In the past we’ve reported on the P2P advertising attempts of MediaDefender, but they are not the only company trying to make money from ads on filesharing networks. Last month, P2Pwords launched their adwords service, and more recently, PeerMatrix launched another advertising application targeted at P2P users. Although there is doubt that this type of advertising can be very effective, it’s the ideal cash cow for malware peddlers.

According to a press release from last Friday, PeerMatrix uses a “…revolutionary technology that morphs the name of an ad file to match whatever a P2P user is searching for, thereby dramatically increasing the probability that your ad file will be downloaded and viewed”.

In other words, with this (patented) “revolutionary technology” advertisers will have the possibility to rename their Viagra advert to ‘The Dark Knight Trailer.avi’, if that’s what the user is searching for. Even worse, the advertiser can do this with every file type, including executable malware applications, or trojan horses. The opportunities to use this piece of software to pollute search results are endless.

Angel Leon, lead developer at FrostWire told TorrentFreak that he is not impressed by PeerMatrix’s marketing pitch. Instead, he is worried. “We wouldn’t call this a “revolutionary technology,” he told us. “This is nothing but good old fake search results, otherwise known as spam, and it’s always been in the interest of the community to remove these results.”

PeerMatrix offers their application for free, and it runs on all recent Windows operating systems including Vista and XP. PeerMatrix’s business model is to make money by inserting a small percentage of their own ads along with the files that the ‘advertisers’ choose to spread.

We can’t help but see this application as the ultimate spamming tool. Luckily, most developers of Gnutella based filesharing applications agree with this view. “We’ll try our best to have FrostWire clients recognize these fakes and keep the experience clean, just the way it should be. If a search result doesn’t indicate in some way it’s an advertisement, it’s clearly a deceptive form of spam,” Leon said.

Bernard Trest, President of PeerMatrix disagrees with this description. “YouTube has also been experimenting with overlays and many websites use a similar overlay concept,” he told us. “Essentially the person does not request ads on YouTube however they are forced to view the ad anyhow. If what we are doing is “spam” then Google, Yahoo, and even YouTube are spamming.”

The problem with PeerMatrix, however, is that there is no control over the content that the advertisers put on the P2P networks, even executable files are not a problem. In addition, Trest admitted to us that the ads inserted by their software are not listed as ads in the search results. “The advertising, whether targeted or untargeted, is not designated as advertising,” he said.

If this isn’t the ultimate spamming tool, then what is? We sincerely hope that the developers of filesharing applications will keep a close eye on this new spamming tool, and filter it from the results wherever possible. If that proves to be a problem, many P2P users might have to switch to BitTorrent.

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

Here at TorrentFreak we’re getting very tired at the frequency we have to keep reporting on the Swiss anti-piracy company, Logistep. The way they operate is simple: they use a modified Shareaza client to enter BitTorrent swarms to collect data, which they sell to lawyers who use the information to discover the identity of alleged file-sharers, who they then threaten with legal action which can be made to go away – for a fee. A simple “Pay Up or Else”, no different to the recent case where they were working with CodeMasters. As we said before, Logistep’s system is unlicensed and unapproved by any official independent or government organization. Put simply, anyone could gather this data from the internet and claim that it’s accurate.

Logistep are now working with a new ally – lawyers ‘kuw’ in Germany who according to a Gulli report are representing certain producers in the adult industry to track and ‘fine’ BitTorrent users they accuse of sharing their material. After further research, ‘kuw’ appear to be emboldened after they worked with Logistep at the start of 2007 in tracking down hundreds of people who allegedly shared the game ‘Gothic3‘ and forcing many of them to pay up.

Those unlucky enough to find themselves in the crosshairs of kuw and Logistep will receive a letter. In it will be the usual legal speak, with lots of implied things and veiled threats designed to frighten. The bottom line is a demand for cash to make this issue disappear – 250 euros to be precise. 135 euros goes to ‘KUW’ for lawyers costs while 115 euros goes to the copyright owner of the movie/video clip in question by way of damages. KUW lawyers are claiming that they only target people who have already downloaded at least 30% of the movie.

Most, if not all people receiving these type of letters in previous UK cases have had no further action taken against them when they refuse to pay up.

In what appears to be a quickening shift in the porn industry to take legal action against sharers, Jon B., Vice President at porn company Red Light District (who hides his real ID because his family doesn’t know what he does) told the LA Times: “What’s happening in the industry is an unacceptable amount of theft.”

While claiming that 35% of his profits are lost to file-sharing, Jon B. described the futility of going after websites as the sheer numbers are too much to cope with. Instead, Red Light District is deciding whether to go after individual sharers, as is the case with RIAA, MPAA and Logistep-type actions.

