Man fined $7,000 for sharing 'WordPress for Dummies' via BitTorrent

Robert Carpenter of Poughkeepsie, New York has been ordered to pay $7,000 in damages for sharing a copy of "WordPress All-in-One For Dummies" on BitTorrent. Carpenter was part of a mass filing by publisher John Wiley & Sons last October that included 27 John Does allegedly caught sharing "For Dummies" books via BiTorrent.

According to TorrentFreak, Wiley has since filed over a dozen mass suits with several hundred John Does accused of illegally sharing copies of works from the extensive For Dummies series.

"Defendants are contributing to a problem that threatens the profitability of Wiley. Although Wiley cannot determine at this time the precise amount of revenue that it has lost as a result of peer-to-peer file sharing of its copyrighted works though BitTorrent software, the amount of revenue that is lost is enormous," Wiley's attorney wrote during the initial filing last year.

It was noted that that one popular For Dummies book on Photoshop CS5 was pirated more than 74,000 times on the BitTorrent site Demonoid.me alone.

Although many people targeted by Wiley have settled out of court (for an undisclosed amount, but ~$3,000 is common), the publisher is applying additional pressure to those who won't pony up. Such is the case with Carpenter, who ignored Wiley's complaint, according to a court document obtained and uploaded by TorrentFreak.

Interestingly, the $7,000 penalty isn't just for copyright infringement, but $2,000 of it is specifically for counterfeiting Wiley's trademarks -- a first for a case of this nature, TorrentFreak believes.

Boxopus pushes torrent downloads directly to your Dropbox, skips desktop clients

A new service called Boxopus has come up with an interesting way of bridging the worlds of BitTorrent and cloud storage, offering a way for people to cue up torrent downloads and have them automatically added to their Dropbox folders, all without even needing to install a torrent client on your computer.


Boxopus uses the Dropbox API, which means you can link both services using your Dropbox credentials, without fear of giving access to other files stored in your account. Once that step is done you can add as many torrents as you like through the Boxopus website and the latter will then take care of the downloading. All files are automatically sent to a special folder within your Dropbox account and synced across devices.

Of course, if you don’t want the same file downloaded on multiple computers, you can use Dropbox’s selective sync feature to leave torrent downloads in the cloud, accessing or downloading them as needed.

One of the main benefits to users is that they can add torrents to their Dropbox from work, school or on the road.TorrentFreak also notes that these downloads are anonymous, as Boxopus takes care of the downloading, although you are still required to enter your email when registering to the service.
Another thing worth highlighting is that the service aims to make torrent downloads easier for novice users with a one-click Boxopus download button that can be integrated into websites. TorrentReactor, Fulldls.com, Vertor.com, and Torrentzap.com have already added this option, according to TorrentFreak.
But of course there are several downsides as well, starting with the fact that free Dropbox users only get 2GB of space out of the box — you can bump that to over 10GB without spending a dime but there’s some work involved. Downloading generally takes a bit longer too because Dropbox sync speeds are limited. And of course there’s the question of whether Dropbox will block the service when pressed over piracy concerns.
Boxopus is completely free and unlimited during beta testing stage but the company plans to rollout paid subscriptions at some point in the future, imposing limits on free subscriptions.
Source : http://techspot.com

PC version of Battlefield 3 leaks onto torrent sites

With just over a week before its official launch in the U.S., DICE’s highly anticipated PC version of Battlefield 3 has reportedly made its way to various torrent sites. Gaming website Dark Side of Gaming says the download is 9.96GB in size and offers a fully playable version of the shooter's single player campaign.

There are no reports of console versions being leaked at this time. Also, those with pirated copies won't be able to access the game's multiplayer portion -- which is the real meat and potatoes of the Battlefield series -- as that requires a valid Origin account. Still, though the effect on sales might be limited, the leak will certainly upset DICE and game developers in general, as it seems it's no longer a question of if a triple A PC title will be leaked but a question of when.

Battlefield 3 is set to launch for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC on October 25 in the U.S. and October 28 across Europe. Earlier today, DICE revealed the nine multiplayer maps that will ship with Battlefield 3 at launch. Details and design insights for each of them are available at the official Battlefield blog.

On the PC the game will handle up to 64 players and will take advantage of the latest computer hardware with support for DirectX 11 and 64-bit processors. As such the recommended system specifications are notably high. Be sure to check our Battlefield 3 Beta GPU & CPU Performance Test and get the latest graphics drivers from both AMD and Nvidia.