Saturday, 04 July
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Friday, 03 July
22:57
French Broadcaster Sued for Firing Employee Based on HADOPI Stance [ZeroPaid.com]
It was the story of an e-mail heard around the world. You may remember Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim who expressed opposition in an e-mail to his member of parliament. That e-mail went back to his employer, TF1, who then promptly fired him because of his political views back in May. Now, Bourreau-Guggenheim is suing TF1 for discrimination.
His journey throughout all of this probably started off as a humble employee, working at Frances broadcaster, TF1. He probably had no idea that one day, he’d be the centre of a major political debate that the whole world is watching at the time.
Then, the HADOPI law debate came up. Three strikes and your out for copyright infringement online. At the time, the proposal would have no judicial oversight whatsoever – not to mention being forced to pay your subscription fee even though you have been, well, banned from the internet. You’re name would be added to a blacklist so you can’t subscribe with another provider and the amount of time you were disconnected, at the time, was still being determined.
Not surprisingly, the law was just about as controversial then as it is now. For Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim at the time, he wasn’t exactly too keen on the law either. So, while at work, he sent an e-mail to his member of parliament to express his personal opposition to the “three strikes” law. His member of parliament’s office, who also happened to be part of the governing party, UMP, then forwarded the e-mail to the minister of culture who then forwarded the e-mail to his employer, TF1. Bourreau-Guggenheim boss then hauled him into his office where he was showed a copy of his e-mail before he was fired for “strategic differences”
His story hit several major French newspapers. He went from just a side-line employee to a front-line borderline celebrity who is against the French three strikes law. The story has since caused political waves.
Now, it seems, a new development has happened in this case. French newspaper, Le Monde, is reporting (Google Translation) that Bourreau-Guggenheim is suing his former employer, TF1, for discrimination. His lawsuit is based on article 225-2 of the penal code which addresses “violations of human dignity”.
The punishment for such a violation is up to three years in prison and a 45,000 euro fine. That article specifically deals with an employment dismissal based on a political viewpoint.
Le Monde makes an additional interesting point:
By revealing the affair in its issue of May 7, Libération had quoted from the letter explicitly refers to mail sent to Ms. de Panafieu. Including this clarification: “This correspondence was received through the office of the Minister of Culture, which has posed address the same day the company TF1. A path to strong symbolic resonance, given the suspicions about the relationship between power and sarkozyste audiovisual group, whose main shareholder, Martin Bouygues, is the near the head of state.
Another part of the article says:
It is true that the case has already made much noise but it has needed to add: wrangling in the Assembly, where the former Minister of Culture, Christine Albanel, has been strongly implicated by the opposition; sanction against the member of his Cabinet who had transferred to the TF1 mail received from Ms. de Panafieu (Le Monde, 12 May).
Now committed criminal in a long process, Mr. Bourreau Guggenheim-must adapt to circumstances. To live this matter without further destroying his career. Say they have had “some contact with elected representatives of the opposition, which (l ‘) were invited to participate in debates on Hadopi”, the former part of TF1 should also “reassure (the) future employers” when is invited to an interview. TF1 who denounced “positions (…) radical expressed publicly,” he defends himself on these two points: “I am loyal, I have nothing being published at TF1. And I am not an extremist free download.”
At this point in time, it’s not hard to see this as a no win situation for the UMP of France, not to mention TF1 who is neck deep in this political fiasco as well. It would appear that Bourreau-Guggenheim has a number of additional options should things go sour for him including referring to the European Court of Human Rights. Though one can only imagine how much additional political damage that would cause for the government who is not only intending on pushing through the three strikes law at all cost, but also changing around the French court system and giving judges only approximately 5 minutes to rule on each disconnection.
This case about a French employee fired for opposing the three strikes law, unfortunately for TF1 and the UMP, isn’t going to go away any time soon.
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.
20:11
I’m in the midst of moving, so I’m stuck in between mountains of cardboard boxes and molehills of bubble wrap this holiday weekend. That means I have little access to the Internet and television and, by extension, the Wimbledon semi-finals. Evidently, NBC forgot the “live” part of its online live-streaming and is delaying the televised and online coverage, a tactic NBC CEO Jeff Zucker is fond of (tape-delayed Olympics, anyone?).
East coast bloggers are particularly perturbed:
Staci D. Kramer (the “D” is for “Damn you, Jeff Zucker!”) at paidContent writes:
I’m sitting outside on a lovely Friday morning, sipping a cup of tea and catching up on the news. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s the final Friday of Wimbledon and I’m reduced to either watching a pirated feed from a place where the broadcasters value live sports or following the Andy Roddick-Andy Murray match vicariously through Twitters and live blogs. That’s because NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) values the Today Show more than live sports and, or at least, more than this live sport and its fans, and NBC Sports has the right to “save” a match for its exclusive window.
And Henry Blodget, who seems ready to bludgeon Zucker, writes over at Silicon Alley Insider:
Following on its disastrous “coverage” of the Wimbledon quarterfinals, NBC is now wrecking the Wimbledon semifinals.
Andy Murray and Andy Roddick are a tight first set (Roddick’s up 4-3). ESPN, which owns the rights for this hour, can’t show the match on TV because NBC won’t let them.
NBC, meanwhile, refuses to show the match online, because that might dilute its TV audience when it finally bothers to put Wimbledon on the air.
If NBC’s coverage was a tennis match, this would be a double fault.
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Playing Whack-A-Mole With Data: The Pirate Bay Lives On [TorrentFreak]
Like everyone else I’ve been reading, talking to friends and thinking about this for the last couple of days. What I’m about to say is the result of that — my own opinion and nothing more.
Let’s start with a great fact: that, as Rasmus Fleischer of Piratbyran points out, the entire Pirate Bay could fit on a single USB stick. This got me thinking: what if someone was to simply scrape and copy all The Pirate Bay’s torrents over to a new tracker and Mininova and all the other indexes currently using the TPB tracker were to change their listings to point to that? OpenBitTorrent.com for example, an independent open tracker which started recently.
What if someone else — it could be anyone; it could be you! — decided to make a new index of these torrents. Call it ‘The Pirate Ship’, ‘Brand New Pirate’, whatever. I’m sure someone has already got a domain ready and waiting for this.
This new index would be functionally equivalent to The Pirate Bay. By the magic of copy-and-paste, TPB would have transplanted itself somewhere new. The corporate ‘buyers’ are free to run the old site into the ground with whatever specious business models they care to waste their shareholders’ money on, while The Pirate Bay’s new foundation uses it to fund interesting, new projects.
Think about it for a moment. What would be the downside of the sale here?
Privacy, possibly — a serious concern. Had The Pirate Bay been keeping logs of seeders and leechers, the acquiring company could — after flailing about for a few months trying to sell bits and bandwidth — auction this to the highest bidder. But TPB have been scrupulously failing to keep such logs. So provided people switch at the right time — as I’m sure they’ll have the intelligence to — there will simply be nothing to sell.
Let’s not be glib about it: after the shenanigans with insider trading, who knows if the deal goes through. But if it does, those behind TPB may have managed to square the circle, sliding out from behind the old, compromised identity while handing-off everything of value (tracker, torrents, users) to the community.
The very fact that this is possible should give those backing business models based on copy-restriction something serious to think about. Not only is this not a blow for P2P, it’s a signal of something very worrying for the MPAA and Co. Spend years going after the world’s most prominent pirate site, only to find that when you get it, it dematerializes and by the magic of copy-and-paste, reappears elsewhere in a different guise. It’s like Whack-A-Mole with infinite holes, infinite moles, and just one hammer. Your odds: not good.
The feelings of betrayal and being ’sold out’ by the TPB founders are natural. We believe(d) in The Pirate Bay; The Pirate Bay was ‘forever’. But in one way, an important way, this belief was right: what made The Pirate Bay possible is forever.Even if I’m wrong, and a service like OpenBittorrent doesn’t immediately get populated with all the torrents from the old database, the ‘community’ should learn some lessons from this:
(1) Big != Good
Let’s face it: The Pirate Bay itself had become a huge focus of attention for those trying to preserve the old copy-restriction model of the culture industries. By some accounts TPB’s tracker has been responsible for 50% of all Internet traffic, and its founders have been looming larger and larger, waving their pirate flags more and more visibly, for quite a few years. They are international celebrities and, love them as we might, that made them and TPB targets. It’s not a secret that quite a few peers on the TPB trackers today are ’spies’, there to gather data on legitimate peers — a real danger to Bittorrent users. And as well being feted, Brokep, Anakata and Tiamo have been followed, spied on, raided, arrested, maligned, sentenced and, now live under a real threat of imprisonment.
The bigger we get, the more of a target we are. Mininova, isoHunt and TPB have all been under siege these last years. We need to stop thinking about ‘one stop shops’ for our media. Distribution and aggregation point the way: think ’separation of powers’. Clients like Miro can aggregate feeds from a variety of sources according to the needs of the user. TPB may have represented the needs of the community for half a decade or more, but we don’t need them. We are our own media infrastructure!
(2) We are all The Pirate Bay now…
… and this is why we have to amend our idea about what being a ‘pirate’ is. In the P2P world, as in that of Web 2.0, it’s us and our sharing that makes the value. Hopefully some of the indignation leveled at The Pirate Bay in the last few days will cause us to think not only about the weirdness of entrusting all this value to TPB, but about all those corporate behemoths — Facebook, say, or Twitter or YouTube — who play fast and loose with the value that we create for them every day. Make no mistake, we’ll wait a thousand years for the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world to start a foundation with the billions they have made from us and our interactions.
We’re all The Pirate Bay now because we all make media; we all copy media, we all redistribute media and because the ‘war against piracy’ has criminalized us. Young or old, middle or working class, any of us could expect that letter from the RIAA or MPAA at any moment. Our online activities are routinely surveilled in the attempt to preserve a paradigm that is manifestly outdated. That fits well with the totalitarian mentality of many of our governments and it isn’t to be accepted casually.
So is it really enough to throw a little bit of bandwidth into the cloud, vote Pirate Party, and then wax indignant about betrayal of a ‘community’ when its end (however temporarily) comes? Is that a sufficient resistance to the erosion of our liberties, to which the ‘war against piracy’ contributes?
What about grabbing one of the many, free ready made trackers out there and starting up our own Bays? By letting a thousand Pirate Bays bloom, we can demonstrate the futility of trying to prop up the old system, speeding the adoption of new models to help artists and ourselves make and distribute culture.
(3) Copy + Paste will never die.
Actually, as I’ve said, I suspect that none of TPB’s functionality, not a single torrent, will have been lost in this ’sell out’. I say this partly because of what I know of its founders, and partly because of my conviction that we live in a world in which the copy predominates, evading all attempts to outlaw it and rendering attempts to ‘buy it off’ futile.
Let’s just remind ourselves again: the entire code and all the torrents for TPB — information which accounts for half the traffic on the internet — fits on a single USB key. Perhaps someone will find a way to make a torrent of THAT. And then we can all sit around and wonder what it is, precisely, Global Gaming Factory have bought for all their millions.
Post from: TorrentFreak
12:01
The internets needs all of us! [The Pirate Bay - Blog]
The last days have been quite stress for all of us. We are still (of course) doing this for fun, and we are (of course) really grateful for or cheers and supportive comments. If we ever needed your support, this is now. Or, actually, more correct would be to say that the internet needs YOU! In these times, when internet legislations and blockades are surrounding us from all angles, we really need to stick together. We need to work the internets as it would be our cute and possibly underages neighbor - gently but with a firm hand. Instead of bashing each other we really have to build the internet as we want it to be. For example, we and our friends have recently been rebuilding the internets of Iran. Why? Do we take a stand in the recent election? No, not really. We just don't want to see people being slaughtered, and since internets is what we do that is also what we can provide. The systems surrounding the Iran project has now been up and running for a couple of weeks, and we really hope that they have made a difference. Actually we KNOW that they have, and that makes us very happy. Besides that we are also working on the finishing touches to our anonymizer Ipredator, we continue working on our You tube killer The Video Bay. We are also a part of the internets collective tink tank We Rebuild EU, which focuses at European politics and internetional networking. Remember this, guys and gals, we really love you all. Together we can build not only a free internets - but the world of our futures. Internets will be what we make of it. PS: We made this small page some time ago but forgot to tell you about it. Try it out at http://thepiratebay.org/downloads to use in whatever way you like. Plz pirate us.
09:00
I love you, NewTeeVee Station readers, but sometimes I suspect that you aren’t listening to me when I tell you that a show is AWESOME. So, in honor of our humble Station’s 1-year anniversary (betcha didn’t realize it’d been a whole year, did you?) I went through our 4-star and 5-star reviews to put together a collection of some of my favorite shows that remain slightly obscure.
Sean and Jilly Move In
This fauxumentary about a dysfunctional couple forced to move in together is full of sly, Office-esque awkward comedy. Here’s the happy couple looking for a new place to live.
What I said then: They’re that couple who don’t really enjoy being together, but are never truly unhappy enough to break up, a caricature pushed to the extreme but easily recognizable nonetheless.
The District
Newsweek took a teenybopper approach to covering Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office; the series wrapped with nine episodes of pure Hills-esque pleasure. The season finale is below.
What I said then: Once you get past the fact that Newsweek decided to mock MTV (which is kind of like George F. Will starting a blog to mock Britney Spears), The District is pretty much pure pleasure.
Project: Rant
This crowd-sourced web series gives a voice to the petty frustrations of modern life, using quality production values and gifted actors to perform rants on problems like straight girls who go to gay clubs.
What I said then: When the audience identifies with the speaker, there’s a sort of second-hand catharsis that occurs. Just because it’s not our frustration or embarrassment, it doesn’t dull the vicarious thrill of finally getting to let it out.
Grass Roots
This indie series debuted in May with a fresh take on the tough world of political campaigns, and was picked up by Koldcast for distribution shortly thereafter.
What I said then: It’s not exactly a love song to politics, but serves instead as a reminder that political campaigns aren’t just scandals and grand speeches, but hard work and shoe leather, too.
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Judges Given 5 Minutes to Rule On Each Third Strike in France [ZeroPaid.com]
It seemed like there would be some form of judicial oversight after the three strikes law in France would have to go through a judge, but now there’s a new twist in the infamous HADOPI law. It appears that, on average, judges will be given 5 minutes to decide whether or not to disconnect and possibly fine an individual accused of breaching copyright laws a third time.
So what can you do in five minutes? Order pizza. Walk up and down a shorter street. Flip through all the channels on your TV and conclude there’s nothing to watch. Read through this article. Now, you can add, if you’re a French citizen, have your internet connection cut off by a judge. There’s a new version of the HADOPI, or, three strikes law, out and it seems details are emerging on just how the government plans to deal with alleged file-sharers while still having their day in court.
According to Futurezone (Google translation), in order for the 50,000 cases to be had each year specifically geared toward enforcing the three strikes law, the French judicial system will hire 109 new employees, including 26 more judges. Each case is suppose to take about 45 minutes of work, but each judge will be given only 5 minutes to handle each case on average.
Futurezone notes that the European Union did essentially prevent the three strikes law from passing in any country within the union, and, indeed, there were even legal threats from at least one member of the European Union if France were to enforce their three strikes law.
“We’ll have to wait and see whether French politicians are still eager to support the bill with this price tag attached. France wouldn’t be the first country to drop Three Strikes because it’s simply too expensive.” Janko Roettgers commented on p2p-blog, “British regulators estimated earlier this year that implementing Three Strikes would cost about 2.5 million GBP per year. The UK government eventually abandoned the idea of Three Strikes and is now favoring solutions that would require less oversight.”
This isn’t the only thing happening in Britain of course. Users in Britain are also stepping forward and saying that they are being sued for copyright infringement of material they have never even heard of before. This does raise the question of the validity of targeting someone via IP address in the first place. There are some resemblances to the French three strikes law promising to prosecute 50,000 users and the Dream Pinball case that has recently resurfaced. A large number of users are being targeted for copyright infringement while there hasn’t been much discussion on what happens if someone is wrongly accused. Of course, when it comes to the three strikes law, there’s plenty of criticisms against the law to go around from when the bill was proposed to when it was passed to now. Not the copyright industry minds because they’re getting what they want and a playing card to use when they pressure other countries to adopt similar anti-file-sharing laws.
