James Burt, a 24 year-old manager at games retailer Electronics Boutique, admitted uploading the game on November 6th, a week before its commercial release in Australia.

In a statement the Japanese games giant said it used a range of forensic techniques to track down the uploader and on 23rd November obtained a Federal Court search order. This was used to locate and seize items from Burt’s property in Sinnamon Park, Queensland, to be used in evidence in the case against him.

As part of the investigation, Burt was also ordered to allow access using his passwords to social networking sites, email accounts and other websites he had used.

Australia traditionally lags behind the United States and Japan when it comes to media releases, but with the release of New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii the reverse was true, leading Nintendo to refer to the leak as a “global issue”.

“This legal proceeding was commenced to protect the creative rights and innovation of game developers, and to combat the growing international problem of Internet piracy,” the company said in a statement.

The game was a sure fire hit on BitTorrent. Data collected by TorrentFreak indicated that by December 27th 2009, the game had been downloaded 1,150,000 times.

Nevertheless, the game was still a huge commercial success. The game sold in excess of 10 million units in its first 2 months on sale – that’s 1 in 6 of all Wii gamers buying a copy – making it the fastest-selling single-platform game ever.

It’s unclear how Mr Burt will be able to pay this huge amount in damages. His salary at Electronics Boutique is unlikely to cover it – if he still has a job there.

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

An NBC representative explained that the network will only cover the highlights because people “are not dying to watch lots of long-form content on a 13-inch screen.” However, at the same time NBC contradicts itself by announcing that it will do all it can to prevent people from accessing unauthorized live feeds or downloads of Olympic broadcasts.

While NBC doesn’t believe there is much demand for live coverage, it will do all it can to prevent the ‘few’ people who do from downloading or streaming the events online. “Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find,” said Rick Cotton, NBC’s Executive Vice President commenting on their Olympic mission.

Once again one of the major entertainment industry outfits has got it entirely wrong. If NBC really wants to prevent piracy they have to offer at least some sort of alternative. Cutting 2,200 hours of live web coverage back to just a few hundred is certainly not going to help in stopping piracy.

NBC reportedly has teamed up with Ustream and Justin.tv, two popular live streaming sites, to use filtering schemes in order to prevent illegal broadcasts. However, it is inevitable that they won’t be able to stop them all since there are dozens of live streaming sites. Preventing torrents from being uploaded will turn out to be even more problematic for the network.

During the Beijing Olympics two years ago, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) asked for “assistance” from the Swedish government with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing being shared via The Pirate Bay. This didn’t help much and during the weeks that followed millions of people continued to download broadcasts of Olympic events.

We assume that in the coming weeks most events will again appear online, despite NBC’s efforts to prevent the Olympics from being pirated.

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

Shortly after the movie’s 19th December release date an illicit copy of the movie appeared on the Internet. According to producer John M. Jacobsen the recording was made in an empty theater, prompting suspicions that a projectionist was involved.

“I think this is totally reprehensible, and I wish we knew who is behind it,” Jacobsen told Norwegian media. “Anyway we will go after those who have done this quite mercilessly. There are ways to track these things down.”

An investigation was immediately launched by the Filmkameratene studio, to be handled by the Simonsen law firm with notorious pirate hunter Espen Tøndel at the helm. Technicians went to work, systematically going through every copy of the movie sent out to find a match – that meant checking 103 analog and 20 digital copies.

Their detective work paid off. Simonsen said they had not only tracked the correct copy but also identified the IP-address from where the movie was first uploaded to the Internet. They took the information to the police but were notified that the case would not be a priority for them. Simonsen responded by taking the case to the courts.

Simonsen, a law firm which since 2006 had held a license to monitor alleged pirates and collect their IP-addresses, demanded that the ISP connected with the IP-address hand over the identity of the subscriber, something it had thus far refused to do. The request had the support of the Norwegian telecoms authorities which in this case made a special exception to the country’s Privacy Act, enabling the person’s identity to be handed to a group other than the police – if the court agreed.

On May 5th 2009, Simonsen received the decision from the court but the verdict was kept a secret from the public. Espen Tøndel said this was to prevent the possibility of evidence being spoiled. This lack of transparency caused an uproar, with thousands of Internet citizens demanding to know the verdict in this important case. Many argued that if there was evidence to be spoiled, it would’ve been spoiled by now.

Today in 2010, the verdict is still a mystery to the public, but at least one of the parties is disappointed with the court’s decision.

“I can confirm that the case is being appealed to the Supreme Court, but I can not confirm which of the parties has submitted the appeal, as that may indicate what the results were in the previous hearing,” said movie industry lawyer Rune Ljøstad.

The Supreme Court will now have to decide if it’s acceptable for privately owned companies with financial interests in the outcome of a case to be given the power to obtain the identity of an Internet subscriber behind an IP-address, whether or not they committed the alleged offense.

