB (these are of course all free leech). CTT does have their own BitTorrent tracker (which is private) - there is a good number of indexed torrents tracked using this as well.

Speaking of the content, there are all sorts of comics available for download. This includes both US/English and non English comic books (see categories below for more information). One of the thing I’ve noticed in CTT is that they index a lot of 0day comic packs – a valuable resource for hard core comics fans.

There is a bonus system present on CTT – you can exchange bonus points for upload credit. All new users start with 100 bonus points as well as 1GB upload credit.

CTT is currently open for registrations. If you are looking for a site to download electronic version of comics, give this site a go. You might end up liking it.

Site Name: Comic Torrent Tracker (http://comictorrent.net)

Signup URL: http://comictorrent.net/signup.php

Categories

• Comic Covers
• Comic Edition
• E-Books
• Erotic comics
• European comics - Belgium, Croatian, France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia
• External Torrent
• Japanese Comics - Anime, Hentai, Manga
• List's
• Other - Various collections
• U.S.A. Comics - Dark Horse Comics, DC, Image Comics, Marvel, Vertigo
• Veseli Cetvrtak - Brad Baron, Dampyr, Dragonero, Dylan Dog, Komandant Mark, Leo Pulp, Martin Mistery, Mister No, Tex Willer, Zagor
• VIP Downloads Comics
• Written comics

Related Articles

• Sites to download comics in CBR, CBZ formats (BitTorrent trackers and direct links)
• How to open & view .CBR, .CBZ, .CB7, .CBT and .CBA files (Comic Book Archives)

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About two weeks ago we held our fourth Cinematik invitation giveaway with 99 free invite codes. The response we received for that was quite overwhelming – over 250 requests were received within a few hours. Unfortunately, we only had 99 codes at our disposal and a lot of readers missed out on getting an invite. The good news is that Cinematik admins have agreed to provide additional invitation codes and we are now ready to conduct our fifth Cinematik invite giveaway - this time with over 200 invites.

What is Cinematik tracker?

We’ve seen people signing up for this tracker ‘just because they can’ and then abandoning their accounts without even using them. Please do not do this – read the Cinematik tracker description below and if it’s not your thing, don’t waste an invite code.

Our mission is to provide cinephiles of classic, independent, rare and outlandish films a friendly location to discuss and share their own interests with current members of this ever-growing community."

We are a ratio-based tracker. It's a purely DVDR (DVD5/DVD9, PAL+NTSC) community, with a lot of rare releases. There are a lot of quality films as far as as classic, cult, foreign and indie go. Once you join you will soon get a feel for what is and isn't allowed on the site by browsing through it.

We do carry a lot of films that were big hits in their day, but you won't find the latest blockbuster flicks here.

We're part of the Golden bandwagon, thanks to our lovely bastard-sister-site AsianDVDClub, with a freeleech Movie of the Week and usually at least a dozen other torrents, picked by staff or suggested by members rotated semi-weekly. All the largest torrents have Silver status - usually big box sets - which is that only 1/2 the downloaded stats are counted.

Some more information and an screenshot of the tracker can be found in our last giveaway article located here.

IMPORTANT:

• Do not make multiple accounts. You will be banned.
• Read Cinematik Rules and FAQ

Note: This is a FILEnetworks exclusive giveaway. We don’t mind you sharing this news with your friends at other BitTorrent forums/sites but please do not post direct links to the giveaway.php page or copy paste invitation codes from the giveway.php page. If you want to share the news, feel free to link to this article. This giveaway should be productive for both the users as well as the tracker itself – we do not want random people signing up without even knowing what Cinematik is all about.

Invitation Codes List: http://cinematik.net/giveaway.php

Signup URL: http://cinematik.net/register.php?with_invite=1

The giveaway.php page lists all currently available invitation codes. At the start of this giveaway there are 210 codes. Used invite codes will automatically be removed from the list. Good Luck!

Special thanks to Cinematik administrator team.

Keep reading FILEnetworks Blog, our Giveaway threads, and our private trackers section for more free invites and open signup updates.

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Releases groups from the warez scene are hugely popular among online pirates. These groups release high quality warez material at amazing speeds and are responsible for leaking majority of movies, music, games, E-books and other pirated material out there. Due to this very reason, release groups have attained celebrity status and are hero worshipped by even the average torrenters. Here is an article that will be useful for those who collect ‘souvenirs’ related to the warez scene.

Scene releases are often accompanied by NFOs or cracktros - groups usually make it a point to include their logo in such external files. This article features a massive downloadable collection of scene release group logos released at various points of time. There are over 1500 images included in the pack - most are in full color and some are in B/W.

