Yesterday the music industry lobby group IFPI presented its 2009 figures, again putting the blame for decreased physical sales on file-sharers. Unfortunately, most mainstream media outlets simply reposted the IFPI press release and their flawed analysis. In general, no effort is made to actually balance out or check the message being sent out to millions of readers.

In their annual Digital Music Report, IFPI states that file-sharers are half as likely to buy physical CDs than the average music buyer. Although the report is about digital music, they carefully avoid saying anything about file-sharers and digital sales. That would actually show a completely different picture as we will explain below.

The music group made this statement based on an IFPI-commissioned study that was executed by Jupiter research. Although IFPI refused to share the entire research report with TorrentFreak, we can conclude the following from the two pages that were published online.

Compared to music buyers, music sharers (pirates) are…

* 31% more likely to buy single tracks online.
* 33% more likely to buy music albums online.
* 100% more likely to pay for music subscription services.
* 60% more likely to pay for music on mobile phone.

These figures (as reported by the music industry) clearly show that file-sharers buy more digital music than the average music buyer. In fact, the group that makes up the music buyers category actually includes the buying file-sharers, so the difference between music sharers and non-sharing music buyers would be even more pronounced.

How can this be true and why was there no mention of this in the Digital Music Report? They must be spending less on digital music then, right? But again, this is not the case at all. On average, file-sharers actually spend more than non-sharing music buyers. At least that’s what Mark Mulligan, Vice President and Research Director at Forrester Research who conducted the study for IFPI told us.

Mulligan has his hands tied and couldn’t say much about the findings without IFPI’s approval, but we managed to get confirmation that paying file-sharers are the music industry’s best customers. “A significant share of music buyers are file sharers also. These music buyers tend to be higher spending music buyers,” Mulligan told TorrentFreak.

So why do file-sharers download music without paying? According to the annual IFPI report, one of the main reasons people share music is because it’s free. This leads the music industry group to conclude that they are cheapskates and not willing to pay for music at all. But, as the above clearly shows, they are misinterpreting this finding, and we’d like to explain why.

In the digital age, people’s demand for music has changed significantly, but their budgets are still limited. The average file-sharer is currently spending $100 a year on music according to IFPI’s own research, not really a group that can be classified as freeloaders. However, their demand for music simply exceeds their budget and that’s where they start downloading music on file-sharing sites, because it’s free.

Just to be clear on our motivation to balance the ‘facts’ as reported by IFPI. We are not advocating that all music should be free and neither do most of the music lovers who share files online. However, the music industry continues to ignore that file-sharing is much more of a signal from the market that it is the increased demand for music that fuels piracy.

The solution to the problem is relatively easy. Start offering more unlimited and unrestricted music services and piracy will go into a free-fall. File-sharers are already paying for digital music, and they pay more than the average music consumer. File-sharing is simply a market signal showing that there is a need to compensate for the lack of high quality and affordable subscription services.

If anything, the music industry should have more respect for file-sharers, as they are their most valuable consumers. They are ahead of the curve and actually leading the way for the future of digital music, buying more digital music than anyone else. It’s the music industry that has to change, not the other way around.

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

Sounds great, but let me start off with the downside to Usenet. The biggest disadvantage is that high speed Usenet servers are not free. You need at least some kind of paid subscription plan to be able to get decent speeds on Usenet. For some people this is not a problem, their argument often is that they already pay a lot of money for high speed broadband access, so why not pay a little extra to get the best speeds out of it.

The Easy Solution

For those who are new to Usenet and want the easy route, we recommend trying a free trial at Binverse. This give you all the tools to start downloading from Usenet quickly, and guarantees fast downloads. Binverse has its own built in search engine and a custom download client.

If you’re not satisfied with Binverse you can try other providers. However, a premium service will always cost a few bucks.

The Alternative Solution

1. Download Grabit here.

2. Double click the downloaded file and proceed to install.
When installing make sure ‘Associate Grabit with NZB files’ is selected.

3. Before clicking “Finish” select “Launch Grabit”. If you missed this look for the grabit icon on the desktop and double click it.

4. Once launched you’ll be asked to enter the name of your usenet server. If you have a premium server (highly recommended, e.g. a free trial at Binverse) select the check box and press next.

5. If you selected the checkbox you’ll then be asked for your news server username and password. Enter them and press next.

Note: Your username/password are case sensitive! Be sure to enter them correctly.

6. You be asked whether to retrieve a list of groups from the news server. Select the checkbox and click finish.

7. Grabit will load fully and begin downloading the grouplist. While it’s downloading continue to step 8.

8. Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and select ‘Preferences’.

9. Select the ‘Folders’ tab. Click the button right of the box containing the download directory. Here you can select the folder you want files to download to.

10. Go to your favourite NZB site (eg. newzleech, yabse) and download an NZB file. Double click the NZB file. You’ll be asked whether you want to import the NZB file, just click ‘Grab’.

11. The NZB file will be imported. If you’ve done everything right the files should then begin to download.

Downloading:

That’s all there is! Well done you’ve downloaded your first files from Usenet.

The following isn’t completely necessary but can save alot of time, especially if you don’t want to deal with 100s of par/rar files.

1. Download ParNRar here

2. Double click the downloaded file and install.

3. Launch the ‘ParNRar’ by double clicking the purple icon on the Desktop.

4. Click the button on the right of the monitored directory and select your download directory. This is the same place you used for saving files with Grabit.

5. Click ‘Go’. ParNRar will then scan your Grabit download directory checking and extracting any files present.

For extra customization click the ‘Options’ button. There are a range of options to choose from.

One useful option is to have ParNRar check the download folder every X seconds for new parts. To do this select the ‘When done scanning:’ box and change to restart. Then enter a delay between restarts.

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

Sounds great, but let me start off with the downside to Usenet. The biggest disadvantage is that high speed Usenet servers are not free. You need at least some kind of paid subscription plan to be able to get decent speeds on Usenet. For some people this is not a problem, their argument often is that they already pay a lot of money for high speed broadband access, so why not pay a little extra to get the best speeds out of it.

The Free and Easy Solution

For those who are new to Usenet and want the easy route, we recommend trying a free trial at Binverse. This allows you to try a premium Usenet provider for free. It gives you all the tools to start downloading from Usenet quickly, and guarantees fast downloads. Binverse has its own built in search engine and a custom download client.