“The Pirate Party opposes and condemns the contents of this new bill,” The French Pirate Party said on their website (Google translation), “which is once again a few special interests at the expense of the general interest of citizens.”
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.
07:06
The Pirate Bay Buyer Suspected of Insider Trading [ZeroPaid.com]
There was a lot of reaction to the sale of The Pirate Bay. Many wanted their accounts deleted, others merely expressed disappointment. One report, however, points out a reaction of a different sort. As a result, the sale could stall.
One of the founders of The Pirate Bay suggested that one could buy a share in The Pirate Bay, but were people buying shares a little too early? That’s what Aktietorget is trying to find out after the stocks for the buyer, Global Gaming Factory, went up before the announcement of the acquisition.
All this is according to Swedish news site, The Swedish Wire. There were comments that if the sale didn’t go through, then the site would then revert back to the original owners. From the report:
“There are reasons to suspect that information was leaked”, said Peter Gönczi, executive vice president at Aktietorget, to business daily Dagens Industri.
Consequently, Peter Gönczi will start an investigation to see if the trading rules have been despoiled.
If the acquisition is completed, Aktietorget might start a further investigation since The Pirate Bay is suspected of committing criminal actions. In April Stockholm’s district court sentenced Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström each to a year in jail and ordered them to pay damages of 30 million kronor (€2.72 million, $3.56 million dollars) to the movie and recording industry. The verdict has been appealed to a higher court.
“Aktietorget wants to make sure that the companies that are traded on the list are managing legitimate businesses”, Peter Gönczi said to Dagens Industri.
Here’s an interesting question in all of this. What if the sale was halted and the infamous BitTorrent website was reverted back to the owners? Certainly, this would pose as an interesting problem for the founders on the PR front. Users already know that the admins intended on selling the site – something that didn’t sit well for many users. All this is on top of the legal implications of the site since the admins did say that they intended on filing charges against the Swedish legal system in the European Court of Human Rights right before the sale. This was the result of a three judge panel deciding that the admins cannot appeal the decision that the original judge wasn’t biased.
One thing is for sure, this latest tangle could dramatically complicate things for the admins of The Pirate Bay. Not really something an exhausted team would want at this point in time.
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.
06:37
Users Wrongly Accused of Internet Piracy Step Forward [ZeroPaid.com]
Is an IP address sufficient evidence to prosecute an alleged file-sharer? This is a question that has been tackled by many in legal circles around the world. Some countries, including Canada, have court rulings that suggested that it wasn’t sufficient evidence by itself. In spite of this, ACS Law in the UK seems to think that it is. As a result, a number of users are stepping forward to say that they were wrongly accused of copyright infringement.
Let’s back up here for a moment. An IP address can be found on a P2P network. A great example is BitTorrent where one merely has to jump into a swarm using Azureus or uTorrent and check out the seeders and leachers in the swarm to find an IP address.
Technicalities aside, why can’t that IP address be used as evidence? That’s actually relatively straight forward – you can’t tie that IP address to a person as reasonable proof. What an IP can reveal in some countries is whoever pays the bills for the internet access to which that IP address belongs to. That doesn’t make that person immediately guilty of copyright infringement because of what can happen with an internet subscription.
Does this person live alone? Or, like countless people, do they share that connection with someone else? What if it was a family in question? Numerous cases have shown that it’s frequently not the owner of the IP address, but someone else using the connection at the time.
On top of that, what about Wifi? The use of Wifi is on the rise and numerous people do lack the technical expertise to encrypt their connection. That means anyone with a Wifi enabled laptop can use that connection. Few would dispute that unauthorized WiFi use can be bad in densely populated places. Even if the connection is encrypted, tech savvy individuals can find ways of bypassing the encryption via simple hacking methods such as a dictionary attack (all the possible words in a dictionary are fed through until one word works)
These are just two reasonably possible ways that the owner of a given IP address would not be guilty of copyright infringement. There are plenty of other ways that an IP address can bring on false accusations and there have been false accusations in the past.
The BBC points out that Which?, a magazine, has researched the subject and have found 20 people stepping forward to proclaim their innocence to copyright infringement accusations.
These cases come from the over 6,000 legal threats sent out demanding £665 from last year. If that rings a bell for many observers, it should because it stems from the infamous Dream Pinball lawsuits. Among the 20 users that came forward, many of them say that they have never even heard of the game before. From the BBC report:
Some 6,000 letters have been sent out by law firm ACS Law, on behalf of firms such as Reality Pump and Topware Interactive, who are the copyright owners of video games Two Worlds and Dream Pinball respectively.
The government is keen to crack down on pirates, and the recently published Digital Britain report said that they could be pursued through the courts.
“The government is basically calling for a crackdown on illegal file-sharers, which is fair enough, but we’ve got serious concerns about the process which identifies alleged file-sharers and we believe that innocent people are being accused,” said Sarah Kidner, editor of Which? Computing.
The IP addresses of alleged file-sharers are initially obtained by anti-piracy firm Logistep which uses software that monitors file-sharing sites.
While the Internet Service Provider Association said that the legal process is flawed, it brings up an even greater question even though Daven Port Lyon dropped the cases because of an investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. What should happen when someone files a false copyright infringement claim? Shouldn’t there be repercussions to guard against such things as we are clearly seeing here?
If one sends a few hundred, let along thousands as seen in the Dream Pinball fiasco, what guarantees each and every one of those legal threats are going to be targeting the correct individuals? If there’s no repercussions from filing a false notice, what’s to stop the copyright industry from suing every single identifiable IP address (0.0.0.0 – 255.255.255.255) and just dropping the cases for those who can use financial means to legally fight back? One wonders what the definition of a shakedown is if these kinds of actions aren’t. This isn’t even touching the kind of legal overhead that would result in the already strained judicial systems in many countries around the world.
This is not to say these questions are necessarily new. As we’ve noted, these questions have been raised before countless times throughout the years. They are nothing new, yet, the same questions are either being raised or need to be raised. Sending 10,000 legal threats may sound like a good deterrent on paper, but when someone is falsely accused, that’s not just an anomaly, that’s potentially ruining someone’s life unnecessarily.
This is just another example on why it is absolutely critical to have protections against false claims. Not just paying out a few hundred dollars, but fully compensating people who have been falsely accused is what is important and making it feasible for victims to carry through with it.
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.
01:26
Dailymotion announced today that Cedric Tournay has been named its new CEO. Tournay replaces Ian Brotherston, who had only held the post since April. Brotherston will stay on with the company but will move over to become executive vice president of international strategy.
MediaPost reports that Dailymotion always considered Brotherston’s appointment as CEO as an interim one, though that temporary status was not mentioned at the time. We dug up the April 21, 2009, press release announcing Brotherston as CEO, which didn’t say anything about his being interim:
Dailymotion names Ian Brotherston Chief Executive Officer
Paris – April 21st 2009 – Dailymotion’s Board of Directors has announced today that Ian Brotherston has been appointed to the role of Chief Executive Officer of Dailymotion…
“We are delighted to welcome Ian as new CEO. His strong management experience will help shape Dailymotion as we continue our growth and global expansion. Ian’s primary focus will be to lead Dailymotion in its next phase of development,” says Benoist Grossmann, partner at AGF Private Equity.
Brotherston joined Dailymotion from Red Bee Media, the privatized Broadcast Technology Division of the BBC, where he was commercial cirector. A Dailymotion rep told us that the company was originally not going to announce Brotherston’s appointment since it was interim, and much of the initial press was based on leaked and incomplete information. The rep said at the time he was unable to comment on the CEO search.
Brotherston was brought on to replace then-CEO Mark Zaleski, and at the time it was rumored that Dailymotion was looking to raise additional funding this year. Zaleski had been brought on from QXL in August 2007 as executive chairman.
Tournay was most recently the CEO of Doctissimo, one of the largest health and medical web sites in Europe, and managed its sale to Lagardere group.
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Essayrunner sells school papers found on Limewire [P2P Blog]
Would you pay ten bucks per month for the chance to access thousands of school papers that your teachers won't find with a simple Google search? Essayrunner.com is betting that some folks will, and it is using the Gnutella P2P network to build a business based on this idea.
essayrunner
The site is basically a giant archive of essays, currently promising access to over 140,000 school papers. There are dozens of essay sites with names like Duenow.com out there, and many students have started to upload papers to sites like Scribd. Essayrunner however offers an interesting twist: The site scours the Gnutella P2P network for essays shared via Limewire and similar file sharing clients. From Essayrunner.com:
"Because of Limewire's complex distributed nature most of the essays are not available on the network at any given time. EssayRunner scours the network for files 24 hours a day 7 days a week so you don't have to. EssayRunner is a mirror for Limewire content. "
A site like Essayrunner obviously brings up a whole bunch of legal issues. Most people use Limewire to download music and videos, and documents are more often than not shared accidentally (in fact, newer versions of Limewire don't share any documents by default to prevent inadvertent file sharing.)
Essayrunner does have a take-down policy, promising to remove any content at the request of the original author, but one has to wonder whether such an author will ever know that their articles are hosted on Essayrunner in the first place.
But wait, that's not all: Adding to the murky picture is the fact that the owner of the Essayrunner.com domain previously tried to spam file sharing networks in order to prevent copyright infringement. He started a Sourceforge project called kNewt about a year ago that was supposed to scour torrent sites for popular file names and then pollute Gnutella with fake files using these names. From the kNewt website:
"For several years open source developers have continued to release versions of p2p software that protect against varied threats, such as spam, but fail to prevent the distribution of copyright files. Should open source software create problems or solve them? Should open source solutions that are mainly used to subvert copyrights be hosted on sourceforge?"
Luckily, his plea for deleopers to "corrode the effectiveness of the Gnutella network to distribute pirated works" got completely ignored, and kNewt never evolved beyond the concept stage. After all, how would Essayrunner have found all those papers in a network of rusty tubes?
00:13
Facebook expects to “very soon” release a new version of its iPhone app, and via TechCrunch we hear it will enable video uploads from the new iPhone 3GS.
Now, this is just one social network on one (very new) phone, and yes, it’s going to be a holiday weekend in a couple hours. But the news is worth paying attention to because of the volume and nature of video-sharing that Facebook enables, and the active mobile content habits of iPhone users. In the few days after the iPhone 3GS release, YouTube, the biggest user video site out there, said its mobile video uploads were up 400 percent, with iPhone 3GS video already accounting for more than half the mobile video sent to the site.
Meanwhile, Facebook told us it sees a very significant — nearly 40 percent — chunk of its video uploads come from webcams. And at last check, Facebook received six times as many video uploads per day as MySpace, showing its personal video-sharing offering is resonating with users. The simple, accessible video sharing enabled by webcams has a lot in common with mobile phone video uploads — except with the added value of on-the-go, on-the-scene connectivity. Let’s just hope AT&T doesn’t get pissy about the upstream bandwidth.
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Lee Rosevere - Play 3 [LegalTorrents: All Content]
The third and final release in the series of experimental compilations by Lee Rosevere. 1. Into The Mist (2:06) Recorded on 4-track with a cheap Casio keyboard. (1991) 2. Orchestral Tortures (1:40) Recorded on 4-track from the same sessions that produced tracks 1-4 on Play #2. (1995) 3. The Day Love Came In The Mail (9:26) Phase experiment, recorded after discovering the music of Steve Reich. Recorded live to 2-track, this version has been modified with additional delay. (1996/2007) 4. Fallout (12:07)Originally created as a full-length project, the overall vibe became too negative and was never completed. This is a 'medley' of the finished pieces. (2006-07) 6. Recital For Sampler And Tape Machine (30:03)Recorded and mixed live to 2-track analog. (1994)
Thursday, 02 July
23:41
The Rabbits - Squeeze one out [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Squeezing one out is as easy as one may think. You simply squeeze. The question remains, what exactly is being squeezed and out of what? The answer may very well lie somewhere on the second Rabbits album "Squeeze One Out". An adventure that could impact your life in such a way that you end up humming these melodies while taking a dump. The Rabbits aim to bang ear drums around the globe and while the globe spins they go ding ding ding and bla bla bla with a nice boom boom boom to make things a little more engaging. In a nutshell, we have here another auditory thrill ride that'll tickle your backbone while you contemplate the ins and outs of...things that go in and out. So squeeze a loved one, squeeze your self and enjoy. cover by: SOUND OF LIGHT DESIGN
23:24
BNN Refutes Copyright Censorship Accusations [ZeroPaid.com]
Late last month, accusations emerged that BNN, a Canadian broadcaster, was actively censoring the copyright debate through copyright means. A spokesperson today contacted ZeroPaid to deny these allegations saying that the accusations are “inaccurate and falsely accusing BNN”.
A user uploaded several clips of the copyright debate that took place on BNN. BNN then found out about the clips being uploaded to YouTube and issued a complaint and had the clips taken down. That caused the user to post accusations on a blog that the network is actively trying to censor the copyright debate. Quite the accusations. Is it true? Rose Noonan, the Sales Coordinator of BNN told ZeroPaid, no.
“BNN is certainly not trying to censor or silence the Canadian copyright debate – or any other topic.” Noonan told ZeroPaid.
So, if it wasn’t censorship, then what was it?
“The removal of BNN clips took place because the clips were posted without permission.” Noonan explained. She continued, “This is the only reason. The material was produced by, and is owned by BNN – Business News Network.”
The blogger making these accusations said that there was evidence that suggested that the only clips that were being removed were copyright debate related.
“When it became evident that numerous unauthorized BNN clips were posted on Youtube, a request was made that they remove all of the clips. This process involves finding each individual URL and sending them to Youtube to request that they be taken down. Attempts were made to find all the clips, but if there are still some there, that is an indication that a few may have been overlooked. There was never any intention to target clips of any topic.” Noonan said.
“In total,” Noonan said, “over 193 BNN clips were removed from Youtube – less than 3% of these clips were related to copyright. They were clips covering numerous topics and certainly not limited to copyright issues or anything else.”
Now that we received the other side of the story, a more probable explanation can be made. In instances in the past regarding other copyright infringement notices on YouTube where multiple clips are taken down, it’s possible that for the side of copyright owners to merely see it as just taking down unauthorized material from multiple sources. Meanwhile, on the other side of the infringement notice, the incident is much more personal. The notice is directed at you, as a user, in particular and can give off the impression that this take down was directed at you specifically – and when it’s political in nature, it can be very easy to take that take down notice as merely a case of a big faceless corporation trying to remove important debates from the public because of certain viewpoints – even though in this case, that wasn’t the case.
This case for BNN is easily a political mine field given thepolitically sensitive nature of copyright. One of the major arguments in the copyright debate is, in fact, that copyright can be used as a tool for censoring free speech. How does a copyright holder try to take down copyrighted material when the subject of that video is copyright in the first place? Did the take down indirectly affect free speech? Technically speaking, yes, there is a grain of truth to be had here. Ultimately speaking, the larger accusation that BNN wants to cover up or censor any debate in particular isn’t necessarily true. The take downs related to copyright were a tiny part of a larger round of take downs by the network with no debate targeting in mind.
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.
22:38
Sometimes you watch the pilot of a series and know exactly where it’s going to go. Other times, you watch the pilot and have no clue how the series will shape up over the course of its run. And that is when the wise reviewer of online video decides to refrain from reviewing said show until she’s seen more than just the pilot, because while a cleverly constructed character will go a long way towards anchoring a series, it’s hard to know how well the premise will hold up, if at all.
Atom.com’s The Shaman is a quasi-Odd Couple featuring a Los Angeles schlub named Matt (played by Matt Price) and his new roommate, the Shaman (played by Jason Nash). The Shaman is more Jim-Morrison-as-portrayed-by-Val-Kilmer-in-The Doors than he is Jim Morrison, living in a magical dreamworld that to the rest of us resembles contemporary L.A. and completely incapable of putting on a shirt. (The camera lingers lovingly and often over Nash’s “Will Ferrell-esque physique.”) When the show premiered a couple of weeks ago, I watched and liked the first episode, but decided to wait on reviewing it until a few more episodes were available. It’s a decision that paid off, as the series, now on Episode 3, has managed to keep the concept fresh and entertaining.
