Nevertheless, Uggla insisted that Spotify is a fantastic service with a great range of music to sample. However, he felt that the fact he wasn’t getting paid was the fault of the major labels involved in the project (Sony BMG bought 5.8% of Spotify for 2,935 Euros, Universal Music got 4.8% for 2,446 euros, Warner Music paid 1,957 Euros for 3.8% and EMI pocketed 1.9% for an investment of 980 Euros), claiming that he “earned as much in six months as a BUSKER could earn in a day.”

As the dust settled on the story, many non-Swedish readers were saying “Magnus who?” and wondering if this artist’s lack of mainstream popularity was the real reason behind him earning virtually nothing. But what about big artists? What about really, really big artists with huge international appeal. Say, an artist like Lady Gaga, who has sold more than 4 million albums and shifted in excess of 20 million paid digital downloads?

According to a report today, Lady Gaga’s track “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks during a five month period on Spotify and was played more than a million times. So how much money does she get paid by STIM (the Swedish Performing Rights Society) for this massive achievement?

SEK 1150 – that’s around $167 or roughly 113 Euros.

Commenting on the story, Douglas Léon, better known as Swedish rapper Dogge Doggelito, said he was dismayed.

“It is totally sick. We musicians have no rights, you may not charge [for music] anymore,” adding that Lady Gaga could’ve earned more driving an illegal taxi-cab.

Swedish artist, music producer and philosopher Alexander Bard, however, said that this payment was better than Lady Gaga would have achieved from her music being available via The Pirate Bay, noting that the amount was “…more than zero.”

Technically Bard is absolutely right, but let’s be honest – Lady Gaga would blow the money she earned from STIM in a 20 minute hotel mini-bar bender. Looking at the overall downloads, let’s face it, per track she earned pretty much near to nothing from both services.

While Spotify is to be commended for having the guts to try something new, for providing a truly wonderful service and for having achieved such a lot technically in a such a short space of time, one can’t help but wonder if it is ever going to bring in decent money for the artists.

After all, aren’t these the very people the music industry continually holds up as the important ones to encourage, nurture and support?

Lady Gaga’s example shows that Spotify’s business model needs some work, and the labels seem to agree on this. The US launch of the service has been delayed earlier this week, allegedly because of concerns about Spotify’s ability to upgrade free users to paid customers.

“We think Spotify is a great service but they’re going to have to convince us they can convert enough people from free to paid subscriptions to make it worth our while,” one label told the Financial Times. “As an ad-supported service the economics don’t work at all.”

Despite the startup troubles for Spotify the reviews from users, many of which were avid file-sharers, are still extremely positive. The service recently launched an iPhone app that allows users to play the tracks on the go, with or without an Internet connection, which many saw as the missing link. Now all they have to do is come up with a plan to actually make money.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

BitTorrent: Attacked by Copyright Holders, Crushed by Courts, but Needed for Innovation.

The Pirate Bay and other P2P sites continually find themselves on the defensive. Copyright holders repeatedly threaten and sue them. Courts zealously document their contribution to copyright infringement. But copyright holders and courts ignore P2P’s vital role in fostering innovation. I would like to change that.

In my book, Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law, I examine (1) why copyright holders continually seek to quash new technologies, (2) why courts fail to appreciate P2P, and (3) why we should lament these developments.

First, I trace the long history of copyright holders reacting with alarm to new technologies that threaten their business models. John Philip Sousa bemoaned the introduction of the player piano, which would lead to “a marked deterioration in American music.” Jack Valenti warned that the market for copyrighted movies would be “decimated, shrunken [and] collapsed” by the VCR. And the recording industry, lamenting a decline in CD sales, has sued numerous P2P services.

In fearing the potential of the new business models, copyright holders offer a classic example of market leaders that fail to appreciate disruptive innovation. A decade ago, the recording industry responded to Napster, which was striving to be “the online distribution channel for the record labels,” not by striking a deal that would have seamlessly transported the industry into the digital era, but by suing it. While the record labels may have won the battle in shutting down Napster, they began to lose the war, as former users migrated to other P2P networks.

Nor are copyright holders the only ones that fail to appreciate the new technologies. Courts also do. Why? Because of an innovation asymmetry. Courts downplay the future benefits of new technologies and overemphasize copyright owners’ present losses. Copyright owners offer evidence of losses from infringement on a silver platter.