If you’re not satisfied with Binverse you can try other providers. However, a premium service will always cost a few bucks.

The Alternative Solution

1. Download Grabit here.

2. Double click the downloaded file and proceed to install.
When installing make sure ‘Associate Grabit with NZB files’ is selected.

3. Before clicking “Finish” select “Launch Grabit”. If you missed this look for the grabit icon on the desktop and double click it.

4. Once launched you’ll be asked to enter the name of your usenet server. If you have a premium server (highly recommended, e.g. a free trial at Binverse) select the check box and press next.

5. If you selected the checkbox you’ll then be asked for your news server username and password. Enter them and press next.

Note: Your username/password are case sensitive! Be sure to enter them correctly.

6. You be asked whether to retrieve a list of groups from the news server. Select the checkbox and click finish.

7. Grabit will load fully and begin downloading the grouplist. While it’s downloading continue to step 8.

8. Go to the ‘Edit’ menu and select ‘Preferences’.

9. Select the ‘Folders’ tab. Click the button right of the box containing the download directory. Here you can select the folder you want files to download to.

10. Go to your favourite NZB site (eg. newzleech, yabse) and download an NZB file. Double click the NZB file. You’ll be asked whether you want to import the NZB file, just click ‘Grab’.

11. The NZB file will be imported. If you’ve done everything right the files should then begin to download.

Downloading:

That’s all there is! Well done you’ve downloaded your first files from Usenet.

The following isn’t completely necessary but can save alot of time, especially if you don’t want to deal with 100s of par/rar files.

1. Download ParNRar here

2. Double click the downloaded file and install.

3. Launch the ‘ParNRar’ by double clicking the purple icon on the Desktop.

4. Click the button on the right of the monitored directory and select your download directory. This is the same place you used for saving files with Grabit.

5. Click ‘Go’. ParNRar will then scan your Grabit download directory checking and extracting any files present.

For extra customization click the ‘Options’ button. There are a range of options to choose from.

One useful option is to have ParNRar check the download folder every X seconds for new parts. To do this select the ‘When done scanning:’ box and change to restart. Then enter a delay between restarts.

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

These exchanges often started off politely but later turned into an email fight when it became clear that The Pirate Bay didn’t intend on removing any torrents from their site. However, some rights holders are furious from the start and don’t even have to be triggered by such takedown refusals.

One such copyright holder, Paul Harris from ReverbXL, couldn’t hide his frustration when he harassed several torrent site admins. In his email, Harris holds the admins responsible for the illegal downloading that occurs though their site, and warns them about the consequences of their actions.

“You won’t win this fight. And not because the big mean corporate world will beat you, because you’ll end up as an insignificant foot note in history,” Harris writes.

Harris’ full rant is pasted below, for your consideration.

Paul Harris wrote:

Hi there webmaster. We are a music publisher and your web spiders are linking to songs by TURIN BRAKES, who we publish. We have not given permission to be distributed.

Please remove all links. I would appreciate it if you could monitor your service and ensure that NO copyrighted material is linked in it. If you do not have the technology to ensure this, then I advise you to invest in it before you are closed down or forced to remove all links. May I draw your attention to this recent ruling.

Mininova. Was the biggest, and the most uncooperative, now the humblest, and the most co-operative. You will be the same. Maybe it would be best to remove the links yourself?

From a moral standpoint, you are not only hurting the music industry but also the writers and the artists involved. Think about it, please. There are plenty of legal alternatives now where people who do not want to buy music can listen. But the contributors deserve to be paid.

Think about it. It’s like a company using their fleet of white vans to move other people’s stolen goods around – no you haven’t done the actual stealing, but you are facilitating the crime!

I work my balls off trying to make a living in music – I’m not some jerk off in a suit. Nor are my artists. But you cast us as such whilst knowing nothing of the reality.

If you are so brave, so keen to take a swipe at the corporate world, why don’t you go and picket Shell, Nike, HSBC, any number of industries who actually ARE immoral. But you won’t, because your moral stand point is totally warped. I can’t wait to see you go down. You won’t win this fight. And not because the big mean corporate world will beat you, because you’ll end up as an insignificant foot note in history.

Thanks very much.

P

Although we can sympathize with Harris somewhat, this is definitely not the best way to get links to content removed from a torrent site. In the case of Turin Brakes, a little patience might have gone a very long way since there are only a handful of torrents on public trackers so the job would’ve been pretty easy.

Despite the aggressive approach, most torrent site operators are still willing to cooperate and remove the associated torrent files. After a quick search though, Google turns up as many links as most public search engines. Whether they would respond favorably to an email like this is up for debate.

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.

The new year starts without The Pirate Bay tracker, which was closed in November, and also without Mininova, which saw its site being censored and stripped down by a Dutch court. To counter these losses, several public tracker-only services have made a comeback along with multiple torrent-only storage sites.

Where do we go from here? Let’s make some predictions.

Prediction 1: The Pirate Bay will cease to offer torrent links

After closing its tracker in 2009, The Pirate Bay will further evolve by removing all torrents from its index in the new year. The site will be reduced to a BitTorrent platform that no longer stores torrent files. Users will still be able to submit torrents through a third party service such as Torrage, but instead of linking to these torrent files, The Pirate Bay will list only Magnet links.

During the second half of 2010, The Pirate Bay four will appear before the Appeal Court. They will be found ‘not guilty’ and walk away free. Shortly after this victory in court, Pirate Bay’s YouTube killer The Video Bay will be released to the public.

Prediction 2: A BitTorrent client will be dragged to court

In 2009, the entertainment industry and authorities took legal action against various BitTorrent users and numerous sites. They left BitTorrent clients alone, but this will change in the new year. A coalition of copyright holders will file a lawsuit against one of the major BitTorrent clients, in an attempt to stop the ever increasing piracy rate.

The copyright holders will argue that BitTorrent clients play a vital role in downloading and uploading copyrighted files, and that the software is assisting in copyright infringement. They will demand that the torrent client implements a filtering mechanism to prevent users from downloading movies, music or games without the permission of the copyright holder.

Prediction 3: More people will use BitTorrent anonymously

2010 is the year where copyright holders gain more control over the Internet. Three-strikes legislation will be rolled out in various countries and global trade agreements such as ACTA will result in humongous fines for casual downloaders.