“If it scares them enough, if it can take away 20% of the illegal downloads, we’ll be doing the best that we can,” he added.

During the next 24 hours we will publish an interview with a prominent figure involved in these cases, in which we will investigate Logistep’s dubious practices around Europe. Stay tuned.

Thanks to _bc

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

Despite the differences these four guys sometimes have, they all believe that no other P2P protocol performs better than BitTorrent at the moment. However, there’s no doubt that there will be changes in the future.

“Technology is always evolving and I have little doubt that 5 or 10 years from now we will be using a different protocol” says Justin from TorrentSpy. Peter (aka Brokep) from The Pirate Bay also thinks new protocols will take over eventually. “There will be other alternatives,” he said “Not necessarily ours but others will come.” Niek from mininova has more faith in BitTorrent but expects that the protocol will evolve rapidly, an opinion shared by Gary from IsoHunt.

Most of the admins also predict that mainstream production companies will eventually embrace BitTorrent and P2P and some of them hope to play an active role in the transition from old to new media distribution. Below you can read the full responses to the question I asked them: What do you think the future holds for BitTorrent and your website?

Niek from Mininova

I’m sure that we’ll see quite a few changes in the P2P landscape during the next couple of years.

From a business perspective, I notice that content producers recognize more and more the advantages of P2P distribution models (see e.g. the Pariah Island case). We all know that DRM is close-to-death, and major studios are now rethinking their business models, which is a good thing. We’d like to see Mininova play a major role in this shift, so stay tuned for some related announcements the coming weeks :)

Looking at the technical side of things, I expect that the BitTorrent protocol will evolve rapidly. See for example (audio and video) streaming, which is already possible and supported by several clients. Other interesting developments are BT-capable chips and TOR-like functionality. New protocols (like the one proposed by The Pirate Bay) might arise, but only time will tell whether these will substitute BitTorrent. Personally, I think BitTorrent can go a long way with some extensions and modifications.

Having said that, Mininova’s only focus won’t be BitTorrent: when the “next big thing” arises, we’ll definitely consider backing it.

Justin from TorrentSpy

I don’t really concern myself with the future of BitTorrent the protocol but I do care about peer-to-peer as a technology platform. Technology is always evolving and I have little doubt that 5 or 10 years from now we will be using a different protocol. However I firmly believe that the use of peer-to-peer for everything from data transfer to shared CPU power will take the Internet to the next level.

If we look at TV you will already see this trend. Media use in our society is transitioning from someone else deciding what you want (push) to something that allows what you want, when you want it (pull). Right now you turn the TV on at 8pm to watch your favorite show or skip channels until you stumble across something interesting. The future is a demand system where you can buy and watch an episode the network has “released” any time you want. Tivo is a first step in this direction.

Surprising as it may seem, this can be done pretty easily today, but is tied up in complex licensing schemes, conflicts between producers and distributors, and a wide array of selfish interests. Unfortunately many companies use their power and influence to halt and punish innovations they cannot think of ways to make money with. The monopolies tried to stop the VHS, DVD, and MP3 player, but thankfully failed when they took it to Court. Now Imagine for a second all the amazing products they did manage to squash…

Gary from IsoHunt

With so much momentum of content behind BitTorrent, I don’t see it going away anytime soon. Unless there’s a far superior and open protocol that is superior to BitTorrent in efficiency and convenience, for which BitTorrent is pretty hard to beat, I see we’ll like have new developments by extending the existing BitTorrent protocol. Although Bram Cohen talked about Merkle trees as a major revision in improving BitTorrent, and that didn’t go anywhere (at least not in open source). When BitTorrent Inc. do significant enough closed source changes to the protocol, BitTorrent will fork or new open protocols will rise.

For future of BitTorrent sites and IsoHunt, I’ve always been an advocate of open and public access. The more sites try to go underground, the more reasons the authority think there’s something dark at work and more they will take sites down by force – Oink and other private trackers for example. I’ve been blogging about P2P and its economic sense/legitimate use cases for a while (latest one on independent music), and I believe that’s what will give BitTorrent continued adoption and acceptance as a de-facto protocol and internet standard. It’s like the WWW: if people didn’t use the early web for other purposes than for porn (which was prolific in the web’s early days), the governments might have a different view and regulations on the internet now. It’s not what copyright infringement or “piracy” may be occurring, on P2P, BitTorrent or the internet. It’s what new use cases we nurture that benefits both end users and content producers, that will correct the stigma behind P2P and BitTorrent and accelerate their acceptance. Development on isoHunt and our other sites will for sure be done with this in mind.