In contrast, non-infringing uses are less tangible. It is difficult to put a dollar figure on the benefits of enhanced communication and interaction. And when a new technology is introduced, no one knows all of the beneficial uses to which it will eventually be put. I offer numerous examples of this (including, just to pick two, the telephone, which Alexander Graham Bell thought would be used to broadcast the daily news, and the phonograph, which Thomas Edison thought would “record the wishes of old men on their death beds”). This asymmetry, combined with costly litigation (which ensnares small technology makers in a web of complex tests and unaffordable lawsuits) explains why courts do not sufficiently appreciate P2P.

This lack of appreciation threatens innovation. As this site’s readers are well aware, BitTorrent and other P2P protocols offer revolutionary forms of interaction and distribution. By breaking up large files into many small pieces, BitTorrent speeds up transfer, allowing the distribution of numerous works, such as home movies, independent films, TV shows, video games, educational videos, computer software, and high-resolution images. Just a few of many examples discussed on this site that have utilized BitTorrent include (1) computer manufacturer Asus, which offers fast, cheap software updates, (2) the airing of a high-definition movie in Norway, and (3) FrostWire’s offering of a service that promotes music of new artists.

Courts’ failure to appreciate P2P and BitTorrent threatens to stifle the development of new business models that attempt to free participants from the shackles of traditional distribution methods. Independent artists would find it much more difficult to break away from mainstream record labels if they lacked an inexpensive method of rapidly and widely distributing their work. Independent filmmakers would no longer be able to reach the masses, instead having to rely on boutique movie theaters or direct DVD mailings.

And of course, we can only see the tip of the P2P innovation iceberg. To pick two of countless examples, in my book I explore potential P2P benefits in providing alternatives to the Google search engine and cloud computing.

In short, the trend—as typified by developments such as the Pirate Bay decision, Malaysia’s order to shut down the tracker LeechersLair, exorbitant statutory damage awards, and various “three strikes” legislative proposals—is to clamp down ever harder on any technology that could contribute in any way to copyright infringement. But in squeezing technologies in this infringement vise, courts and copyright holders threaten to suffocate P2P innovation.

Michael’s book ‘Innovation for the 21st Century: Harnessing the Power of Intellectual Property and Antitrust Law’ is available on Amazon.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Jonas Bergling is one of the young politicians who believes in being politically active for the public benefit. His story, however, may shed some light on why the young voices are effectively silenced in the daily grind of politics.

Last Monday, Jonas Bergling took part in a chat session with the local newspaper Nerikes Allehanda (NA) in the city of Örebro, Sweden. He was there in his spare-time position as head of the constituency for the Pirate Party in Örebro. Readers of the newspaper were invited to ask him questions regarding topics such as anti-piracy efforts, the Pirate Bay trial and the politics of the Pirate Party.

Since Sweden’s Pirate Party is running for seats in the upcoming elections for the European Parliament, there was a lot of interest in what he had to say. For Bergling, maybe it turned out to be too much interest.

When not pursuing his political interests in his spare time, Jonas’ day job used to be as an IT consultant for EDB Business Partner. It used to be, because the chat with the newspaper didn’t go unnoticed by the company’s Chief of Security, who wasn’t amused. Three days later the aspiring politician was fired because of the political opinions he’d aired in the chat.

“When I left work on Thursday, I got a call from my boss who told me I couldn’t come in on Friday morning and that I had to hand in the keys and security card. It doesn’t feel good to be treated this way. This isn’t how it should be in a democracy,” Jonas said to NA.

According to Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge’s blog, the decision to fire Jonas came from the head office in Stockholm, where the management group made its decision despite protests from Jonas’ local bosses in Örebro.

“It came from the highest ranks within EDB and that makes this a dead serious matter,” writes Falkvinge. “To me, it doesn’t matter if the harassment stems from someone being a pirate, socialist, capitalist or feminist – to harass someone in this way is completely and fundamentally unacceptable.“

“I’ve always been careful not to mix my political views with my work,” Jonas told NA, and he said his supervisor knew of his involvement with the Pirate Party when he was given the job.

