With 2021 drawing to a close, we take a look at the most widely read news articles published on TorrentFreak this year. There was a lot of interest in IPTV-related enforcement actions, Yout legal struggles, and The Pirate Bay resistance. At the same time, the oldest active stream in the world was once again in the spotlight.
Every year we write hundreds of articles here on TorrentFreak, and some are more popular than others.
On the brink of the new year, we look to 2021 by reviewing the twelve most read stories of the last 12 months.
All in all, it was quite a controversial year once again. Pirate IPTV services targeted the world, Yout.com managed to temporarily unblock itself in Brazil, and Netflix stepped up its VPN ban. Of course, no list is complete with at least a few mentions of Pirate Bay.
But what will 2022 bring?
Popular stream extraction site Yout.com is fighting legal disputes around the world, including a lawsuit. against the RIAA in the US In Brazil, Yout operator Johnathan Nader scored a win earlier this year after achieving appealed a website blocking. However, this blockade was later restored after the Brazilian authorities launched a criminal prosecution.
Netflix stepped up its efforts to prohibit VPN and proxy users from circumventing geographic barriers. The streaming service started blocking residential IP addresses, as some unblocking tools use them to bypass the restrictions. This decision was not without collateral damage, as many regular Internet users without a VPN reported "missing content" on Netflix.
In September, the Federation Against Copyright Theft and the West Midlands Police announced that they have shut down a major illegal streaming operation in the UK. Two men and a woman were arrested on suspicion of copyright infringement and fraud-related charges. The service reportedly had hundreds of thousands of customers who were greeted by a police message rather than the expected television content.
In Italy, authorities reported a follow-up to a 2020 raid that shut down a pirated IPTV provider. More than 70 people face complaints, and 49 resellers of the service are required to pay more than 500,000 euros in fines. The police can then go after IPTV clients as they reportedly have a database of 65,000 users.
In February last year, the police reportedly attacked the famous Denuvo cracker, EMPRESS. In an interview, the cracker pointed a finger at popular repacker Fitgirl, while blaming Reddit users for reporting her to authorities.
The popular BitTorrent client uTorrent was again flagged as problematic by antivirus vendors. Microsoft's Windows Defender took drastic measures simply by removing the application from the operating system. The software was classified as "risky software", "malware" and "potentially unwanted software". In addition to uTorrent, rival client qBitTorrent faced similar problems.
There were dozens of movie leaks in 2021, but James Bond's “No Time to Die” sparked the most interest among readers. Despite widespread attention, download numbers were relatively low for this low-quality leak that took place before the US theatrical release. Download numbers spiked later in the year when a high-quality copy appeared. online.
The Pirate Bay suffered some downtime last year. A rather unique problem appeared in January when the site became almost unusable. These confusing glitches left many users scratching their heads, but with a little creativity it was still possible to get it to work.
After GitHub Takedown Battle, Take-Two Interactive sued several programmers Linked to popular re3 and reVC fan projects Grand Theft Auto. In response to the court, the programmers said that the fixes and improvements to their games are fair use.
The Pirate Bay quietly turned 18 this year. The site survived several closure attempts and remains online. According to Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, rights holders simply can't stop the torrent site. “The only way for him to die is if the people who run him get tired and try to kill him. There is no power of the film or technology companies that can affect that, ”Sunde told us.
A coalition of Hollywood studios plus Amazon, Netflix and Apple sued two IPTV providers in the US The companies targeted AllAccessTV and Quality Restreams, which are allegedly operated by the same person. The complaint claims that the sales are made through a fake VPN website and a large network of resellers that funnel customers and revenue to the platforms.
In September, the world's oldest active torrent file turned 18. The torrent "The Fanimatrix" was published in 2003 when BitTorrent was still a relatively new protocol. At the time, the torrent creator saw it as the only affordable option to share the Matrix fan movie with the world. Fast forward to the beginning of 2022 and the torrent is still going strong.