Peter aka Brokep from The Pirate Bay

First of all, I don’t think it’s easy to predict the future. But I do think that it’s very important to be very promiscuous when it comes to the protocols we use. BitTorrent is currently the best but this might change. There will be other alternatives, not necessarily ours but others will come.

In five years things are probably very different from today, technology wise and politically. The latter thing is the biggest issue, not the technology. I would foresee that streaming is bigger and the companies still try to frame their users to use their locked down systems, maybe not DRM but rather streamed with their clients (like the BT DNA system) which will contain other copyright protection scams.

What do you think?

It’s great to hear the opinions and predictions of the leading BitTorrent admins, but what do you think the future of BitTorrent will be? Will we be all using a new protocol 5 years from now, will BitTorrent sites change, will TV and movie producers embrace BitTorrent?

Let us know!

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

TF: What exactly does the political leader of the German Pirate Party do?

JH: The most important point is to coordinate the political development of the pirate party. This implies motivating discussions about current and new stances as well as writing press releases. It also includes being active as a spokesman of the party, but of course here I am not the only one.

TF: The party was officially registered as a party on September 10th 2006, correct?

JH: Yes, that is the day we founded it. The letters for registering it were sent a few days later, but that is not what counts in Germany.

TF: Approximately how many members do you have?

JH: A few minutes ago it have been 537 plus a handful pending, future members.

TF: What has been the party’s achievements over the past year?

JH: If ordered by how hard it was to achieve, then I am proud that we have federal parties in 6 federal states wich build local concentration points for pirates and interested persons.

Close to that came our funding in a number of NGOs and citizen right groups. When we started a year ago none of them took us serious. Today a lot of their members have become pirates, we organize demonstrations and press releases together and hold lectures on each others conferences.

Third to name of course is media attention. Besides the base attention of journalists discovering the pirates and their attitudes, there have been two popular events this year: the first was a trojan horse build of old computer crap with which we “infected” the ministry of interior to demonstrate against hidden intrusion to computer systems. The second is the “Killerchess”, a bloody chess game with human pawns, to show the idiocy of a law which proposed forbidden all kind of violence in computer games.

TF: Are there any current activities for the party?

JH: A smaller one: a local internet provider named Arcor has – without any good reason – decided to ban certain pornographic sites. Tomorrow we will not only discredit this behaviour but also launch a website to circumvent this filter. A bigger one is the festival of forbidden art, we copy an artists installation of a spam shredder (computer, printer and shredder in a line to immediately destroy all incoming e-mails) and modify it, to download illegal videos from YouTube, burn them, display on a big screen and then destroy the CDs on which we burned them. The illegal video will be mesh art, to demonstrate the power of recycling knowledge and the absurdity of claiming property in ideas. The act will be surround by a Creative Commons band. Of course we also do more traditional political work by commenting current political and social movements. Currently we are working with other European Pirate Parties in dealing with European Justice and Security Ministers demand to block dangerous words like “Bomb” and “Genocide” from being searched.

TF: When is the next election in Germany?

JH: The next regional election is in January 2008, the election for our federal as well as the European parliament is in 2009 as well as the most regional elections.

TF: Do you have anyone running for election then?

JH: Yes of course. At the moment we plan to take part in every national and regional election. We have to collect signatures for that case and in some cases this might stop us. But where active pirates are the signatures are no problem. The most promising federal party is the one of Hesse, with Thorsten Wirth as chairman, but we will take part in the election as the Piratenpartei, not reduced to a single person – this is a flavour of German election laws. Hesse is also one of the two federal states which have elections next January.

TF: What do you feel are the chances of election?

JH: Anything above 1% will be a success in the first election. It will help as in further election, because it is a promise for our voters, that their next ballot is not wasted. If we get such a result once, it will boost our results on the following elections. Especially in Hesse we have a good chance of getting such a result, because the current government has made several unpopular decisions before election like forcing study fees and reintroducing biblical stories into biology. Also Hesse is one of the most active regions for pirates. I think they will made the percent and this will be a land rush for the pirates in Germany.

TF: 1% would make it the best result internationally for any Pirate Party. how many votes (if you know) would that mean?

JH: 60,000

TF: We have talked before with representatives of the US Pirate Party and they do not encourage copyright infringement, does the German party have that position as well?

JH: We would prefer not to encourage breaking the law. But the German copyright law is so incompatible with the freedom of speech and daily use of computer and internet that it is almost impossible not to infringe copyright. We therefore see civil disobedience in the copyright issue as a valid form a protesting against it. We recommend to make use of ones natural right of free flow of information, we also help people to get the technology for sharing and resting against censorship. This advice finds its limitation when it comes to earn money from others work. We do not support that.

