Titled “Escape From Terror Byte City” the book tells the story of two young boys who attempt to download the latest Transformers movie from a P2P website. Of course, when the two fire-up their file-sharing software all hell breaks loose.

Surprisingly, the story itself has nothing to do with the consequences of copyright infringement. The comic book that is supposed to educate children about file-sharing is nothing more than a scary story about viruses, worms, trojan horses and identity theft.

It’s quite sad really when you think about it. Apparently the MPA and their anti-piracy partners have decided to give up on the message that piracy hurts their business in the hopes that horror stories about infected computers will deter youngsters from downloading copyrighted works instead.

That aside, the risks of being exposed to viruses and malware on P2P networks have always been greatly exaggerated. If we follow the logic of the MPA we might as well ban email because of all the trojans and phishing scams that are sent around. Or stop selling USB drives because people might lose them and potentially expose personal information that shouldn’t be on there in the first place.

The comic is conveniently avoiding the word copyright, perhaps because the 10 year crusade against copyright infringement hasn’t led to any results. The propaganda doesn’t work without providing alternatives, and every parent knows that forbidding something quite often leads to the opposite result.

Still, the entertainment industry seems unconcerned with innovation and new ways to adapt to the digital era. Instead they prefer to focus on promoting new ways to punish potential consumers. Aside from pushing the comic book, the Hollywood lobbyist also lobbied for the return of the controversial ‘3-strikes’ legislation which was scrapped earlier this year after public pressure.

Will they ever learn? A scanned copy of the full comic book is available on Mininova. This one’s going to be a collectors item, for sure.

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

The code of practice identifies several types of content that could be harmful to children, and encourages ISPs to filter these type of sites. Among the filtered content are gambling sites, pornographic material and hacking tutorials. BitTorrent or other file-sharing related sites are not blocked according to the code. It is not clear why The Pirate bay ended up on the block list, but the most plausible reason seems to be their diverse adult torrent collection.

The code doesn’t allow any sexually explicit material, legal or not, and The Pirate Bay does offer ‘links’ to such content, although it doesn’t carry any itself – sound familiar?

The reason why the code is specifically aimed at mobile providers is the increase in mobile devices youngsters have access to without oversight. All sites that have an ‘over 18′ status are included and all access to these sites is simply blocked. Customers who want to lift the block to one of the sites may do so by contacting customer service.

This is not the first time that The Pirate Bay, for one reason or another, has been blocked by Internet service providers. We’ve seen similar things happen in Italy, Turkey, Denmark and several other countries. However, this is the first time that the reason for the blockade is not copyright related.

Whether or not the code will prevent minors from seeing too much flesh is up for debate, but although the comparison between Google and The Pirate Bay has been a hot one this week, one thing is certain – there is a hell of a lot more porn to be found via a Google image search than is to be found on The Pirate Bay.

Failing that there’s always daddy’s porn mags to fall back on – quick, board up the newsstand.

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

In order to get an accurate estimate of the tracker load a single person connected to three torrents is counted as three peers. In the picture below, we see that roughly 5 million peers are connected to a torrent that uses only The Pirate Bay (single). Another 5 million have more trackers in the announce list, but use The Pirate Bay as the primary tracker. For the remaining torrents The Pirate Bay was added as an additional (foreign) tracker.

The Pirate Bay is by far the largest BitTorrent tracker, followed at a distance by Sumotracker, Torrent.to and Torrentbox respectively. Unfortunately, this dominant position can result in a horror scenario if the Pirate Bay tracker fails.

Raynor told TorrentFreak that if The Pirate Bay goes down, many of the other trackers might collapse as well. “If The Pirate Bay goes down the load will automatically shift to others. This is because most of the Pirate Bay swarms also include other trackers. When Pirate Bay goes down it would overload others until they fall also. Meaning even more stress and further casualties. This is likely to end in a BitTorrent meltdown.”

So what’s the alternative? How can we fix this vulnerability? The obvious option is to rely less on the Pirate Bay’s trackers, but this is easier said than done. Although there are thousands of smaller trackers on the Internet, it has proven to be hard to convince people to actually use these.

