anyone looking for aXXo links. I found a cool site with no sign up. It looks new but lots of links
www.torrent-revolution.ws

Due to an issue with pirate bay,aXXo will no longer use sites that link to said site.This info I read in torrentbox forum:"about adso".
Hopefully he will find sites that make him comfortable and respect his/hers work.

cheers tes1point8 :)

When I trid to access axxorelease.com I got redirected t this site http://axxo.superfundo.org/ seems ok, not really looked at it yet.

Take care clue

what is a said site im new at this at some of the lingo i dont understand i just know that ive gotten some axxo torrents and they look pretty good

sorry tes1point8 I don't understand what you are asking.

@tes1point8,sorry for confustion,by "said site" I mean pirate bay,I didn't want to spell it out again.Most aXXo torrents on said site are fakes,beware:)

thanks

But aXXo releases are shitty re-encodes of scene stuff anyway, why would anyone go deliberately looking for one of those releases?

@tes1point8
If you are looking for Proper aXXo Releases go to this site. http://www.torrentbox.com/account-details.php?id=277561 There all proper DVD Rips from (Adso). Not someone using his name aXXo to rip you off and install Crap on your computer.

check out this site it has direct links for proper dvdrips from axxo- judt got a couple and they're the real deal
http://www.torrent-revolution.ws/

@NIP (nobody in particular)

Can some-one tell me the best way to know whether a torrent is a true axxo or not.

The only way I know to prevent rubbish is to scan the file immediately after download.

But then I do this with all downloads.

@onlyme1,the axxo releases that are there are proper,check out the forum for interresting news:"about adso"
@uncertaingod,only as a matter of opinion I find proper axxo releases to be of high quality and small file size,not to say that there are none better,but few and far between.
@tes1point8,I checked out the site you mentioned,quite nice.
@clueless,went to the site you were rederected to,am very impressed.The forum is very inviteing, vast in its content.

@quark
aXXo only uses this as a Name his real release name is (Ados)Go to the link I posted, I only download aXXo from from this site. Never had any problems.
@azoth
Good site all link's are true will check out the Forum

Bad spelling (Adso)

@quark,thats a method everyone should use whatever they download.I know torrentbox was adso's base and the torrents from that site are safe.He/she is no longer uploading to the site because of the issue with pirate bay.I don't know where he/she is up/ling to now.
A site I checked out today looks like it has new axxo releases.

i personally love the axxo (adso) torrents. they are small size, quick dl, and am never disappointed in the playback on my dvd. i mostly use the torrentbox site as it loads quicker than the superfundo site. (i have never been virused from either spot)and if my family luv the movie and would watch it a couple more times, (with all the behind the scenes stuff which my kids enjoy) then its off to 'buy more' i go lol

he`s GREAT, i hate the fakers!!!!!!!

@onlyme1

Thanks do you have any idea what's happened to Death734
his uploads were always top quality and full of info.

death734 never seen him all his posts good?

death734 is excellent for TV releases!!! Those are the ones I go for when I have the option.
As for aXXo, to avoid fakes with the older movies he posts with three files, 1)avi, 2)readcarefully, 3)info.
Torrentbox IS the best site for them as they update quickly, and he will no longer be posting with his 3 files for the newer stuf. Due to lack of standing with Pirate Bay he has deleted all of his posts(or a huge majority) of them from that site. One of the best places for torrent news is at TorrentFreak, I will post a link.

http://torrentfreak.com/
All the aXXo news is near the beginning of November I beleive. A quick search through there will give ya all the info. Wahoooo!
Oh and for any one interested another great uploader is

http://www.torrentbox.com/account-details.php?id=482516

duivel3666, another for torrentbox, he supplies a mix of TV (mainly SMallville and Heroes) and esoteric movies along the horror genre.
good times.

Many thanks Vicious

@viciouslollipop
duivel3666 is a great uploader, But not (all) DVD rips
Superbad is not a rip it's a 2 cd rar FLAiTE release it's OK though got it myself.
@quark
Death734
I don't know will try to find out and keep posted.

This is for anybody, I found this site, it tells you what axxo files are fake:

http://83.149.99.14/forums/index.php?s=569920a7f302ca324cc1d945e67ddab6&sho
wtopic=27453

And I have found that the only way I can tell it is a real axxo is the name of the files, axxo files are DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo.avi thats the only way I know.