As his employment terms were more like those of a consultant rather than an employee, EDB did not break Swedish work legislation when they canceled his contract, even though the termination was explicitly due to his political views.

This isn’t the first time that someone has lost his job for taking a ‘pro-piracy’ stance. Back in 2005, Alexander Hanff, the ex-admin of the now defunct DVDR-Core tracker, appeared on the BBC’s Newsnight show to discuss the Grokster decision. His computer training company employer gave him the time off to appear on the show – then promptly fired him.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The list is based on traffic rank reports from Compete and Alexa, backed up by visitor reports from some of the site admins. If you’re looking for high speed downloads, a free Usenet trial might be a good alternative.

1. The Pirate Bay

It has been a good year for The Pirate Bay. The number of visitors spiked, despite efforts in Denmark and Italy to block access the site. Last month, The site celebrated its 5th anniversary, just after it broke the 25 million peers mark. At any given point in time, more than 25 million peers actively trade files thought the Pirate Bay tracker.

2. Mininova

Mininova has seen a steady rise in visitors in 2008, and more than 3 billion torrents were downloaded from the site in the past 12 months. In addition to user uploaded content, the Mininova team has started to focus more on premium publishers with their content distribution platform.

3. IsoHunt

Despite being ensnared in legal proceedings with the MPAA and CRIA, isoHunt is continuing to grow. This year they partnered with the Creative Commons music distribution site Jamendo, and just like The Pirate Bay, isoHunt added SSL encryption to the site, making it impossible for your ISP or the authorities to monitor users’ activities.

4. Torrentz

Torrentz.com, one of the oldest torrent sites around, celebrated its 5th anniversary in July. The site added a “verified torrents” feature this year, and inspired many other meta-search engines to do the same. Last month a “hacker” caused some problems after it took over the torrentz domain, but luckily this issue was resolved in a few hours.

5. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor redesigned and optimized the site throughout 2008, which resulted in a significant increase in visitors. In addition, the TorrentReactor launched TorrentPrivacy, a service that allows BitTorrent users to download torrents anonymously.

6. Demonoid

After being forced to go offline following threats from the CRIA, Demonoid returned this April after 6 months of downtime. Since then it is business as usual, and most of the members returned quickly.

7. BTjunkie

In December 2007 BTjunkie was forced to leave their ISP following a takedown notice from the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. This year there were no troubles, and the site continues to go strong.

8. SumoTorrent

In 2007, SumoTorrent quickly settled itself among the top torrent sites, and traffic continued to increase this year. The pop-ups and redirects are new though, and don’t make it one of the most convenient sites to browse.

9. BTmon

BitTorrentMonster, BTmon for short, debuted in 10th place last year, and managed to climb a spot. Other than that, there is not much news surrounding the site.

10. TorrentPortal

Not much news about TorrentPortal this year either, but for BitTorrent sites that is usually a good thing. Traffic seems to be stable, although the site is not growing as fast as the other BitTorrent sites in this list.

Honorable mention: TorrentSpy

In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.

In a response to this decision – and to ensure the privacy of their users – TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic, but still, it managed to make out top 10 list last year. March 2008 TorrentSpy owner Justin decided to shut down completely, and in May his company was ordered to pay a $110 million fine, which it will appeal.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Of course, a country with plenty of ‘pirates’ has to have its own anti-piracy organization, and Lithuania is no different. The local anti-piracy outfit goes by the name ANVA, an acronym for ‘Antipiracines Veiklos Asociacija’. Their main targets are the local BitTorrent sites, which they have announced they will sue for millions in damages.

To use the word ‘Lithuania’ in a Lithuanian organization’s name requires government approval. Recently, ANVA changed its name to LANVA, after they succeeded in getting this authorization. This seal of approval may give the organization more credibility, but there is a small problem. They forgot to register the domain lanva.lt when they changed their name. Before, they were using anva.lt, but while they did make a new logo with the L included, registering a new domain didn’t come to mind.

Usually, mistakes like this can be easily overcome by paying a certain amount of money to the person who was smart enough to register the domain, but not this time. Kestas Ermanas, the owner of one of the largest BitTorrent sites in Lithuania, registered the domain as soon as he found out about the name change, and he is not planning to hand it over to his arch rival.