TF: Finally, where do you see things being, globally, in a years time?

JH: I expect big progress into surveillance state in Europe but also a larger debate about the fear of terrorism and the dangers of a police state. This will give the pirate parties an even bigger boost, as current oppositions are failing their task of correcting governments heading. I do not expect big movements about the copyright laws, but a change of their environment. There are chances that the John Doe cases against filesharers will loose their power as acceptance of screen-shots as proofs as well as revealing names behind IP addresses will be denied by judges. A lot will happen in the field of open access (and related with that patents) when it comes to public funding – which matters for the majority of scientific results. I expect an increase of open access publications and a broad discussion among scientist, who wake up and find out that they have more pull. And finally I expect that the number of pirate parties will be lower than today, but the number of pirate party members increase a lot. This because the incentive to run a party alone in a country is low and the initial hype to found one is over. But once a critical mass is reached the parties growth will make oneself independent. Additionally the Pirate Parties goals are getting more important every day they are not in parliament as the movement towards the information society can not be stopped any more. Only its shape can still be formed.

The German Pirate Party’s site is here

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

However, there are companies out there who give you ‘free’ software (like a torrent client) but at the same time install some of that extra stuff you don’t want too. We have regularly reported on BitTorrent clients which also install this malware such as Torrent101, BitRoll, TorrentQ and GetTorrent. These are just a handful of bad clients currently available online.

It didn’t take much research to discover that a Swedish company called Wakenet is behind the enterprise, a company that made news on lots of spyware sites due to its Anti-Leech plugin.

Wakenet has a new domain called uvTorrent.com (currently diverting to their Cash4Downloads site) – no prizes for guessing the planned confusion with novices and the official ‘uTorrent’ client. They also have a new (fake) ‘compression’ utility called Winzix, obviously named to be confused with Winzip. Unfortunate downloaders will download something from BitTorrent, only to learn that it needs to ‘decompressed’ with Winzix in order to work. Installing Winzix again results in malware getting onto the host PC.

Our investigations revealed two major servers carrying the malware-ridden clients, media players, compression utilities and other sites supporting the enterprise:

IP: 69.72.144.122

1. netpumper.com (there’s even a link to this from Wakenet’s homepage)
2. bitgrabber.com
3. bitroll.com
4. c4dl.com
5. cash4downloads.com
6. download.play3w.com
7. get-torrent.com
8. playon.play3w.com
9. winzix.com (additional information from Symantec)
10. bitdownload.org
11. divoplayer.com
12. plugindl.com
13. torrent101.com
14. torrentq.com
15. torrentsoftware.org

IP: 207.44.244.86

1. bitroll.com
2. c4dl.com
3. cash4downloads.com (Click here for removal instructions)
4. download.netpumper.com
5. Uvtorrent.com
6. playon.play3w.com
7. wakenet.se (WakeNet’s own homepage is on the same server)
8. bitsofporn.com
9. domplayer.com
10. gamingtorrent.com
11. kitplayer.com
12. torrentmusic.org
13. torrentgamers.com
14. Torrentspeeder.com (different server currently)

We suggest that everyone stays well away from every site on the above lists. Use uTorrent or Azureus to download and if you ever download anything that requires anything other than a standard media player or WinRAR in order to play, be a little suspicious. Checking the comments to the torrent you plan to download is always a good idea.

For the little more adventurous reader, it’s possible to use the Windows HOSTS file to block the activity caused not only by the malware listed above but also that from hundreds of other sources. We recommend the excellent guide from MVPS, “Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts File”

UPDATE: Reports suggest that software is now available to play 3WPlayer (and possibly DomPlayer) files without getting either player. This software is untested by TorrentFreak.

UPDATE 2: Software to crack 3WPlayer, WinZix can also be found here. Click here for the .torrent.

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

Recently, TorrentFreak published a translation of an interview between a journalist and a member of the German warez Scene. Although the article was well received, it generated quite a lot of controversy. Some readers felt that the questions should’ve probed deeper, others that the responses could’ve been more informative. Some questioned how much the Scener really knew while others even questioned his authenticity. At TorrentFreak we try to write interesting articles but we also listen to our readers when you say you want to see something.

To that end, we conducted our own interview with an established ‘Scener’ – and we asked him those questions we believe our readers would’ve asked him.

The Interview

There are many ideas of what ‘The Scene’ is. Some people say it’s a place, others say it’s a collection of people, some say it’s a combination of both. Can you tell us about your definition of ‘The Scene’, how it operates and the kind of people involved?