Take care clue

@azoth

So glad you like it, I have made someone happy, my work is done for the day lol.

Take care

Who is AXXO? Where does he/she live and when will they be home? Just curious.

Also do you know where I can find Neo?

I find the best site to get my shows really quick downloaded with 30 mins average is IPtorenntscom for example i was downloading greys anatomy by 10 past ten ten mins after it was over and i had the show within 20 mins fastest site I have every seen

cheers mates

@singlew4

In a paxo box I think(for peeps that dont know what paxo is, it is stuffing that you stuff in birds), and last I heard Neo was in the Matrix :P LOL

Take care clue

@captainsheridan

I just looked on that site (iptorrents.com), you need an invite to get on there :(

Take care

@NIP
I Know we aii want free stuff Stay clear of Hitman Hitman 2007 DVDSCR. You cannot scan and your desktop has a new link, Stay with who you trust.

@single4
aXXo is one of the leading uploaders in the torrent community, His movies are allways top quallity, and free of bugs. Usually he puts up one or two a week, and there is allways a good mix of genres. I will post a link for you of one of the more trusted sites.

http://www.torrentbox.com/account-details.php?id=277561

His user name is Adso on this particular site.

@admin, or a mod,
not sure if posting this link is allright because it's for movies, if you could get back to me on that......

@clueless..not so clueless about neo lmao

@appara

lol :p I only remembered because he is soooooo hot ;)

Take care clue

AXXO is a torrent god

Check out this link it has links to real adso"axxo" torrents and links check it out if you like adso its worth looking at
http://www.torrent-revolution.ws/

axxo as gone to a new site called"MOVIEOID.COM".

AXXORELEASE as finished

here is where I go ..............ssshhhh.............
torrentguy. Be quiet, it's a secret.


fishwink

I just went to Torrent-Revolution and wasn't able to download anything at all (08.30 GMT Sunday 25th Nov) - perhaps there is a server problem?

i went for a look see...looks like you can only d/l with utorrent

@n8ph8ts

Thanks for that information - I use Bitlord though, if what you say is true, I might download and try utorrent.

Axxo is the greatest uploader of torrents. But i think there are some fake torrents in the name of axxo now in some sites.
Any one who know about him/her plz give some infor.

if you have download his you would know his is 2nd to none ! you have to look at files his name is on it!

@hush320
If you read my posts a couple or more up, I have provided some links for more info on aXXo ;)

@vicious
thanks for it. Before i had not that much time to read all the posts in here. But i will read.

Thanks a lot great to have ShareTV users helping other users :)

@NIP

Think aXXo is now posting as FLAXXON. Dont know if it's true.

I dont see any links from axxo in torrentguy why is that????

With the incredible contribution he has made it might be that he has gone more low profile. He seems to have stopped posting about the same time that bloke in GB was busted who hosted the huge tv and movie streaming site.

Much as we love share tv it can't last forever.

@NIP,
Check out this story:http://filesharingplace.be/forums/?showtopic=179400
It is being whispered on Torrentbox forum by a profile named "jop" that this is concerning adso.

That doesn't sound like fun. People should bring it up as an election issue. Also online sponsors of the sites (is it really microsoft advertising on Share tv?) should speak up.

First run movies are understandable but not TV shows.

@singlew4

Maybe we should have a forum entitled 'Ask Bill'. LOL

@quark
I think that would be fun.

Nobody asks Bill, they beg of Bill and he robs them and crushes them financially then screws up their computer with half written code and crap like Vista.

Only fun if you can afford Apple.

Here is the site you will get all the aXXo files; and they are the genuine thing.

http://superfundo.org/

@flygirlnz
Superfundo and http://www.torrentbox.com/account-details.php?id=277561 used to be a release site but he has not released since mid November. As i said earlier think he's changed his name to FLAXXON. Try this site http://movieoid.com i downloaded FLAXXON from there all OK.

@onlyme1
superfundo states that AXXO is on vacation and will not upload anything for the next couple of months, this isn't the first time he has taken a break.

Guys please Axxo is terrible Download stuff from real sceners. Diamond Septic MVS are all great scene groups why download from axxo? All his stuff is public and i bet the FBI has a honey pot set up to catch all the IP's since he's such a huge target

Hi all I am new here and just wondering does it matter who creates a torrent as long as it is a show you want, a newbee question I know but I am new at this just trying to understand.