Despite the leak, Max Manus did incredibly well in Norway, breaking all records. Its 2009 theater run yielded almost NOK 200 million across 1.16 million tickets and the DVD sold 400,000 copies in the same year. From recording a loss in 2008, movie company Filmkameratene made a profit in 2009.

“There is a dramatic change for the better for us in 2009,” said producer Sveinung Golimo. “So we are not now concerned about the future.”

Privacy campaigners will look toward the forthcoming Supreme Court decision before sharing in his optimism.

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

James Cameron and the rest of the Avatar crew probably cracked open a few bottles of Champagne to celebrate, but today they will wake up with a serious hangover.

Only a few days after the nominations were announced, a DVD screener of Avatar (2D) appeared online. Before today, only a lower quality Telesync copy of the film has been available on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks.

Ironically, the DVD screener that is now widely available online most likely leaked through one of the Academy Awards voters.

There is no doubt that Avatar will also score big in the list of most downloaded movies this year. The Telesync copy of the film that has been available for over a month was already downloaded by more than two million people.

It is expected that the DVD leak will easily double or even triple these figures. Avatar has been among the most searched for keywords on nearly every torrent site for more than a month already.

Twentieth Century Fox has been extra careful with sending out the DVD-screener of Avatar, as more Academy members received it mid January, just a few days before they had to vote. Although this did delay the leak, it couldn’t be prevented.

How and if the DVD-screener will affect the box-office revenues is up for debate. The film has already grossed more than $2 billion worldwide, which is an absolute record despite the relatively high piracy rate. In fact, high piracy numbers are often an indicator of success at the box-office and vice versa.

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

In Italy, Fapav (Federazione Anti-Pirateria Audiovisiva) is currently embarking on one such mission. It has gone to the Civil Court of Rome asking it to compel Italy’s largest ISP, Telecom Italia, to take unprecedented action to deal with subscribers the anti-piracy group claims are infringing their members’ copyrights.

Fapav has several demands. It wants Telecom Italia to monitor their users and eventually report those who file-share to the authorities, block a whole host of sites (including The Pirate Bay, 1337x and isoHunt) and collaborate with them in the future to fight piracy. If it does not comply, Fapav wants the ISP to pay 10,000 euros per day by default.

Fapav insists that Telecom Italia has not done enough to stop its users from file-sharing and point to their own monitoring research which indicates that “hundreds of thousands” of the ISP’s subscribers had downloaded around 1.6 million copies of copyright movies.

Telecom Italia is refusing to comply and in turn has accused Fapav of breaching the privacy of its subscribers by spying on them, referencing an earlier case where German record label Peppermint Jam spied on Internet users via Swiss monitoring firm Logistep in order to extract money from them.

The label was ordered to stop by the authorities who deemed the activities to be illegal.

Paolo Nuti, President of ISP association AIIP, told Repubblica that Fapav were trying to force ISPs to become “sheriffs of the Internet” while taking responsibility for the activities of their subscribers. He went on to criticize the anti-piracy group’s unauthorized monitoring, stating that in his view Fapav had not only violated the norms of privacy but also committed a crime punishable by up to six years in prison.

The positions of both sides will be tested next week. The hearing will take place before the Civil Court of Rome on February 10th.

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

Most of the upcoming features of the Falcon project are still being developed, but those who download the latest Alpha release have the option to take a peak at what to expect from the future. Below we sum up some of the key features.

Access Anywhere

Allowing users to access their BitTorrent downloads from anywhere through a simple web-interface is one of the main goals of the Falcon project. Without having to configure uTorrent and home networks so that they can be accessed remotely, users can simply head over to the Falcon page and connect to their client instantly.

The easy to use web interface is as secure as it gets, a major improvement over the Web UI currently available. When logged in, it gives users all the controls they are familiar with in their regular PC client. Torrents can be added, paused and removed using an interface with a look and feel identical to that of the uTorrent application.

Those who want to try the remote access features require an invite for now. Invites are sent out regularly and those who leave their email address behind should receive one within a few days.

Download Anywhere

Aside from the added security and easy setup, accessing your torrents via the Falcon web-interface offers another advantage – remote downloading. Once a file has finished downloading you can transfer a copy of the file to a remote computer via the web-interface.

This feature is not enabled in the current version of the Falcon web-interface. However, it has been publicly announced in the uTorrent forums so we expect that it will return soon.

Streaming

Another new feature of the Falcon project is the added option to stream video files while downloading. Instead of having to wait until a file has finished downloading, users can already start watching video provided that the download speed is sufficient.

“Our hope is to transform getting media using uTorrent from a ‘load-wait-watch-tomorrow’ to more of a ‘point-click-watch’ experience,” Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak, commenting on the new feature.