The set-up is a clear riff on a genre of storytelling perfected by sitcoms like Perfect Strangers, though Matt — the not-Balky of the pairing — is the weak link of the series, as not enough’s been done with his character to make him feel fully realized. Why he wants a job in a clothing store in the second episode, for example, is a complete mystery to me. But while on his own Matt doesn’t add much, he’s a strong foil for the Shaman — the extended sequence in Episode 3, in which Matt must carefully explain that full release massage counts as prostitution, is a highlight of the series so far.
The show makes solid use of the Los Angeles comedy scene — not only setting part of Episode 2 at the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy theater, but enlisting the acting talents of Nick Kroll, Moon Zappa and Laura Silverman (the Sklar Brothers are also due to make an appearance).
What really works about the Shaman as a character is the way Nash regularly pulls the character back from flat-out absurdism; he’s almost quasi-functional in the real world, and that self-awareness is what makes the character likable. The Shaman probably wouldn’t work as a feature — heck, it probably wouldn’t even play as a recurring SNL sketch — but as the anchor for a narrative, Nash’s comic creation is immensely appealing. Part of me almost wishes I’d waited longer than three weeks to catch up on the show. That way, I’d have more to watch.
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Victor Ivaniv and Muhmood - Rut [LegalTorrents: All Content]
An EP collaboration of two Siberian artists - Victor Ivaniv is a futurist poet from Novosibirsk. Muhmood is Alexei Biryukoff's one man project from Barnaul, experimenting with ambient soundscapes, noises, field recordings and heavy guitar music. They met in November 2007 when Victor came to Barnaul with a presentation of his book "A Glass Man and the Green Record". At that time they decided to try to do 2 or 3 tracks to see what would come out. By June 2009 the four tracks EP is done. They continue to work on a long playing album that will include Victor's poems and prose.
22:21
Pirate Party of Canada Currently Seeking Membership [ZeroPaid.com]
It may have taken a while, but the Pirate Party of Canada is finally on the road to forming. When asked about what’s currently happening, Jake Daynes of the Pirate Party of Canada said that the party is currently seeking membership to help give it some traction.
The manifesto of the Pirate Party of Canada is in the works, the current members are trying to figure out how to bring awareness, and general internal organization is taking place, but all good things start somewhere. After a few years of discussions on the Pirate Party International website, there are signs that the Pirate Party of Canada is now forming. A website has been set up (including forums) and it’s not hard to see that they are in need of some helping hands.
In Sweden, the Pirate Party stands for privacy, a halt to online censorship, doing away with medical patents and legalizing file-sharing. No surprise that this movement has taken off elsewhere in the world.
We asked the Pirate Party of Canada what all was happening and were able to get a response.
“Your guess that there is some internal organizing going on is 100% accurate,” Daynes told ZeroPaid when asked if there was internal organization taking place, “at this moment in time that is one of our main concerns”
“however,” he added, “membership is still a pressing concern.”
There’s been plenty of issues happening in Canada that the Pirate Party could gain support from. The biggest reason one might join the Pirate Party is if Canadians are fed up with what has happened on the Copyright file. With the Liberals Bill C-60 and the Conservatives Bill C-61, it seems as though neither of the biggest parties haven’t, in practise, been too user friendly. Added to this is the recent comments by the current public safety minister Peter Van Loan during an episode of Search Engine. The minister suggested (direct link to MP3) said that users have no expectation of privacy online and that, in spite of the courts cited by Jesse Brown, suggested that real name, address and telephone number doesn’t count as personal information.
Added to this was recent comments made by the Liberal party which said that Canada needs to immediately reform copyright laws to “combat” the “scourge” of piracy and ratify WIPO. Those comments were followed up by follow-up comments which suggested that merely stating this merely marks interest on the copyright file.
While the Pirate Party of Canada is still a ways of from becoming an officially registered party, it won’t hurt the party to gain a few new interested individuals to help them out reach that goal of becoming an officially registered party in the future a little faster.
To help, you can join the Pirate Party of Canada forum.
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.
22:13
Sugar Overdose - 7 Different Kinds of Overdrive [LegalTorrents: All Content]
New album of indie experimental rock, with a touch of psychedelic by Spanish group Sugar Overdose. If you like this release please drop by at their concerts around spain, or donate via paypal to the band at their homepage.
20:44
Michael Jackson’s funeral will likely be scheduled for next Tuesday, July 7 at 10 a.m. at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, according to various reports. AEG Live, which was planning Jackson’s comeback, owns the Staples Center and says it’s putting on the event. The arena seats 20,000, and AEG is said to have plans to place large screens outside to show the proceedings to an overflow audience. But will the funeral be live-streamed to the King of Pop’s fans around the rest of the world?
Given the ongoing magnitude of global grieving for Jackson, wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral on TV networks goes without saying, and one or more online live streams is a solid bet. Other midday events, such as Obama’s inauguration and college basketball’s March Madness, have had huge numbers of watchers online, many of them office workers who want to see them live.
Hulu has already set up a placeholder page for the live web broadcast, under the account it uses to post special events. That site is mostly geo-blocked outside of the U.S.; surely others will get in on the action as plans unfold.
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The biggest horror hit of the summer may not come from any box-office blockbuster, but rather from video footage taken from a Raleigh, N.C., sewer system. The clip uploaded earlier this week shows a moist, throbbing blob affixed to the inside of a pipe.
The video has been a hit, watched more than 3 million times since June 30 as people tune in to see the curiosity from below just sit there. Pulsating. Waiting for the right moment to stri–aaaaahhhhflghhglhghgglggh!!!
Sci-fi blog io9 has been following the story and attests the creature is real, and not some viral video prank — though there appears to be some confusion as to what this real creature actually is. At first it was thought to be a slime mold, but then the News & Observer wrote:
Actually, the sewer monster is made up of thousands of tiny organisms called bryozoans, or moss animacules, said N.C. State University biologist Thomas Kwak. Invertebrates, they bunch together in colonies and feed with tiny tentacles.
This theory was disputed by DeepSeaNews which said that no, it is not bryozans; instead it is “clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex).”
Whatever it is, it’s gross, it’s captured the Internet’s imagination, and the hacks in Microsoft’s marketing department are probably looking to use it for an ad campaign now that their vomit video has been pulled.
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New Pirate Bay to Pay BitTorrent Seeders? [ZeroPaid.com]
GGF CEO says BitTorrent seeders would be compensated for making content available to others.
This past Tuesday was a sad day of sorts for the BitTorrent community after Swedish BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay announced it was sailing into safer waters and going legit.
Global Gaming Factory X AB (GGF) bought the site for over $16 million USD in cash and stock and said it plans to use the Pirate Bay to launch “new business models” that will ensure copyright holders are fairly compensated.
A bit cryptic about what this means before, GGF Ceo Hans Pandeya is now shedding some light on the subject.
“We are going to set up a system where the file-sharer actually makes money,” he told the BBC. He says the only way you can the problem is to “make something more attractive.”
Paying Bittorrent users to seed or share content is definitely “more attractive” I must admit.
Pandeya also said he plans to harness the power of BitTorrent via the Pirate Bay to reduce network traffic strain on ISPs.
“Let’s say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site – which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP – we can take that song and put it out on P2P,” he says. “The copyright holder still gets paid, the users still get their file, the ISP doesn’t have a million people all grabbing a file and – for the users who share that song – a payment for putting that file on the P2P network.”
He figures that by “helping” ISPs reduce the traffic burden content distribution often places on their networks that they might be willing to then compensate GGF for its assistance.
“We’ve been working with ISPs for over a year and we can cut their costs – when the system becomes overloaded – by 90%,” he added. “All ISPs have this problem and it is one we can fix.”
It’s still too early to tell how successful GGF will be, but it’ll certainly be entertaining to watch nonetheless. Paying people to seed content is a must if they expect anybody to make content available on the Pirate Bay. The only question will be if they can create a viable system and whether or not the amount GGF’s willing to pay is enough to sway users to donate their bandwidth and HDD space.
In my opinion I think it’s just not feasible. It inevitably comes down to what the entertainment industry’s demands are. We have yet to see a viable on-demand movie service and I don’t think the Pirate Bay is the ship the MPAA’s been waiting to sail in and make it available. Copyright holders are what’s key to the future of the Pirate Bay.
Stay tuned.
jared@zeropaid.com
19:53
BREIN Demands $70,000 Per Day Penalty For Usenet Community [TorrentFreak]
Founded in 2001, FTD is the largest Usenet community in The Netherlands with around 450,000 members. FTD and its software allows members to report material they find on Usenet along with its location. This material could include movies, music and TV shows and this made it a target for notorious anti-piracy outfit BREIN.
BREIN says that FTD operates illegally but the Usenet community and its specialist IT lawyer, Arnoud Engelfriet of Ictrecht law firm vigorously deny this and are now taking legal action the Dutch anti-piracy outfit. The background to the case can be found in our earlier article, and a more detailed report on the action against BREIN here.
Yesterday, while BREIN’s site was still supposedly out of action following an alleged (or Hoaxed) DDoS attack from Pirate Bay fans, it published a further report about FTD, which was hidden on its site away from easy public viewing. Strangely the same page at the time of writing is password protected and the report unavailable, but we have a copy and translation.
Entitled ‘BREIN Demands Closure of FTD’, the anti-piracy outfit went on to say that if FTD does not close it will require a penalty of 50,000 euros ($70,000) per day against the service, in addition to compensation and full reimbursement of costs. BREIN said that FTD “organizes and promotes” Usenet content, most of which is illegal.
BREIN then refers to earlier discussions it had with FTD, noting that it asked FTD to cease its “structural use of illegal content” in early 2009. The two sides had entered discussions to see if they could iron out their difficulties. Following on, FTD pro-actively modified how they operate to ensure that there could be no doubt as to their legality.
“After we made the changes, we got complete radio silence from BREIN. No confirmation, no rejection, nothing,” Arnoud explained. “Only after several days we found out what BREIN thought - but only by reading the online news. That was a huge disappointment.”
The news saw BREIN declare that FTD was a criminal operation in an article titled “You do not pay for it, it’s unlawful” and this led to FTD taking legal action against BREIN to try to clear their name by having their operation declared legal by a court. Now BREIN is counter-claiming against FTD.
Tim Kuik from BREIN now says that it is clear that FTD “continued their abuses unabated” and that the modifications they made were only made to hide the “true nature” of the site.
“It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Kuik. “FTD earn money with a system that exists by virtue of the huge supply of illegal content to Usenet.” Mirroring the disappointment felt at FTD, Kuik added: “It is disappointing but illustrates that BREIN’s outstretched hand has been cut off.”
So what exactly does this claim for 50,000 euros per day mean for FTD? Lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet told TorrentFreak that BREIN did not ask the court for damages. Legally they are barred from asking for damages - article 3:305a of the Dutch Civil Code says that an organization that represents the interests of a certain group can never ask for damages. They asked instead for a penal sum of 50k euros if FTD were ordered by the court to shut down but it refused.
“The idea is that a court can order you to shut down but you can ignore the court,” said Arnoud. “With the penal sum, you risk that the court will then sell your house or seize other assets. In principle that’s legal, but the amount is of course ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous also sums up my view of the BREIN counterclaim. Instead of addressing any of the points we raised, they simply repeat their standard rhetoric. Nowhere is the distinction made between uploading works and telling people that someone has uploaded a work for (legal) download. And downloading illegal uploads is legal in the Netherlands,” notes Arnoud.
“BREIN is not known for its careful handling of the truth,” he added. “They are a propaganda organization after all.”
Post from: TorrentFreak
19:45
EFF Slams ASCAP’s Proposed Ringtone Performance Tax [ZeroPaid.com]
Says ridiculous that that each time a phone rings in a public place, the phone user has violated copyright law.
A few weeks ago we mentioned how the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) had taken AT&T to court arguing that phone ringtones are a “performance to the public” under the Copyright Act and that it must be compensated accordingly.
“AT&T is directly liable for the public performance of ringtones,” reads the initial court submission. “When a ringtone rings in ‘public,’ it is undeniably a ‘public performance’ as those terms are defined in the Copyright Act.”
ASCAP argues phone carriers must pay additional royalties or face legal liability for contributing to what they claim is cell phone users’ copyright infringement. In an amicus brief filed Wednesday, EFF points out that copyright law does not reach public performances “without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage” — clearly the case with cell phone ringtones. If phone users are not infringing copyright law, then mobile phone service providers are not contributing to any infringement.
The case is now being tried in a New York federal court, at which yesterday the EFF urged the court to reject these bogus copyright claims that could ultimately raise costs for consumers, jeopardize consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation.
“This is an outlandish argument from ASCAP,” said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “Are the millions of people who have bought ringtones breaking the law if they forget to silence their phones in a restaurant? Under this reasoning from ASCAP, it would be a copyright violation for you to play your car radio with the window down!”
ASCAP has responded by saying that it does not plan to charge mobile phone users, just mobile phone service providers. But if ASCAP prevails, consumers could find themselves targeted by other copyright owners for “public performances.” Worse, these wrongheaded legal claims cast a shadow over innovators who are building gadgets that help consumers get the most from their copyright privileges.
“Because it is legal for consumers to play music in public, it’s also legal for my mobile phone carrier to sell me a ringtone and a phone to do it,” said von Lohmann. “Otherwise it would be illegal to sell all kinds of technologies that help us enjoy our fair use, first sale, and other copyright privileges.”
Stay tuned.
jared@zeropaid.com
19:20
19:13
OneSwarm Adds Community Server Support [ZeroPaid.com]
Darknet BitTorrent-based P2P application introduces trusted source capability so you can add a feed of new friends and thus create “private trackers on steroids.”
OneSwarm, the darknet BitTorrent-based application that was released this past February by researchers at the University of Washington, has now released version 0.6.2 that adds several new features, most important among them being support for community servers.
Community servers are a new and improved method for importing friends into your private OneSwarm community. Each community server publishes a feed of new friends, which after subscribing to OneSwarm will notify you when new friends are available or old friends have expired. Unlike individually added friends, friends imported from a community server are marked as limited (so they can’t see your file list) and have chat disabled (so they can’t send you spam).
“Community servers address a longstanding challenge in web-of-trust style P2P sharing: key distribution,” reads a press release. “Instead of needing to manually exchange public keys, community servers allow users to outsource key management by subscribing to a ‘feed’ of keys from a trusted source. Think private trackers on steroids.”
One of the drawbacks to darknet applications has always been the limited size of the community. You can only add so many friends manually and so the type and amount of content shared within the community suffers as a result. Community server support and friend feeds help to address that problem and make for a healthy swarm of peers.
New features in version 0.6.2:
- Support for community servers
- A friends table that enables multi-friend operations, sorting by ratio, last date connected, etc.
- Rebuilt web UI with GWT 1.6
- Friend groups
- Remote access now permits saving files to the local machine
I had a chance to catch up with Michael Piatek, one of the reserachers behind OneSwarm, and who was kind enough to answer a few questions.
How has OneSwarm been received by your peers and members of the file-sharing community?
We’ve received a fairly positive response to OneSwarm. In roughly 5 months since our initial release, we’ve observed hundreds of thousands of downloads and tens of thousands of active weekly users. Our forum is fairly active, and a few intrepid users have set up community sites for different localities (e.g., Sweden: http://oneswarm.co.cc/ and France: https://forum.oneswarm-fr.net )
One of the most popular uses of all of these message boards is for key exchange. To maintain secure connections, both endpoints of a OneSwarm connection need to know the cryptographic keys of one another. In OneSwarm 0.6.2, we’ve introduced software support to make key exchange easier. Users can subscribe to a feed of public keys from a community server, making the maintenance of a set of friends automatic for members of private sharing communities, or users who simply want the privacy associated with a mixnet composed of a large set of random users.
Already, in the few days that the community server has been publicly available, several public servers have already emerged (and we’re aware of at least a few private ones in operation as well).
What kind of other features are you currently working on that you can mention?
Since the majority of our users are outside of english-speaking countries, one of the things we’re planning in the short term is better support for translation and localization. Aside from that, we’re planning improvements that will make OneSwarm easier to integrate into existing websites. One of the benefits of our web-based interface is that we can make it pretty straightforward for website operators to integrate OneSwarm into their sites. Just like operators can write a snippet of Javascript that embeds a YouTube video in a page, we’d like to provide similar support to detect if a client is running OneSwarm, but can fall back on other distribution mechanisms otherwise.