As a result of this newly founded Internet police state, millions of BitTorrent users will take measures to hide their identities online. By the end of the year, a quarter of all BitTorrent users will use a VPN service or similar anonymity software, with another quarter looking to do so in the following 12 months. This will make new legislation ineffective, and lead to further lobbying by the entertainment industry for even harsher anti-piracy measures.

This cycle will repeat itself until the entertainment industry decides to innovate.

Prediction 4: BitTorrent (live) streaming will take off

Advances in technology and growing broadband penetration have brought us to a point where BitTorrent-powered streaming solutions have become reality. BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen is working on a streaming implementation and experiments have shown that it is possible to stream high definition content.

In the second half of 2010, the first BitTorrent-powered YouTube competitors will be launched. These new BitTorrent sites will mainly offer streams of pirated movies and TV-shows. Live BitTorrent streaming will gain worldwide traction during the 2010 soccer world cup in South Africa. In the second half of the year, commercial implementations will follow, allowing broadcasters to stream live content at zero cost.

Prediction 5: uTorrent will become a resource hog

In 2010, uTorrent will be transformed from a lightweight BitTorrent application into a media portal similar to its nemesis, Vuze. Unlike Vuze, BitTorrent Inc. will continue to offer a lightweight uTorrent version for the the people who don’t want to make this switch, preventing a revolt among conservative uTorrent users.

The new uTorrent will be a resource hog, featuring a full blown search engine, video conversion, iTunes integration and a video player. The browser interface will allow uTorrent to be put on set-top boxes, which opens up the possibility for BitTorrent Inc. to reopen a new and improved version of their video store that can be easily hooked up to TVs.

Due to the changes, uTorrent will obviously have to remove its tagline ‘a (very) tiny BitTorrent client.’

—–

Happy new year to all of you from TorrentFreak. Let us know what your predictions are for 2010 in the comments below. We will feature the best on our side-blog FreakBits during the coming days.

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

While the evidence gathering techniques differ from agency to agency, they all have one thing in common. None of them can provide proof that the account holder has actually committed copyright infringement. In fact, some anti-piracy outfits cannot even prove that the IP-address they have on file was used in an actual file transfer, although they claim otherwise.

The Video Protection Alliance’ (VPA) belongs to the latter group. Instead of simply warning the alleged infringers, they take it one step further and actually ask for cash to settle immediately on behalf of the copyright holder, a known extortion-like technique that is also used by spammers.

The process used by VPA and others is simple. Their software monitors BitTorrent swarms and other file-sharing networks and records the IP-addresses of those people who share their clients’ copyright works. It then automatically sends an email to the ISP linked to the IP-address with a request to forward it to the associated customer.

“Someone using this account has engaged in illegal copying or distribution (downloading or uploading) of [title],” the VPA writes in one copyright/settlement notice, adding: “The information in this notification is accurate.”

But is it really accurate? We beg to differ and we’re certainly not the only ones.

As outlined in an elaborate article posted on on Freedom to Tinker earlier this week, the VPA does not verify whether the IP-address is actually uploading or downloading content. They simply take it from the swarm list reported by the tracker.

This is wrong for several reasons. First of all, some trackers are known to insert random IP-addresses into swarm reports to provide plausible deniability. Secondly, anyone can easily create a url that would put someone in the swarm list when it’s clicked. This link can be posted everywhere on the Internet and it wouldn’t even require the recipient to have a BitTorrent client installed.

Of course, this information is nothing new to people who are familiar with these anti-piracy evidence gathering techniques. Last year researchers from the University of Washington revealed the same flaws, but outfits such as VPA apparently don’t see the need to back up their claims with solid evidence.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of these notices are sent out every year, some of which include cash requests to settle the case. Even worse perhaps, in countries that adopt three-strike legislation millions face the threat of being disconnected by their ISP, based on shoddy and unverified evidence, and without judicial oversight.

Unfortunately, the outfits that collect the evidence for the copyright holders are not very open about the techniques they use. When the RIAA’s evidence was disputed (pdf) in court earlier this year they decided to drop the case and settle with prejudice for $0.00. How convenient.

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

Those who take a few minutes to browse through the site will discover all kinds of other neat features. One of the latest additions to the site is the option to download files directly, through partner site httpTorrents.

The integration with httpTorrents gives users the option to download the files directly without having to use a BitTorrent client. Music tracks can also be streamed directly from the site itself. The service works in a similar way to most other files hosting services such as Rapidshare, but only works with torrents and doesn’t allow users to upload files themselves.

The owner of the site told TorrentFreak that direct http downloads may be useful to users who have restricted access to BitTorrent, such as those whose ISP or firewall blocks or slows down transfers. There are currently 4000 files available as a direct download, but this number is growing rapidly.

KickassTorrents’ users can submit a request for files that are not yet available as direct downloads. “If someone clicks on the http download button at KickassTorrents and the file is not available yet, it places it in the request queue at httpTorrents. Only popular torrents are downloaded during the beta stage,” TorrentFreak was told by the site’s owner.

“KickassTorrents and httpTorrents are not directly connected. However we use their API to get hashes of the torrents available for the direct download,” the owner said, adding that if the beta tests are successful this API will also be available to other torrent sites.

Everyone can use httpTorrents, but in the future the download speed and number of simultaneous downloads will be limited for free users. Those who want to use it more than occasionally will have the option to sign up for a premium account without restrictions.

Since the service is actually hosting files (on an external CDN) it might run into complaints from copyright holders. The owner of the site told TorrentFreak that he’s not too worried about the legal implications, and hopes that a takedown policy will prevent the site from running into trouble.

It will be interesting to see how the service develops in the future, and we will definitely be keeping a close eye on it. Although direct downloads may be preferred in some cases, for those looking for (free) high speed downloads, BitTorrent probably remains the best solution.

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

In this short time span it was downloaded by more than 400,000 people on BitTorrent alone, earning it a spot in TorrentFreak’s chart of top 10 most pirated movies this week.

For most Hollywood bosses this is usually a trigger to start complaining about lost revenue, but the makers of Ink are welcoming their new pirate audience.

In an email to the followers of their newsletter, Jamin and Kiowa Winans say that they have “embraced the piracy” and are “just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.” Thanks to the pirated copy their movie jumped to 16th place on IMDb’s movie meter, and according to the makers this increased popularity also boosted DVD and Blu-ray sales.