Easy Sharing

Also new in the Falcon release is the “Send Torrent” feature. This feature is particularly useful when you want to share torrents with people who do not have a BitTorrent client installed yet.

Right clicking a torrent in uTorrent shows a “Send Torrent” option which then brings up a URL similar to this one. This is a direct link to a download of the uTorrent client with the torrent file included.

Finding Torrents

The Falcon release is expected to make it easier for users to find torrents. The uTorrent team didn’t want to comment on how this will be integrated, but Simon Morris has stated that they are working on “better ability for torrent sites to promote content or search within the client.”

When we asked if this means that uTorrent will come with a built in torrent search engine, Morris said that they are more interested in “APIs rather than bloating the uTorrent user experience.” We’ll see what this means in the months to come.

Further Improvements

The features listed above are just a few of many that will be added to the new uTorrent clients. The latest Alpha release also had a ‘minify interface’ option, for example, and the development team is also working on speed improvements, UI improvements and optional file security features.

Exciting times ahead for uTorrent users.

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

Of course, just as was the case with the iPhone, a resourceful hacking community is standing by to tear the tablet apart too, forcing it to run their own software designed to do tricks that Apple never intended. The holy grail – running pirate software.

The original Installous application was created by a coder named Puy0. For use on jailbroken iPhones, the web-browsing, downloading and installing application was used by hundreds of thousands of iPhone users to obtain free applications.

After completely rewriting the original Installous code, Puy0 subtly renamed Installous to Install0us, left his home at the infamous Hackulo.us forum, and moved to his own forum at Install0us.com. This move caused a bit of a split in the community, with some people moving to join Puy0 at Install0us.

Although it may have appeared otherwise, in common with a web browser viewing a torrent index, Installous and Install0us only ever showed web pages which in turn provided just links to copyright works, but even this providing this functionality was enough to give Puy0 legal concerns.

Puy0 has now revealed that for some time he has been searching for a specialist copyright lawyer to find out what the legal position is with Install0us. After a three month search he finally found a good one and entered into a discussion – the outcome wasn’t good.

The conclusion is that if it came to court, it would be very difficult for Puy0 to defend his position and that of Install0us. With this in mind, the decision has been taken to discontinue the Install0us project. The forums will close along with the repositories used to access the software and everything will be deleted.

“The bad news is, however, Install0us 3 will not and cannot ever be released. It all must end here. This is extremely disappointing for all of us, considering the time and energy we have spent on it,” explains Puy0.

“Call me a coward, but as I said, hiding under covers is not a life for me. Moreover, these days in my country piracy is a hot subject among politicians… I do not want to be flamed in a trial for something that I do as a hobby, and I do not want to involve any people with me in this. I am sincerely sorry to the people who followed me thinking we were legit, my honest mistake,” he concludes.

Sites like that carry links to the downloadable apps will still be viewable through existing versions of Install0us, at least for now.

The longest-established and famous Appulous index, which runs on a single server, is maintained by an individual who hasn’t been active in the community in over 6 months due to an extremely busy personal life. This means that those who maintain the index have had no idea how long the project would continue for and have been living month to month.

iPhone app cracker most_uniQue told TorrentFreak that the solution was found with the creation of a new project. Launched just one week ago, Apptrackr.org has the same layout and features as Appulous, but operates on multiple servers with active admins. Apptrackr also acquired the database from Appulous, so it carries links to all the same apps as Appulous.

Of course, the community is super-resourceful and replacements for lost projects are never usually far away. TorrentFreak can exclusively reveal that the admins at Hackulous have confirmed that a replacement for Install0us is currently under development.

“Installr” will be released in the near future.

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

Under the new Hadopi law, alleged copyright infringers will be reported to a judge once they have received three warnings. The judge will then review the case and hand down any one of a range of penalties, from fines through to disconnecting the Internet connection of the infringer.

Trident Media Guard, the investigative company that will be responsible for tracking down alleged infringers, was presented to the public today. Interestingly enough this private company was not appointed by the government but by the entertainment industries, including the major record labels and movie studios.

Among file-sharers Trident Media Guard (TMG) is not a new name. In fact, thousands if not millions of people have run into them already as they are known to hinder illegal downloads by spreading fake data. For their ‘revolutionary’ anti-P2P technology they have submitted a patent application which is currently under review.

Aside from polluting file-sharing networks, the company will now also be responsible for tracking and reporting pirates to the authorities. TMG has the capacity to record up to 25,000 infringements a day, and according to initial estimates 10,000 offenders a day are expected to receive a warning.

TMG’s tracking technology will cover a wide range of file-sharing networks, with four of them being monitored as a priority. There is little doubt that BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella will be the major targets, but according to TMG it is also possible to monitor Rapidshare, newsgroups and streaming services.