Anything else you’d like to mention?
We’re always interested in engaging with the broader community. If you, your readers, or anyone else has any ideas about how to improve the software, what features we should be working on, etc. do let us know (via email, twitter, or our forum). Thanks!
_________________________
Stay tuned.
jared@zeropaid.com
Screencasts
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19:05
TorrentReactor Users Suffer Rootkit Attack [TorrentFreak]
Aside serving torrents the TorrentReactor team launched TorrentPrivacy last year, a service that allows BitTorrent users to download torrents anonymously. Unfortunately, the site itself now poses a security threat of its own.
Websense reports that TorrentReactor has been injected with an IFrame that connects to a malicious site full of exploits. The exploits affects various applications including Internet Explorer and Adobe’s Shockwave and Acrobat Reader.
Once the user is successfully exploited a Trojan Downloader with an extremely low anti-virus detection rate will download and install a rootkit on the user’s system, after which more evil is bound to happen.
TorrentReactor’s founder Alex told TorrentFreak that they are looking into the matter and hope to fix the vulnerability as soon as possible. Alex further told us that he has no clue who’s behind the attack.
This is not the first time that TorrentReactor has suffered from an IFrame injection as The Register points out. Last year it dealt with a similar security breach.
Needless to say, TorrentReactor users may want to avoid the site for the time being if they’d rather not have a rootkit on their system.
Update: Alex told TorrentFreak that the problem has been addressed. “It was sql injection which was fixed the same day. Now we do everything to prevent it in the future. We’re very sorry.”
TorrentReactor, now with Rootkit
Post from: TorrentFreak
18:41
Watercolor, ice climbing, underwater basketweaving — you can pay someone to teach you (or your kids) anything these days — and now, how to YouTube.
A couple years ago, we wrote about Pitzer College offering a media studies class on YouTube. There’s also Kansas State cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, who’s become something of a social media celebrity for his video reports on the web, which often focus on YouTube. But if you’re looking for a little summer extra credit or personal growth, check out these online video workshops, both of which hit our inbox in the last day.
In both these instances, you’ll have to go to New York (but c’mon, NYC is lovely in the summer). First, “From You to YouTube” is a summer camp for young adults ages 12 to 18. Forget campfires and archery, bring your working knowledge of Mac computers. Held at the Manhattan Edit Workshop in August, the camp costs a hefty $2,000.
“Designed to create a fun and exciting learning atmosphere, class is divided into small crews of writer/directors. In week one you tackle writing, camera instruction, and pre-production. Then it’s two solid days of shooting films. The week ends with screening dailies and an introduction to editing. “In week two you will learn how to use Final Cut Pro and how to streamline your post-production workflow. With an emphasis on the creative aspects of storytelling, we will look at films to understand the ‘why’ of editing in addition to just the “how.” Each student has their own fully equipped, state-of the-art editing system and access to cameras and equipment for their shoots.”
Second, the three-class Viral Video Workshop at NYU from Indigo Productions (a steal at $200 with a $50 discount for students) promises to “teach you how to create great short videos, distribute them successfully, build an online brand, and make money in the process.”
The instructor, television producer and development exec James Murray, has made viral videos of his own, such as Cooties (embedded above), which has a respectable 1.7 million views and an airing on MTV.
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Learn more »18:26
Sling Founder Headed to DirecTV? Satellite company reportedly has reached out to Blake Krikorian to succeed Chase Carey as CEO. (paidContent)
The NewsMarket to Acquire MediaLink; NewsMarket will acquire all oustanding shares of MediaLink’s common stock for 20 cents per share in cash; move will combine NewsMarket’s digital video distribution platform with MediaLink’s professional services. (release)
Microsoft Dumps Vomit Ad; viral spot for Internet Explorer featuring a woman vomiting over the web sites her husband visits is pulled. (CNET)
1Cast Signs Fox Business News and Al Jazeera; two networks will provide “up-to-the-minute” clips to the news aggregator. (Multichannel News)
Yesterday Was Supposed to Be a Tru2Way Milestone; July 1 was the day the large cable cos agreed to be ready to support tru2way enabled CE devices; while deadline was missed, cable companies are making good faith efforts. (ZatzNotFunny!)
HD Streams Still a Dream; measly megabit-per-second connections, superior Blu-ray video quality and limited content add up to high-definition video streaming to the TV not taking off for a while. (Variety)
Study: TV More Effective for Ads than Online; research from Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing and NeuroFocus TV gives high marks for recall, intent to purchase and emotional engagement (ed. note: What if the emotion people are engaging in is anger over all the commercials?). (MediaWeek)
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Dish Network subscribers will still be able to use their DVRs (for now) after a federal appeals court yesterday granted a stay of a lower court injunction against the service.
After losing its patent infringement case against TiVo, Dish (formerly known as EchoStar) developed a DVR workaround, but last month a Texas court ruled that this workaround still violated TiVo’s intellectual property. Dish was found in contempt, was ordered to pay TiVo an additional $103 million, and told to disable roughly 4 million DVR receivers on its network within 30 days. Dish was given a temporary stay of that order immediately following the decision.
That temporary stay will last a little longer as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Dish was able to “demonstrate that it has a substantial case on the merits.”
The case is being expedited, and Dish will now file its opening brief by July 17; TiVo’s brief will come August 25; and Dish’s reply is due September 4.
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Mininova Demands Rectification from Dutch Parliament [TorrentFreak]
In common with most other European countries The Netherlands is trying to find a solution to the ever increasing use of file-sharing sites to share copyrighted material. Presently, downloading movies and music for personal use in The Netherlands is seen as “fair use” and not punishable by law.
In their advice to the government, a working group consisting of four members of the Dutch parliament looked into the matter. They suggested criminalizing downloading once the entertainment industry has come up with sufficient legal alternatives.
The conclusions of the report were widely debated in the Dutch press. Worryingly, also some of the factual errors about Mininova that the parliamentarians dreamed up were recited in the media, which may hurt the BitTorrent site in the ongoing court case against the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN.
For instance, the report claims that Mininova ignores complaints form copyright holders and refuses to remove torrents from their site. This nonsense of course, since the site has had a copyright policy for years and is known to follow up every complaint.
Another inaccuracy in the report is the claim that Mininova adds “reviews” to the torrents their users have uploaded, something we’ve never heard before. The rumors that they actually host copyrighted content and that they filter porn from their site pro-actively don’t hold up either.
The Mininova staff are not happy with these allegations, especially since they are currently involved in a lawsuit against the entertainment industries that covers the same issues. “We are very displeased with the fact that the working group didn’t contact us prior to releasing this report, or even took a look at mininova.org,” Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer said.
“We demand that the spreading of false information related to Mininova will be stopped. In addition, we demand that the working group removes the name Mininova from the report and places a rectification on the website of the Dutch parliament and in several national newspapers,” Dubbelboer added.
“We take this very seriously,” Erik Dubbelboer said. “If these demands are not met, we’ll consider to take legal steps,” he said to emphasize the seriousness of their demands.
Arda Gerkens, the head of the parliamentary working group pointed to her parliamentary immunity when she was confronted with the news. However, legal experts said that parliamentarians don’t have any immunity when they speak out in public, which she did.
Mininova demands that the rectifications are made before the verdict in their case against BREIN is due, so it wont influence the decision of the judges.
Post from: TorrentFreak
11:08
Shotgun Diplomacy Radio Vol 2 - Fallout 3 Mod [LegalTorrents: All Content]
**UPDATE FOR LEGALTORRENTS.COM**I have made this content available on LegalTorrents.comto share with a bigger crowd. You can find the new siteat..www.soulPURGE.co.ccOriginally posted on..http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5789**UPDATED ON 7.2.09**Diplomacy is boring. Shotgun Diplomacy is epic. Add volume 2 and it's FTW.Since the original seemed to take off so well so quick I've decided to work on and release a second pack of songs for everyone to listen to while scouring the wastes. There's some previous artists as well as new ones. New styles of music and the same taste and quality from before.Track listing...Still Alive (DnB remix) - The Hamster AllianceMayhem - wauterboiFinger In My Eye - Saints of SilenceMonolithium - AFinalDatePain - AFinalDateBarricade of Fire - The Hamster AllianceCan Do Trace Too - The Hamster AllianceNear the End of Forever - wauterboi
10:00
Shotgun Diplomacy Radio - Fallout 3 Mod [LegalTorrents: All Content]
**UPDATE FOR LEGALTORRENTS.COM**---I have made this content available on LegalTorrents.comto share with a bigger crowd. You can find the new siteat..---www.soulPURGE.co.ccOriginally posted on..http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5766**UPDATED ON 7.2.09**---Shotgun Diplomacy Radio---This radio mod uses the IPip radio package which adds a new radio station to your Pipboy 3000 titled "IPip"...---SDR plays 14 tracks of music from myself (Falcore Autumn/AFinalDate), Solarian and The Hamster Alliance. There's a total of 20 tracks due to the way IPip works and those 6 other tracks are 1 seconds of silence. You'll barely notice these 6 tracks of silence when your out exploring or fighting. I've also tried to lower the quality somewhat to save on load times for players with slower machines. I've tested this on a machine that barely meets minimum specs and one that is way above reccomended specs and it runs fine.
09:13
UseNet Service UseNet.com Loses Copyright Infringement Case [ZeroPaid.com]
While a few NZB sites have been targeted before, this may be the first time a service that offers UseNet access has been dealt with a blow. In court, UseNet.com has lost their case against the RIAA. The case has been going on since 2007.
“While others claim to have huge download limits,” UseNet.com says, “we deliver unheard of download limits and incredible access to two huge geographically diverse server farms. But huge download limits are of no use if you can not get the material you are searching for.”
Things might change after this legal blow.
“This action arises out of allegations of widespread infringement of copyrights in sound
recordings owned by Plaintiffs…”the decision states (source contains built-in-browser version), “copies of which are available for download by accessing a network of computers called the USENET through services provided by Defendants Usenet.com, Inc.”
The court document continues, “Defendants’ cross-motion for summary judgment argues that they are entitled to the safe harbor protections of § 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). All parties filed numerous additional motions to exclude certain testimony, as well as voluminous evidentiary objections. Plaintiffs opine that their motion for terminating sanctions alleges discovery abuse sufficient to require that I strike the Defendants’ answer and enter a default judgment in their favor (“Terminating Sanctions Motion”). For the reasons set forth below, Plaintiffs’ Terminating Sanctions Motion is granted to the extent discussed in this opinion, though not in its entirety; Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment is granted with respect to all claims; and Defendants’ motion”
More excerpts:
Copyright infringement via services:
There can be no dispute that Defendants’ services were used overwhelmingly for copyright infringement. Indeed, Plaintiffs’ expert has testified that, based on a statistical analysis, over 94% of all content files offered in music-related binary newsgroups previously carried by Defendant UCI were found to be infringing or highly likely to be infringing.
Moreover, not only is there rampant copyright infringement of musical works occurring on Defendants’ service in general, but there is direct undisputed evidence that Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings have been distributed and downloaded in violation of their copyrights.5 First, Plaintiffs’ evidence shows that both Plaintiffs’ forensic investigators and Defendants’ own former employees confirmed downloads of digital music files of Plaintiffs’ sound recordings from Defendants’ service.
Selling a service for the purpose of copyright infringement (A mistake made by Grokster):
The record in this case is replete with instances of Defendants and their employees specifically engendering copyright infringement and targeting infringement-minded users to become subscribers of Defendants’ service. First, Defendants’ own former employees have testified that their marketing department specifically targeted young people familiar with other file-sharing programs and suggested they try Defendants’ services “as a safe alternative to peer-to-peer file sharing programs that were getting shut down” due to copyright infringement lawsuits and resulting injunctions.
Wiping hard drives:
Based on the revelation of this new evidence, Plaintiffs promptly filed a motion to compel
production of responsive documents stored on Defendants’ employee hard drives, and requested an extension of the discovery period. A hearing was held before Magistrate Judge Katz on October 27, 2008 to address Plaintiffs’ motion and Defendants’ failure to produce discovery. At this hearing, Defendants’ counsel acknowledged for the first time that he was in possession of seven computer hard drives that had belonged to Defendants’ employees (the “Seven Hard Drives”). October 27, 2008 Hearing Transcript (“Oct. Tr.”) at 13:9-22. Initially, Defendants conceded that four of the Seven Hard Drives had had their contents deleted or “wiped” and suggested they would produce documents from the remaining three drives.
The court concluded that appropriate damage awards would be determined by Magistrate Judge Katz.
This default judgement could easily be seen as a major blow to UseNet service providers. For years, it was indeed common knowledge amongst those in the know that UseNet is practically immune from trouble. The defendants argued that they were under the safe harbour provisions of the DMCA, but the court didn’t buy it.
Because of all this, the once seemingly invulnerable service of UseNet, at least for inside the United States, isn’t so invulnerable anymore. Given that so few actions against UseNet have been taken, many might still see UseNet as a safe alternative compared to other alternatives, but for UseNet services in the United States, this case could spell trouble for the rest of the existing services on US soil.
Still, there’s been no known case, at least to our knowledge, that a UseNet user was ever busted for copyright infringement using UseNet, but it might be a little more tricky to connect to UseNet if other US based UseNet services start folding in a similar fashion to when an NZB site was targeted by the MPAA (many others voluntarily shuttered in response).
Regardless of what happens in the long run, this could be seen as the biggest blow to the UseNet network – legally speaking – to date.
[Hat tip: Ray Beckerman]
Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.
07:20
Quick: What’s the newest hybrid sensation that combines video games, television programming and social aspects? Is it:
X: 1 vs. 1oo on Xbox Live
A: Twittering With The Stars
B: Donkey Kong’s Digg for Dollars
If you said “X”, then you’d be right. Of course, savvy Xbox players might have been tipped off since the X, A and B controller buttons are used to answer questions in the Live version of 1 vs. 100. Microsoft launched the game in late May, but I just got around to participating in a session last night. Players simply show up at the pre-scheduled “on air” time and play for free. In my 30-minute episode, over 15,000 people were logged on and collectively we were “The Mob.” Each of our Xbox Live avatars were shown in the mob and we could even control our virtual selves to a point; pressing the Y button repeatedly shows excitement, while moving the left stick can be used to taunt.
Unlike the original television show, you can answer questions incorrectly and still stay in the mob. You don’t, however, gain points for wrong answers and there are incentives for speed as well as answering consecutive questions correctly. The more incorrect answers in the mob, the more points you earn with a correct answer. Questions are answered in sets of 10 and during the commercial break, you can see how you stack up by viewing your stats.
I was pitted against three formidable opponents last night, which is a nice touch. Without some small group context, it’s easy to get lost in the mob and the game would lose some competitive feel. It came down to the final and 37th question but I just edged out my live opponents to win bragging rights in our quartet. With an Xbox Live headset, you can voice chat with your three opponents, but I felt it to be in poor taste to brag about my informal win. (OK, I did jump around and scream wildly, but I had the mute button on.)
Microsoft’s Xbox Live version of 1 vs. 100 has essentially created a live and exciting game-show feel. But it’s virtual, so you don’t have to worry about wardrobe or sounding like a goofball in front of millions of people. The controls and concept are simple, yet I could see myself tuning in and playing on a regular basis just to see how well I did against the thousands of other participants. Given the simplicity of it, I wouldn’t be surprised to see mobile versions of this, and possibly other game shows in the near future.
Kevin C. Tofel is co-editor of our sister site jkOnTheRun.
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After reading an informative post about the history of real-time search by guest author Mary Hodder on TechCrunch today, I was reminded to check on her social video search startup, Dabble. Founded in 2005, Dabble had undertaken the challenge of organizing the universe of web video with metadata and community-created playlists.
It appears that the site hasn’t been up in months — at least nine months, in fact, because I remember specifically talking to Hodder about it being down in October. None of the search and share functionality is available, with the whole of the site replaced by a note with the headline “Dabble is having a make-over.” The Internet Archive isn’t much help in pinpointing the date the note was put up; it hasn’t posted a fresh save of the site since February of 2008.
