There’s been a lot of talk about censorship lately. Last week the Internet witnessed the largest protest in its history, against the Internet censorship bills PIPA and SOPA. And earlier this month ISPs in Finland and the Netherlands were ordered to censor The Pirate Bay.

Alongside the millions who protest against these increasing censorship initiatives, there’s also a group of people who come up with ways to route around it. One of these projects is the RePress plugin for WordPress.

The plugin is developed by the hosting company Greenhost and allows everyone with a WordPress blog to start a proxy for sites that are censored elsewhere in the world. As an example, Greenhost have setup a Pirate Bay and Wikileaks proxy.

“By adding this plug-in to your WordPress website it will start functioning as a proxy and uncensor any blocked website you’d like,” Greenhost explains. “The only thing you’ll need is a WordPress website and the ability to install new plug-ins. After that you can maintain a list of websites you’d like to keep open freely available on the web.”

Repress Options

One of the main motivations for the plugin’s developers was to provide people in the Netherlands full access to The Pirate Bay when the recent court order is enforced. However, if SOPA or PIPA pass there might also be a need for people in the US to have a tool like this.

“We hope people outside Holland use the plug-in to uncensor piratebay.org, as it is in danger of being blocked in our country after a court-ruling. In the Netherlands we could then uncensor websites for people in oppressive regimes like Iran, Syria or the US after SOPA is passed.”

“[SOPA and PIPA] are said to defend the interests of the Entertainment industry, but will mainly cause grave and undeniable damage to the Open and Free web and all of its users: from the end-consumer to the cutting edge developers and inventors. Our aim is to make this impossible,” the Greenhost team notes.

Although the plugin can’t prevent domain names from being seized, it is indeed a good solution to bypass all of the common blocking measures that are used today.

The RePress initiative is applauded by several politicians, including European Parliament member Marietje Schaake. “This is a fantastic opportunity for human rights activists and a solution for people who face technological censorship and repression,” she told Webwereld.

To those eager to start their own proxy of blocked websites, RePress can be downloaded in the WordPress repository.

Source: WordPress Plugin Unblocks Censored Sites, Including The Pirate Bay

With WordPress pretty much anyone can set up a personal blog or small website in a few minutes, and thanks to the new WP-Trader plugin it becomes just as easy to start a fully operational torrent site.

The levels of work and expertise required to run a large torrent site shouldn’t be underestimated of course, but there are also hundreds of hobbyists out there who have the desire to set up a small torrent site of their own. WP-Trader is aimed at the latter, and it has a wide range of features that support the needs of every self-aspiring torrent site admin.

WP-Trader developer Andrew Walker told TorrentFreak that he saw the need for an ultra-simple torrent script through his half-decade long involvement in the forums of the popular Torrent Trader script.

“All of the torrent tracker source codes out there are unique or good in their own ways, but I saw a lack in one click install and setup for torrent sites since only a couple of sources offer that function. On a daily basis I saw people coming into the forums having problems with install and setup of their sites,” Walker told TorrentFreak.

“I do have a strong belief that if you do not know how to install or mod your own torrent site then you should not be running a torrent site but something like WP-Trader can benefit artists who have little to no knowledge about how to set up a site,” Walker adds.

Torrent listing

So the idea for WP-Trader was born, and little over a month ago the first version was released via the WordPress plugin repository. Since then, Walker and his co-developer Lee Howarth have added new updates every week, and they’re dedicated to improving it further during the coming months.

“At the moment the plugin is still in beta and does lack a lot of features but new things are being added weekly. The plugin was built around Torrent Trader V2.07 and some things you see in Torrent Trader will stay, we were are trying to use a lot of the built-in functions of WordPress,” Walker adds.

The current release already comes with a wide range of options and a fully functioning tracker. Users can choose to make all uploads public and allow external trackers for example, but it’s also possible to run a completely private tracker with ratio requirements and wait times for lower user classes.

In addition, WP-Trader comes with several widgets, to show off the latest uploads and most active torrents for example. The full list of features is too long to list here, but you can get a glimpse of the options below.

A selection of the many WP-trader options

While WP-Trader already has all the features a basic torrent site needs, there is still a lot of work to be done. Aside from ironing out the bugs and implementing new features such as support for anonymous uploads, the developers will also work on a more seamless integration with WordPress.

“We plan on fully integrating it as closely as possible with WordPress because WordPress has plenty of features or plugins to handle certain things which we feel that should not be added to the plugin,” Walker says.

The WP-Trader team hopes that a lot of people will take the plugin for a spin, and provide feedback where needed. WP-Trader is available for download in the official WordPress repository, which also hosts a FAQ section and some pointers on how to get a torrent site up and running in no time.