How they will be able to monitor these non-P2P services remains a mystery for now, but it suggests some form of privacy invasion. Unlike with BitTorrent, a third party can’t simply see what a user is downloading as they do when they actively monitor a user’s P2P connections.

In the UK the ISP Virgin Media is trialling a technique which involves Deep Packet Inspection to monitor the level of illicit file-sharing across a percentage of its customer base.

Because systems like this are believed to breach the privacy of individual Internet users, the European Commission has been asked to review its legality.

Thus far no details have been published on the data gathering techniques of TMG, but considering the enormous opposition against the Hadopi law there is little doubt that their every move will be closely watched.

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

Baidu has become increasingly popular with the Chinese population for its MP3 indexing abilities. While its “MP3 Search” provides algorithm-generated links to millions of undoubtedly illicit copyright tracks hosted by others (so-called “deep-linking”), Baidu has always insisted that the provision of such links alone is entirely legal. Needless to say, IFPI, the global music group, disagrees strongly with this assertion.

“The music industry in China wants partnership with the technology companies – but you cannot build partnership on the basis of systemic theft of copyrighted music and that is why we have been forced to take further actions,” said John Kennedy, Chairman and Chief Executive of IFPI, in a February 2008 statement.

Bolstered by an earlier ruling against Yahoo China, by further actions Kennedy unsurprisingly meant “legal actions.” In early 2008, IFPI (Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music) sued Baidu.com for $9m. Today the result of that case has been made public.

Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court has cleared Baidu on accusations of copyright infringement, with a court statement showing that simply providing search results does not breach Chinese copyright law. According to lawyer Sun Yan, the case against the search giant fell because IFPI failed to identify the actual sites hosting the illegal music downloads.

IFPI has challenged Baidu – and lost – in the Beijing No.1 Intermediate Court before. In September 2005, IFPI filed claims regarding nearly 200 music tracks it claimed were made available via Baidu. In 2006, the Court ruled Baidu was not infringing copyright. IFPI appealed to the Beijing Higher People’s Court which upheld the earlier ruling.

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

An insider at a US base in Japan has been in touch with TorrentFreak to tell us of a new initiative underway which is being operated by the Department of Defense. The campaign is running in overseas bases and is targeting members of the military currently using BitTorrent and other P2P software to obtain media.

While millions of regular US citizens also use file-sharing to acquire tv shows, movies and music, we’re told that military personnel overseas have a unique problem – their physical location excludes them from obtaining media from US-based services.

“For years many of us have spent time and money, hand over fist, looking for ways to work around IP blocks placed by companies operating from the states to access services such as NetFlix, Amazon, and others, to enjoy the same level of access as anyone living in the US does,” the insider told TorrentFreak.

“We have offered money to the companies in exchange for lifting the blocks and have offered up information as to how to allow military members into their content while strictly enforcing the contract,” he added.

However, the pleas to the various media companies appear to have fallen on deaf ears. Our contact believes that the content providers must have no interest in the business available from overseas military personnel, as they continue to block them from accessing content legitimately.

In a response to this inaction, we’re told that US military personnel have stepped up their campaign to download as much content as they can using BitTorrent.

“We have sent letters to the RIAA and the MPAA repeatedly letting them know that our downloads are a direct representation of their failure to allow us to be good consumers as others in the US can be,” our military insider explained.

Of course, the response from these groups has been predictable. On a daily basis, the MPAA and RIAA send copyright notices to military personnel via their base ISPs. In turn, the personnel are threatened with account suspension and in serious cases, disconnection.

“Sucks, but all of us have kept doing it [file-sharing] as we have made every reasonable attempt to gain access to the content legally as any person living on US sovereign ground can,” says our clearly frustrated contact.

While there is an apparent crackdown on online file-sharing, there is an interesting footnote to this story. TorrentFreak is informed that when personnel are deployed, they have access to sanctioned “Morale” hard drives which are allegedly filled with copyright materials acquired by “nefarious” means, and available for anyone to download and keep.

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

Peter Makepeace, prosecuting, naturally painted an extremely negative picture, labeling the Pink Palace as a place designed from the ground up as a personal money-making machine for Ellis.

“21 million downloads. 600,000-plus albums. £300,000. This was a cash cow, it was perfectly designed to profit him and it was as dishonest as the day is long,” said Makepeace.

It is common sense to come to the conclusion that Oink was dishonest, claimed the prosecution lawyer, adding that Ellis knows that it’s dishonest “to promote, encourage and facilitate criminal activity,” and accusing him of telling the jury “persistent, cunning, calculated lies.”

It would, of course, be dishonest to promote “criminal activity”, but Mr Makepeace should be very well aware that the activity engaged in by OiNK’s users is covered under civil law.