In October, Hodder told me that the site had to be taken offline due to problems with her hosting company and a lack of funding. Today via email Hodder said she’s still working on the technology behind the scenes, but without funding the site won’t be back up anytime soon.
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Hollywood is full of stories about legendary comebacks — Robert Downey Jr. surviving drugs, John Travolta surviving Look Who’s Talking II — so who’s to say that a web series about the industry shouldn’t get a second chance? That’s what Showbizzle has its eye on. The indie web series produced by Charles Rosin (a producer on the original Beverly Hills 90210) relaunched a few weeks ago after falling flat last fall.
How flat did it fall? Steve Bryant, in our initial NewTeeVee Station review on Sept. 26, 2008, gave it two stars, writing that “the site is confusing, the mission statement unclear, and the promise — personal webcam-ish confessions and storytelling that’s ‘different from virtually everything else that you can currently find in the world wide web’ — laughable.” Composed then of individual two-minute monologues relayed to an unseen and unheard aspiring screenwriter named Janey, Showbizzle was more like watching scenes from an acting class than a narrative. And the site was focused on getting people to sign up for a poorly constructed and irrelevant social network, in theory hoping to connect aspiring whatevers in their quest for Hollywood fame and fortune. “Everything was rushed, and we made some tactical errors, we made some technical errors, and by the time we started up we were already in the hole,” Rosin said via phone. “But we were able to evaluate what went wrong, and what we could do better.”
Today, though, the Showbizzle site has a clean look that showcases the series properly, and perhaps thanks to the advice Rosin received from a Silicon Valley consultant — “you either have to be a web series or a social network, not both” — that element of the site has been dramatically toned down, instead focusing on the actual content.
And that content has been dramatically changed. The individual two-minute monologues, originally planned for daily release, have been compiled into weekly 10-minute episodes that are focused on characters with a clear connection to Janey (a connection spelled out in the cards introducing each character). Oh, and Janey actually has a voice now, courtesy of the show’s primary writer and director Lindsey Rosin (Charles’ daughter), which addresses Steve’s complaint from the original review that “there’s no dialogue, which contributes to an overall feeling of falseness. As if the people talking were being interviewed on a late-night promo for a self-help book.” The monologues are now interspersed with comments from Janey — mostly “hmm?” and “really?”, but enough to indicate a human presence on the other side of the camera.
So, how does Showbizzle 2.0 work? As a fan of micro-length episodes, I do miss the old format a little, and while the addition of Janey’s comments is an interesting approach, it’s not well-mixed into the rest of the audio, definitely revealing its roots as additional dialogue recording. But the fact that each character now belongs to a larger narrative, however slight, is a major bonus and ties the series together in a new way. It also emphasizes to audiences that, in Lindsey’s words, “This is a show; this isn’t real; it is scripted,” which hadn’t been clear before.
Also, an interesting bit of recycling: To accommodate the new format, the Rosins had to eliminate several of the filmed monologues from the series. But rather than leave these in the cutting-room bin in Final Cut Pro, they’ve created a new section of the site called Digital Showcase, which serves as a “hey, check out this actor” spotlight, making sure that the performer’s time wasn’t wasted.
It’s a use-all-the-parts-of-the-buffalo approach, one to honestly admire. Because here’s the thing: The Rosins listened to their audiences and their critics, reapproached their concept, and did their best to fix it. So much web video right now is being made by people who don’t really know what they’re doing. It’s rare when someone admits it, and tries to do better.
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Thriller Gets 28M Views Since Jackson’s Death; copies of the groundbreaking music video rack up the playcounts, according to Visible Measures. (company blog)
Digital Media Sales Up Only 0.9% Year-Over-Year; but paid models doing better than advertising, according to Strategy Analytics. (release)
Warner Bros. to Distribute Oscilloscope Online; Warner Bros. Digital Distribution has exclusive for digital release of firm’s boutique films. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Obama Takes Citizen Video Questions; prez hosts midday town hall on health care reform Wednesday, includes video questions from YouTube. (YouTube, transcript)
AMC Acquires Movie Sites; the network launches digital media unit and buys filmsite.org and filmcritic.com. (Broadcasting & Cable)
Five CEO Wants British Hulu; UK broadcasters should team up (even though that whole Kangaroo thing didn’t work out), says Dawn Airey. (Variety)
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21:39
Three strikes: Five minutes per court decision [P2P Blog]
France's government is gearing up for a new version of the controversial HADOPI legislation that would force ISPs to disconnect file sharers after three offenses. HADOPI's original version was struck down by France's Constritutional Council earlier this month because it enabled rights holders to police P2P networks without a judge's oversight. The council ruled that this procedure, also known as Three Strikes, was unconstitutional because it didn't guarantee suspected offenders a fair trial.
A new version of the law currently proposed by the French government would address these concerns by having a judge decide whether or not a file sharer should be disconnected. These decisions would however be made in a fast track trial that would only give a judge five minutes for each case on average. All in all, each case should require about 45 minutes of work, according to an official government study, Futurezone.at is reporting.
That doesn't sound like much time at all, but it still adds up, especially if you want put a dent into the phenomenon of millions of users sharing files online. The original HADOPI plans called for 250,000 blocked Internet accounts per year. The new proposal is slightly less ambitious and only calls for 50,000 decisions per year. The government study still estimates that it would take 109 new full-time positions, including 26 judges, to deal with these cases. One can easily imagine the total cost to reach tens of millions of dollars.
We'll have to wait and see whether French politicians are still eager to support the bill with this price tag attached. France wouldn't be the first country to drop Three Strikes because it's simply too expensive. British regulators estimated earlier this year that implementing Three Strikes would cost about 2.5 million GBP per year. The UK government eventually abandoned the idea of Three Strikes and is now favoring solutions that would require less oversight.
21:34
It’s great that the iPhone finally has the ability to record video, right? But once you’ve captured your video, the iPhone doesn’t allow you to do much with it, other than upload it to YouTube or MobileMe. Pixelpipe overcomes this limitation, by allowing you to upload your videos directly to a wide variety of online locations. But the service also suffers from a few shortcomings of its own.
Pixelpipe is available for free in Apple’s App Store; the startup also offers versions for Nokia and Android-based phones. The app lets you take content from your computer or mobile phone (including photos, videos, audio files, and more) and upload it directly to a variety of social networks, photo-sharing sites, blogs, and more. On the iPhone 3GS, Pixelpipe supports uploading of video to more than 40 services; the iPhone itself only offers direct uploading of videos to YouTube and MobileMe.
Installing Pixelpipe on my iPhone was a breeze, but once I had the app up and running, things didn’t run quite as smoothly. In fact, the first thing I noticed about Pixelpipe was how slow it was — even though I was using it on a speedy, new iPhone 3GS. The first time I launched it, the app seemed to hang and was unresponsive. As it turned out, though, it was just indexing all of the photo and video files on my phone and placing them in my Pixelpipe Media gallery. But it didn’t tell me it was doing this, and — what’s worse — it repeated this process (which took a minute or longer) every time I opened the app.
Once your media files have been indexed, you can browse through a list that’s nicely organized — with one pretty big exception. Pixelpipe’s gallery displays thumbnails of your photos, but all of your video files have a blank, white thumbnail instead. So, if you’re planning on uploading a video that you captured, you best remember when you took it, as the files are displayed in that order. If you know the file name, you’re in luck, but the iPhone assigns those names, and doesn’t let you alter them. Pixelpipe is aware of this bug, and says it’s working on a fix.
To upload your photos and videos, you go into Pixelpipe’s settings and select your destinations. All of your options are arranged in a neat list, and in most cases, you simply enter your login and password for the sites you choose. Once your destinations are set up, you can go back to your media gallery and upload all of your files, or pick and choose individual items.
I tried to upload a variety of videos to my Facebook and Flickr accounts simultaneously. While all of the files neatly appeared in my Flickr account, I had to wait — and wait — for them to show up in my Facebook page. And when they finally arrived, not all of my videos made the journey. Pixelpipe’s web site has a handy tool where you can check on pending uploads, and it told me that an error had occurred during my upload. I was able to restart the upload right from the site, rather than having to go back to the app on my phone — a nice touch.
I found Pixelpipe a little slow to use and still a bit buggy. If the company can iron out some of the problems — specifically the missing thumbnails on your iPhone videos — I would find myself using it very often, though.
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20:57
20:33
20:23
18:59
A Glimpse at The Pirate Bay’s Uncertain Future [TorrentFreak]
The sale of the largest BitTorrent tracker in the world to Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) blasted like a shockwave though the BitTorrent community yesterday. For years The Pirate Bay has been a synonym for free file-sharing, something that many fear will change in the near future.
However, thus far GGF’s plans for the site and tracker are rather vague and uncertain. First of all there is a huge divide between what the Pirate Bay co-founders think will happen to the site and what GGF is telling the public.
TorrentFreak has spoken with Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij who both think that the Pirate Bay will stay pretty much like it is now for the time being. The only difference in the short term, according to their knowledge, is that the site will link to torrents hosted on a third party domain tracked by a third party tracker.
Both the torrent hosting service and the tracker they are referring to are still in development, the co-founders said. They are not aware of any concrete plans to turn the site into a legal venture. In an attempt to find out we asked GGF to elaborate on their future plans and the response we got was remarkable.
GFF told us that most of their recent comments to the press were nothing more than “corporate bla bla.”
So let’s take a look at some of the bla bla that surfaced in the past day, to see if it makes any sense at all. Here are some of the key proposals.
1. The new Pirate Bay will put a halt to illegal downloading.
2. The Pirate Bay will compensate rights holders who publish their content on the site
3. The Pirate Bay will pay users for sharing files.
This sounds very impressive but, to put it mildly, it raises a few concerns.
It’s basically the same as saying that iTunes would pay its users to share music. When GGF has to pay both file-sharers and content providers they will undoubtedly have to raise huge sums money from a third party. So what is going to bring in this cash?
Ads of course! GGF is predicting to sell ads like no other website in the world has ever done. They told BusinessWeek that they hope to make as much as $672 million a year from advertisements.
GGF is also planning to raise money from ISPs. Theoretically ISPs might be willing to contribute because they could save on bandwidth costs if most of the files are served locally or directly from caching services, but it wont be enough. Also, they assume that The Pirate Bay will generate a significant portion of Internet traffic once they go ‘legal’, which is doubtful.
An even more significant problem is keeping the current users on board and cutting deals with content providers, all at the same time. This is an almost impossible task since copyright holders will only join if there is no illegal content on the site, and users will only stay if there is enough free and unrestricted DRM-free content available.
This means that GGF has to cut deals with pretty much every large music and movie studio from the start to have even a chance of survival. Even if they manage that, they also have to collect millions of dollars to compensate both the users and copyright holders.
Nevertheless, only hours after they announced they would acquire The Pirate Bay, GGF claimed that the entertainment companies they’ve spoken to are already interested in teaming up with the site they fought long and hard in court. Perhaps the Big Four are more open-minded than we expected - maybe GGF will draw on the business relationship it built with Vivendi in 2007?
No further explanation is needed to see that the bright future GGF is selling will never happen. Their plans seem to be completely delusional, at least in this world, and it’s even a mystery where they will get the $7.8 million funding to actually buy the site. If they ever will….
Post from: TorrentFreak
17:53
Clawjob - Manifest Destiny [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Music: Rock/Indie/Punk/Electronic/Pop/Experimental/Concept
Manifest Destiny is a musical exploration of 19th-century America. Its six songs touch upon Civil War battlefield surgery, the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872, the Industrial Revolution, Indian removal, and people doing awful things to their fellow humans. Rock junkies and academics alike will be satisfied as never before, because Clawjob has infused this EP with crunchy, diseased rock guitars, viciously abused drums, and excitingly humiliated synthesizers! 1. The Era of Good Feelings 2. Slice Me Up 3. Ether Frolic 4. Diamond Hoax 5. This Glorious System 6. Reservations More information is available at http://www.clawjob.com14:21
EL Heath - Wind, Thee Wind [ogg] [LegalTorrents: All Content]
The latest release from EL Heath.
14:08
EL Heath - Wind, Thee Wind [flac] [LegalTorrents: All Content]
The latest release from EL Heath.
13:15
EL Heath - Wind, Thee Wind [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Another masterful weaving of the personal and the natural from EL Heath. But for perhaps the first time on record, the emphasis with Wind, Thee Wind - his third release for Records on Ribs - is heavily on the former. This mostly Martenot work is born of the depression of the end of a relationship whilst - as ever with Heath - reflecting the sublime melancholy of the countryside around the Wales/Shropshire border. The EP opens with two of his most ambient tracks yet in which sparse, yawning sweeps of Martenot bring to mind Aphex Twin's ambient works. Then comes Thee Wind, Thee: a brief but devastatingly effective spoken word rumination on life's inevitable movement. The unrelentingly sparse Monodrone and Wind, Thee Wind return to the earlier ambient beauty to close out this short, and brutally beautiful meditation on Heath's consistent themes. Recommended.
10:55
Suspicions of Insider Trading Surround Pirate Bay Buyers [TorrentFreak]
Confidence and trust in the BitTorrent community reached a possible all-time low yesterday as news broke that the world’s largest tracker, The Pirate Bay, would be sold to the corporate Global Gaming Factory X (GGF).
The acquisition for $7.8m (SEK 60 million) came as a huge shock to most people familiar with The Pirate Bay, as GGF promised that when it takes over the site it will eliminate illicit file-sharing - the base upon which The Pirate Bay achieved its worldwide fame and enabled it to gather millions of loyal users.
Indeed, most indications point to GGF being only interested in three things - the Pirate Bay’s domain name, the users and the revenue they can generate from them.
However, according to a report, the news of the acquisition didn’t come as a shock to everyone. Indeed, accusations are being made that some individuals knew what was about to happen and took the opportunity to try and cash in.
Around a week ago, equity marketplace Aktietorget shut down the trading of GGF stock after it spotted unusually large trading volumes leading to a rapidly increasing stock price, notably in the absence of any new information to explain the sudden interest in the company.
Indicating they suspect insider dealing and announcing an investigation, Peter Gönczi, executive vice president of Aktietorget told Dagens Industri: “There are reasons to suspect that information was leaked.”
After the price of GGF shares rocketed by more than 150% yesterday, at one point today they had lost 29% of their value, up to date details here.
Post from: TorrentFreak
08:48
BitTorrent On Your TV For Less Than $90.00 [TorrentFreak]
Weighing in at a svelte 1.5 pounds and a compact 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.8 inches, CinemaCube is a brand new HD multimedia BitTorrent-enabled set-top box.
CinemaCube connects to your regular TV. It has an HDMI port and supports HD content up to 720p. It has all the usual analog and composite connections, S-Video and S/PDIF and plays back a multitude of formats including Xvid, DivX, AVI, H.264, MP4, MP2, RMVB, WMV, MP4, MKV, JPEG, BMP and PNG. Audio formats are also supported including FLAC, AAC, OGG and WAV.
Crucially for TorrentFreak readers, all of the above media can be acquired via the machine’s built-in BitTorrent client or from your existing PC archive via the built in 10/100 network socket.
Of course, there are many other set-top style boxes with these type of capabilities these days but what sets CinemaCube out from the competition is what it doesn’t have.
For starters the device doesn’t have a built in hard drive. Instead, CinemaCube has USB 2.0 connectivity which means that you can use your own external units or take advantage of small and cheap USB memory sticks which simply plug in.
For green-minded individuals, due to the lack of a hard drive CinemaCube doesn’t have a thirst for power consumption either, using only 10 watts of electricity when downloading via BitTorrent.
Perhaps most importantly, the device also lacks a big price tag. Unlike other admittedly higher-spec boxes, CinemaCube from brite-View costs just $89.99, putting it in reach of even the most frugal BitTorrent user.
Post from: TorrentFreak
Tuesday, 30 June
22:43
The Pirate Bay sale: Saving their ass or taking the fall? [P2P Blog]
The first thing that came to my mind today when I was reading the headlines about the sale of the Pirate Bay was Kazaa. Okay, that's not true. The first thing probably was something like "HOLY SHIT!!!" And then I had to think of Kazaa.
Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom sold their wildly popular file sharing network in the midst of a legal battle with Hollywood and the record companies, essentially saving their ass, securing a way to move forward and found Skype and Joost.
Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg are now trying to sell their site just weeks after Swedish court handed them jail terms, and the news broke only days after they failed to get a retrail based on the claim that the judge was biased. However, there's one very important difference:
The Kazaa case was civil litigation, and and the center of the case was Fasttrack BV, a company founded by Friis and Zennstrom. The duo dropped out of their lawsuit by simply selling the assets and closing the company.
The Pirate Bay lawsuit on the other hand was a criminal case against four individuals, and not a corporate entity. That means that the new owners won't actually inherit any part of the lawsuit. They're essentially starting with a clean slate, as I wrote today on Newteevee.com.
The original owners on the other hand may just have pretty much killed their chances to get the original verdict overturned. Sure, a jury may eventually decide that this isn't really a crime worth a prison sentence, but they'll also ask: If this was really legal, then why did you sell it?
That's obviously a very different outcome than the Kazaa sale. To me it looks much more like the Pirate Bay guys are taking the fall to potentially save the site, and put some more rubust infrastructure in place that would help to keep other sites safe as well.
21:49
5 Things to Know About The Pirate Bay Sale [P2P Blog]
The sale of The Pirate Bay to a Swedish software company, which plans to revamp the site and launch a new business model to compensate rights holders, has most everyone in the P2P community scratching their heads today. Global Gaming Factory X announced that it will buy the site for roughly $8 million, along with Swedish P2P solutions provider Peerialism, which has been developing BitTorrent-based distribution solutions for P2P streaming and downloads. The plan is apparently to use Peerialism’s technology for the next generation of The Pirate Bay.
Countless file-sharing users are now asking: Where does this leave us? Some are wondering if it will lead to the BitTorrent meltdown that we’ve been hearing so much about in the wake of the Pirate Bay lawsuit. And what will happen to all that money? Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
21:32
Jupiter Makes Me Scream - Tuesday Morning Hurricane [LegalTorrents: All Content]
New EP by previous enough releaser Lithuanian project Jupiter Makes Me Scream. 5 tracks of uplifting laidback electronica.
18:43
Digg and Mininova Team Up to Seed Bruno [TorrentFreak]
With a theater release scheduled for less than two weeks time, Bruno is doing several interviews promoting his upcoming mockumentary. One of the most anticipated Q and A sessions is the Dialogg with the Digg.com community that was released earlier today - on Digg as well as Mininova.
Our traffic sponsor Digg is no stranger to BitTorrent. Before the MediaDefender debacle Digg’s weekly video podcast Diggnation was published on Revision3’s very own BitTorrent tracker, but times have changed.
However, with their latest Dialogg video Digg has again decided to embrace the Internet’s most powerful distribution method. They’ve teamed up with Mininova, the largest BitTorrent indexer, to make the file available to millions of Bittorrent users.
“We see BitTorrent as a smart way to legitimately distribute content amongst millions,” Matt Van Horn, Business Development Manager for Digg told TorrentFreak. “That’s why we’re excited to share Digg Dialogg via torrents as one of the ways in which people can enjoy Digg’s interview with Bruno,” Matt added.
In addition to a regular torrent, Mininova is also testing a BitTorrent-powered video stream using Bitlet’s services. By clicking on the “stream this video” link users can directly watch the stream in their browser, fully powered by BitTorrent.
Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer told us that they are delighted to be working with Digg. “We have always liked Digg so when they asked us to work together we jumped on it immediately. This was also a nice opportunity to test the new video streaming from Bitlet which we had just implemented into our Content Distribution service,” he said.
With its Content Distribution service Mininova is seeding the file on its servers which guarantees a high speed download. The advantage for the Digg team is that they save some bandwidth and don’t have to seed Bruno themselves.
The Dialogg with Bruno can be both downloaded and streamed using on Mininova. Geil!
Post from: TorrentFreak
18:27
User deletion [The Pirate Bay - Blog]
We are going to build a user deletion interface later today. Many people have asked about having their account removed and we will not force anyone to stay on of course. However, we also want to point out that we have no logs of anything, no personal data will be transferred in the eventual sale (since no personal data is kept). So no need to be worried for safety. We always care for that. It also feels a bit sad to see the comments on the previous blog entry. We understand that you're upset. But we have reasons to do this that we cannot ignore. We need to keep the site going and this is the only working alternative. We cannot finance the growth of the site anymore and we cannot back down. The only way is up and this is the only route to that place. The support we had, is support we still need. We've been fighting for years for you; and yes; you have supported us in that endevour. We still need you, even if you abandon the site. The important thing is that you keep sharing and keep on saving the internets. We will try to do that, but right now, we need and deserve a break. Some things needs to be reborn and rebooted. Let's make this into something good!
17:08
13:52
Peace Out: The Pirate Bay Sold - Changes Ownership [Slyck.com File-Sharing News And Information]
Gone and quickly forgotten?
12:58
Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde Discusses the Site’s Future [TorrentFreak]
Today it was announced that Global Gaming Factory X is in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay for $7.8m (SEK 60 million). The acquisition is scheduled to be completed by August 2009 and will see the site launch new business models to compensate content providers and copyright owners.
Tomas Wennström of What’s Next managed to secure a recorded audio interview with The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde. In it Peter says why the site was sold, talks a little about the future for the site and touches on the huge disappointment being expressed by the site’s fans. It’s a very interesting interview, although in common with everything else going on today, it raises even more questions.
Some key points from the interview:
GGF approached The Pirate Bay with a deal several weeks ago. TPB considered GGF to be the correct company to bring the project “to the next level” since they didn’t feel capable of doing it themselves. Peter said he feels that GGF share the same values as TPB.
Peter said that TPB have been approached by companies before to sell out, but they didn’t understand the value of TPB. He said the value of the site is to be found in the userbase and nothing else. He added that if a company is interested in buying that userbase they have to keep up spirits or they will find themselves owning something that rapidly decreases in value.
Tomas Wennström said that he found it crazy that TPB would become a listed company. Peter responded that they think the concept is “super funny” and that’s one of the main reasons they are doing this.
Peter said in the past they’ve had to hide the financial details of the site and who is doing what “for legal reasons” but says that in the future there will have to be more transparency about how the operation is run, adding that people now not only have the chance to share files, but also buy shares in the site.
Peter explained that he and the original owners of TPB disposed of the site in 2006. He refused to name who took the site but referred to a single owner in one of his responses, using the word “he”.
Peter noted that the site hadn’t yet been sold to GGF and the company will have to find funding inside 4 weeks. He said he doesn’t know who the financial backers are, but if GGF cannot find the money then everything goes back to exactly the way it was before.
Peter said that the perfect situation would be if the users of the site set up something to buy The Pirate Bay. Certainly, with all the previous fund raising for buying islands etc this might have been a possibility but this has never even been put forward as an option. The idea seems optimistic considering the backlash among the users.
Currently the site is down after suffering a minor DDoS attack, and TPB’s TiAMO told TorrentFreak that the site’s load balancer had crashed .
Peter says running Pirate Bay has resulted in ‘bad pay’, i.e minus SEK 30 million in fines - incidentally an identical amount to the cash payment part of the deal with GGF.
Tomas Wennström put a scenario to Peter - what if GGF screws up and makes all that is good about The Pirate Bay go away - which seemed like a veiled reference to the availability of the usual TPB content.
“I’m agnostic about it, I think it could be true, could be faulty, but whatever happens at least something happens, which is the big thing here. I’d rather see The Pirate Bay die in a chance of becoming better, than just dying.”
For the time being The Pirate Bay crew will assist the new owners in operating the site. In addition a new tracker will be launched as well as a new torrent hosting service.
The interview can be downloaded here.
Post from: TorrentFreak
10:43
TPB might change owner [The Pirate Bay - Blog]
Yes, it's true. News reached the press today in Sweden - The Pirate Bay might get aquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB. A lot of people are worried. We're not and you shouldn't be either! TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it's value if the money would be the interesting part. It's not. The interesting thing is that the right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site. As all of you know, there's not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It's the same site essentially. On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn't evolve. We don't want that to happen. We've been working on this project for many years. It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen! If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of us. The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we're fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It's win-win-win. The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!
07:55
The Pirate Bay Will Decentralize Its Operations (Updated) [TorrentFreak]
Earlier today The Pirate Bay announced that it would be acquired by Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) who are listed on the Swedish stock market. So, Pirate Bay users can not only share files but they can buy a share of the site as well.
Perhaps even more significant for the BitTorrent community is the thus far unreported decision to close down the BitTorrent tracker. Up until today Pirate Bay’s public tracker connected more than half of all BitTorrent users but this is about to change.
Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has informed TorrentFreak that the site will soon decentralize and stop running a BitTorrent tracker of its own. Instead they will encourage their users to use a yet to be launched third party tracker for their torrents.
To decentralize even further, the torrents that will be listed on the site wont be hosted on The Pirate Bay’s servers anymore. In the near future the site will use a new torrent hosting service that will store the torrents for them. This new hosting service will be open to other torrent sites as well and can be accessed through an API.
In the end The Pirate Bay is making these changes to ensure that the BitTorrent ecosystem stays intact no matter what happens, Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. By decentralizing the different aspects they hope that BitTorrent users will be less reliant on the uptime of The Pirate Bay’s servers alone. The burden will now be spread among several independently operated services.
For now it remains a mystery what GGF CEO Hans Pandeya meant with “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.” That’s worrying to say the least.
In addition, GGF also acquired Peerialism who apparently have developed a new P2P distribution technology which will be used on The Pirate Bay. How this related to the new tracker and external torrent hosting remains unknown.
We’re trying to get confirmation and more details from GGF as soon as possible.
Update: According to Johan Sellström, the CTO of Global Gaming Factory, the plans have changed after Peter Sunde talked to us. “We had discussed closing it down initially so I think that’s why he said so. The plan is to use technology from Peerialism that makes bandwidth utilization more efficient and then it would not make sense to shut it down,” he said, adding. “Peerialism will modify the tracker but it will be backwards compatible. But all this is subject to change if for some reason it would not work. It is our ambition to do so.”
Post from: TorrentFreak
05:55
The Pirate Bay Sold To Software Company, Goes Legal [TorrentFreak]
Software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) says it is in the process of acquiring The Pirate Bay and file-sharing technology company Peerialism. GGF claims to have the biggest network of internet cafés and gaming centers in the world.
The changeover of ownership is scheduled for August 2009, whereby GGF will take over the operation of the site.
The company says that after it has completed the acquisition it will launch new business models so that copyright owners get paid, which is clearly a huge diversion from TPB’s previous modus operandi.
“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” said Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF.
“The Pirate Bay is a site that is among the top 100 most visited Internet sites in the world. However, in order to live on, The Pirate Bay requires a new business model, which satisfies the requirements and needs of all parties, content providers, broadband operators, end users, and the judiciary,” said Pandeya.
“Content creators and providers need to control their content and get paid for it. File sharers’ need faster downloads and better quality,” he added.
GGF will acquire the site’s domain names and sites for SEK 60,000,000 ($7.8 million) - SEK 30,000,000 in cash and the rest in newly issue shares.
File-sharing technology company Peerialism will also be acquired by GGF for a total of SEK 100 million, of which at least SEK 50 million will be in cash.
According to GGF, Peerialism has developed a new P2P distribution technology which will be used on The Pirate Bay. The technology is said to be backwards-compatible with BitTorrent although details are scarce at the moment.
At the time of writing, shares in GGF are up 155% - this will quickly become outdated, so check here for latest stats.
This is breaking news and this article will be updated constantly - please keep checking back.
Post from: TorrentFreak
Monday, 29 June
18:39
MediaDefender Virus Scam Targets Torrent Site Users [TorrentFreak]
The latest in a long line of scams targeting email users is attempting to capitalize on the increasing number using BitTorrent sites.
Targets of the scam receive an unsolicited email purporting to come from notorious anti-piracy company MediaDefender. The email, which is simply addressed “Dear User!” claims the individual has been monitored on any of several torrent sites while engaging in anything from copyright infringement, through to simply browsing the sites.
Of course, citing MediaDefender is a nonsense, since that company doesn’t get involved in anti-piracy warning letters - its specialty was spoofing on BitTorrent networks.
Additionally, most of the sites listed don’t even operate a tracker, so committing any type of copyright infringements on them is almost impossible. Here is the body of the email;
Pirate Scam Spam
Dear User!
Your recent internet activity was logged on the following sites:
* Btjunkie
* SumoTorrent
* isoHunt
* Btscene
* Mininova
* Fenopy
* Monova
* Yotoshi
* GetInvites
* Btmonhxxp://XXXXX.net/report_78478XX.exe (XX added by TorrentFreak)
We have a report about the copyrighted movies, music, softwares you downloaded or searched on these webpages. We strongly advise you to stop any future activities regarding the downloading of illegal content or you can expect prosecution by 17 U.S.C.512,1201?1205,1301?1332; 28 U.S.C. 4001 laws.
Sincerely,
MediaDefender Inc.
So what is this scam all about? Attached to the email is a logfile which supposedly provides additional information about the user’s infringements, but of course this is a lie - the log is really a virus.
This type of scam is nothing new - the same type of thing has been tried before, probably by the same people. However, this time the virus is different. Here is the report, courtesy of ThreatExpert;
Threat characteristics of ZBot - a banking trojan that disables firewall, steals sensitive financial data (credit card numbers, online banking login details), makes screen snapshots, downloads additional components, and provides a hacker with the remote access to the compromised system. Creates a startup registry entry. Contains characteristics of an identified security risk.
Savvy Internet users will hopefully realize the email is a scam fairly quickly, but hardened file-sharers should smell a rat even earlier due to the omission of demands for money.
Post from: TorrentFreak
09:02
ISPs Doubt Accuracy of Anti-Piracy Evidence [TorrentFreak]
ACS:Law, the outfit that at least appears to have taken over from lawyers Davenport Lyons in chasing alleged uploaders of 2nd rate games on file-sharing networks, have experienced another blow to their credibility. Their ‘evidence’ has been called into doubt yet again - this time by Internet service providers.
The hypocritical law firm - who were recently shown to be copyright infringers themselves - partner with Swiss anti-piracy tracking company Logistep (and another company DigiProtect) in order to demand settlements of around £665. However, time and time again there have been allegations against individuals who have absolutely no idea why they are being accused of copyright infringement.
Last year, in the most prominent case of mistaken identity and when Davenport Lyons were working with porn companies, they incorrectly accused a retired 64 year-old man of sharing the hardcore movie ‘Euro Domination 5′ via BitTorrent. The man received an apology and the demands for money ended.
Eventually the actions of Davenport Lyons, Logistep and DigiProtect attracted the attention of consumer group Which? who made a complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Although that action is still ongoing, Davenport decided - at least on the surface - to withdraw from the business.
But of course, ACS:Law were waiting in the wings and they are now conducting business with Logistep in much the same fashion. Unfortunately for them, Which? is now on their case too.
In their most recent print edition, Which? published an article which casts an even darker shadow over the issue. They say they have been contacted by 20 individuals who say they have no knowledge of the games in question - Dream Pinball 3D and Two Worlds.
Which? quoted hospital ward clerk Deborah Hughes who said: “It’s distressing to receive such a letter. I’ve never heard of this game and I’ve no idea how to share it. I’ve searched my computer but it’s not there.”
Of even greater concern and embarrassment to ACS:Law are the accusations they leveled at Colin Dixon, Technology Director at a UK software developer. “My wife and I are middle aged (51 and 49) and work from home, and the computers here are owned by our employer, and are strictly controlled for pirated software - that’s my job!”
Which? also spoke with the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) about the issue. They replied: “We’re not convinced of the efficacy of the software and not confident in its ability to identify users.”
Up to now, this hasn’t worried Logistep, DigiProtect, Davenport Lyons or ACS:Law since they say in their claims letters: “We do not claim that your computer was used to commit the infringing act (although we do not exclude this possibility), nor do we claim that you downloaded our client’s work. Our claim is that your Internet connection was used to make our client’s work available via one or more P2P networks. The file may not, therefore, be on your computer.”
So, in a nutshell, they admit that the people named in their letters may not have carried out any infringement. Absolutely priceless.
Neither ACS:Law nor Davenport Lyons have ever won a contested case against a UK file-sharer, despite all their bluster. Hundreds of people are “let off” after simply digging in their heels, denying the accusations and refusing to pay.
