Vortex Network, the touted replacement for the BrokenStones tracker, is today surrounded by controversy.

The site owner announced she will link the site to a non-profit organization as part of a wider plan to unite all BitTorrent sites in a new air of legitimacy. Staff and members are leaving the site en masse.

A few weeks ago after difficulties with Malaysian hosting, the much-loved BrokenStones BitTorrent tracker went down.

When news of a replacement site started to filter through, staff, members and others were prepared to offer time and resources to make the site a success. This led to the birth of Vortex Network - a brand new site put together in record time and one of the first to be built on the shiny new ‘Gazelle‘ codebase, developed by What.cd.

Around two weeks ago, a message appeared on the site, written by Rachel Faith Anderson, “Owner, SysOp and Chief Admin of the Vortex Network”.

In it were thanks to the ‘heroes’ who put the site together along with statements about Vortex Network becoming something unique and something different, a standard claim for a new BitTorrent site trying to get off the ground.

“Welcome to the eye of the storm my friend” ends the notice from Rachel, which has turned out to be quite the prophetic greeting.

read more | digg story

The only Democratic FCC Commissioner who came near to approving the proposed merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio changed course today; Jonathan Adelstein now says he will not support the deal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Communications Commission will soon approve the proposed merger of Sirius and XM satellite radio, but with some punitive strings attached. According to the Journal’s latest post (subscription), Republican Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate, the last holdout on the deal, will soon give the go ahead to the union.

But she wants “a consent decree that resolves several enforcement issues involving the satellite radio companies and a combined fine of about $20 million,” according to the story.

read more | digg story

Some artists, bands and labels claim that their lives are ruined by their material being available on P2P networks.

BuckCherry are complaining that a track from their latest album has leaked to BitTorrent. How do they complain? Via an Atlantic Records press release. I smell a rather large free-publicity rat.

Leaks of pre-release material onto the Internet are pretty normal events these days. Even the mainstream media are happy to cover the big leaks, usually while portraying file-sharers as the son of the devil.

In the past many file-sharing news sites have covered such leaks of movies and music as a matter of course, but as they become more prevalent, less people report on them.

read more | digg story

BitTorrent is without a doubt the best way to share large files, as long as you follow some basic rules, that is. We asked one of the leading BitTorrent client developers for some tips and tricks so you can speed up your BitTorrent downloads.

Since there’s always a lot of debate about what works and what doesn’t, we decided to ask an expert to share his thoughts with us.

Olivier Chalouhi, developer and CTO of Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) was kind enough to give us some of his own tips and tricks.

Since Olivier was the person who initiated the Azureus Open Source project in 2003, which went on to create one of the most popular BitTorrent clients ever, if anyone knows how to get the best out of your torrent client, he does.

read more | digg story

A man allegedly seen ‘camming’ the latest Batman movie has been arrested by police. Following guidelines, theater employees called the police after suspicions were aroused.

According to the MPAA, many other movies have been recorded at this theater.

Hindering piracy of the movie was always high on the list for Warner and it handed out night vision goggles in Australia in an attempt to thwart ‘cammers’ - people who record movies in theaters.

In Australia ‘cammers’ are asked to leave if they are caught by theater staff, in the United States things are a little different.

read more | digg story

Last month, the prominent Malaysian ISP “Shinjiru” had shut down several torrent sites, following pressure from the government.

Strangely enough, after a few days of downtime some of the sites started to reappear, like nothing had happened. However, those sites who did not leave, are now being tapped.

This turned out to be a false sense of security though, as the sysop explained.

“Two days ago we discovered that an external disk was suddenly mounted on our box (in a quite clumsy way, I might add) 24/7 support didn’t know shit about it, until 2 hours ago when a senior admin confirmed that this disk was attached by their legal department and out of their hands.”

read more | digg story

During the last three years, not many new BitTorrent clients have surfaced. Together, the likes of uTorrent, Azureus and BitComet have a 90% market share, with uTorrent being the most popular client.

For a new client it is nearly impossible to catch up with these giants, but Halite might just stand a chance.

The open source application is developed by Irishman Eóin O’Callaghan, who started the project in 2006, and has been adding features and improvements ever since.

We’ve been following Halite’s development for quite a while now and over the past few months it has become a fully-featured, yet lightweight BitTorrent client.

read more | digg story

As we mentioned earlier in the week, EU commissioner McCreevy has been pushing for a longer copyright period for recorded performances.

This proposal has now passed the commission and is on the way to the parliament.

The upside however, is that the commission also aims to break music royalty monopolies.

read more | digg story

YouTorrent is without a doubt the most talked about newcomer in the BitTorrent scene this year.

The site initially indexed all the popular torrent sites, but switched to purely ‘verified’ torrents after receiving legal threats.

Today, YouTorrent officially relaunches with 67,170 “legal” torrents, good for 6 TBs of data.

read more | digg story

Just days after the QuebecTorrent BitTorrent tracker was taken down by an injunction in a blaze of publicity, a near identical clone of the 108,000 member tracker has appeared out of nowhere.

Allegedly the product of the old team, Torrent411.com is up and running with 109,000 members - and counting.

read more | digg story