Switching momentarily from criticism to praise and then back again, Makepeace said that the OiNK website was a “wonderful machine” for sharing music but noted that while the site had a really good brand name, it was a brand synonymous with “ripping off music.”

University of London professor Birgitte Andersenok gave evidence earlier in the trial, stating that file-sharing didn’t hurt the music industry and led to more sales. Mr Makepeace trashed her evidence.

“It’s nonsense, it’s flannel, it’s verbiage, it’s garbage,” he told the Court.

For the defense, Alex Stein said that Ellis had never knowingly acted dishonestly and that in 2004 when OiNK was launched, it was a “brave new world” on the Internet.

“In many societies he’d be an innovator, a creator, a Richard Branson. His talent would be moulded, not crushed by some sort of media organization,” he said.

The media organization being referred to by Stein was the IFPI, who he said had never requested that OiNK be shut down, and had instead “sat and watched.”

Gazette Live reports that Stein went on to launch a scathing attack on the IFPI.

“They used this site. Their own members used this site to promote their own music and now they’re crushing him. Maybe he grew too big for them, maybe they’ve taken a different marketing approach. I don’t know. But it was decided that this site should be taken down.

“All of us here are being manipulated to some sort of marketing strategy by the IFPI. If anybody’s acting dishonestly it’s them,” he said.

At the end of the two week trial the jury returned a unanimous verdict (12 to 0). Alan Ellis is not guilty of Conspiracy to Defraud the music industry. He walked out of Teesside Crown Court a free man today, his name cleared.

The verdict cannot be appealed and Ellis can finally put the past behind him and move on.

Breaking story…

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

Their decision to prevent BitTorrent users from sharing content over their network has sparked the Net Neutrality debate, resulting in an FCC investigation and various lawsuits. One of these suits was settled last month.

Comcast agreed to put $16m into a fund to pay BitTorrent users that were affected by the ‘network management’ which made it impossible for them to share files after their downloads had completed.

Each of the affected users can now claim their $16 in damages, but those who do are required to state to the Court, under penalty of perjury, that their use of BitTorrent “was for lawful purpose consistent with applicable copyright and other laws.” This required statement came as an unpleasant surprise to many affected Comcast users.

“Am I supposed to be able to remember everything I downloaded during that period, and be cognizant of the copyright status of those items not only then, but now?” one worried Comcast user told TorrentFreak. “I certainly do not think that sixteen dollars is enough incentive to possibly suffer the penalties of committing unwitting federal perjury.”

Other Comcast users will have to agree with this assessment, simply because it is often not clear when one is violating copyright law. For example, there is still a large portion of BitTorrent users who think that downloading a TV-show that they could have watched for free on TV, is not a crime.

It wouldn’t surprise us if a large portion of the $16 million fund is left unclaimed because of this required statement, saving Comcast a significant amount of money.

That leads us to the question why was included in the first place. It somehow suggests that Comcast was attempting to stop copyright infringement with their throttling practices, aside from the network management purpose it served. Maybe they just want to hang on to their money.

Whatever the motivation to include this option, it is completely irrelevant to the case itself. Comcast has never used copyright infringement as a justification for stopping BitTorrent traffic, so the lawfulness of the traffic should not be an issue.

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

As May’s elections draw closer, already there have been reports of killings and attacks on candidates, many of them with firearms. In order to dampen down this violence, the government implemented a nationwide firearms ban yesterday, setting up 3,500 checkpoints staffed by 100,000 soldiers and police officers.

Quite wisely these uniformed individuals are now the only people allowed to carry guns and even off-duty policemen must comply – already 3 government officials have been arrested for breaches. There is one group, however, who think these temporary laws shouldn’t apply to them.

The Optical Media Board (OMB), a civilian outfit which tries to combat piracy and copyright violations, has written to the Commission on Election asking that its officers be given an exemption from the ban.

According to OMB executive director Anthony Liongson, his staff need firearms for conducting investigations, carrying out raids and for other activities related to tackling piracy and violations of intellectual property rights.

Liongson put forward the names of 150 of his staff who he wants to be exempted from the law and allowed to carry pistols, revolvers, shotguns and rifles. Amazingly some staff have up to seven firearms.

It seems pretty clear that the government is serious about this firearms ban and avoiding bloodshed, but surely, fighting the non-violent act of disc copying shouldn’t warrant an exemption. Or should it?

People use weapons to fight over oil almost constantly, so since intellectual property is now the oil of the 21st century, perhaps this is the appropriate response after all……

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

It is difficult to downplay this success. BREIN must have been absolutely delighted that all their hard work and investment had paid off, stopping Mininova in its tracks just a short time after the site had served up its 10 billionth torrent.

The Dutch anti-piracy group also had a fairly significant victory over The Pirate Bay. In common with the earlier decision against Mininova, a Dutch Court ruled that The Pirate Bay has to remove a list of torrents linking to copyrighted works by 1st March 2010.