Thanks Hickster
Post from: TorrentFreak
06:49
Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent [TorrentFreak]
This week there are three newcomers including Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. ‘Knowing’ managed to stay on top of the chart for another week.
The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.
RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
| Ranking | (last week) | Movie | Rating / Trailer |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | (1) | Knowing | 6.7 / trailer |
| 2 | (…) | The Haunting in Connecticut | 5.8 / trailer |
| 3 | (2) | Angels and Demons (R5) | 6.9 / trailer |
| 4 | (…) | Transformers 2 (Cam) | 6.8 / trailer |
| 5 | (…) | Michael Jackson: Moonwalker | 4.9 / trailer |
| 6 | (4) | Night at the Museum 2 (R5) | 6.1 / trailer |
| 7 | (3) | Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li | 4.1 / trailer |
| 8 | (7) | He’s Just Not That Into You | 6.5 / trailer |
| 9 | (10) | Push | 6.4 / trailer |
| 10 | (5) | The Last House on the Left (R5) | 6.9 / trailer |
Post from: TorrentFreak
00:58
Limewire helps to circumvent Irianian Internet censorship [P2P Blog]
Limewire is encouraging its users to download and share videos documenting the protests against the Iranian election.
limewire vs iranian censorship
The company's P2P client started to display a splash screen late last week that asks users to add videos about the protests in Iran to their shared folders, explaining:
"Iran has been limiting its own citizens' and the world's access to coverage of the post-election protests by blocking sites distributing such material. Peer-to-peer software, like Lime Wire, provides access to critical information and coverage of the events in a manner that the Iranian government cannot effectively block."
Users that click on the splash screen are automatically starting to download a zipped 110 MB archive of videos from Iran. The Zip file comes straight from Limewire's servers, and users are encouraged to unzip and then share it. Some of the videos are pretty graphic, and most of it is clearly shot with mobile phone cameras or small photo cameras. Of course, you'll probably find most of these videos on Youtube as well - unless you're in Iran, and Youtube is blocked ...
I wrote previously about the way P2P networks and file sharing sites are becoming increasingly important in distributing information about the protest movement in Iran. Videos of the demonstrations as well as the violent crackdowns on protesters have been circulating via BitTorrent, and the folks behind the Pirate Bay have even launched a web forum in support of the Iranian opposition.
Limewire doesn't go that far, but the company wants to take a clear stance against attempts by the current Iranian regime to suppress information about the protests:
"The Iranian government has been limiting the free flow of information in the wake of their presidential elections. Lime Wire takes no stance on the election itself, but we strongly believe in internet and information freedom."
Sunday, 28 June
18:24
Automated Legal Threats Turn Piracy Into Profit [TorrentFreak]
Some people might remember Nexicon from the Getamnesty site we mentioned in the past, or perhaps as the Youtube copyright cops. The company has a history as a cigarette retailer but went on to hunt pirates after they were sued for selling smokes to minors and failing to report their sales to the tax office.
After its transformation into a pirate tracking outfit Nexicon launched its Getamnesty program which offers copyright holders a chance to turn piracy into profit. They cleverly circumvent privacy protection laws by using ISPs to forward settlement requests for various copyright holders to alleged infringers. One of their most successful partner programs is the Payartists website which is a misleading name to say the least.
The money collected through Payartists is not going to any artists at all. The only artist they collect ’settlements’ for on the site is Frank Zappa, and he passed away in 1993. All the settlement money collected now goes to The Zappa Family Trust which is headed by Zappa’s widow.
Most recently a new Nexicon franchise emerged, as the ‘Video Protection Alliance’ (VPA) has teamed up with several porn studios to track down and force settlements from alleged copyright infringers. The methods they use are very similar to Getamnesty and Payartists and are designed to get cash payments from illicit file-sharers without even having to first find out who they are.
The process is simple. Their software monitors BitTorrent swarms and other filesharing networks and records the IP-addresses of those people who share the work of their clients. It then automatically sends an email to the ISP linked to the IP-address with a request to forward it to the associated customer.
Thus far, this is very similar to the warning letters that the movie and music studios have been sending out for years. However, there is one big difference. The emails sent out by Nexicon to alleged infringers contain veiled threats of legal action if they don’t choose to settle within 10 days.
In their email they write that “it may be beneficial to settle this matter without the need of costly and time-consuming litigation.”
If you don’t settle they are “prepared to pursue every available remedy including damages, recovery of attorney’s fees, costs and any and all other claims that may be available to it in a lawsuit filed against you.” To make it even more scary, they point out that ISPs might cut your Internet connection if you don’t comply.
In the FAQ on the VPA website it is noted that consulting a lawyers is an option, but it would be a rather silly thing to do since it will cost more than the settlement itself. “It is likely that the cost incurred to retain a lawyer will exceed the settlement amount offered.”
Indeed, the settlements are rather cheap compared to the fine that was handed out to Jammie Thomas recently. The settlement offer for an adult movie is close to the retail price of a DVD and for a single Frank Zappa track you’ll pay $10. In comparison, Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $80,000 per song.
Settle with Zappa on Payartists, or else…
However, because of these low fees and the use of threatening language we cannot help mentioning the word ‘extortion’ once more. Even if they handle with the best intentions they should adjust their tracking software to be more accurate. We confirmed at least one case where they sent a settlement offer to the wrong person, and we’re pretty sure that this is not the only mistake they’ve made (here’s another one).
Still, even people wrongfully accused of sharing [insert obscene porn title here] may be inclined to pay a few bucks rather than risk being taken to court. The threats are worrying enough for some people to pay for an offense they didn’t commit. But there might be an even easier way out.
Unsurprisingly, very little happens when the threats are ignored. A Manhattan College employee dealing with DMCA notices wrote recently. “We have not passed the settlement info on to the students linked with the allegedly infringing IP address and have not had any follow up notices from them.”
This aside, we are not aware of any legal action taken by any of Nexicon’s partners to back up their threats. To the best of our knowledge they don’t even have a proper license to act as private investigators which is a felony in several US states and renders the ‘evidence’ they have in their spreadsheets useless.
Our advice, if you get a settlement offer from one of Nexicon’s partners please forward it to your spam folder - after forwarding it to us first of course.
Post from: TorrentFreak
16:29
Muhmood - Tamara and Demon [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Tamara and Demon album is the soundtrack of the 3D cartoon of the same name, created By Nikolay Aladinskiy and Petr Bobryshev - StPetersburg, Russia. Muhmood - is a one man act and the stage name of Alexei Biryukoff - a Siberian artist, who makes conceptual projects that include large scale figurative paintngs, perfomances, installations and sound. Muhmood's music is a mixture of all kinds of styles, starting from a capellas, going thru experimental dark ambient with an ethnic streak [mostly middle eastern] and creative percussion, ending with heavy guitar riffs and powerful drum sets.
00:15
LA GIUSTIZIA SVEDESE COME LA CONSULTA ITALIANA [Partito Pirata]
Comunicato dell'Associazione Partito Pirata
LA GIUSTIZIA SVEDESE COME LA CONSULTA ITALIANA
Eravamo convinti che la giustizia dei paesi nordici, Svezia in particolar modo, fosse da prendere ad esempio per l'imparzialità, la terzietà ed il rispetto totale di tutte le norme. La lettura del processo raccontato nell'ultimo romanzo di Stieg Larsson ci aveva illuso di poter finalmente avere un paese nel quale esistesse la certezza della pena assieme a forti ed antichi principi etici e morali. Evidentemente ci sbagliavamo. Dopo il processo agli amici del sito The Pirate Bay , concluso qualche giorno fa con una condanna, è emerso che il giudice Tomas Norström aveva lavorato e manteneva rapporti con alcune importanti associazioni per la difesa del copyright in Svezia. Molti membri dell'associazione per i diritti d'autore in Svezia hanno inviato messaggi anonimi al sito di Pirate Bay confermando che in molte occasioni il giudice era presente ad incontri dell'associazione dove si affrontavano temi legati proprio al sito e alle iniziative per contrastarlo. Il processo avrebbe dovuto essere immediatamente annullato ma per il momento non è successo nulla. The Pirate Bay ha in programma di denunciare la giustizia svedese davanti alla corte europea dei diritti dell'uomo. In Italia è di questi giorni la notizia che ben due membri della Consulta hanno tranquillamente cenato con il presidente del consiglio, il suo avvocato ed il Ministro della giustizia. Un incontro riservato tra il Premier e due magistrati della Consulta, ovvero l'organismo che tra poche settimane dovrà decidere se bocciare o meno il Lodo Alfano: la legge che rende Berlusconi intoccabile se non alla fine del suo mandato. Due esempi assimilabili e lampanti di interferenze inaccettabili ed immorali. Solidarietà totale agli amici di The Pirate Bay. Qualsiasi sia il risultato di entrambe queste vicende, se gli attori rimarranno al loro posto, sarà inficiato dal sospetto di connivenza.
Saturday, 27 June
23:45
070 - Helsingfors - Schematics [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Maths is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Rock is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids. 'Schematics' is the debut EP from five piece Helsingfors, including all four ex-From The Sky members, and is an instrumental post-math-rock hybrid, a logical progression from their previous work. Upping the complexity and melodic layering mixed with upbeat, jarring indie-rock, 'Schematics' was recorded primarily as a live band and bursts with the live energy this brings. A physical CD release is also available from here and is being promoted and distributed by the new indie record label from The 405 website, 405 Records.
19:11
Pirate Bay’s YouTube Competitor is “Coming Soon” [TorrentFreak]
More than two years have passed since The Pirate Bay team first announced that they were working on a video streaming site. However, as with most of their projects it can take a while before the public can catch a glimpse of what they are working on.
The Video Bay - as the project is named - opened up to the public with a very early test version a few weeks ago. Initially, users were able to browse though the videos but this has been disabled now. What is left is an announcement that the site will be launched somewhere in the future.
“This site will be an experimental playground and as such subjected to both live and drunk (en)coding, so please don’t bug us too much if the site ain’t working properly,” it currently reads on the site’s main page.
The Video Bay Launches in Test Mode
How long it will take before the site will be opened up to the public is unknown. Pirate Bay’s TiAMO told TorrentFreak that there is still a lot of work to do behind the scenes. The encoder is not finished yet and the design is also a work in progress.
Pirate Bay Spokesman Peter Sunde agreed that it might take a while before the site goes live and told us that “it will be done when it’s done, in the future, in like a year or five.”
The Video Bay aims to implement some of the latest technologies including HTML 5 features such as the video and audio tags as well as the embedding of ogg/theora video and audio formats. However, it will not use p2p technology to stream the videos.
In time the site has the potential to become a major player in the video streaming area, similar to what BayIMG is for image hosting. A no-nonsense video sharing site where users can share whatever they want - uncensored. Hollywood will be delighted.
Update: Two preview clips are now available at the main page. Those who want to try out need a web browser that supports the HTML 5 tags such as the latest Firefox Beta or Safari 4.
Post from: TorrentFreak
14:53
Brazilian President Shows Warmth To Pirate Bay Spokesman [TorrentFreak]
Since 2005, Brazilian senator Eduardo Azeredo has been proposing new ‘cybercrimes’ legislation. Unlike some European proposals, the Brazilian one isn’t limited to dealing with copyright issues alone, but has expanded to include all “dangerous” online activities. Anyone creating a virus or simply sharing illicit files could be arrested and jailed for up to three years.
The International Free Software Forum (FISL) is an annual event sponsored by the Free Software Association taking place in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The event sees the coming together of researchers, social movements, entrepreneurs, hackers and free information advocates, this year including Peter Sunde, spokesman for The Pirate Bay.
At the event yesterday was a rather high-profile individual, Brazil’s President Lula. The President took the opportunity to publicly criticize the legislation supported by Senator Eduardo Azeredo.
“In our government it is prohibited to prohibit,” said the president during his speech at the event. “I consider this bill a form of censorship,” he added.
After meeting with others including Richard Stallman, President Lula noted that “..the Internet must continue free,” adding ”..the freedom is the source of the creativity”.
Also invited to the event was someone with perhaps an even higher profile in Internet-related issues than the president himself, The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde. Not wanting to miss out on a great photo opportunity to boost his popularity, President Lula Peter Sunde posed with Peter Sunde President Lula.
The Pirate and The President by Mariel Zasso
Post from: TorrentFreak
09:07
Joost Adds Widgets, Metadata API to Its Flash Player [P2P Blog]
Joost has announced that it is going to allow third-party developers to add Flash widgets to its video player soon. The Joost Labs blog this week previewed a widget that adds keyword-based Twitter search results to a video. Joost wants to eventually release a widget API that will expose some of the underlying video’s metadata and make it possible to integrate these widgets within the Joost Flash player.
This isn’t the first time Joost is toying with widgets. The company’s P2P-based video application also featured a widget API, but few wanted to develop for a player that had no user base. However, Joost has clearly been thinking about how to make widgets work in the past few years, and some of these ideas could lead to interesting results. Continue reading on Newteevee.com.
02:33
Are Torrents a Tool for Predicting the Future? [P2P Blog]
Gigaom Pro is featuring an article of mine today, and the tag line is "Music and movie downloaders have more than once proven to be on the bleeding edge of connected consumer tech." It's available to subscribers only, but this short preview might give you an idea of what it's all about ... wait, you're already a subscriber? Then let me now what you think about it!
Friday, 26 June
22:37
18:40
Pirate Bay Cow Gatecrashes Milk Competition [TorrentFreak]
Tine, Norways largest dairy products company is giving its Litago chocolate milk branding a bit of a makeover. Rather than waste time and money employing expensive designers, they started a competition.
Litago milk features a cow on the packaging so not wanting to break with tradition, Tine invited the public to enter their own cow designs. Once all entries were received voting began - the winning cow will become the new Litago logo - no bull.
Here are the finalists, they are very amoosing.
According to reports, the cow in first place right now - the Opera Browser Cow - could have been put there by supporters or even (gasp) employees of the Norwegian browser company. An udderly scandalous allegation, especially when the steaks are this high.
But take a closer look at the design in second place right now. That’s right, just as expected, it’s a Pirate Bay-inspired cow. With green arrows on it.
“What we are really talking about here is Litago with a Pirate bay logo, submitted by a someone who loves to drink milk and loves to download torrents,” say IT-Avisen, “but perhaps has less love for Tøndel and intellectual property law.”
But of course, Tine has a few safeguards to ensure that no Pirate Bay logo gets anywhere near their bottles and packaging. The final decision will be made by a panel of farmers judges - selected by Tine.
Moo.
Post from: TorrentFreak
12:45
Michael Jackson’s Death Causes Surge On BitTorrent [TorrentFreak]
Michael Jackson suffered a cardiac arrest on Thursday afternoon, which was likely caused by a Demerol overdose and ultimately led to his death.
There is no doubt that Jackson had a tremendous impact on several generations of musicians, and millions of people who grew up with his music. It is therefore no surprise to see that only hours after he was pronounced dead, his music is being sought by hundreds of thousands of people.
At the time of writing the three most active torrents in the music section on the largest torrent indexer, Mininova, are all compilations or discographies from the “King of Pop”. On top is a torrent listing 30 Michael Jackson albums, The Jackson 5 and The Jacksons, totaling 1.94 GB of music.
In common with social media sites, ‘Michael Jackson’ is one of the most sought after phrases on torrent sites too. The search cloud on Mininova is filled with Jackson-related searches from fans who want to complete their collection.
Michael Jackson fills Mininova’s search cloud
This renewed interest in Michael Jackson is not limited to just torrent sites though. On Amazon, Jackson’s work takes up the top 14 spots on the bestselling albums list. Currently the top 10 albums chart on iTunes is dominated by 7 Jackson albums. On eBay there is a similar boom with memorabilia being traded for ten times the prices of just two days ago.
It had been rumored by Michael Jackson biographer Ian Halperin that the ‘King of Pop’ had recorded as many as 100 unreleased tracks but was keeping them locked away. He claimed that upon Jackson’s death, the tracks would be made available to his three children as a personal legacy and to secure an inheritance.
With Jackson’s death the 100 songs could now become available, and considering his troubling financial situation it may not take very long before they become available to the public, in stores and on BitTorrent.