Who needs a hefty marketing budget to promote a movie (and merchandise) when they have BitTorrent? Sent out a few hours ago, here’s the mailing in full plus a follow up response from Kiowa.

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn’t expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it, we’ve embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb’s movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world.

This all started as a result of the completely underground buzz that you’ve each helped us create. We’ve had no distributor, no real advertising and yet the word of mouth that you’ve generated has made the film blow up as soon as it became available worldwide. So many of you came to see the movie multiple times, bringing friends and family and many of you have bought the DVD and Blu-ray from us. All of this built up and built up and suddenly it exploded.

We don’t know exactly where this will all lead, but the exposure is unquestionably a positive thing.

Ink hits Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes and many more tomorrow! Remember to get your signed copies, t-shirts and posters at the Ink Store.

Thank you so much for the constant love and support.

Jamin and Kiowa
Double Edge Films

And the follow up response we got from Kiowa, in reply to this article.

Dear Ernesto,

To say we are shocked by all this news and are digesting it rapidly is an understatement. We made this film in Denver, CO on a budget of $250,000 and have fought to bring it to 15 cities ourselves over the past ten months. Hollywood has claimed that they don’t know how to market the film or that it doesn’t have an audience, and what BitTorrent has done in the last four days is prove, unequivocally, that Hollywood is wrong.

So is this the best thing that could happen to our little film? Absolutely! There is no way this many people would know about the film otherwise, or that our IMDb MovieMeter would have shot up an astounding 81,000% from a few days of activity over the torrent sites. What Hollywood would calculate as lost dollars, we calculate as fans earned. Due to many suggestions from downloaders over the past few days we have established a Donate button on our Store page for people to contribute what they can. Thank you for posting that info.

We’re not looking to get rich, but would like to pay back our investors and the enormous amount of personal debt we’ve gone into making the film. We’re also not looking to make Hollywood films (Jamin has had several opportunities) and plan on continuing the march of making fiercely independent films. In order to do that we have to count on the power of the people, eyeballs all over the world and torrenters to throw our film a few bucks apiece. It’s the indie film model of the future and we appreciate each and every person who takes the time to watch our film. It appears we’re all rebels here… so let’s wave that flag proud.

Again, we are really floored that all of this is happening and that you’ve opened up the conversation!

All the best,

Kiowa K. Winans

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

What’s most interesting about the site is that its users can also browse torrents based on an actor or director, a feature that other torrent sites lack. With just a single click users can list all the films where Patrick Swayze made an appearance, or all the films directed by Quentin Tarantino.

“The actors and directors can be added by the users when they upload a torrent file,” Files24 founder Oleg told TorrentFreak. “Also if we recognize the movie, we automatically check and fill in any missing data,” he added.

Although the site also lists music and games, thus far these advanced searches only work for movies. TV-shows are oddly enough listed in the movies section but Oleg told TorrentFreak that a TV and software section will be added in the near future.

The navigational structure and design of the site is not the only thing that’s unique to Files24 though. According to one of the site’s founders, Files24 also has a dedicated tracker that is optimized to facilitate the highest download speeds.

“We track which country users come from and the tracker then gives priority to peers from their own country. As a result users can download at much higher speeds,” Files24’s Oleg told TorrentFreak.

One of the downsides of the site is that users are only permitted to upload torrents with a Files24 tracker, so this may severely limit the number of torrents that will be added to the site. On the other hand this is also one of the upsides, since this will stop a great deal of spam and fake files from being uploaded.

Files24 went live yesterday and currently lists some 40,000 torrents. It is clear that the site is still work in progress but the new features the site has to offer will be welcomed by many BitTorrent users. Of course they will also be frowned upon by Hollywood. Nothing new there.

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

After receiving a complaint from Microsoft, GoDaddy temporary hijacked the myBittorrent domain, but after emails back and forth the owners managed to regain control. In the years that followed the two founders continued business as usual, frequently changing the look and layout of the site.

In fact, the two changed plans so often that they never really managed to add new features to the site. “Instead of adding new things we were always spending time on fixing features that used to work just fine,” Rex, one of the site’s founders told TorrentFreak.

Nevertheless, myBittorrent grew out to become one of the largest torrent sites, serving torrents to millions of visitors every month. This popularity, together with the increased legal pressure against fellow torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova, raised doubts with Rex’s partner, who wanted to scale down.

Eventually this led to a rift between the two owners. Rex wanted to continue with the site, but his partner opted to close down the operation permanently. To resolve the dispute the two decided to go their separate ways. This summer myBittorrent was shut down for good, but not before a replacement was in place.

To fill the gap left by myBitTorrent, Rex launched a new site under a new name – yourBittorrent.

“The biggest difference between both sites is that yourBittorrent has verified and adult torrents,” Rex told TorrentFreak, adding that he plans to include many new features in the near future, including an integrated subtitle search engine.

“YourBittorrent will soon have a few million subtitles and IMDB-links linked to all movies and TV-shows. The advanced search will also be extended to allow people to look for subtitles. YourBittorrent is going to be the first site where you can do that,” Rex said.

Another key feature is that the site will verify torrents to prevent the appearance of fake files and spam. “YourBittorrent has its own verification system with 60,000 verified torrents, and unlike some other torrent sites, we do take measures against fake files,” Rex told TorrentFreak.

Thus far 2009 has not been the best year for BitTorrent. Many sites have gone down or received negative verdicts in court, so it’s good to see that yourBittorrent continues where myBittorrent left off.

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

According to a recently published paper by Prithula Dhungel, Di Wu and Keith Ross, these effort are a waste of time and money. In the paper titled “Measurement and mitigation of BitTorrent leecher attacks,” the researchers show that BitTorrent swarms are hardly influenced by attacks from anti-piracy outfits.

The research looked into the effectiveness of two popular attack methods used by companies such as MediaDefender. The first is a ‘piece attack’ where the hostile leecher attempts to slow down downloads by creating as many hash fails as possible. The second method is the ‘connection attack’ where the hostile leechers try to tie up as many TCP connections as possible in order to make it impossible for downloaders to connect to real peers.

The different methods were tested in a real-life BitTorrent swarm of a popular music album that was targeted by these attacks. “We present measurement results for a torrent for a new album, which was verified to be under attack,” the researchers report, adding “This popular album was released a few weeks before our experiments. At the time of the experiment, it held the number 1 position on the UK album chart and iTunes ranking list.”