Note that this Art Pack is brought to you by Defacto2 – a long running scene new portal. Following information is quoted from Defacto2 home page:

Today we have released a new file pack, the Group Logos Pack. This is a collection of over 1,560 scene group logos and art pieces that were once collected by Climbatiz. Climbatiz once ran a web site at http://crackart.95mb.com/ which housed all these pieces but it has long since been abandoned. So the collection has been donated to us for hosting.

The pack is released under a Creative Commons (cc) Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike licence. The artworks within are still copyrighted by their respective artists.

Download

The logo collection is roughly 57MB in size – the archive is freely downloadable from Defacto 2.

[Click Here] to download scene group logos pack from Defacto2

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Here is a quick update on 10 private torrent trackers that are open for signup as of 17/4/2009. This update roundup includes up to date information about ElbitZ (E-Learning), ExDesi (Bollywood), CCFBits (HD), 7Track (General), AceTorrents (General), FreeTheScene (General), Scene-Inspired (Ratio free/General), PMTorrents (Mobile), STMusic (Music) and Spirit Tracker (Educational). Almost all of these sites have been reviewed in detail here on FILEnetworks Blog – if you missed them the first time around, here is another chance to get in.

ElbitZ
 
Site Name: ElbitZ (http://elbitz.net)
Signup URL: http://elbitz.net/signup.php
Stats: Unknown number of users and close to 5500 torrents
Description: Elbitz is a great E-Learning tracker with lots of E-Books, video tutorials and test engines. This should be a good alternative to those who are suffering from the shut down of Docs.Torrents.Ro. For category details. screenshots and more information about ElbitZ check our previous article located here.

ExDesi (ExD)

Site Name: ExDesi (http://exdesi.com)
Signup URL: http://exdesi.com/register.php
Stats: 3200+ torrents and 61500+ members
Description: ExDesi is a BollyWood/Hindi/Pakistani movies and music tracker. For full tracker review refer to our previous article located here (Screenshots included).

7Track
 
Site Name: 7Track (http://7track.org/)
Signup URL: http://7track.org/register.php
Stats: 1000+ users and ~1050 torrents
Description: 7Track is a fairly new general tracker which runs on the Gazelle codebase. For full tracker description including category details, screenshots and mini review refer to this article.
IRC: irc://irc.7chan.org/7track

AceTorrents (Ace-T)

Site Name: Ace Torrents (http://www.acetorrents.net/)
Signup URL: http://www.acetorrents.net/signup.php
Stats: 8100+ users and 7850+ torrents
Description: Ace-T is a decent general tracker with good pre times. Full review can be found here.

Free The Scene (FTS)

Site Name: Free.The.Scene (http://www.freethescene.net)
Signup URL: http://www.freethescene.net/register.php
Stats:7800+ users and  2300+ torrents
Description: FTS is a decent general tracker that runs on the Gazelle codebase. Full review including screenshots can be found here.

Scene Inspired

Site Name: Scene Inspired (http://www.scene-inspired.com)
Signup URL: http://www.scene-inspired.com/signup.php
Description: Scene Inspired is a community based general/0day tracker that’s been around for quite a while. This site is technically a ratio free tracker via the permanent free leech system. We hear from the admins that the site will close its doors on the 3rd of May.

PMTorrents
 
Site Name: Portable Media Torrents (http://www.pmtorrents.com)
Signup URL: http://www.pmtorrents.com/signup.php
Stats: 5550+ members and ~500 torrents
Description: Portable Media Torrents (or PMTorrents) is a private torrent tracker that specializes in applications, games and video (movies and TV shows) for mobile devices.Full tracker review along with screenshots can be found here.

Spirit-Tracker
 
Site Name: Spirit Tracker (SpT)
Signup URL: http://www.spirit-tracker.org/signup.php
Description: Spriti Tracker is a large educational site with lots of documentaries. Currently only 14 open slots are available for the taking – if you couldn’t make it inside, check back frequently. They tend to have few slots open almost daily. Full tracker review can be found here.

STMusic (STM) 

Site Name: STMusic (http://stmusic.org)
Signup URL: http://stmusic.org/signup.php
Stats: 39000+ torrents and possibly over 40k users
Description: After being down for quite a long time, STMusic is now back online. STM is a good music torrent tracker and a great alternative if you aren’t a member of What.cd or Waffles.fm. The site has a unique layout, tracks both scene and non scene music torrents and generally offers good download speeds.

CCFBits

Site Name:  CCFBits (http://ccfbits.org)
Signup URL: http://ccfbits.org/signup.php
Stats: ~16000 users and 7000+ torrents
Description: CCFBits is a Chinese private torrent tracker with lots of HD content (majority English scene and p2p releases). Interface language is Chinese but all major functions have English labels.

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