Source: Turn Any WordPress Site Into A BitTorrent Tracker

There's nothing worse than that "womp womp" moment for Windows Phone users when they find out a favorite website doesn't have an optimized mobile app. Seriously. It's proven. Now, however, Wordpress aficionados can spread the love with the Windows Phone Starter Kit -- a package that promises quick and easy development for Microsoft's mobile marktplace. With the included skeleton code, admins only need to replace one line, insert the blog URL and tweak some settings in the CMS until presto -- the app's finito. Like other Wordpress dev kits, this one allows users to view posts and moderate comments. Hopefully, the promise of a super simple platform will be enough to entice developers to sit at Ballmer's table and fatten up the app store, particularly with Mango positioned as the next course.

Windows Phone Starter Kit for Wordpress hopes to lure developers, beef up marketplace offerings originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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British law firm Tilly Bailey & Irvine (TBI) which began a file-sharing settlement letters scheme earlier this year, later withdrew from the business due to masses of bad publicity. A staff member from the company later tried to rewrite history on its Wikipedia page by removing any references which showed its connection to this work.

While we have covered developments with these type of schemes closely here on TorrentFreak with numerous Davenport Lyons, ACS:Law and latterly TBI articles, there are other sites which concentrate purely on them. The excellent BeingThreatened consumer site is an excellent resource, but for those who prefer a more tabloid-style take on events, the ACSBore blog can be quite an eye-opener.

After an earlier site, BeingScammed, was threatened by ACS:Law and was eventually taken down, a guy called ‘Hickster’ – himself wrongfully accused of file-sharing by the company – became motivated to launch a replacement.

“Really the aim of the site is to put pressure on the law firms that are falsely accusing people of filesharing,” Hickster told TorrentFreak.

“Imagine when an internet connection is in a wife’s name and she receives a letter from these people accusing her of downloading and watching some vile pornography. I mean does she look at her husband in the same manner? Especially when it is gay pornography, what could that do to a marriage?”

Although Hickster maintains that he only publishes the truth, he does admit that his blog takes a ‘Red-Top Tabloid” approach. Anyone familiar with the British tabloids will know that they are not averse to a bit of image Photoshopping should the need arise, and it is that type of activity that has caused Tilly Bailey & Irvine to complain about the ACSBore blog.

Back in January we reported that Lord Lucas had labeled the type of scheme run by these law firms as “straightforward legal blackmail“. It was this statement that inspired Hickster into action.

After culling a photograph from the FaceBook page of a lawyer who handled file-sharing cases at TBI, Hickster transformed it into a Wild-West style ‘Wanted’ poster which declared “Wanted: For Legal BlackMail” and offered a $1000 reward – an amount similar to the settlement fees demanded by these companies. This image was then included in an article on his WordPress-hosted blog.

This week in correspondence with WordPress, Tilly Bailey & Irvine complained about the image claiming “Copyright Infringement and Libellous statements”. The section describing the complaint reads:

The copyright image of Ms Amanda Mitten is framed in a ‘Wanted’ poster with the word “Wanted for Legal Blackmail”. We consider this statement to be defamatory in terms of the wording used and the way in which the copyright image has been framed in a ‘Wanted’ poster. There is no truth in the statement that Amanda Mitten personally or Tilly Bailey & Irvine LLP has been involved in “Legal Blackmail”. Such a statement is misleading and false.

This blog entry can be viewed by general members of the public who have access to the internet and as such cause injury to the reputation of Ms Mitten. This blog entry has caused great distress to Ms Mitten personally. It is generally accepted under English law that defamatory statements on web pages are to be regarded as libel.

The company also claims that the displaying of the image constitutes copyright infringement and goes on to state that as the publisher Automattic, Inc. can be held liable for defamation. TBI then formally put the company “on notice of our claim for copyright infringement and defamation” while demanding an immediate takedown of the image.

Interestingly, TBI then threatened to use a Norwich Pharamacal Order against Automattic, Inc. to obtain the identity of Hickster – the same technique it used to obtain the identities of alleged file-sharers – so it can take further action against him. Although the WordPress operator took down the image, it isn’t going to play games with their users’ identities.

“We only dealt with the DMCA notice contained within the e-mail sent to us,” said WordPress in correspondence. “We will not, under any circumstance, disclose any contact/personal/private details of our bloggers without a U.S. Court Order, and this has not been presented to us.”

This isn’t the first time that Hickster’s actions have drawn the attention of lawyers acting against file-sharers in the UK. He was named in the legal threat made by ACS:Law to file-sharing forum Slyck.com earlier this year, after he referred to a law firm employee as “a wanker“

Source Torrentfreak.com