Perhaps we should find an alternative for the traditional BitTorrent tracker then? A truly decentralized form of filesharing, that doesn’t rely on the philanthropy of three Swedish guys? Attempts have been made to decentralize trackers, and most of the major BitTorrent clients support “trackerless” torrents through DHT.

DHT is not the silver bullet though, as it is lacking in speed and efficiency according to Tribler founder Johan Pouwelse, and the mainline Bittorrent client “has a faulty DHT implementation and many people will be left in the cold”. Researchers of Tribler found several DHT flaws. One bug in a DHT sorting routine ensures that it can only “stumble upon success”, meaning torrent downloads will not start in seconds or minutes if Pirate Bay goes down in flames.

“The DHT concept is proven to be broken and just invites DDoS attacks,” Pouwelse added. “People have proposed repairs to the DHT, but only at the cost of too much performance or global trusted servers.”

Dr. Pouwelse says that there have been ideas to deal with BitTorrent’s Achilles’ heel, but none of these have materialized. This summer Raynor hopes to have an operational solution in their Tribler BitTorrent client. They think the trick is to include the SQLite database engine in every Tribler client. This enables abuse prevention and fast starts, however this complex task could be delayed until Christmas (of some year to come).

So is BitTorrent going to die? No, not by a long shot. However, this research does point out that the ecosystem depends on The Pirate Bay. If their trackers go down for whatever reason, others are likely to collapse because of the increasing load and many torrent download will slow down significantly or stop entirely. So please direct your prayers to trackers around the world. May they function in peace and prosperity.

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

After our original article we caught up with the director, Joe Russo, a film student at Arizona State University. Joe was selected to intern on the movie ‘The Kingdom’ and has worked with Fox Sports Network and Applebox pictures. He is also an accredited film critic and is Editor-in-Chief at MoviePulse.net – and he’d like the support of TorrentFreak readers.

TF: How did you come up with the Movie Screening Security Guards concept?

Joe Russo: The history of this project is actually a funny story. I had just finished production on a short film, which I have been editing simultaneously, called Santa’s Last Stop. It’s my thesis project, and I hadn’t really planned on doing another short film until it was complete. My Director of Photography, Andy Hendrix, really wanted to do another short film for our Business Ethics class. The only criterion for the project was that it had to be “related to an ethical problem in the film industry”.

Well we started mulling over ideas and then it hit me. I was at a press screening for a film called Definitely Maybe. We were in an older theater up in North Scottsdale and for some strange reason the exit was lit and the security guards were clearly visible. I noticed that they were fooling around a bit with their night vision goggles so I turned to see what had their attention , the group of blondes seated behind me. I said to myself, man this would be a funny bit for a short film. So I brought the idea up to my classmates, they dug it and we went for it.

TF: Why did you choose a ‘Mockumentary’ format?

Joe Russo: First things first, I hate documentaries. This was an opportunity to not only spoof what I consider to be a silly form of piracy prevention, but the documentary genre itself. I know that our lead actor Dean Veglia really got a kick out of viewers questioning if Movie Screening Security Guards was real. He felt that meant we had done our jobs right.

TF: How did you generate ideas for the film?

Joe Russo: Essentially we came up with little scenarios, based loosely off things I had witnessed at press screenings, and our incredibly talented writer, Jen Winterbotham, fleshed out the characters and story. Usually screenplays for Mockumentaries are structured like a narrative, but I really wanted to shoot the film like a documentary. We tried to keep things very loose, and the script was written as a series of vignettes. We then edited them together, trying to find the funniest combination in post-production, to create the final product.

TF: What was the hardest part about getting the film made?

Joe Russo: Everything on Movie Screening Security Guards came together quite smoothly; the hardest part was actually locking down a location. It wasn’t until the week of the show that we were able to get a confirmation from Harkins Cinemas, a fairly large chain in the South West, that we would be able to use one of their locations. I had to go all the way up the food chain to get permission too, somehow finding myself in communication with the owner of the company who loved the idea.