Newbe, as you continue down loading you will find vast quality and trust issues. Axxo offered not only unequaled quality Axxo had films before they were released, or so it seemed.

http://www.mininova.org/user/aXXo
.......This is aXXo's official site...he has taken a break it seems...All downloaders are badly missing him...In the meantime,some other good ones have come up...One such notable one is FXG...his official link is http://www.mininova.org/user/FXG
.....The quality is real good...Can be compared with the ones that axxo releases...

As far as I know aXXo only uploads films/movies and this site is ShareTV. There should not be a thread concerning aXXo on this site.

Make it so.

Nagila Jean-Luc

Sorry but I have had this out with others. He has upped some TV. Shows.

But in general you are right, of course. He prefers to do Movies.

AHFA

hes hard too find right now ? any one ?

I don't recall which thread it was in but I seem to recall that it was said he was fed-up with others using his name for bad torrents.

I am sorry

I thought axxo only uploaded films/movies but it appears that I'm wrong and he does upload some TV material.

I also apologize. I thought that aXXo only uploaded movies but I am told that he also uploads TV series.

Sorry.

@metallica

Sorry but wether public or not AXXO si the best there is, his quality is 2nd to none, he has 6000 seeds per torrent/ Let the FBI trace some ip's (doubtful) if they like but I woulf never trust anyone over him. Know he does poker programs and books but never seen him upload tv shows though, not that i am suprised.

It annoys me we don't allow discussing movies here when relevant, they aren't tv shows yes but surely if the convo goes that way it should not be censored!? just keep it relevant and use your own initiative, we aren't in Japan are we???

@nip there are lots of great private trackers and uploaders out RIver darmeth, a couple more that i cant think of right this instance both of those to U.K. tv and movies as well american tv and they are fast like it takes me 15 mins to download any UK show 25 30 if it is a 2 hr show IPtorrents is also way good with their seeders and rippers and they are way fast too same speed as darmeth and river

cheers mates

1 POINT

I have been downloading aXXo for some time now. I generally go to Superfundo under aXXo there are others that are good on this site. This site has recently undergone some changes, I have had no problems with any material retrieved from SuperFundo.

SuperFundo recently referred to Torrentbox this site seems very good aXXo is referred as "adso" I would use these sites for his torrents.

aXXo apparently has other legitimate sites but I refer to the above sites only as there are some who use his name attempting to ruin P2P. As an aside SuperFundo indicates aXXo is taking a break.

Regards
Fozzy

Good info Fozzy thanks.

axxo posts all of his releases here
http://axxo-release.blogspot.com/

axxo hasnt released anything since November.
I don't think hes coming back

@fozzybear, thanks for the site tip! :)

I've had big problems with aXXo, either no sound or gotta get a dom player ...

axxo is ok, but not aXXo. sharethefiles has been good too.

@extralien

aXXo or adso has such a good reputation there are people whom do not share free P2P interests.

The best they can do is to place fake torrent files out on the internet hoping it will all end.

In other words pay for each movie you see! Superfundo, Darkside are solid sites with honorable/safe downloads.

Thx Fozzy. I have been aware of axxo for quite a while and several others too. Then general difference I've noticed with axxo is the use of the word Axxo, it would appear that aXXo is the fakers. for some reason I see more aXXo fakes than axxo fakes. axxo is usually the good stuff. I find that interesting. It's almost like somewhere along the line, they can't make make their use of axxo look genuine. Which is rather odd. All that said though, as long as axxo or aXXo is good stuff you get then who cares? :-)

Oh and thx for the site tips.

just found this http://www.youtorrent.com/
and http://scrapetorrent.com/Search/

hope they help if you've not seen them before.

@extralien

I'll check it out thanks!

yes, superfundo is a great place to download aXXo rips

http://axxo.superfundo.org/

axxo has had a lot of people using their name with fake torrents recently, but another good dvd ripper is fxg and also fxm, but they also have people copying them

Darmeth and River are still the best I have found especially for the Hd 720 stuff


cheers

@sam1980

I must say I like your avatar. It is a pity it's not a bit clearer. It looks like a German Shepherd?
German Shepherds were always my favourite breed.
My Bella was 130lbs of solid muscle and was the best protection dog I ever had, but she was a softie with kids and friends.