The researchers then downloaded the ‘attacked’ torrent several times with both Azureus (Vuze) and uTorrent. For each download they recorded the time it took to complete, both with and without using blocklist software that bans (some) of the attackers’ IP-addresses.

The results were quite remarkable. The researchers found that, on average, downloads with a blocklist were 30 to 35% faster. In other words, the efforts of the anti-piracy outfits do slow down the targeted swarms, but only for a few minutes at most, and not long enough to deter anyone from downloading.

A more detailed look at the peer distribution of the two BitTorrent clients further reveals that without the IP-filters, uTorrent encounters only 2% of malicious peers, who all use the ‘piece attack’ method. Azureus on the other hand encountered no ‘piece attack’ peers at all, but 18% ‘connection attack’ peers.

Not surprisingly, the researchers conclude from their research that the methods used to attack BitTorrent swarms are highly ineffective. “The anti-P2P companies are not currently successful at stopping the distribution of targeted assets over BitTorrent. We have also found that blacklist-based IP filtering is insufficient to filter out all the attackers,” the researchers write.

What the researchers have overlooked is that both Azureus and uTorrent have implemented various technological measures against these automated attacks. The results may differ for other BitTorrent clients. Azureus (now Vuze) has put a lot of work in preventing ‘piece attacks’ and uTorrent has implemented similar anti-pollution measures.

The overall conclusion put forward in the article is most likely the right one, and to most people not even that surprising. The millions of dollars spent by the entertainment industry to protect their works from being shared on BitTorrent is at best only a mild annoyance to the ‘pirates’.

Via.

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

The interest has been absolutely unprecedented. Issues that niche sites like TorrentFreak have covered for years are now suddenly mainstream fodder, the public’s interest peaking along with their interest in real-life participation in the file-sharing phenomenon. The existence of The Pirate Bay has played a huge part in this new awareness but, as is often the case, it became a victim of its own success. No amount of bravado and no amount of public support would enable the world’s biggest file-sharing site to continue the work indefinitely – at least not in its current format.

A few P2P sites have previously tried to gain legitimacy or avoid legal action by “going legal” to a greater or lesser extent, but nothing really compares to the revolutionary plan put forward by GGF for The Pirate Bay.

Due to the mass press coverage, almost everyone has heard about the audacious and wildly ambitious plan to keep the site going with (hopefully) all of the torrents still on board, to allow people to carry on sharing while paying them to do so, selling off excess bandwidth to ISPs and paying the rights holders. And taking responsibility for any copyright claims that may come along. And selling Pirate Bay branded merchandise including vodka and baby accessories. And, of course, making a profit.

We’re continually informed by GGF CEO Hans Pandeya that the multitude of problems that have made the press almost daily are part of a conspiracy against him, and that people need not worry since all the funding is in place. The purchase of the world’s biggest tracker will go ahead as planned he says, providing the GGF shareholders agree.

But what about the current users of the site, the people who know the site best and have its future close to heart? You’ve read the stories, unencrypted the rumors and experienced the drama. So, regardless of if you’d like it go ahead or not, or whether you’d just like the whole thing to just go away, what do you really think of the deal’s chances?

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

There is no doubt that Jackson had a tremendous impact on several generations of musicians, and millions of people who grew up with his music. It is therefore no surprise to see that only hours after he was pronounced dead, his music is being sought by hundreds of thousands of people.

At the time of writing the three most active torrents in the music section on the largest torrent indexer, Mininova, are all compilations or discographies from the “King of Pop”. On top is a torrent listing 30 Michael Jackson albums, The Jackson 5 and The Jacksons, totaling 1.94 GB of music.

In common with social media sites, ‘Michael Jackson’ is one of the most sought after phrases on torrent sites too. The search cloud on Mininova is filled with Jackson-related searches from fans who want to complete their collection.

This renewed interest in Michael Jackson is not limited to just torrent sites though. On Amazon, Jackson’s work takes up the top 14 spots on the bestselling albums list. Currently the top 10 albums chart on iTunes is dominated by 7 Jackson albums. On eBay there is a similar boom with memorabilia being traded for ten times the prices of just two days ago.

It had been rumored by Michael Jackson biographer Ian Halperin that the ‘King of Pop’ had recorded as many as 100 unreleased tracks but was keeping them locked away. He claimed that upon Jackson’s death, the tracks would be made available to his three children as a personal legacy and to secure an inheritance.

With Jackson’s death the 100 songs could now become available, and considering his troubling financial situation it may not take very long before they become available to the public, in stores and on BitTorrent.

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

Maybe, just maybe, in future our answers will be different. Allow us to introduce BitBlinder, a new and free cross-platform (Mac support coming soon) open source project which not only claims to make anonymous BitTorrent transfers a reality but also hides your IP address while browsing the web. Its functionality also extends to the bypassing of some web filters and in the future will be compatible with more applications, such as email, IRC and instant messaging clients.

Although anonymity with the previously-mentioned TOR is good, using it for torrents is a big no – it’s too slow and the operators of the network do not appreciate it. BitBlinder was born to solve the problems that TOR couldn’t. TorrentFreak caught up with Josh Albrecht, one of the creators of BitBlinder, for the lowdown.

“BitBlinder is an attempt to address the aforementioned issues with Tor – we want to make online anonymity fast, usable, and ubiquitous to the point that organizations give up on spying and filtering us,” Josh told TorrentFreak. “BitBlinder is actually built on much of the same technology as Tor, though we have a completely separate network.”

The anonymity itself is provided by BitBlinder’s own P2P network, inside which everyone is required to contribute their own bandwidth to proxy other users’ data. The diagram below shows a standard user setup, without anonymity;

As seen in the diagram below, your request for data using BitBlinder is passed encrypted through multiple peers. Each peer in the chain only knows the IP address of the next person in the chain, not the original requester/sender.

Since decent BitTorrent-capable anonymity services cost money these days, how can BitBlinder offer the same for free? The key is to think of it as operating a little like a private BitTorrent tracker.

In order to maintain a good ratio on a private tracker, at a minimum you need to upload the same amount of data as you downloaded. With BitBlinder there is a similar system – in order to get the service for free you have to proxy X GB of data for other people inside the swarm if you want to share X GB of anonymized data. In common with some new accounts on private trackers, BitBlinder accounts come pre-loaded with some free credit to get the user going – 2GB to be precise. If anyone prefers not to be bound by ratio rules in the future, just like on many private trackers it will also be possible to buy ‘upload credit’ to use BitBlinder, but there is no reason why people can’t use it for free, as long as they share their bandwidth as detailed above.