Two days before the shoot we were informed that we were good to go, once they had our million dollar liability insurance policy. If we were working with a production company, typically that wouldn’t be a problem, but because we were an independent student film and completed the movie for under two hundred bucks, there was no way for us to raise enough money in time.

As I was typing the email to cancel the shoot, I got a message from the head of Chandler Cinemas. If you live in Arizona I highly recommend you check them out. They put on really cool 35mm screenings of grindhouse flicks, seventies exploitation pics and weekly midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Anyway, we were able to shoot there for less money and in turn got more space and time, but man did it come down to the wire.

TF: So how can the TorrentFreak readers help?

Joe Russo: We loved the article and the big response from your post about the film and we were hoping maybe you could help us out once more. “Movie Screening Security Guards” was just accepted into an online short film competition where we have the chance to not only make another short film for ten thousand dollars, but could win up to a hundred thousand dollars and a meeting with studio executives! If you could help us out by pointing your readers to the film at the below link we would really appreciate it! All they need to do is click, register, watch and vote!

TF: Well, you gave us all a few laughs, so sure, why not! Click here to vote for The Movie Screening Security Guards.

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

BitComet used to be the most used BitTorrent client, but its popularity has decreased over the years, and it is now in fourth place after uTorrent, BitTorrent mainline and Azureus. The decline in popularity is, among other things, due to the negative press BitComet has received over the years.

It all started in 2005 when BitComet was banned from several private BitTorrent trackers for ignoring the “private flag”. Even though this issue was resolved relatively quickly, the image of BitComet was permanently damaged.

In the years to come, more and more horror stories popped up, from spreading junk data, to disobeying BitTorrent rules. Last year, BitTornado developer Shad0w even went as far as banning all BitComet users, because the client allegedly exploited super-seeds.

Last year however, Robb Topolski, a networking and protocol expert with more than 25 years of experience researched most of the claims against BitComet. He concluded that the client was not best suited for initial seeding tasks but at the same time refuted all other claims.

“BitComet is a worthy download client, providing some advantageous features not found in any other current BitTorrent client. Some of these features are confusing and are poorly implemented, but they are not detrimental to a BitTorrent swarm, nor do they take unfair advantage,” Topolski wrote.

“None of the typical accusations against BitComet, those that are provided as reasons for trackers or users to “Ban BitComet,” have held true. It is my professional opinion that the bans of BitComet are based on misunderstandings and falsehoods, and not on good data,” he added.

People should of course decide for themselves what they think of BitComet, but one thing is hard to deny. The client has turned into one of the most feature rich clients, currently available in 43 languages, which still has a great appeal to beginning and intermediate BitTorrent users.

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

The order of the list is not indicative of the difficulty it is to get in; rather, it’s a reflection of what is in hot demand. Without further introduction, here are the hottest Private BT sites of 2008 (that you likely can’t get into):

So, just how many of these badboys are open to new signups? As of right now – a meager three. Just starting out? Perhaps you should check out the btracs.com list for some lower-level private sites.

Or, you can use ‘Open Registrations Checker‘ software that is now in final release. If you’re at all familiar with ‘Tracker Checker‘ – ORC is the same concept. It periodically runs through a list of private trackers for “openings” and displays the results. When one becomes open to new signups, you’ll be notified and be able to join – assuming you act quickly.

Some of you may already be using ORC – this is where we’ve put a new spin on it. We’ve painstakingly taken their “trackers.tlist” database file and completely revamped and updated it with all the newest and hottest private BT sites. Not even the file they offer on their website even comes close to offering the same functionality. Additionally, we’ve removed the public trackers and any other non-working BT sites from the list.

Installing Open Registrations Checker (with the new trackers.tlist file).

1.Download ORC and install. (Requires .NET framework 2.0 or higher).

2.Download our trackers.zip file. You’ll need to unzip it into TWO locations (choose to ‘overwrite’ the old file in both cases):

— C:\Program Files\Torrents Open Registrations Checker\

— C:\Documents and Settings\ [Your Computer Name] \

3.Launch ORC from the Start Button – the private trackers will be updated. The program is self-explanatory – check off what you want it to check; click the magnifying glass icon in the corner.