For me like many others it’s a place to go and chill with your friends, not unlike the current craze of social networking. It also represents the core fundamentals of the internet – the net should be free – and not governed. If I had to put a location or a name for the scene I would say its a haven for Geeks (sometimes arrogant with their extreme talent), enthusiasts, people who need to feel part of something and people who like a challenge and like to be kept on their toes. I suppose its full of criminals but not in the true sense of the word. What I mean by this is people who like a challenge, who get a buzz or a hit from breaking these so called laws, being hunted by and keeping one step ahead of authority. It’s also a place where the `Geek` rules all. He is not frightened by the big guy who plays football, the boxer down the road or the bullies at school because he knows he has the power to take the access away. Once you have been given access and trust, to have it taken away can be devastating for some. Same as money I guess – I suppose it’s all about power.

Some people believe that the ‘true’ Scene has its roots many years in the past. When did you become aware of its existence, how long after this did you become a member and what were the events that lead up to your joining?

The `true` scene goes back to the early 80’s, some think it goes beyond that. Unfortunately the groups of old have all grown up, had kids and now have nice jobs at the companies they used to pirate !!!!! (ironic or what?). In relative terms I could be called a newbie Scener, having only been in it a little over 10 years. My scene started with some hacking and infiltration which led me to meet some people, who in turn put me into the scene. Once I was involved I gave up hacking and cracking as it is generally frowned upon in the `true scene`, plus you don’t want to get caught for something stupid if you are doing bigger and badder things !!!

The Scene is viewed by many as almost mythical, only for the chosen few. What were your first impressions and experiences of being involved and how did they compare to your preconceptions?

The scene can be seen as a magical place where a lot of information is available and you get consumed by the amount of stuff you can lay your hands on. It can also be a dark place with a lot of people ready to screw you over for some access to somewhere or someone or starting a rumor simply because they don’t like you. This can be damaging. You see a lot of Release groups doing this to make the other group look bad and in my opinion, it’s pointless but thats just my opinion! My first impression of the scene was an overwhelming desire to download the entire internet! I suppose for me, who didn’t have a lot growing up, I felt I had hit the jackpot but as you soon realize, nothing comes for free.

How long was it before you felt you’d gained the trust of the other members and how did this manifest itself?

Personally I don’t trust anyone. You can only ever rely on yourself in the scene and in real life. It’s more true in the scene because no-one has any honor for so called friends (they will all sell you out to save their own skin) so the best bet is to protect yourself in anyway possible, so they never have information about you they can use for whatever they may need.

Being involved in the Scene in certain countries can lead to your arrest. Were you briefed about security before making contact with the servers and if so, what measures were you advised to take?

I always knew the risks when I entered the scene. I had a shady life growing up being dodgy and wheeling and dealing, so I suppose it came naturally to me to be alert and paranoid. For me it was natural evolution to take crime from the streets to the world of computers and the internet. I was already fairly versed in security from my exploiting days so I just researched the new protocols a bit more and took some steps to ensure i was more protected. I switched from Windows based computers to Unix, encrypted everything on every piece of hardware, turned off all logging, changed my irc/email frequently, always connected through proxies when checking email and used dynamic IP addresses as much as possible. For instance, to boot up and logon to my main computer you need 10 different passwords to get through the various layers of encryption and security I have in place and no-one on earth is going to break those!

I feel quite secure and at the touch of a command I can format the whole lot and write zero’s to the data drives so no-one can ever retrieve data from them. A lot of `topsites` are like this (maybe not as paranoid as me – but thats what has kept me from prison or the hint of it), but they certainly are clever and paranoid about getting caught.

Without warez release groups, the Scene would have little content to offer. Did you ever hold a position in a group, what did that entail and how did it affect your standing in the group and the Scene as a whole?

I did and still do hold a position in one of the top groups in the scene obviously naming it is stupid so I won’t! To be honest I don’t know if my fellow members would like or dislike this interview. Being an affiliate (a release group) certainly ups your standing in the scene but a lot of my friends in the scene don’t know who i am affiliated with or what groups I work with/for. It’s better this way.

Most people are aware that Scene access means easy access to warez. What range of material is available, who supplies it and where does it come from?

There are so many releases in the scene, maybe 2000 a day ranging from games, movies, TV shows, mp3, anime, dvd, music videos, wii, xbox, xbox360, ps3, pda, psp, docs, ebooks, comics and every type of porn you can imagine! All of these are available in pretty much any language or subs are available.

The stuff comes from anywhere people can get their hands on it. Most of the pre-release stuff will come from a silver or a screening of a film, the TV shows are usually `capped` from an HDTV station or a DSR link. The TV series as a DVDrip will probably be bought from a shop or ebay, then ripped into whatever format that group releases in. They will then sell the original DVD at say a flea market or ebay or something or take it back to the shop to trade for the next release or a refund.