While it had a win over Mininova and a limited win over The Pirate Bay, both of which attracted mountains of press, it seems the Netherlands-based group has been hiding its biggest successes from almost everyone.

According to figures just released by BREIN, the group shut down a staggering 615 “illegal websites” in 2009 and, apparently, BitTorrent sites made up the majority.

TorrentFreak knew that BREIN had shut down a handful of torrent sites, 19 very small sites for example (plus TorrentVault which was targeted but still operates today via Sweden), but we were absolutely oblivious to the sheer numbers now being claimed.

Total BitTorrent sites BREIN said it closed down in 2009 – a staggering 393.

And it doesn’t stop there. The anti-piracy group also says it shut down 35 eD2K servers, 38 streaming video sites and 14 Usenet portals/NZB sites.

While these closures would have no doubt been very noticeable for those that used the sites and services in question, one has to question how many people were actually using them. Unfortunately, we’re a little bit in the dark, since aside from the sites we mentioned above, a grand total of zero emails flooded into TorrentFreak during 2009 requesting information on the other several hundred closures.

So, if you know any of those we haven’t listed, please post them in the comments. We’d love to know exactly how much damage these closures did to BitTorrent. Our suspicions at this point are, not very much at all.

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

The jurors were further warned by Judge Briggs not to Google for OiNK or do any other form of research on the Internet. This might be a good suggestion, as many of the mainstream press reports thus far have been littered with inaccuracies.

Even the BBC report the site was free to join, but in the very next sentence say it cost £5. In another article they report it cost $5.

“It would be most unfortunate if any of you did any private research on the internet relating to this matter. Please don’t,” said Briggs. “It’s only likely to cause difficulties and could in theory abort the trial. So, ladies and gentlemen, no independent research.”

Judge Briggs told the jurors that the defendant, OiNK admin Alan Ellis, is charged with an offence of conspiracy to defraud.

“Put very simply it is suggested he was involved in a website that was used to distribute sound recordings and things of that nature in breach of copyright,” he said.

Ellis denies the charge that he “conspired with others unknown” to defraud the music industry.

Today the trial continued and the jury was told by the prosecution that the OiNK tracker facilitated 21 million downloads. Ellis, who accepted donations from members, had gathered almost $300,000 (£190,000) in several PayPal accounts over the years, money that allegedly came from donations.

“Every penny was going to Mr Ellis,” said Peter Makepeace, prosecuting. “He hadn’t sung a note, he hadn’t played an instrument, he hadn’t produced anything. The money was not going to the people it rightly belonged to, it was going to Mr Ellis.”

The prosecution failed to mention that the money was used by Ellis to pay for the servers and hosting, which probably cost him several thousand dollars a month.

The court was further told how OiNK did not host or distribute any music itself, but instead indexed files shared by its users for others to download.

When responding to a description of how BitTorrent works, that leechers share what they download with other peers, thus speeding up downloads, Mr Makepeace commented: “That is the beauty of the Oink website. It never had to upload any music itself, all it did was provide the facility of linking one person to another who wanted that music.”

After his arrest, the prosecution said that Ellis told officers: “All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website.”

The case continues.

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

The private site tracked hundreds and thousands of torrents linking to the finest recordings from virtually every musical genre. With millions of peers, it was more popular than many public trackers.

The site was shut down in a joint effort by Dutch and British law enforcement in October 2007, based on intel provided by two music industry lobby organizations, the IFPI and the BPI. The police arrested Alan Ellis, the founder of the site, and months later several uploaders were arrested as well.

Four of the uploaders pleaded guilty at Teesside Crown Court in December 2008, where they were all charged with copyright infringement offenses. The four were later sentenced to community service and fines.

The trial of OiNK founder Alan Ellis was pushed back and started today at Middlesbrough Crown Court. Due to a press boycott of the previous court hearings, there was no information available on the reasons for the delay.

What we do know is that Ellis has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the music industry for his role in the OiNK tracker.

During the first day of his trial little has happened. The case has been adjourned until tomorrow when the jury will be assigned. There is still a reporting ban in place on three specific issues, but the trial can and will be reported on.

We will cover the rest of the trial, which is expected to end next week, in the coming days.

Update: Court documents list the remaining uploader as part of the trial, but new information received by TorrentFreak says that his case is due later this year.

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

Despite this, there will also be labels that perform badly for unrelated reasons. How convenient is it then, to blame evil file-sharers for your disappointing results. The Finnish hard rock label Lion Music is doing just that, with rather dramatic consequences.

Because of all the stealing and looting by Internet pirates, the label has decided not to sign any new acts until politicians have found a remedy.