@nip
for no sound with aXXo files, grab the AC3 filter, and presto! Sound, here I gotta link for it some where
~~~~rummage rummage~~~AHA!!!

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/AC3_Filter.htm

there are some other helpful links towards the top of this thread as well.

@quark.

he is a german shepherd, great dog. we rescued him from an animal shelter. his name is zak

@sam1980

I too only have had rescued dogs. Why go to a breeder when so many are in need of a good home?

aXXo is Back.
1st upload is I Am Legend DvDRip ironic but he is one of the best. I know this is a TV site but I though people would like to know. Trusted link's below.

http://www.superfundo.org/

How do you know this is not just someone using his name?

Theres been official word, the attention whore with the crap 1cd re-encodes is indeed back.

@ungod,Do you put up better? Lets see it.Give me a link to a torrent you have uploaded.How can thousands of people be wrong. "1cd re-encodes"Don't know what you mean by this.Isn't this what you all do?

1 cd re-encodes are what he does, he takes a scene release, runs it through the encoder to make it ~700mb regardless of the level of action in a film, colour depth, etc and packages it out as his own. All of his releases are already out there in superior quality and the only advantage to those releases are an easy to search for term.

@ungod,
What is the style you prefer?And why is it different than a DVDRip? Scene release?I think this would be enlightening for everyone,if you don't mind.Pardon my ignorance of such things.Thank you.

Style, I just prefer to have a copy of the film from the original release source. Whenever you renencode something especially when you shrink it down to one cd from a 2 cd release you lose quality, in most of axxo's releases the extremes of colour are very muddy indeed.

There is a reason the scene groups agreed on and stick the there quality rules, it's because they are the best size/quality balance.

And as for do I put up better, yes I do I seed plenty of torrents on specialist trackers.

@ungod,
Do you mean by scene or original source,someone in a movie theater with a cam-corder?
I would like to try one that you have put up to see the difference as long as it isn't rar format.I only d/l avi.
I have very good play back equipment and would notice difference.
I get most of my stuff from Moviex or Pirate Files and they are known for what you speak but most are in rar.

I find axxo releases to be good quality, not much different than the screeners I have also downloaded.I have all hd equipment, complete with a plasma tv. I don't see much difference myself, unless you are actually watching an actual hd copy. Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me.

@mrsjerry

A woman that has everything-well just about everything!

I like his releases too unfortunately does not work with that DLink media player. I still have not figured out why!

@fozzybear

I'm missing a few things. Can you help me out?lol I think my neighbor has the dlink media player. I'll ask him if he can play avi files with his. I like the fact that axxo releases can be burned in batches onto dvd's and I can take them camping for rainy days.

Why can't you do that with other releases?

@uncertaingod
I like the 700mg size of the avi files, that's what I mean. I can burn these 6 or 7 movies onto one disc which can be played with my portable dvd player(divx compatable)I can do this with any avi file. I just trust axxo for consistent quality.

Now that axxo has made his name its worth it to download his torrents because they have so many seeders. You may find an excellent quality copy of a film but have to wait days because nobody else knows about it.

Have been dling axxo torrents since I starderd doing this and cannot say that I have ever had a bad one.

Have tried others a few times and been burned with crap.

Darmeth and River are good also.

Belonged to BlockBuster for quite awhile. Ripped what I rented and then re-encoded them to 1 cd files. Could not really tell the difference, but with my eyesight what it is that does not make a difference.

Scene stealer: The aXXo files
To Hollywood executives, he's public enemy number one. To film fans around the world, he's a modern-day Robin Hood. As the internet's most prolific pirate makes his 1,000th illegal film download available to the masses, Tim Walker investigates the mysterious figure known only as aXXo


At 8.40am on Monday 15 December, a new post appeared on an internet forum called the Darkside Release Group. "Darkside_RG" is a clearing house for internet pirates, a site dedicated to the online redistribution of movies, music and videogames. Its members happily spend their days sharing and discussing their ill-begotten booty on the site's many message boards.

The post in question contained a BitTorrent file – the most widespread and efficient filesharing method on the web – containing an illicit copy of a second-rate Kiefer Sutherland horror film called Mirrors. Though the mainstream media ignored it, this was a landmark moment for millions of filesharers worldwide: the 1,000th movie uploaded by aXXo, the internet's most popular and enduring pirate. If you already know his name, chances are you've been doing something illegal.