Can you tell us about the structure of the Scene, it’s hierarchy, expected etiquette and the politics involved?

There isn’t really a hierarchy in the scene. There is a council for releasing standards kind of like the w3c a list of people or groups who all virtually sign a document saying “this is how we should release a film or whatever” it describes codec types, packing methods, what the nfo should state, what languages are allowed and how it should be tagged. The people who write these so called guidelines are generally considered to be the best at what they do, i.e if you looked at the game release guidelines then the best game crackers would be writing the guides between them, and agreeing. Next is the part that makes me laugh – if your release doesn’t adhere to these guides or say its slightly out of synch or has missing info or whatever you get whats called a `Nuke` – which is like a bad merit and states the release shouldn’t be downloaded as it’s basically crap. While I agree with this in principle what is strange to me is this; the scene is around because of people’s disregard for laws and antiestablishmentarianism, yet they have a set of rules to govern it! Madness!!

Some of these `Nukes` are bullshit nukes, i.e nothing wrong with the release, just some group having a war or some kiddie with nuke access being a dick, so I rarely take notice of them. There are a hell of a lot of politics in the Scene, mostly due to paranoia. For instance, if you use P2P or use or even help torrents, you will get banned. On some sites if you don’t use a bouncer to hide your address you’ll get banned and so on and so on.

In recent years there appeared to be a conflict between members of the Scene and certain elements of the BitTorrent community, especially certain trackers who offer Scene-releases just a few minutes after the Topsites do. What are your thoughts on P2P and BitTorrent releasers such as aXXo?

Personally I don’t like P2P/BitTorrent as it gives unwanted press to a small scene and it makes piracy real in the eyes of the law. My personal view is “so what?” if a few geeky kids want to swap a few movies and a few applications around, they probably don’t have the money to buy them anyway. With stuff like operating systems – Microsoft for example, it’s so buggy that who in their right mind would want to pay for it? I mean, would you pay for a dud microwave? I know I wouldn’t.

I think if the torrent / p2p community was locked down a bit more and they had to do work to get the releases it would stop a lot of this warring. For me, I work hard to be in the scene and I feel my downloads are justified by the work I do on the releases my group makes. But P2P doesn’t have to do that work because it is already done – but thats just my view. I don’t think that P2P or torrents will ever stop getting it’s releases from the Scene, so I feel the war is pointless. In my opinion, if a known torrent group is operating , the topsites should (and do) make a group ban on that particular group, but not all sites adhere to this – due to no-one actually knowing how many sites there really are in the world.

Most file-sharers don’t hear accurate information about the Scene because good sources are few and far between. Do you have anything further to tell us about this fascinating subject?

No matter how hard the Feds try to stop the scene there are always people smarter than them out there. What they should be doing is leaving us to it and catching pedophiles, rapists and psychopathic killers rather than wasting resources on a few geeks.

The scene spreads deep into businesses, software houses, record companies, cinema owners, application houses and websites and I think once you start to uncover it, it starts to become a big tangled mess (same as the internet really!). As it evolves – as all things do – i’m sure that it will become more secure and disappear deeper into the underground.

Do you have one final message for our readers?

Yes! About people who sell the warez that we release; This is WRONG and should never be done!

Thank you for taking the time to speak to TorrentFreak. Stay safe.

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

Most site owners were offered a fixed sum of money and a percentage of the future ad revenue on top of that. Similar to the proposition the made to Meganova.

Moreover, this recent confession makes me wonder what’s really going on at Empornium. Let’s ask a former Empornium admin…

TorrentFreak: Is there, to your knowledge some kind of ownership agreement between Targetpoint and Emporniums former owner Sazaraki?

Emp admin: To the best of my knowledge, yes.

TorrentFreak: What is the nature of this contract?

Emp admin: The rough outline was, the contract would call for a couple of lump sum cash payments by Targetpoint, with the last bit paid upon transfer of the domain name. Sazaraki was to remain on for some time as head admin to smooth the transition. He intended to use the cash payment to pay for professional development of new site code. At the time these negotiations were taking place, Jan-Feb 05, the site was dying under the strain of the large number of users — load times were slow, timeouts were common, and staff were spending many hours every day simply manually correcting user’s stats because the tracker was timing out on them. The contract called for Saz to continue to receive a share of the ad revenue for the next year, for a token monthly payment to hand out to staff, and for Targetpoint to pay the salary for a professional backend sysop of Saz’s choosing. It also called for Sazaraki and the original admin team to retain access to the boxes and 100%
editorial control during this 1 year period.