4.Outwit your next door neighbour the plumber by getting into these sites first!

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

TorrentFreak had a chance to talk to Ben, the owner of FlixFlux to ask him about his motivation to keep adding such features to his site, he said:

“Basically the whole reason I put FlixFlux together was to make it easy to find decent films to download. It’s not always easy to work out what a film is going to be like just from the plot summary and list of genres. With a trailer though you get a good idea of what a film’s going to be like. So I guess the reason I added them was to make it easier to find decent films to download”

Adding trailers to the site and listing the charts on the frontpage will almost certainly grab the attention of the MPAA. We asked Ben whether he thinks this will make him an easy target for the MPAA.

“It’s up to the users if they want to download the torrents or not, and that may or may not be illegal where they are. What the site provides is a list of box office hits, details about them and a list of available torrents. None of the movies are hosted by me, nor any of the torrents. So hopefully I’ll be safe from the MPAA.”

Easy target or not, FlixFlux will keep indexing the latest movie torrents and introduce more features to the site. “I want to make it even easier to find movies in the future”, Ben says “Instead of just listing the new releases it’d be nice to be able to say “show me a good horror from the last couple of months” or “list any comedy from the last couple of weeks.”

We’ll keep an eye on it.

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

Movie companies and the MPAA tell us of their $18bn per annum lost revenue due to piracy and use this to pressure government to bring in more and more restrictive laws and then use them to get people jailed for getting involved in pre-release movies.

So when Lions Gate President Tom Ortenberg spoke about the pre-release of his latest money spinner, one could be forgiven for expecting a speech about millions in lost revenue and how pirates ought to be sent to the electric chair after stealing food from his starving child’s mouth. Amazingly, not so.

He said the movie was ‘in a rough, unfinished form’ (normal for a workprint copy), something with which amateur reviewers of the leaked version of the movie generally agreed.

But what about the millions of dollars of revenue, lost to piracy?

“It’s distressing and disappointing” said Ortenberg “but it will have no meaningful impact on the box office”.

No Meaningful Impact

…yet in the US, you can get 5 years in jail for it. Ask sk0t how he feels about that.

Let’s hope Tom Ortenberg’s words are admissible in evidence, should the FBI decide that 6 more people need to go to jail for costing the movie industry no money.

Digg this Article

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

This film tries to simplify its drug abuse message with an analogy of kids putting together a contraption out of Lego blocks. Although the metaphors often don’t make sense, the visual impact of the film is stunning and could easily be quite popular with individuals consuming illicit drugs. Also, like most anti-drug films, this could be a tempting introduction to drugs for some youths yearning to escape their “boring” lives or to rebel against their parents.

Perversion for Profit I (Ca. 1965)

Anti-pornography film produced by financier Charles Keating, linking pornography to the Communist conspiracy and the decline of Western civilization. Keating is pretty serious about it. Here’s a quote: “We must seek to deliver ourselves from this twisted, torturing evil. We must save our nation from decay, and deliver our children from the horrors of perversion.”

Perversion for Profit II (Ca. 1965)

Another quote form this anti-pornography film: “Now, you might ask yourself, why this sudden concern? Pornography and sex deviation have always been with mankind. This is true. But now, consider another fact. Never in the history of the world have the merchants of obscenity, the teachers of unnatural sex acts, had available to them the modern facilities for disseminating this filth. High-speed presses, rapid transportation, mass distribution. All have combined to put the vilest obscenity within reach of every man, woman and child in the country.”

Alcohol Is Dynamite (1958)

Teens Bud and Jack, eager to get some alcohol from the liquor store, ask the adult to buy it for them. Instead, the adult tells them a story of three teenagers who learn the hard way that “alcohol is a violent narcotic.” In true Sid Davis form, the story ends with one innocent teen being killed and one who becomes an alcoholic bum, leaving the others to deal with guilt from their night of reckless abandon.