The domain Kestas bought currently displays the following message: “This is how it works. Whatever you sink, we build back up. Whomever you sue, ten new pirates are recruited. Wherever you go, we are already ahead of you. You are the past and the forgotten, we are the Internet and the future.”

LANVA has scheduled an emergency meeting next Thursday to discuss what they can do to get the lanva.lt domain in their possession. The chances that they will get the domain through a dispute are very slim though. There have been several cases in Lithuania where large companies sued owners of domain names, and they lost every single time.

This is not the first time that an anti-piracy organization has had a domain dispute with a BitTorrent site. October last year The Pirate Bay got hold of the domain name of IFPI, under which they wanted to launch the “International Federation of Pirate Interests.” The case was later lost by The Pirate Bay, but the fact that they acquired it in the first place is yet another example of the tech illiteracy of these organizations.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

According to evidence presented at his May 2008 trial, Barry E. Gitarts, aka ‘Dextro’, operated and financed a server based in Texas which was used by aPC to store thousands of music files, movies, software and games. The New York resident was convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Copyright Infringement.

On Friday, Gitarts, aged 25, was sentenced in Alexandria federal court to 18 months in jail for his role in aPC.

Another ex-member of aPC, Jacob Stahler, aka Lunatik, was on the witness list at the May trial, and there has been speculation that he testified against Gitarts. Stahler himself was also convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Copyright Infringement, but was later sentenced to just 2 years probation.

So far there have been a total 15 criminal convictions of aPC members, including that of Mark Shumaker of Florida (aka ‘MarkAlso’), a previous leader of the group who already admitted criminal copyright infringement back in 2003.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The first public version of Mininova went live in 2005 and was hosted at the DSL line of Niek van der Maas, one of the founders of the site. The name “Mininova” was inspired by SuprNova.org, the popular BitTorrent site that decided to shut its doors in December 2004, a few days before Mininova was launched. Not surprisingly, within a few days Niek’s connection couldn’t handle the bandwidth.

The site soon became one of the largest torrent sites, and more than 5 billion torrent files were downloaded from the site since it launched. May 2008, the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN announced a lawsuit against Mininova.

Mininova.org

Founded: January 15, 2005
Founders: Matthijs Meulenburg, Niek van der Maas en Erik Dubbelboer
News: The latest Mininova news

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

May 31, 2006 the the Pirate Bay took down the site, but within three days the site was back online, and much to the dislike of anti-piracy outfits, its traffic had doubled thanks to all the media attention. The investigation following the raid was finished December 2007, and four individuals involved with The Pirate Bay are being charged with “assisting copyright infringement”. The case will be taken to court in the fall of 2008.

The site is currently ranked as the 2nd most popular BitTorrent site according to statistics from Alexa.

ThePirateBay.org

Founded: November 21, 2003
Founder: Gottfrid Svartholm (”anakata”), Fredrik Neij (”TiAMO”) and Peter Sunde (”brokep”)
News: The latest Pirate Bay news

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

There are a few changes in the top 10 compared to the list of 2007’s top torrent sites. Mininova is still leading the bunch, but The Pirate Bay is now in second place, in front of isoHunt. Torrentportal and TorrentReactor traded places as well, the sites are now 7th and 9th respectively.

YouTorrent is the only newcomer, and it’s really impressive that the site made it into the top 25 only 2 months after its launch.

Top 25 torrent sites March 2008

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Here is the list, as of December 29, public BitTorrent sites only.

1. Mininova

Without a doubt the most visited BitTorrent site. In November, Mininova reached a milestone by entering the list of the 50 most visited websites on the Internet.

Alexa rank: 46

2. IsoHunt

IsoHunt continued to grow this year. In September they were forced to close their trackers to US traffic because of the issues they have with the MPAA, but this had no effect on the visitor count.

Alexa rank: 143

3. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay has been in the news quite a bit this year and remains not only the most used BitTorrent tracker, but also one of the most visited BitTorrent sites. At the moment they are fighting with IsoHunt for the second place in this list.

Alexa rank: 147

4. Torrentz

Torrentz is the only “torrent site” in the top 10 that doesn’t host .torrent files. Several improvements and new features have been introduced over the past year such as a comment system, private bookmarks and a cleaner layout.