At this point some readers will be asking how it’s possible for no-one to know what’s going on inside the BitBlinder swarm, yet somehow BitBlinder manages anonymity ratio tracking. It is possible though, and for those interested to learn about the micro-payment system BitBlinder’s is based on, further (highly technical) reading can be found here (pdf).

Of course, since traffic is sent from your PC to others in the BitBlinder swarm before reaching its destination in order to anonymize it, it won’t be as quick as regular non-anonymous BitTorrent use, but Josh told us speeds should be respectable and in any event, much faster than TOR. Indeed, within a few seconds of starting a ‘Steal This Film’ torrent from The Pirate Bay, we experienced speeds in excess of 2Mbit/s, which is massively faster than my previous experiences of BitTorrent over TOR.

For Windows users the BitBlinder package comes in a 17mb installer. The torrent client is a custom version of BitTornado and although it doesn’t have all the features of say uTorrent, more features will be added as time goes by. The bundled anonymous browser is naturally built on Firefox.

Josh told us that the BitBlinder network could be made to work with uTorrent or another browser such as Internet Explorer but unfortunately both applications are closed source, which means that it’s impossible to be certain that all data will be sent through other users (proxies) in the BitBlinder swarm and not directly to the Internet. For the same reasons, Flash is unavailable in the bundled version of Firefox.

Another trick up BitBlinder’s sleeve is the development of techniques to bypass web filters.

“BitTorrent encryption is pretty good at avoiding ISP level restrictions but it doesn’t do much for things like avoiding university or corporate firewalls. One of Tor’s goals is to circumvent the Great Firewall of China and we hope to make BitBlinder even better,” explained Josh. “Filters generally work by either blocking ports, a certain IP address, or by inspecting the traffic itself for specific protocols. We’re working hard to make BitBlinder effective against all three of these methods, but we still have some work to do on these features, so results may vary.”

Since BitBlinder has an anonymous browser, it should prove useful if you don’t want your employer knowing what you’re doing on Facebook or other social networks, for example. Indeed, if these sites are blocked it’s possible to use the BitBlinder network to access them. Of course, the anonymity would also be useful for signing up to and using the HTTP element of a torrent site.

Inevitably there are some issues with an anonymity system such as BitBlinder, and they parallel those experienced by users of TOR. Any traffic generated inside the BitBlinder network eventually needs to escape to the wider Internet. In order to facilitate this, some users need to act as an exit point. In basic terms, this means that an exit node operator’s IP address will be associated with the traffic leaving the network.

Before panic sets in, this is not necessarily bad news. Acting as an exit node provides the operator with plausible deniability, since they will have no idea what data is passing through. It would also be difficult to say if the data leaving that PC had originated from there or elsewhere, extending the deniability of their own traffic too. And it’s not as if that user’s IP address wasn’t perfectly visible already before BitBlinder came along.

For most users, however, opting to act as a beginning or middle proxy in the BitBlinder network means that no-one outside can see any traffic emanating from their PC and the good news is that this internal traffic still adds upload/download credit to the user’s account.

Time will tell if BitBlinder lives up to its dreams (and everyone else’s) but from what we’ve seen so far in the beta version, things are looking very promising indeed. That said, remember folks this is a beta and it is likely people will uncover bugs so please be patient and consider allowing the app to send crash reports, it will help the team a lot.

BitBlinder can be downloaded here – don’t forget to register and please read the instructions on how to forward ports etc, it will be good for your ratio.

New users should note that invite codes will be sent out at a controlled rate. Early adopters will be able to register fairly quickly but as more and more people apply, the longer the wait will become. This is merely to ensure a healthy network with an adequate number of quality proxies.

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

“Total visits by Australians to BitTorrent websites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor and Torrentz grew from 785,000 in April last year to 1,049,000 in April this year, Nielsen says. This is a year-on-year increase of 33.6 percent,” The Age wrote a few days ago.

This may sound like a lot of traffic, but since Nielsen reports the number of visits and not the unique visitors we expected it to be much higher. Luckily, Mininova was kind enough to give us some insight into their statistics so we could check how accurate Nielsen’s estimates are. The results are quite a shock.

When we look at the statistics of Mininova alone, we see that the site had 6,268,969 Aussie visits in April and a massive 33,162,846 Aussie page views. Compared to the same month in 2008 (4,144,556 visits), this is an increase of more than 50 percent.

So, the Australian visitors to Mininova alone are already 600% higher than Nielsen’s estimates of the total traffic to Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor and Torrentz. Unfortunately we don’t have any details on the methodology or sample Nielsen used, but it’s certainly not very representative.

Perhaps even more worrying, The Age attributes the surge in traffic to the economic downturn, without providing any evidence for a causal relationship between the two events. Over the past 5 years most BitTorrent sites have seen huge traffic increases every year, also when the economy was in an upswing.

Even more so, the money generated by (legal and illegal) use of BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks is greater than the combined revenue of the various entertainment industry bodies who try to stop piracy. One could argue that without piracy the whole economy would collapse.

The downloading itself is not so much about cost saving. In Australia, BitTorrent is especially popular among those who want to catch up with US television shows that appear months or years later on TV down under. Money is not so much of an issue for them, they simply want to see the latest Lost or Heroes episodes.

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

Sadly, ACS:Law don’t appear to be practicing what they preach, despite taking the moral high-ground with the hundreds of recipients of their letters.

In an article published on their site entitled “20th Century Fox hit by illegal downloads” (Google cache copy here, since the page has been removed after we published this). ACS:Law appear to have taken the easy option and instead of writing their own article, chose to cut and paste paragraph after paragraph of other people’s work, passing it off as their own, without so much as a link to any source or a mention of an author’s or publication name.

Paragraph 1 of ACS:Law article

Almost a month before Wolverine hit the movie theaters a workprint copy of the movie was “leaked” onto the Web. It was a copy that was half finished as far as the special effects were concerned with green screens and wire framed character models visible for all the world to see. The great fight scene at the top of the nuclear reactor was more stickman like drawing that anything to do with the actors. In the end it was an incomplete movie that really only left the majority of those that watched it wanting to see the real thing

Original source article: Written by Steven Hodson over at inquisitr.com

Paragraph 2 of ACS:Law article

AFACT’s director of operations Neil Gane thanked the member of the public who had called attention to the racket and claimed Australian businesses suffered greatly from piracy.