This aXXo may be anonymous, but he (or she, or they) is a global brand. His most popular uploads are downloaded illegally by up to a million internet users per week. His files regularly make up more than one-third of all the films trafficked on BitTorrent. Most of them are mainstream multiplex fare – aXXo's recent posts include Mamma Mia!; the Ricky Gervais black comedy Ghost Town; and Bangkok Dangerous and Eagle Eye, thriller vehicles for Nicolas Cage and Shia LaBeouf.

The list of the Top 100 movie downloads at The Pirate Bay – one of the largest "torrent portal" sites, which aggregate torrent links from around the web – is littered with his work, easily recognizable by the suffix "DVDrip-aXXo" left like a graffiti tag at the end of each filename. Over at The Pirate Bay's most popular competitor, Mininova.org, aXXo's fame is evident in the "search cloud", a page of the most searched terms on the site, their relative popularity denoted by the size of the font in which their names are displayed.

"Today, the largest search terms might be aXXo and Prison Break, if Prison Break aired on US television last night," explains David Price, head of piracy intelligence at the internet consultancy Envisional. "But tomorrow Prison Break will be a lot smaller, whereas aXXo will always be that size. Over the last two years, he's been one of the top five searched terms on Mininova every day."

Whenever aXXo posts a new film (which can be as often as three times a day) his followers fill the comments boards with praise. He is the lowly film-fan's Robin Hood. Last year, one aXXo fan, codenamed the_dwarfer, composed a version of the Lord's Prayer for his idol, which began: "Our ripper, who art on Mininova, aXXo be thy name..."

The name aXXo first appeared in November 2005, when he began to post pirated movies to the message board at Darkside_RG. He quickly acquired a reputation for both quality and convenience. All of his films were copied to DVD quality (or near enough for the amateur eye); in a simple format that would play instantly on almost any computer as soon as the download was complete; and handily compressed to emerge at 700Mb, just the right size to fit on a single writable CD.

Uploaders generally have a shelf life of a few months before they get bored – or caught – but aXXo persisted. "aXXo guarantees quality," Price explains. "In the piracy world, there's no Film 2008 to tell you which version of a film to download. Instead, the community tells you that aXXo is the guy to look for, because everybody else downloads him. As soon as a DVD rip of a film appears online, people search out aXXo's copy, because they know they're guaranteed a good piracy experience."

The question of aXXo's identity is undoubtedly of interest to the authorities, but it's also an abiding obsession for his fans. One Canadian documentary film-maker, for example, is working on a film entitled Searching for aXXo. The blog Torrentfreak.com is devoted to the torrent sharing culture. In March 2007, its creator, a 28-year-old academic from the Netherlands who writes under the pseudonym Ernesto, appeared to have landed a brief but exclusive email interview with the elusive aXXo. His interviewee claimed to be a teenager working alone, a naive but philanthropic soul who believed that, if a good film is out there, "everyone has the right to be entertained by it." The interview was quickly discredited by the ensuing web chatter, and Ernesto, asked today if he thinks his interviewee was a hoaxer or the real deal, replies curtly: "I have no idea." My own request for an email interview with aXXo, left in his Darkside_RG mailbox has gone unanswered.

The otherwise uninformative Darkside_RG profile for aXXo suggests he was born in August 1972. There's no reason why this should be true but, says Price: "I wouldn't have thought he was a teenager. Whoever claimed to be him was probably a fake. From what we know, he's fairly experienced." In a recent piece about aXXo for the online magazine Slate, reporter Josh Levin said he believed aXXo was not American – but, Price suggests, he is probably a native English speaker.

As with Operation Ore, the international police operation to prosecute users of online child pornography sites, the copyright cops are planting spies in the chatrooms and forums of the torrent community, hoping to ensnare the pirates who frequent them. The ultimate prize would be aXXo. Envisional's work, says Price, has led to arrests in the past. "We have had successes searching for individual uploaders and leakers of content. With aXXo, we know where he tends to be active online. If you visited the right bulletin boards and forums, and you knew what to look out for, you would find other people who were searching for him."

BitTorrent, aXXo's chosen distribution method, is a filesharing technology that, serendipitously, arrived online at around the same time as home broadband became standard. Created in 2001 by Bram Cohen, then 26, a programmer from Seattle, the software was intended to be a means for music fans to share bootlegged videos of live performances by artists such as the US singer-songwriter John Mayer, who encourages such recordings by concert-goers.