Alexa rank: 160

5. BTjunkie

BTjunkie was one of the fastest risers last year and continued to grow throughout 2007. Last month they were, like many others, forced to leave their ISP (LeaseWeb), but the transition to a new host went smoothly and didn’t result in any downtime.

Alexa rank: 445

6. TorrentSpy

TorrentSpy was the most popular BitTorrent site of 2006, but dropped to sixth place due to legal issues with the MPAA. To ensure the privacy of their users, TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US, causing their traffic to plunge.

Alexa rank: 461

7. TorrentPortal

Not much news about TorrentPortal this year, but that probably is a good thing. Like most other sites they have grown quite a bit in 2007.

Alexa rank: 481

8. GamesTorrents

It’s quite a surprise to see GamesTorrents in the list of 10 most popular BitTorrent sites of 2007. This Spanish BitTorrent site had a huge dip in traffic earlier this year but managed to secure 8th place.

Alexa rank: 583

9. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor.net has been around for quite a while, four years to be exact, and is still growing.

Alexa rank: 604

10. BTmon

BTmon was one of the newcomers in 2006, and it is the youngest BitTorrent site in the top 10 this year.

Alexa rank: 673

Honorable Mention: Demonoid

For being one of the most visited BitTorrent sites until they pulled the plug in November.

Top 5 Newcomers

1. SumoTorrent

SumoTorrent launched this April and quickly became one of the more popular BitTorrent sites.

Alexa rank: 1021

2. SeedPeer

SeedPeer launched in September and is formerly known as Meganova.

Alexa rank: 2924

3. Zoozle

A BitTorrent meta-search engine, launched in January.

Alexa rank: 2987

4. Extratorrent

Launched a year ago, it got a serious traffic boost earlier this year.

Alexa rank: 5304

5. BitTorrent.am

BitTorrent.am is also indexed by Torrentz.com, and was launched early 2007.

Alexa rank: 6903

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is not perfect. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

To give an impression how big they are, Mininova has well over 3,000,000 visits and 16,500,000 pageviews a day, and this number is still growing. Last month they already broke the 3 billion .torrent download barrier and we will probably see the 4 billionth download pretty soon.

Niek, one of the founders of Mininova, told TorrentFreak that the increase in traffic is facilitated by the new hardware they recently installed. “The faster the site is, the more visitors we get,” he said “However, more visitors make the site slower again, so we have to keep optimizing the site and hardware all the time.”

There is also a downside to this positive news of course. Mininova’s continuing growth is, in part, due to the downtime at Demonoid and the issues TorrentSpy and Isohunt currently have with the MPAA.

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is not perfect. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

‘OiNK’ himself participated in a short Q&A and the truth is that this is not the case. Here is a rundown of the salient points:

The raid was completely unexpected and came with no warning at all but steps had already been taken to protect the users. Although there was no ’self-destruct’ or encryption according to OiNK, “the logs we store aren’t enough to incriminate users.” This will come as a huge relief to ex-members of OiNK.

A Cleveland Police spokesman told The Telegraph: “It is too early to tell if we will go after individuals, it all depends on what we find.”

OiNK is accused of conspiracy to defraud and copyright infringements with police questioning OiNK for hours after which he was eventually released. It became apparent that the police had limited technical knowledge which, according to OiNK “made the interview quite amusing.”

OiNK’s father – who was also dragged into this, is fine – although the police took his laptop.

There was an implication that a backup of the site may exist, although this is unconfirmed and there is no news yet that the forums will be restored for the purposes of music discussion. Additionally, it’s unclear if OiNK remains the owner of the OiNK.CD domain.

Sites have been cropping up claiming to collect donations for legal defense but according to OiNK there aren’t any that potential donators should feel comfortable donating to right now.

Certain changes had been made to the OiNK site and IRC channel in recent weeks security-wise and there was a suggestion that this may have been because a raid was expected. OiNK has denied this and confirmed these changes were a coincidence.

In echoes of what happened to Alexander Hanff (admin of the BitTorrent tracker DVDR-Core) Alan Ellis aka OiNK has been fired from his IT Consultant job following the raid but has refused to elaborate on what grounds his employer – Virgin Media in Stockton-on-Tees – chose to dismiss him.