Post from: TorrentFreak
09:22
08:27
appDowner: A BitTorrent Powered iPhone App Store [TorrentFreak]
During the summer of 2008, iPhone developer Alec Renolds announced he was working on a BitTorrent application that would be capable of automatically downloading and installing iPhone applications. Provisionally named ‘AppDowner’, the project looked promising but faltered a little due to some personal issues.
Now things are back on track as Alec has teamed up with a new designer Miles Lorry to revitalize the newly and slightly renamed ‘appDowner’. Available in beta “soon”, appDowner will be compatible with iPhone 3.0 devices, so what’s the deal?
“The concept of appDowner has changed slightly, from being a simple ’smart’ BitTorrent application to a full on App Store replacement,” explains Alec.
“No longer will you have to remember and type in the URL to your torrent file, simply click the “Store” tab on appDowner, and you’ll be brought to a beautiful interface designed by Miles (which isn’t quite ready to be shown off yet, but he assures us that it will be very, very soon!) which will allow you to search and find the apps you’re looking for.”
appDowner will be available soon
Unlike the official App Store, there will no iTunes-like approval process to get your own applications onto the appDowner store, with Alec promising that submissions to the system will be accepted within a week.
While BitTorrent is employed to serve apps to the user, the appDowner torrent client can also be used for non-appDowner downloads too
When released in beta, appDowner should become available via Cydia/Icy.
Stay tuned for updates
Post from: TorrentFreak
08:17
Rapidshare is going to appeal court decision [P2P Blog]
Rapidshare has announced that it's going to appeal a recent court verdict that would force the company to establish stricter filters for copyrighted content. Hamburg's District Court ruled earlier this month that Rapidshare has to remove 5000 musical works that are part of the catalog of the German music rights group GEMA.
The court also found that Rapidshare isn't doing enough to prevent the repeated upload of previously removed works. Rapidshare would have to figure out stricter controls to make sure that these 5000 titles won't get uploaded again.
One of the issues that keeps popping up in these conflicts are links shared in third party forums. GEMA had previously told the courts that it had developed a software to scour web forums and extract links to content shared on Rapidshare. The company however doubts that this software is working:
"It's questionable wether the application can deal with mechanisms to prevent the scraping of links, open encrypted files, accurately indetify audio files or find links in forums that can't be accessed by search engines."
Rapidshare CEO Bobby Chang added that GEMA fighting a futile war that alienates it's own customers. "GEMA is trying to turn back time," he added.
01:57
Pirate Party teams up with Greens in European parliament [P2P Blog]
Newly elected Pirate Party representative Christian Enstroem will join the group of the European Greens in the EU parliament. The party reportedly got offers to join a number of groups, including a coalition of liberal parties and a leftist group. Representatives of the Green party group had this to say about their new member:
"The Greens/EFA Group is delighted to welcome the Swedish Pirate Party, which shares our principles and values in defending internet users' rights. Christian Engstroem will have an independent status within our group and he has indicated he will support the Greens/EFA position in areas where the Pirate Party has no agenda."
The Greens currently have a total of 54 members in the European parliament. Joining this group should give Engstroem considerably more influence that figthing it out as a lone wolf. It's unclear how the Pirate party's members and voters will take the announcement that Enstroem is going to support Green issues.
However, at least two supporters of the two movements should be qite happy about this decision: The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde aka brokep had announced that he was going to support the Greens in the recent EU election, whereas his partner in crime (no pun intended) Fredrik Neij aka Tiamo had thrown his support behind the Pirate Party.
Thursday, 25 June
23:21
CacheXY - U to L [LegalTorrents: All Content]
New album by previous enough releaser Cachexy. This time with a 5 track dark ambient noise soundtrack exploration including some cover/remix versions from tracks by Olya and Monster and The Litz.
16:47
Judge supposedly not biased [The Pirate Bay - Blog]
According to the court, the judge Tomas Norström is not to be considered biased. The court says that Tomas Norström should have informed about his engagement in the different pro-copyright organisations and that it should have been done before the court case. They also say that he's probably more biased towards judging in favor of the rights holder. However - Anders Eka, the person judging here (and has the final verdict) - does not say that this enough for being biased. Oh. And it should also be noted that Anders Eka, the guy with the final decision that is not appealable, heads in an immaterial rights organisation as Peter Drowsky and Monique Wasted, the MPAA and Ifpi-lawyers. However, he does not feel that working together with the lawyers that enjoys this decision the most has an impact on his decision or that he might be biased himself... Tomorrow, we will probably file charges against the swedish legal system to the european court of human rights.
12:36
Svensk Tingsrätt [The Pirate Bay - Blog]
är ju ettskämt, fyra pensionärer och en kanna nybryggt kaffe. Tre avdankade politiker i 60-årsåldern och en ordförande sitter och dömer att en Lösenordsskyddad server är ett tillgängliggörande för allmänheten, men samtidigt har det ens påbörjats någon utredning om hur APB fick tillgång till denna lösenordsskyddade server? (läs Datorintrång), eller har utredningen lagts ner p.g.a. "brist på bevis" i god svensk polissed? Hur de förvänta sig att den unga generationen ska ha respekt för ett system som enligt dem inte förstår den enklaste teknik, som de har vuxit upp med och tar en som självklarhet, hur ska de kunna känna att de garanteras en rättvis rättegång i ett sådant rättsklimat.
09:47
Will Baidu soon search P2P networks? [P2P Blog]
This could be a big story in the making: JLM Pacific Epoch is reporting that Chinese search giant Baidu is about to release a dedicated P2P search offering. The article, which is literally just two and a half lines long, reads:
"A Baidu (Nasdaq:BIDU) insider said the company plans to release a peer-to-peer (P2P) search service at p2p.baidu.com soon, reports Sohu."
The search site is supposed to offer results from Easymule, which is a Chinese Emule mod published by the folks of the popular Chinese Edonkey link indexing site VeryCD. It's not clear whether this means that Baidu will just search VeryCD, or actually scour the Emule network for content.
Either way, it's an interesting development. The court case against the Pirate Bay led to many comparisons between the torrent site and Google, which the search engine promptly denied. Baidu on the other hand seems to have no problems with becoming a competition for P2P search engines.
09:43
09:41
07:09
Sugar on a Stick [LegalTorrents: All Content]
The award-winning Sugar Learning Platform promotes collaborative learning through Sugar Activities that encourage critical thinking, the heart of a quality education. Designed from the ground up especially for children, Sugar offers an alternative to traditional "office-desktop" software. The Sugar on a Stick Strawberry release is based on Fedora 11 with the latest updates as of June 22. It also features the latest Sugar learning environment, namely version 0.84, including 40 Activities to enrich the learning experience. Hundreds of Activities are available for download from the Sugar Activity Library. This release is a step forward from the beta release; in addition to Fedora updates, it includes supplementary sample content, which is available in the Journal. Apart from the default Fructose activities, additional Activities are included in this release. http://download.sugarlabs.org/soas/releases/soas-strawberry.iso
Wednesday, 24 June
01:46
Rights holders celebrate yet another victory over Rapidshare [P2P Blog]
The German music rights association GEMA has announced yet another court verdict against Rapidshare. Hamburg's district court ordered Rapidshare to remove 5000 songs that are part of GEMA's repertoire. The one-click-hoster also has to make sure that the titles won't be published by its users in the future, according to an article on heise.de.
Rapidshare has already been using a MD-5 hash to identify uploads and block files that the service previously had to take down. However, the court now found that these measures are not enough to actively prevent copyright infringement.
The court decision has apparently not been published yet, and Rapidshare told heise.de that it wasn't able to comment on any details until it had seen the decision. However, CEO Bobby Chang went on record saying that court decisions like these often get overturned.
Rapidshare has been having a mixed record with court cases brought against them by rights holders. The company was able to dodge a bullet when a court forced it in 2007 to simply police a single link site that has since shut down. However, the same court that now sided with GEMA also ordered the company to proactively check uploads for infringement and monitor users that previously published infringing content.
Rapidshare has since started to keep a closer eye on its uploaders, an in fact been in the headlines for providing the contact information of an uploader to law enforcement officials. The company reacted to this by finally publishing a privacy policy earlier this month.
Tuesday, 23 June
21:48
VexXxeR - Power Industrial [LegalTorrents: All Content]
4 track demo from the new Portuguese power industrial project VexXxeR.
21:44
What Would It Look Like [LegalTorrents: All Content]
What if the world embodied our highest potential? What would it look like? As the structures of modern society crumble, is it enough to respond with the same tired solutions? Or are we being called to question a set of unexamined assumptions that form the very basis of our civilization?This 25-minute retrospective asks us to reflect on the state of the world and ourselves, and to listen more closely to what is being asked of us at this time of unprecedented global transformation.
17:40
SFU-medlemmar! [The Pirate Bay - Blog]
Blog post is in Swedish, sorry. Hej alla medlemmar i Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt. Flera av er har hört av sig anonymt om att Tomas varit hos er när ni diskuterat oss som sakfråga. Vi skulle behöva att någon av er var modiga och ställde er bakom det ni sagt, även på papper och evt som vittnen i en rättegång. Det känns lite desperat - men vi vet att det inte gått rätt till. Därför hoppas vi att ni kanske kan sporra varandra. Våga göra rätt! Ni vet hur ni kontaktar oss. Gör det igen, snälla! Vi kanske har olika åsikter om upphovsrätt men inte om rättssamhället. Värna om det!
08:08
06:00
Digital Foundations Textbook master file including all files, links, images [LegalTorrents: All Content]
This zip contains all of the inDesign files used to publish Digital Foundations. A description (from the intro) is below.Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite integrates the formal principles of the Bauhaus Basic Course into an introduction to digital media production with the Adobe Creative Suite.
Monday, 22 June
22:00
Vysehrad - No Signal 3 50 [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Dark ambient album by Portuguese project Vysehrad.
15:13
DV8 Release Group Uploader Arrested [Slyck.com File-Sharing News And Information]
Indy and major music release group targeted.
09:08
Phillip Wilkerson - Williams Park [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Styles: Ambient, Experimental, Glitch Williams Park is in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It is the city's first park and encompasses an entire city block between 4th and 3rd Streets North and between 2nd and 1st Avenues North. Founded in 1888 and originally named "City Park," it was changed to Williams Park in honor of the founder of St. Petersburg, John Constantine Williams Sr.The park is the center of the downtown business district and has been the venue for numerous political and civic rallies and celebrations for more than one hundred years. In 1964, Richard Nixon used the bandstand to speak to a large group gathered in the park on behalf of then presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Many downtown workers flock to the park in good weather for picnics during their lunch breaks. At one time, the park was surrounded by prestigious department and retail stores. In the past 25 years, most of them have moved away to malls and other areas away from the city center.
00:03
Quanto costa resistere allo strapotere delle major dell'intrattenimento? [Partito Pirata]
A questa conclusione è giunta anche la giuria chiamata a giudicare il caso di Jammie Thomas-Rasset (come riporta PI), madre di 4 figli.
Queste potenti organizzazioni stanno sfruttando il potere e il denaro accumulato nei decenni per influenzare i poteri legislativi e giudiziari degli stati e mantenere i propri privilegi con metodi ormai indifendibili. Come una novella corte nobiliare della Francia del 1789 gozzovigliano ignari di seminare i germi della propria distruzione.
Il mondo non può più permettersi l'esistenza di simili residuati, fossili di un tempo in cui, in nome della diffusione della cultura, si
doveva tollerare la loro esistenza.
Sempre più, è evidente come occorra recuperare il rapporto diretto tra i produttori di opere e i fruitori del loro lavoro.
Ci chiediamo come possano certi artisti continuare a far finta di nulla quando in loro nome vengono perpetrati abusi come questo sulle persone più indifese.
Il 14 luglio viene per tutti.
.(testo di Marco Confalonieri)
Sunday, 21 June
08:07
Bert Jerred - Volume 7 [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Another collection (2002-2009) from Bert Jerred
Saturday, 20 June
19:00
FDIC Insured-America West Bank-Master File [LegalTorrents: All Content]
This is the master file for a laser cut print "FDIC Insured (America West Bank)" executed in an edition of 50 for the non profit organization No Longer Empty http://nolongerempty.com/ The red and black correspond to different laser strengths on the laser cutter I am using, but can be rendered in one color for aesthetics, etc.Since the beginning of the Great Recession the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has taken control of over 70 failed or failing banks. The government has bailed out, or brokered forced sales of a number of other major financial institutions. These emergency conversions are done in one weekend; on Friday the bank is alive, but at 6 PM it begins a massive autopsy, and by Monday morning all traces of the original bank are gone. It is operated under the name of a formal rival bank, many of the employees are gone, and the entire visual signage has changed. These logos disappear from our memory, they disappear from the clutter of the visual landscape, they are even erased from the Internet and its many archives.
17:08
HE-LUX - Native [LegalTorrents: All Content]
An ambient trance ep by german project HE-LUX, also quite active in the graphic design and vj scene.
15:06
Multifaros - Epiq EP [LegalTorrents: All Content]
Small 4 track ep by Swedish young chip/8bit artist Multifaros. Easy listening 8bit sounds.
15:01
Le proteste degli Abruzzesi ignorate dalla stampa. Facciamo da noi l'informazione. [Partito Pirata]
Dal momento che l'informazione nazionale non ne ha parlato, mi sento in dovere di farlo in quanto testimone. Martedì ero a Latina per lavoro e mi apprestavo a tornare Roma. In stazione, i treni portavano ritardi dai 30 ai 120 minuti. Il megafono della stazione annunciava che i ritardi erano causati da manifestanti che bloccavano i binari. Credo che la manifestazione (di cui nessuno ha parlato nei media tradizionali) fosse questa.
Lascio alla vostra coscienza la scelta di condividere e divulgare (sul vostro social network preferito, blog o microblogging) questo articolo. Lo spirito con cui è stato scritto è quello di sopperire alle lacune di una informazione nazionale sottoposta a vincoli, commerciali, politici e ideologici. Abbiamo un mezzo che può diffondere la conoscenza e quindi la libertà. Paradossalmente ce lo sta insegnando l'Iran. Mi permetto di chiudere con uno slogan che nel suo sugnificato originale era piuttosto patriottico, ma modificandolo leggermente può diventare cosmopolita: GOD BLESS INTERNET
11:00
Try This - GeoSuphat [LegalTorrents: All Content]
GeoSuPhat - Try This One Minimal Techno, Experimental
Friday, 19 June
23:42
What to Do and How to Do It [LegalTorrents: All Content]
With this album Imagiro intends to engage their fans in the creative process. Consequently, What to Do and How to Do It is released on the very user-friendly Creative Commons-license BY-NC-SA which allows you to remix and share the music on the same license, i.e. within non-commercial limits, as long as the creators are credited with attribution. Thereby, the release is part of a greater experiment that attempts to rethink the music business in a way that does not on one side alienate its fans and customers and on the other lament their reluctance.Lyrically, the album revolves around themes of aggrieved love, political cynicism and spiritual angst, notwithstanding a dreamy undercurrent of hope and optimism. The recording captures the lively energy that Imagiro brings with them on stage when they play live. As an album it is concise and solid without limiting the joy of music and playful curiosity that best characterizes their music.
23:20
phoke56 - Digi G'Alessio - Love, Beats and Pina Coladas [LegalTorrents: All Content]
vamos a la playa oh oh oh oh oh.Easy spirit Digi G'Alessio presents a show of his fat master-tunes for the sunny side in us. Grinning like a cheshire cat, the trip-Hop-Moods come deep and catch you immediatly. Hello, Hello, who is on the phone? Amusement park of funny senses, while you sit in your easy chair, the circus surrounds you, driven by fat beats. From time to time you hear the influences from his project 'A Smile for Timbuctu', which is already well known in the netlabel scene. Don'T miss it. His eight tracks here are thought for the beautiful days in life.
18:06
Jammie Thomas-Rasset Loses - Again [Slyck.com File-Sharing News And Information]
Second time is worse than the first.
12:19
Broken heart EP [LegalTorrents: All Content]
A short two track EP with two different styles. Classical and some Trance. I worked desperately hard on this for when my soon-to-be fiance comes to visit tomorrow. I'm finally finished and I'm proud to say I'm happy with the results. This has nothing to do with the current storyline that's being worked on. :)