Though the BitTorrent software itself is legal, and can be used to share any number of legitimate digital items, its efficiency and user-friendliness inevitably made it the amateur pirate's weapon of choice. Today, BitTorrent has well over 150 million users worldwide. "I'm studying social behavior," explains Ernesto, "and the torrent community interested me because it is by far the largest library of our modern day culture. BitTorrent has a more social aspect than other filesharing protocols: sharing is rewarded."

Unlike traditional peer-to-peer (P2P) networks such as Napster and Kazaa, which share files directly (and rather slowly) between two users' computers, BitTorrent collects pieces of the downloading file from across the filesharing network, seeking out segments of the film, album or application from every user's computer. This "file-swarming" not only makes downloading faster, it's also the epitome of filesharing – the more users there are online, sharing a particular file, the faster each of them will complete the download.

Hence aXXo's popularity: as a trusted brand name, users rush to acquire his releases as soon as they appear online. His small "torrent" file takes a matter of seconds to download from a torrent portal site like Mininova, after which the user add it to their computer's BitTorrent queue, sit back and watch the data flood in. With so many people downloading the same files at once, an entire aXXo film can be complete and on a user's desktop in a few hours at most.

But aXXo's popularity can be a curse. Once his name became common currency among downloaders, it was simple enough for less sophisticated pirates to piggyback on his success by imitating his tag in their own torrent files; one site turned up calling itself axxotorrents.com. There were also more sinister schemes afoot. In 2007, word spread through the community that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) was uploading fake, blank torrents labeled as aXXo releases, in order to collect the IP addresses of downloaders. Next, someone intent on giving him a bad name started to upload aXXo-tagged files filled with malware – software designed to infiltrate and corrupt a downloader's computer.

An angry aXXo got into a dispute with both axxotorrents.com and the torrent portals that chose to host his imitators. The pirate was infuriated by the appropriation of his work – in spite of appropriation being his own stock-in-trade – and ceased uploading altogether until axxotorrents.com agreed to close down its domain name.

Unlike other torrent portals, however, The Pirate Bay's Swedish founders – who are driven not by any code of honour among thieves, but by an ideological opposition to copyright law – refuse to give high-profile uploaders the VIP treatment. aXXo's protests fell on deaf ears and, in November 2007, after deleting all his torrents from The Pirate Bay's pages in a fit of rage, he disappeared from the web altogether. His friends at Darkside_RG reported that he'd decided to "take a break".

In aXXo's absence, other uploaders had their moment in the sun. FXG, whose DVD rips were about the same quality and size as aXXo's, became a popular alternative. One smart uploader named themselves Klaxxon, so that each time a casual downloader searched for aXXo's name, they would find a Klaxxon torrent instead. Perhaps concerned that he'd been forgotten by his fickle public, aXXo resurfaced in March.

"He tried to go away," says Price. "But he came back. The pull of it is quite attractive to him. When you have millions of people downloading your content online and they know who you are, that's quite an incentive. Even if he's not getting any money, he is getting name recognition and status." To commemorate his return, aXXo chose as his first post the symbolic – and hubristic – film title, I Am Legend.

The authorities aren't the only ones who have it in for aXXo. He's also deeply unpopular among an elite group of internet users and abusers known only as "The Scene", which has existed in one form or another since the 1970s – before aXXo (the name, if not the man) was even born. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of illicit content available for download comes not from consumer-bought CDs, DVDs and games. Instead, film industry insiders, cinema projectionists, DVD factory workers and retail assistants plunder their employers' forthcoming releases and pass them on to the high-level pirates that comprise today's Scene.

The Scene's so-called "release groups" are at the top of the piracy pyramid. Each group will likely specialise in a certain medium (film, TV, games, music) – even a specific movie genre – and will include computer experts (or "rippers") with the skills to turn a two-hour movie into a compressed file that is easy to transfer online without any loss of quality. Once the release group has their copy, they seed it online with the help of enthusiastic mediators. Within hours, it is freely available to the average BitTorrent user on The Pirate Bay or Mininova.