It’s hugely commendable that OiNK has taken the time to come out and give the community timely facts. Alan told The Daily Telegraph: “I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t believe my website breaks the law. They don’t understand how it works.”

Stay Tuned

Update: Seems like someone involved in the takedown left an administrative message on the OiNK site (thanks for the tips DaanRiver and R10T):

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Although it is relatively easy for US users to access TorrentSpy through proxies such as UnblockTorrentSpy, most people get their .torrent files elsewhere. Torrent sites like Mininova, The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and Isohunt all benefited from the partial TorrentSpy shutdowns and continued to grow over the past months.

By the end of 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular that any other BitTorrent site, but times have changed. The graph below shows that Mininova now receives the most traffic, The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and Isohunt battle for second place and TorrentSpy dropped to the fifth position.

Censorship seems to be the new strategy employed by anti-piracy organizations these days. Not only did the MPAA manage to shut down TorrentSpy from US users, they’re also the reason why Isohunt blocked access to US users on their TorrentBox and PodTropolis tracker. The Pirate Bay on the other hand is banned in Turkey and even the P2P friendly Canadians are not safe anymore after the CRIA pressured demonoid to ban Canadians from their website.

A trend?

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is quite dubious. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate for smaller sites, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare larger sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The Alexa 100 is a list of the domains that generate the most traffic on the Internet. The fact that Mininova managed the top 100 is even more impressive if you take into account that over 25 local Google domains are among these 100 domains. Other popular sites in the Alexa 100 are Yahoo!, YouTube, Myspace, Wikipedia and EBay.

A the moment Mininova has 2,000,000 daily visitors who generate nearly 20,000,000 pageviews. Mininova continues to grow and served over a billion .torrent downloads in less than six months.

Most other BitTorrent sites aren’t doing too bad either. The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and Demonoid are all listed among the top 500 most visited sites, and more sites will probably join them in the months to come. Even Isohunt and Torrentspy continued to grow last month, despite the negative publicity. Here’s a combined graph of the traffic rank of the five most popular BitTorrent sites at the moment.

Compared to last year, all these sites continued to grow and attracted more visitors. Will it ever stop?

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is quite dubious. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Big Crook

First off, we’ll look at ‘Big Crook‘, the Hong Kong BitTorrent user jailed for 3 months for admitting uploading the Hollywood movies “Daredevil”, “Miss Congeniality” and “Red Planet”. Going to jail for using BitTorrent is a powerful headline which was designed to scare Hong Kong sharers away. Initially it worked with the HK BitTorrent community reduced by 80% after ‘Big Crook’s’ arrest. Unfortunately for the headline grabbers, the community size has since recovered and although there are undoubtedly significant numbers of people sharing Hollywood movies via BitTorrent, no-one further has even been arrested, let alone looking at prison. This ‘trophy’ bust which only has implications for Hong Kong residents, seems to have failed. Add that to the fact that this guy mounted the most ridiculous defense that was always destined to fail, this isn’t a really important verdict.

The Prince of Pirates

What about suppliers of material to file-sharing networks? Hollywood resident Johnny Ray Gasca – known as ‘The Prince of Pirates’ managed to get himself arrested three times for camcording movies in theaters. He’d hang around preview screenings and pass himself off as a movie insider in order to get access. He tried to argue that he didn’t profit from his activities but unfortunately notes in his diary said he’d made $4000 each week. When he didn’t get his confiscated equipment back he threatened the MPAA that he’d release even more movies online and said he would “laugh all the way to jail”. He was found guilty of criminal offenses (non-commercial file-sharing not involving pre-release media is a civil offense) and received 7 years in jail.

Pre-Release Leaks

In the United States ONLY, dealing in pre-release material or movies still in the theater was made a criminal offense when the Family Entertainment Copyright Act came into force. Up until then, things were dealt with under civil law. However, as soon as the changes were made, the government in the US (and the FBI) naturally got involved and they were quick to draw blood. For getting involved in the pre-release distribution of Star Wars Episode III, people who help to run the EliteTorrents website were all heavily punished. Scott McCausland, Grant Stanley and Sam Kuonen all went to prison. On July 23rd, Scott D. Harvanek will find out if he will join them.