After an initial payment was made and the domain was transferred, Targetpoint proposed changing the deal. The deal essentially remained the same, but Targetpoint was to become an investor, rather than buy the site outright. The only significant changes were that they would not pay another cash payment, it was now a permanent partnership rather than an ownership transition, and Targetpoint agreed to pay for a professional site development house of saz’s choosing to improve Empornium, rather than have us build a new site.

TorrentFreak: How much money is involved, and who paid the money?

Emp admin: The money was payed by Or Kunztman, CEO of Targetpoint. As far as the amouunt of the monthly minimum that he was paid, I don’t feel it’s my place to say.

TorrentFreak: Who is in control of the site at this very moment?

Emp admin: I’m sure today it’s just as it was last week. Or Kuntzman and Targetpoint control the money, Oded makes the day to day decisions, Arjan (aka Noos) does the tech stuff.

This is supported by the list of admins on empornium.us

TorrentFreak: What made you decide to leave emporium?

Emp admin: The admins realized last year, shortly after the deal was made, that they were not living up to their end of the agreement. We were constantly having Arjan login to our boxes doing stuff without permission… like that whole “Piratebay Moderated Network” banner that caused such a controversy… Slipping in more and more obtrusive Targetpoint ads, which he wasn’t supposed to do without Saz’s approval.

TorrentFreak: Do you know why he put The Piratebay banner up?

Emp admin: No. At the time there was speculation that it was a “google bomb” … that they were trying to steal hits from TPB when people searched on google, they’d hit on Empornium and draw more eyeballs to Targetpoint’s ads… but that’s just speculation. I have no personal knowledge of their involvement with TPB

Emp admin (continues):

So they weren’t paying the monthly payments, weren’t hiring the professionals they had promised. we knew they were screwing us. So some of us started development work on Cheggit.net. We hung around because we were never in this for the money, we got into this for the community, and the money was intended to improve the site because it was dying under the load it had grown so big. If we had left at that time, we would’ve been box-banned and that would’ve been the end of that community. So we swallowed our pride and did Targetpoint’s gruntwork while simultaneously working on cheggit.net. We knew a day would come when we couldn’t stomach it anymore, we just didn’t know when, and we hoped we would have a new working site before that day came.

Then they’re new site rollout happened

We had a working beta site on Cheggit… not perfect yet, but the nuts and bolts were there, we knew we were close… just adding on the non-essentials … the “pretty stuff”. And there was Sazaraki’s reaction to the whole new “pay to signup” site rollout that the rest of us had to consider. Sazaraki got fed up, abandoned ownership of the IRC channel, logged out of Empornium and told us he was quitting. Despite Arjan’s claims, we did not do any attacking on Empornium, the rest of what happened was the user’s reaction. We have a loyal community. Targetpoint never understood that.

TorrentFreak: How many of the original staff members are still at emporium?

Emp admin: Save for Saz, who is bound by his contract, ALL of the original Empornium staff, mods and admins alike, were a part of the development and/or beta of the new site, and all of us have left.

TorrentFreak: Thanks.

The nature of the contract described by this former Empornium admin is similar to the one offered to Meganova. Although Targetpoint officially denies that they have an ownership agreement with empornium.

TorrentFreak contacted Targetpoint and they responded with the fillowing statement:

Its very simple. Targetpoint do not own in any way Empornium.us. We never owned it and we shall never will. Targetpoint only connection to Empornium was advertising business relations. No more.

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

Empornium

Targetpoint has nothing to do with Empornium.us’s recent changes. The fact is that a former Targetpoint employee Oded Daniel was involved in the transfer and sale of empornium.us to its new owner. Daniel operates as a broker and he is listed as the registrant of the site, but the site is owned by a group of people, not related to Daniel. It might look suspicious that Oded Daniel is the domain registrant, but as a domain and site broker he is the registrant of more sites which he does not own.

At least, this is what we learned from my recent conversation with Mr. Daniel. He told that the present owner prefers to stay out of the picture. He also stressed that empornium still is a free site, but that new members can buy their way into the community when registration is closed.

So basically it is a paysite when registration is closed, but people can join for free when it’s open.

So Daniels statement on Slyck

Registration will continue to be free for all users, new and old

is not completely true… (Update: Slyck fixed it)

Wait a minute… How can he make these statements anyway if he is not involved with targetpoint or empornium? Ah… he is in charge of the monetizing of empornium.

Targetpoint Buying BitTorrent Sites

In our initial article three months ago we reported that Targetpoint tried to buy several BitTorrent sites. The fact is that three unrelated torrentsite owners told TorrentFreak that Targetpoint opted to buy their site. Among these sites is one of the biggest players in the BitTorrent scene and Meganova. Meganova who posted Targetpoints attempts to buy their site openly on their blog.