Original source article: Written by Suzanne Tindal for zdnet.com.au

Paragraph 3 of ACS:Law article

“That pirated copies of X-Men Origins: Wolverine were discovered amongst the haul is especially disappointing. The film was made in Australia, employed over 1000 Australians, engaged over 100 Australian companies and contributed over $80 million to the local economy. The flagrant sales of pirated copies of the film is a slap in the face to the hard work and creativity that so many Australians put into the movie,” he alleged in a statement. The film has not yet been shown in cinemas worldwide

Original source article: Written by Suzanne Tindal for zdnet.com.au

Paragraph 4 of ACS:Law article

The woman’s arrest and the discovery of the discs led police to what was allegedly a disc burner lab in Sydney’s Westmead. The lab allegedly had the potential to produce 378,000 pirated discs a year, worth $1.8 million on the street.

Original source article: Written by Suzanne Tindal for zdnet.com.au

Paragraph 5 of ACS:Law article

Marketed as one of this summer’s blockbusters, downloads topped 75,000 within hours of the film being uploaded to BitTorrent and 20th Century Fox, the studio behind Wolverine, said the uploaded version was “stolen, incomplete and early”

Original source article: Fraser McIntyre and Jennifer Whitehead for The Scotsman

Paragraph 6 of ACS:Law article

The computer-generated imagery had not been added, there were missing scenes, sound and music and Wolverine himself had not yet acquired his enhanced strength with the wires attached to the actor Hugh Jackman still visible on screen.

Original source article: Fraser McIntyre and Jennifer Whitehead The Scotsman

Paragraph 7 of ACS:Law article

Reviews based on an unfinished film and which have already cost influential Fox News columnist Roger Friedman his job. He was fired for commenting on illegal footage. Richard Mollet is from record label trade body the BPI. He says the industry lost around £200m last year because of illegal downloading.The illegal copy became available on the internet on March 30. According to the Hollywood Reporter, “at last year’s average ticket price of $7.18, the piracy could conceivably – though not likely – have cost Fox $28.7 million.”

Original source article: Fraser McIntyre and Jennifer Whitehead The Scotsman

Even though there are clearly no references to any sources, links back to the original articles or mention of the author’s name in the ACS:Law article, TorrentFreak contacted all three publications to double check that permission had not been granted. Of the trio, Duncan Riley editor of Inquisitr.com was most vocal, telling TorrentFreak;

“No, we have not given permission for the content to be used. What perhaps is the height of hypocrisy, besides the wholesale theft of the text word for word, is that the paragraph they have taken is from a post that argues that piracy helped Wolverine, and then they’ve added anti-piracy statements to the end.”

We must admit we are very confused. On the one hand ACS:Law speak constantly about how their clients suffer at the hands of copyright infringement, yet the company itself appears to have a different approach when it comes to its own dealings.

Just recently, a support site set up to help recipients of ACS:Law letters cope with their predicament was ordered to stop its activities by ACS:Law (under threat of legal action) after they objected to the link between the site’s domain name (beingscammed.com) and their firm. The owner of the site was forced to publish an apology on the site’s homepage. As expected, another site has taken its place.

ACS:Law have forced others to publish an apology on their site too after comments were made that the law firm objected to. In the interests of fairness, it seems fitting that that Mr Andrew Crossley, as main partner of ACS:Law, publishes his own apology on his site’s homepage for making use of other people’s copyright works and exploiting them for commercial gain.

Andrew Crossley was already fined by the UK’s Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA) for engaging in “conduct unbefitting a solicitor” (pdf) back in 2006. We believe that a law firm claiming to uphold copyright law on behalf of its clients but infringing copyright in the process warrants the same label, but we’ll let the Conduct Investigation Unit at the SRA decide.

And to those that think these infringements by ACS:Law are small ones to be brushed off or discounted, then in an ideal world, yes, you would be absolutely correct. No one should care about small infringements of copyright. No-one should have to write articles about petty copyright infringement, but these are the depths to which this arena has sunk.

But consider which games these threats and lawsuits are all about. Two Worlds from Reality Pump is available on Amazon for £12, Topware’s Dream Pinball 3D is available for under £10, Call of Juarez by Techland much less than that. At absolute best ACS:Law has evidence that copyright was infringed via an IP address for a mere second on a few kilobytes of these titles. For these equally small infringements, ACS:Law demand around £600 from the public to satisfy them and their clients, backed up by the threat of ruination in court.

That’s how low we’ve sunk. It must stop, all of it.

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

Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak that the system will be tested for 12 weeks with only a few titles. With this trial Mininova collaborates with an association representing several TV/movie content owners. Niek couldn’t tell us which one, but our best guess would be that it’s the MPA(A).

The content removal system should be seen as an extension of the existing copyright policy according to Niek, who also said that the current trial will be used to find out whether the content recognition system is a workable and effective solution.

The system was selected by the copyright holders themselves who want an easier way to get torrent files removed than the current notice and takedown policy, and it is operated by an undisclosed third party. Interestingly, this collaboration does not mean that the upcoming court case against BREIN is off the table.

Later this month BREIN hopes to convince the court that Mininova has to filter its search results, so that all .torrent files which may point to unauthorized content are removed. Up until now, Mininova refused to interfere with the search results, claiming that the DMCA take-down procedure they have is good enough. This has clearly changed now.

The response from Mininova’s users is mostly negative, with one commenter saying “Shame to see such a nice site decide to go hang itself,” and another adding “Wow, guess you guys are caving under the pressure. Too bad its all over now.”

The effectiveness of this filtering system, and how it will affect mininova’s popularity is yet to be seen, but it sure is a radical development.

Breaking story, more info will be added.

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

The apparent strategy:

1. Outlaw file sharing
2. Outlaw personal encryption and anonymization services
3. Set up a global, privately-run Internet surveillance program to spy on everybody all the time without a warrant — run by ISPs and paid for by the taxpayers
4. And finally, get the authority to block anyone from the Internet entirely, without the involvement of police, courts or any verifiable trail of evidence

We can not let this happen.