Other people have also fallen foul of the law in the US when getting involved with pre-release material became a criminal offense. Salvador Nunez Jr is looking at a possible 3 years in jail for uploading the (pre-release) movies ‘Flushed Away’ and ‘Happy Feet’.

Jorge Romero uploaded 4 episodes of ‘24′ to the video sharing site ‘LiveDigital’ in advance of their official screening, making him guilty of a criminal offense in the United States. He is facing the possibility of 3 years in jail.

International Warez Leader

Just last week, Hew Raymond Griffiths, leader of notorious warez group ‘DrinkorDie’ was found guilty of “criminal copyright infringement” as a result of Operation Bucaneer and was sentenced to 51 months in a US jail. Even though he was a British citizen living in Australia who never committed any offense on US soil, he was extradited to the US on criminal charges. This is quite important. The MPAA went to the UK and threatened Alexander Hanff, (owner of the BitTorrent tracker DVDR-Core) with all sorts but he showed some great spirit and understanding of the law and refused to comply. They wanted him to come to the US to face them in Court but sadly, he didn’t want to go and because it was a civil case in another country and unlikely that he would be extradited, everything just died away and it seems they left him alone.

Conclusion

So in summary, if you live in Hong Kong and are caught uploading Hollywood movies and mount a ridiculous defense, you may be the unlucky one in hundreds of thousands to be made an example of.

Camcording movies is a very risky business in the US and will almost certainly result in some criminal charges, but as the millions of file-sharers around the world aren’t generally camming, these convictions have no effect on them.

Dealing in pre-release movies in the US automatically involves the FBI. That’s uploading, supplying, facilitating or operating a site, possibly any link will do for the FBI to start looking at jail, including if you upload something like SiCKO to YouTube. However, US law isn’t valid outside of the US so the millions of non-US file-sharers remain unaffected.

As for the DrinkOrDie case, 99.99% of all file-sharers aren’t being accused of pirating millions of dollars worth of material, so they can ignore this headline too. No small time downloader has been to jail for sharing applications.

If you’re a citizen of any county in the world apart from the US, the chances of going to jail for non-commercial file-sharing appear to be minuscule. Even a US citizen could achieve a similar level of security by not being the original suppliers of pre-release material.

Jail for Sharing? If I can find an offense that fewer people are in jail for around the world, i’ll be sure to report it.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Despite Geshev’s apparent innocence, a Bulgarian Interior Ministry order has stopped clients of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) accessing the arenabg tracker. Organized crime fighting supremo Yavor Kolev said that all ISP’s have been ordered to block access to arenabg.com.

Bulgaria had promised to “show no mercy” to site administrators who illegally distribute copyright material but as BitTorrent trackers merely point to content and do not host it, it is unclear what they intend to do about them. Blocking access to the sites, regardless of their legality appears to be one option.

However, it seems that Bulgarian citizens are not pleased with this course of action and intend to make a public protest in support of torrent site administrators who they believe are being unfairly treated. On March 15th, the organisers applied to the Sophia Municipality to hold their demonstration which will protest against what they claim is illegal state-sponsored action against Bulgarian torrent site administrators.

The protest will take place on March 22nd in front of the Aleksandar Nevski Cathedral.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Considered by many to have reached their peak before the dawn of 1997, DoD remained firmly on the FBI’s radar. In 2000, U.S. Immigration and Customs began their investigation into DOD and other warez networks such as RiSC, RAZOR1911, RiSCISO, Request To Send (RTS), ShadowRealm (SRM), WomenLoveWarez (WLW), and POPZ. In 2001 DoD was busted during US Customs co-ordinated raids as part of Operation Buccaneer.

More than seventy search warrants were carried out globally across 12 countries, including raids in the US, Australia, Great Britain, Finland, Norway and Sweden with the subsequent arrest of 65 people.

The investigation claimed to have revealed two leaders of DoD. The first, 28 year old US citizen John Sankus Jr from Philadelphia aka ‘eriFlleH’ was convicted and sentenced in 2002, receiving 46 months in a federal prison (along with co-conspirator, Barry Erickson, who was sentenced to 33 months). At the time, US Attorney Paul McNulty said “John Sankus and his techno-gang operated in the faceless world of the internet and thought they would never be caught. They were wrong. These sentences, and those to follow, should send a message to others entertaining similar beliefs of invincibility.”