“We are NOT able to sign more artists. No demos or masters you send us will be considered for release. We will NOT listen to any mp3 files or check out your websites and we will NOT respond to questions regarding releasing your album,” the label’s bosses write on their website.

“The illegal file sharing on the net is killing independent music. We are sorry about this situation but we are sure you are aware of what is going on,” the dramatic rant continues.

“Our demo policy will not change before our politicians have stopped the P2P sites. Illegal file sharing is not just about stealing from rich major companies. It is about killing independent music and making it impossible for many great musicians to have a chance to release albums and have a musical career even as a part time job.”

“Next time you consider downloading an album for free or adding new torrents please think of the impact you are having on the artists – would you like it if we came into your home and stole your pay check?”

The label’s bosses then go on to show various statistics of how many times the albums of their artists were pirated though an unnamed BitTorrent site, arguing that these downloads are responsible for their disappointing results.

To add to the drama the label has asked their musicians to write up their thoughts on piracy in a section called “The Murder of Music.”

One of the artists that penned up his thoughts on piracy is guitar hero Borislav Mitic. Mitic is just as gentle in his commentary as the label’s bosses.

“Just because you CAN download music for free today on the Internet doesn’t mean you SHOULD,” he writes. “You CAN also beat up an old lady on the street and steal her pension from her wallet … but somebody CAN beat you up too and do the same to you. Would you like this?”

According to Borislav, illegal downloading will lead to a “society of filthy, wild savages.” To those people who dare to continue stealing through BitTorrent sites he adds, “the blood will be on your hands…”

Those who have the courage to read the rest of the artist entries will be amazed at the hostile tone towards the readers, who they assume are pirates.

Don’t get us wrong. Despite research that points in the opposite direction, it could be that piracy is hurting the sales of Lion Music. But even if this was true, their way of bringing the message across is not going to help their cause, it will only alienate the fans.

A label taking completely the opposite stance, embracing both file-sharing and their fans, is Thorny Bleeder Records, who have just released the second volume of their free download series. Entitled Get Thorny 2, the album features new music from seventeen independent Canadian artists. (link to torrent on Mininova)

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

His first website, Moneysavingexpert.com, was founded in 2003 for around £100 but has since grown to receive around 7.5 million users each month. Lewis’s new venture, Tunechecker, is designed to help music fans get the best deal from online music stores.

Recent research by the site has revealed some alarming differences in prices for exactly the same products. Downloading all of 2009’s top 40 albums from the cheapest retailers would cost £864 less than if they were all bought from iTunes. That’s a lot of money.

When looking at singles, specifically last week’s number 1 record in the UK, the cheapest retailer offers the track for 29p, while iTunes wants 99p – nearly two and a half times more. The cheapest retailer sells Michael Bublé’s number 1 album at £5, while the iTunes price is £7.99.

Not surprisingly, recent research by TorrentFreak and millions of users worldwide reveals that the biggest savings are to be made on file-sharing networks, where all tracks by all artists, big and small, on any label, in any country, are to be found for free.

These are savings that Lewis can only dream about, but being realistic, most people recognize that the labels, musicians and the companies behind them have to earn a living. Lewis notes, as we did yesterday, twice, that the solution lies with competing with piracy.

“The music industry needs to wake up and embrace price competition. it’s facing annihilation from illegally download tracks, yet there are still remnants of an attitude that price doesn’t make a difference.

“If it promoted cheaper, legit music it’d mean fewer illegal downloads.”

Yet while millions flock to file-sharing networks and the knowledge on how to use them continues to spread, there is still a huge and largely untapped market out there, eager to funnel money through the official channels.

“Since we launched the TuneChecker.com a month ago we’ve had 400,000 users, an indication there’s a real appetite to download music at the lowest price,” concludes Lewis.

We get the feeling it’s is going to be a recurring theme in 2010. Pressurizing ISPs, monitoring Internet users and throwing around meaningless warnings is going to do little to bring customers back to the music industry.

The solution, the only solution, is good product, available now – right now, at a fair price. But that’s not going to happen, not for a long time yet.

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

One of the explanations for this apparent ‘lack of piracy’ is the fact that eBook readers are still an exclusive gadget. When compared to uptake of MP3-players, only a tiny fraction of the online population has an eBook reader, which makes it a niche audience.

Theoretically the piracy figure could explode when eBook devices become both affordable and desirable to the mainstream public, especially if the publishing industry makes the same mistakes as the major record labels did. Let’s take a look at how they’re doing thus far.

Before we start it’s worth noting that three of the classic mistakes discussed below are made by the publishers or authors whose books were pirated the most. Coincidence?

DRM

DRM doesn’t work. It only takes one person to strip the DRM from an eBook to make it available to millions, but it also prevents legitimate customers from using the book they way they want to. Unfortunately not all book publishers have learned from the music industry’s DRM failures.