According to Meganova owner Bogaa he spoke to Ran Yehud from Targetpoint. Bogaa quotes the email correspondance at Slyck forums my emails

Quote:

Hi Bogaa,
It’s Ran from Targetpoint.
I wanted to speak with you about something please contact me or leave me a phone where I can reach you.
Thanks,
Ran

Bogaa continues: “Later on when we made the news public, we received this email:”

Quote:

Hi Bogaa,
I got this earlier this week: http://TorrentFreak.com/targetpoint-is-buying-BitTorrent-sites/
I see you are doing nice PR for you site, as long as you didn’t made us look bad that is fine with me!
Anyhow, happy holidays.
Bye and best regards,
Ran

When we contacted Targetpoint about these actions they stated:

Targetpoint is an advertising network. We do not own any commercial/content sites. For that matter, we do not own any of the following sites:Empornium.us, puretna.com, imagefap.com, Thepiratebay.org and mininova.org.

However, Oded Daniel, a former Targetpoint employee and related to all the sites Targetpoint mentions told TorrentFreak:

Targetpoint’s CEO indeed confirmed to me that they tried to buy Meganova. This is not unique, these deals happen all the time. Direct deals, external deals, partner agreements and exclusive ownerships are a part of out bussiness.

So we’ve got a little contradiction here.

The Piratebay and Mininova

This is probably one of the more sensitive points, implying that “pirates cuddle toy” the Piratebay is partly owned by a third party is pretty controversial.

Let me start with saying that Targetpoint does NOT own any part of mininova.org. The only relation Mininova has with Targetpoint is strictly business; they deliver the ads, that’s all.

The Piratebay case is more complicated; two credible sources reported to TorrentFreak that former Targetpoint employee Oded Daniel has a share (37%) in The Piratebay. One of these sources got this information directly from one of The Piratebay owners.

This means that it is not Targetpoint that owns a piece of TPB, but Oded Daniel. The same person who happens to be the CEO of Random Media. A recent article on rixstep.com argued that it is Oded Daniel’s company who handles TPB’s ad revenues.

When SvD rang Oded Daniel he refused to reveal what Random Media are and why the company have an address in Switzerland but a telephone number in Stockholm. And he refused to reveal where the ad revenues for The Pirate Bay disappear to.

‘Who said I take care of the money? There are a lot of bit torrent sites. They all work the same way. Go after them instead’, said Oded.

An interesting detail is that randommedia’s website is hosted at PRQ, TPB’s hosting provider…

In our recent conversation with Oded Daniel he said that his company is delivering the ads (url: clicktorrent.info) on TBP but that there are no shares. This is actually a good point because TBP doesn’t have any shares, the only thing they can share are server costs and ad revenues. Perhaps the 37% is the shared ad revenue figure?

It is funny to see that Mr. Daniel and TPB respond exactly the same to the question about the relationship between Targetpoint and TBP:

TPB/Targetpoint used to work with Targetpoint/TPB before, currently we do not. We might in the future again

…

So lets wrap it up.

1. Targetpoint does not own Emponium, some guy who doesn’t wants to reveal his identity does. Mr Daniel, a former employee of Targetpoint is monetizing empornium.

2. Several sources confirm that Targetpoint is buying BitTorrent sites. Targetpoint denies these allegations.

3. Targetpoint has no shares in TPB. TPB probably has a shared ad revenue agreement with mr. Oded, but that’s pretty common. Mr. Daniel had strong links with The Piratebay and other torrentsites, the website of his company randommedia is hosted at TPB’s hosting provider.

This is what I found out, there are a lot more (minor) details, and there’s always room for conspiricy theories and other wild fantasies, but that’s why we have comments.

To quote a former admin at Empornium (slyck forums):

Like Broham said, I never claimed Oded owned anything. I personally had discussions with Oded a couple times while I was an Emp admin, and he represented himself to me as an employee of Targetpoint. Targetpoint was always represented as the investor, not Oded.

He also made it perfectly clear on more than one occasion that he did not want Targetpoint’s involvement with the site publicly disclosed, even going so far as to have Noos log into our boxes and delete forum threads and threaten anyone, including admins, with box-banning if they said anything negative about Targetpoint. The latter occasion is when the “Targetpoint is full of shit” avatars disappeared.

So it comes as no surprise to me that he is desperately trying to deny Targetpoint’s involvement. They know that corporate involvement in peer-to-peer, in porn, and a corporation asking for “donations” stinks.”

…

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