The second leader is claimed to be 44 year old Hew Raymond Griffiths, a British national and previous resident of Bateau Bay, Australia. After fighting extradition to the US from an Australian detention center for the last 3 years, Griffiths finally lost his battle in the Australian courts and yesterday was brought before Magistrate Judge Barry R. Poretz sitting in U.S. District Court, Alexandria, Va.

According to the indictment, it is claimed that Griffiths, aka “Bandido,” was an established leader of DrinkOrDie and a major player in the ‘warez’ scene. It is claimed that he also held important positions in other warez groups including Razor1911 and RiSC.

“Griffiths claimed to be beyond the reach of U.S. law, and today, we have proven otherwise,” said Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher. “This extradition represents the Department of Justice’s commitment to protect intellectual property rights from those who violate our laws from the other side of the globe.”

“Our agents and prosecutors are working tirelessly to nab intellectual property thieves, even where their crimes transcend international borders,” said U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg.

The Court claims that prior to its dismantling, DrinkOrDie was estimated to have enabled the illegal reproduction and distribution of more than $50 million worth of pirated media including software, movies, games and music.

However, its is worth noting that it has never been proven that any member of DoD profited financially from their activities. Indeed, at the trial of other DoD members in the UK in May 2005, Bruce Houlder QC, prosecuting, said he acknowledged that the defendants were not involved in the software piracy scene to make money but rather they saw themselves as latter-day Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

For many in the warez scene and beyond, this is how DoD will be remembered.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

01.Australia
Favorite Site: Mininova

02. Romania
Favorite Site: Mininova

03. Greece
Favorite Site: Mininova

04. Netherlands
Favorite Site: Mininova

05. Canada
Favorite Site: Torrentspy

06. United Kingdom
Favorite Site: Torrentspy

07. Sweden
Favorite Site: The Pirate Bay

08. Slovakia
Favorite Site: Torrentz

09. Malaysia
Favorite Site: Mininova

10. France
Favorite Site: Mininova

–

12 Unites States
Favorite Site: Torrentspy

It is remarkable to see that there are some clear differences in the origin of the visitors among BitTorrent sites. Mininova is the most popular BitTorrent site in Australia, Torrentspy in Canada, and perhaps less surprising, The Pirate Bay rules Sweden.

The numbers below show how popular these sites are. 59 for Australia means that mininova ranks 59th in the list of most visited sites in Australia.

Mininova
59. Australia
78. Romania
78. Greece
81. France
92. Netherlands

Torrentspy
63. Canada
68. Australia
77. United Kingdom
77. Croatia
84. United Arab Emirates

The Pirate Bay
17. Sweden
34. Norway
61. Denmark
64. Finland
127. The Netherlands

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is quite dubious. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It is hard to tell if these sites will ever stop growing, and if they will ever make it into the top 100 without one of them going down, but we’ll see what the future brings. Isohunt, the site that bumped the other sites into the top 200, is currently moving their servers from The USA to Canada, and will probably be up and running soon.

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is quite dubious. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

All three websites continued to grow in 2006, especially in the first half of the year. The graph below shows that they all entered the Alexa top 500 this spring, which means that they are among the 500 most visited websites on the Internet.

Over the past 6 months the traffic ranks began to stabilize. Here’s a graph of the traffic rank of October, November and December. As you can see, the traffic is quite stable in this period, apart from the returning spikes in the weekends.

Other BitTorrent sites that made it to the 1000 most popular sites on the Web in 2006 are:

329. Isohunt.com
454. Demonoid
642. Torrentz.com
962. Puretna.com (adult content)

The award for the most effective advertising campaign goes to BTjunkie. Overnight they jumped from a traffic rank of 20,000 to a spot among the 2,000 most visited sites, and they managed to keep the people in.

We reported before that BitTorrent sites are slowly taking over the Internet. And it is not only the larger search engines and trackers that continue to grow. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of torrent sites in Alexa’s top 1000 doubles in 2007. Let’s see what the new year brings.

Note: Alexa’s data gathering is quite dubious. The exact figures may be not be completely accurate, but it is a great tool (especially the traffic rank) to compare sites within the same niche and to get a global impression of traffic shifts over time.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.