The Scene's motivations aren't financial. The object of the exercise is simply to get your pirate copy of a film out there before any other group, and well ahead of its official release. Respect and reputation are earned through speed and technical skill. The Scene may be elite, but it's a meritocracy. Its code – again, ironic for a group engaged in the systematic demolition of copyright law – demands that any pirated material must give credit to its original ripper or release group, no matter how far down the piracy food chain it has come.

This explains the Scene's contempt for aXXo, who, it is widely believed, simply duplicates work that has already been produced by a higher-level release group. His re-encoding of the Scene's film releases into a clean, user-friendly format requires relatively little risk, and relatively little skill. In a world where the only reward is prestige, it must be galling for the Scene to watch aXXo taking the credit for their hard work. It also explains aXXo's motivations, and his anger at seeing his name taken in vain. Like Bruce Wayne, aXXo may only be celebrated for the actions of his alter ego, but he is celebrated all the same.

Industry insiders claim that illegal downloads cost the global film business £500m last year. According to a 2006 study by Envisional, P2P networks and their ilk account for at least 60 per cent of all internet usage. In the UK alone, more than six million people shared an estimated 98 million illegal downloads in 2007. These numbers will only grow as broadband speeds increase. Virgin Media recently launched the first 50Mb broadband service, and hopes to make it available to the entire UK customer network of 12 million in 2009. At that speed, a DVD-quality movie could be downloaded to a home desktop in less than four minutes.

Earlier this month, an estimable group of disgruntled British film-makers – including Kenneth Branagh, Richard Curtis and Stephen Daldry – signed a letter to The Times demanding government action against the internet service providers (ISPs) who make illegal filesharing possible. The MPAA, meanwhile, is already lobbying the incoming Obama administration in the US to improve internet filtering technology in the hope of foiling online piracy. Thanks to new legislation, President Obama will be required to nominate the country's first "copyright tsar" to oversee such issues.

The biggest problem for anti-piracy groups is the growing social acceptability of illegal filesharing. "The easier you make it for people to download, the more people do it," says Price, "and the less moral or ethical concerns they have about it. I talk to teachers and solicitors who'll say they streamed something from the internet, without realizing it's illegitimate." The entertainment industry is still seen as bloated and greedy. Downloading movies is an apparently victimless crime, and if there is a victim, it's "The Man".

"We also never see how their data is calculated," says Becky Hogge, executive director of the Open Rights Group, a civil liberties group devoted to the digital universe. "Policymakers trot out figures, but we're never sure of their provenance. There is a meme sloshing around that suggests they overestimate the numbers. They used to equate the cost of piracy to the [entertainment] industry as a multiple of how many files were being shared illicitly online, which assumes that if you didn't get the stuff for free, you'd go out and buy all of it – which simply doesn't hold."

It's even difficult to prove the pirates' detrimental effect on individual films. The most pirated movie of 2008, according to TorrentFreak's annual listing, was also the year's biggest box-office success: Batman sequel The Dark Knight. The film's cinema release grossed close to $1bn (£700m) worldwide, and three million copies of the DVD were sold on its first day in the shops. Although it was downloaded more than seven million times on BitTorrent alone, Ernesto reported in his accompanying post, comments on various sites suggest that many of the downloaders had also paid to see the film at the cinema.

One enthusiastic, London-based torrent-user who preferred to remain anonymous estimates that he downloads around four or five films each week (including The Dark Knight). However, he says, "I pay to go to the cinema at least once a week. I very rarely buy DVDs, but then who does? Most of my friends prefer to subscribe to DVD rental sites like Lovefilm. Ownership of the physical artifact seems increasingly moot.

"I do have qualms about it, but it's a two-way street. The commercial cinema is increasingly homogenic; there are hundreds of films that never get decent distribution, and now I have a platform to see them. For example, I waited months for Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain to come out in the cinemas – when it finally did, it screened on three or four screens spread across Greater London, none of them for more than a week. Roughly a month later it was online."

The Dark Knight's internet leak followed a standard pirate release pattern: immediately after the film's July premiere, a "cammed" version, filmed secretly from a seat in the theatre, dropped onto the web. Next, in early September, a DVD-screener copy (with the film interrupted at intervals by title cards announcing a copyright breach) made its way online. Finally, in November, a few weeks before the DVD was due in stores, the DVD-quality pirate copy (aXXo's specialty) appeared, was appropriated by aXXo, and soon spread across the net like wildfire.