According to CNN, Hachette Book Group, publisher of the ‘Twilight’ series, “considers copyright protection to be of paramount importance,” claiming that “piracy is a serious issue for publishers.” You can almost hear the fear in these statements, fear that will most likely result in a strong focus on DRM instead of offering a great service to readers.

Stephenie Meyer, the author of the ‘Twilight’ books, is even more pro-DRM than her publisher. After one of her forthcoming books leaked onto the Internet in 2008, she simply cancelled the book. You can’t get more restrictive than that.

Delay

Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Stephen King’s ‘Under the Dome’, delayed the release of the eBook version for a few weeks, allegedly because they feared that it would cannibalize hardcover sales. This is one of the stupidest mistakes a publisher can make. The only thing it does is annoy customers, guaranteeing less sales.

Those interested in a digital version of the book could get one on file-sharing sites anyway. Within days, scanned versions of ‘Under the Dome’ surfaced online, and even perfect replications of the book in text format. The result for the publisher is that tens of thousands of people have downloaded the unauthorized eBook versions, many of which might have bought it if it was available.

Digital Ban

J.K Rowling is copying the Beatles by refusing to make her Harry Potter books available in digital form. As a result her books are among the most pirated titles year after year. Every single book from the Harry Potter series is available digitally, either scanned or transcribed by fans.

Luckily, there are also publishers who have learned from the mistakes made by the music industry. CNN quotes Ana Maria Allessi, publisher for Harper Media, who focuses on the upside of digital books. According to Allessi, new technologies will offer benefits to consumers, authors and publishers.

“Consumers who invest in one of these dedicated e-book readers tend to load it up and read more,” she added. “And what’s wrong with that?”

Alessi’s right. The focus should be on offering an outstanding product and user experience. Give consumers what they want, for a decent price, and don’t let those music industry folks scare you.

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

It might not come as a surprise to most people, but Bono’s wish is a little out of touch with reality. By mimicking the words of the record label bosses high up the food chain of the music industry, he fails to see where the real problem lies.

Over the last ten years the RIAA mounted the most aggressive anti-piracy campaign against file-sharers seen anywhere, collecting millions in settlements from thousands of households. The songwriters didn’t benefit much from that.

The RIAA also collected as much as $400m from settlements from the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt. That money was supposed to go to the artists whose rights had been allegedly infringed upon, but the labels weren’t that keen to hand any of that over either, even when faced with the threat of lawsuits from the artists themselves.

The major labels, Warner, Sony, EMI and Universal, are currently being sued by another group of artists over sales of compilation albums featuring their music for which they haven’t been given a cent. The money they’re owed collectively is a staggering $6 billion. Looks like the ‘little guy’ is in trouble without the assistance of file-sharing.

While one set of corporates ripping off musicians doesn’t get a mention in Bono’s top 10, other supposed evil-doers do. Singing from the same sheet as his paymasters at Universal, Bono also takes aim at ISPs, claiming that their “swollen” profits “perfectly mirror” the lost revenues in the music business.

This “blaming of the messenger” will be a continuing theme in the next decade, and one which Bono dwells on for a moment, noting that if it’s possible to crack down on online child pornography in the US, and China has the ability to suppress online dissent, then it’s also perfectly possible to track downloads of copyrighted music.

Well, yes, of course it is. That’s been perfectly possible for the last decade, but what good does it do? The RIAA has largely given up suing individuals and even when countries like France pass fairly draconian legislation to have people removed from the Internet for sharing content, there are plenty of ways around it.

“The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files,” says Bono. “The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we’re just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of “24” in 24 seconds. Many will expect to get it free.”

While it’s true that we are only a couple of years away from being to download huge amounts of data in just a few seconds and that will have an impact on the volumes of movie and TV show downloading, we can’t actually watch a full season of “24″ in 24 seconds. Real-time will suffice, though.

Right at this moment via sites like Watch-Movies-Online, it’s possible to view the very latest movies instantaneously. With the new streaming functionality available in the latest beta of uTorrent, the same can be achieved via torrent swarms.

Bono, the future is now. Suing Internet users does not work and blaming the ISPs will only prove counter-productive. Monitoring the Internet will prove futile. The only way to deal with piracy is to compete with it.

As we pointed out in our article covering the most downloaded TV shows of 2009, there is huge interest in on-demand TV and there are millions of viewers that can potentially bring in millions of dollars in revenue.

The growth in unauthorized downloading of TV shows and other media is a sign that consumers want something currently unavailable through the official channels, and while price is a factor, it is not necessarily all about ‘free’.

Serving the insatiable demand during the next decade at a reasonable price should be the main aim of the media industry, as locking down the Internet will not only suffocate their customers, but also their own business. That definitely won’t help the songwriters.

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