Last Prom (1980)

A near epidemic of alcohol-related deaths on prom night spurred this film’s release. While alcohol does play a role in the graphic, yet fake carnage we see on the screen, you gotta wonder about that dangerous tunnel. Filmmakers realized that teens would fail to identify with even a slightly dated message; this film was later remade to update the fashions, although the story stayed the same. The school chorus soundtrack makes this film even creepier

Human Reproduction (1947)

Though this sex education film concentrates on presenting the anatomy and physiology of human reproduction in sober medical terms, its release kicked off a controversy in many American cities and towns over the legitimacy of sex education in the public schools. The film is narrated from the point of view of an adult who tries to decide how to answer his son’s natural questions about sex and reproduction. With excellent diagrams of the reproductive process.

As Boys Grow (1957)

Sex education film aimed at teenage boys, with the coach of a freshman track team as authority figure and teacher. How does the male reproduction system work, why does it work that way, and what can we do with that thing.

How Much Affection? (1957)

How far can young people go in petting and still stay within the bounds of personal standards and social mores? You like someone, he or she likes you, everything seems to be fun, but suddenly you find yourself in a position where your physical urges fight against your reason.

A Case For Beer (Ca. 1970)

An educational film about the dangers of selling beer to underage youth. The film is intended for convenience store owners, very informational indeed. Don’t be tricked, or you will lose your license and never sell anything again.

Thanks Archive.org and BEN

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

Like the title suggests, the movie is about a man who is the last remaining human survivor on earth. Robert Morgan (played by Vincent Price) is a scientist who is the only survivor of a deadly virus that turned all other humans into zombies and vampires.

Morgan is immune to the virus and tries to kill the horrifying creatures during daytime, when they are weaker. At night the zombies and vampires grow stronger, and Morgan has to lock himself in his house to prevent them from getting to him.

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

In the mood for some Halloween horror? If so, you’re in luck, because BitTorrent.com has put together some of the greatest cult & horror movies, courtesy Archive.org.

There are 9 titles in all. We have complied a list, with links to each one’s Wikipedia page:

Agreed, these have already been available on Archive.org for some time now, but seriously, how many of us have the time to actually go looking for them?

BitTorrent Inc. is really establishing itself as a supporter of public domain and legally free content. From free music videos and remixes to classic films, the company is building up a good reputation.

The movies on BitTorrent.com are in the iPod compatible mp4 format. Take a look at Public Domain Torrents if you’re looking for high quality copies.

If you’re not into classic cinema, maybe you’ll want to check out Google’s Halloween offering. Free PDF book downloads of scary stories!

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

The movies are hosted by publicdomaintorrents, the great resource for movie addicts we discussed earlier.

Vampire Count Orlok expresses interest in a new residence and real estate agent Hutter’s wife. Silent classic based on Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” (imdb)

More Info and Different formats at publicdomainmovies.

Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) is the only survivor of a devastating world-wide plague due to a mysterious immunity he acquired to the bacterium while working in Central America years ago. (imdb)

More Info and Different formats at publicdomainmovies.

Five diverse people are invited to a ‘haunted house’ party. They are offered $10,000 each by an eccentric millionaire and his wife to spend the night in a house with a murderous past. (imdb)

More Info and Different formats at publicdomainmovies.

In flashback, New York nightclub pianist Al Roberts hitchhikes to Hollywood to join his girl Sue. On a rainy night, the sleazy gambler he’s riding with mysteriously dies; afraid of the police, Roberts takes the man’s identity. But thanks to a blackmailing dame, Roberts’ every move plunges him deeper into trouble. (imdb)

More Info and Different formats at publicdomainmovies.

Seymour is a young man who works in a flower store. He manages to create a carnivorous plant that feeds on human flesh. Nobody knows about it, so Seymour and the plant become good “friends”. The plant needs food to grow up, so it convinces him to start killing people. A very young Jack Nicholson also appears in a small role. (imdb)

More Info and Different formats at publicdomainmovies.

More Public Domain Movies can be found at publicdomaintorrents.com

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

Unfortunately not everybody knows every movie listed, so you probably want to check some extra info on IMDB. To make your life a little easier, skender wrote a script to list all the movies on publicdomaintorrents by their IMDB rating.

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