In an article written for Torrentfreak.com in January, Matt Mason, author of The Pirate's Dilemma, wrote that "when pirates enter our market spaces, we have two choices. We can throw lawsuits at them and hope they go away. Sometimes this is the best thing to do. But what if those pirates are adding value to society in some way?... In these cases, what pirates are actually doing is highlighting a better way for us to do things; they find gaps outside the market, and better ways for society to operate. In these situations the only way to fight piracy is legitimize and legalize new innovations by competing with pirates in the marketplace."

Mason's book demonstrates that the history of piracy is also a history of innovation, one that includes the names Thomas Edison (inventor of the record player) and William Fox (founder of Hollywood). Ernesto agrees: "The ever-increasing piracy rates show there is a demand that the entertainment industry has not satisfied. Thanks to the internet, access to media on demand has become reality, and people seem to love it. It's now up to the movie and music industry to come up with a model that can compete with these filesharing networks."

iTunes has proved that the music industry can compete with a parallel black market online. In the US, Hulu.com, a website set up by the major television networks to stream their programming online, has done the same. Project Kangaroo, the UK equivalent, is currently in the works. "If it's very easy to find and has a lot of content, people will use it," says Price. "Hulu is bringing in huge amounts of advertising revenue for the TV companies, and it's bringing people back from the piracy networks."

"The entertainment industry would make more for artists if it embraced these technologies and found ways of doing business online," Hogge argues. "When you have six million people breaking the law, it's the law that needs changing, not the people."

Anti-piracy activists have celebrated some small victories, with trials pending in Sweden and the Netherlands for the creators of The Pirate Bay and Mininova respectively. But neither site actually hosts torrent files; as portals, they merely point the way to them – and there's no guarantee that the law will find a way to penalize them for it. Meanwhile, new torrent portals will spring up in their place, and as long as the authorities focus on the sites rather than individual uploaders (prosecuting individual down loaders has brought record companies almost nothing but bad PR), they will do little to stem the torrents' flow. The outlets may be closed down, but the aXXo brand can just move on elsewhere.

The internet makes power-brokers of the most unlikely people. Harry Knowles, a portly, 37-year-old film fanatic from Austin, Texas, became the web's most influential film critic after he was accidentally run over by a 1,200lb cart full of memorabilia at a science fiction convention in 1994. While bedridden, he bought a new computer and set up his own movie website, Ain't It Cool News, which today has the power to sink a film with a negative review before it even reaches cinemas.

Andrew Sorcini, aka MrBabyMan, is an animator for Disney in Los Angeles, who spends his days (and possibly his nights) recommending articles and web pages on the news aggregator website Digg. As the site's most popular recommender of content, he wields the same influence as the editor of a major newspaper.

But MrBabyMan and Harry Knowles haven't the mystique of aXXo. They're flesh and blood. You can find their faces on Google. Their fame may be remarkable, but they achieved it straightforwardly – and legally. The abilities of aXXo, on the other hand, seem almost superhuman. To his followers, he is Robin Hood, Batman, God: he is everywhere, and nowhere.

great read nog thanks go axxo

Second that.

Nog do you perchance know what happened to Death734.
He/she/they also was a provider of extremely good torrents.

@quark,
He's still around,I talked with him just today at TV.com.

I just found an interview with axxo.

http://torrentfreak.com/interview-axxo-the-most-popular-dvd-ripper-on-bitto
rrent/

It's a fake,it's not axxo.

So i guess he keeps a low profile.

Good read

http://www.torrentportal.com/account-details.php?id=175429

Thx canadadan


To all

The URL posted by canadadan tells you all the torrents uploaded by Axxo to Torrentportal the latest was yeaterday.

Does axxo upload TV shows?

Sometimes

Where has axxo gone this time? He has been gone for months.

I was told he has changed his uploading name because of those who try to impersonate him.
How true this is who can say.

He`s still uping watched some the other day.

@Odo

Are you sure it was genuine axxo? Was it a recent release? Where did you get it?

yup, was great if not him it was great pm me and i`ll tell.

I see he has visited his account at Demonoid recently and changed his avatar. Fame always has it's price.

@nogds ,know that one lol
he has other sites he`s uping at now.