“It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” – Bruce Schneier

One of the main reasons why the recording industry are currently succeeding in this hostile takeover of the Internet, is that most people simply don’t understand what file sharing is, or why it matters to them in the first place. Whenever civil liberties are sacrificed, it is always on the bonfire of ignorance. We need to educate the world – neighbors, parents, judges and lawmakers – as to why the Internet must remain free, neutral, and uncensored.

It sometimes helps to explain that a file sharing technology like Bittorrent is the digital society’s equivalent of the wheel. It allows fast and easy transportation of data between users and businesses alike. But like the wheel, file sharing needs a stable, flat surface to perform at its best. In this analogy, The Pirate Bay is nothing short of the largest, best maintained, and most stable network of such ‘digital roads’ in the world. And it’s free to use for anyone, at any time, for any purpose.

Naturally, as is always the case where people congregate in a free society, some of the people who drive their wheeled carts on this network of roads will be carrying things in their carts of questionable quality, purpose or origin. In any system or society that is based on freedom rather than censorship or distrust, there is no question that individual transgressions can take place. This is the most basic cost of liberty.

As a digital society in its teens, we have yet to realize the enormous potential of file sharing in culture, education, knowledge sharing, and business. But already, we are seeing massive opposition against it from the likes of IFPI, the RIAA and the MPAA. This opposition, of course, stems from some of the aforementioned wheeled carts transporting ‘questionable goods’, in the form of copyrighted material.

The ensuing battle has been disguised as a legal matter concerning rights holders and ‘pirates’, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. It is true that the recording industry wants to stop criminals, but they are attempting to prohibit the wheel and all building of roads to pull it off. These lawyers are prepared to sacrifice our liberties, our privacy and our digital freedom in order to reach their goal. It is a grossly disproportionate and misdirected attack, and it has already begun: Once the verdict of the Spectrial was in, the Swedish anti-piracy office immediately began issuing legal threats against other file sharing networks. They are bulldozing every street and burning every car to prevent any possible (mis)use of the wheel. And worse yet – we are letting it happen.

The case of The Pirate Bay was not a case of artists vs. freeloaders, or even the recording industry vs. pirates. There were no artists on the accusing side, nor were there any pirates on the defending side. It was, and is, a case of misguided frustration by industry executives and lawyers, directed not against the actual violators of copyright law, but against the most outspoken proponents and enablers of a fundmental digital technology. A technology that allows fast and easy transportation af data – all data – between users and businesses alike.

We must never blame the network for the actions of individuals. Both rights holders and lawmakers must respect the fundamental principle of personal, individual responsibility. Let each peer be responsible for his own actions, just as every driver is liable for his own car.

The Pirate Bay is not illegal. File sharing is not illegal. Using file sharing for illegal purposes is illegal. The difference may be subtle to a layman, but in legal terms, the distinction is clear as day. The fact that the judges in the Pirate Bay case failed to recognize this, is a judicial travesty bordering on flat out corruption.

It cannot be stressed enough: this is not a question of copyright, of music, or of piracy. This is a question of a private organization now aiming to subvert several of the most important digital inventions since the World Wide Web, and our judges and politicians turning a blind eye in a staggering display of ignorance and corruption. This fight is about much more than The Pirate Bay. When our liberties are taken from us, we must rise, united in one voice, and fight for them.

It is a fight for basic digital liberties. It is a fight for our right to privacy. It is a fight for net neutrality. There is no getting around it. This is the fight of our generation, and it is too important to lose.

This is a guest post by Jens Roland. Jens is a computer scientist by training, but a technology forecaster by trade. He has worked at international think tanks as a consultant and researcher in emerging technologies and has written more than 300 articles and a book on the subject.

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

It all started with rumors about two US ISPs, Comcast and AT&T, who were said to be doing a three-strikes deal with the RIAA. It soon became known that this rumor was completely fabricated, but not before hundreds of other news oulets reproduced the story. At the end of the week it turned out that there was no news at all.

Yes, the RIAA, MPAA and other outfits do plan to send copyright infringement warnings to ISPs, but they’ve been doing so for at least half a decade. Every other month these Hollywood lobbyists pitch their anti-piracy efforts to the public, and that’s exactly what they are paid for. This doesn’t mean, however, that something is about to change.

The anti-piracy outfits are happy with all the free publicity of course, that is exactly what they are after. Their purpose is to scare people. In this post we hope to clear up some of the misunderstandings, as we show that the scary stories published this week have no substance at all.

Copyright infringement warnings?

For years, content owners such as record labels or movie studios have been sending copyright infringement notices to ISPs, who are legally obliged to forward these to their customers. Some ISPs simply ignore them, while others faithfully forward the emails to the customer account associated with the infringing IP-address. Many ISPs don’t keep records of these events.

So, is my ISP spying on me?

No. This is a common misunderstanding. ISPs don’t look into your specific downloading behavior, they never have and there is no indication that this will change anytime in the near future. All the ‘evidence’ comes from organizations that work for the copyright holders.

What do they know about me?

If you receive a warning, all copyright holders know about you at this stage is your IP-address and what files were (partially) shared via your account, or more accurately – the bill payer’s account. The MPAA, RIAA and others don’t know your name and they never will unless they get a court order forcing your ISP to hand over the information. In the bigger picture, this is very rare.

How did they track me down?

The copyright holders hire companies such as BayTSP and DtecNet to track down people who share certain titles on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks. They join the swarm and request files from others. When someone shares a piece of the file with them they log the IP-address, look up the ISP and send out a copyright infringement notice automatically. Unlike the file-sharers, these companies are authorized to download these files, so they are not infringing copyright themselves.

Will I get sued if I receive a warning through my ISP?

No. These copyright infringement warnings are not related to any legal action. Copyright holders do go after people who share their work on file-sharing networks, but this has nothing to do with the warnings they send out via ISPs.

Will they take my Internet away?

No. Although there is a lot of talk about “three strikes” policies, no ISP has agreed (or was forced) to disconnect users after they receive their third warning. In New Zealand they came close to implementing a law that would require ISPs to do this, but this proposal was pulled.

In France they are also considering three strikes legislation, but this has not passed into action yet. In Ireland the largest ISP Eircom said it would disconnect repeated infringers only if they receive a court order.

It is worth mentioning though that ISPs may cut off people whenever they think it’s necessary. Cox does this in the US for example, without an agreement with the MPAA or RIAA. ISPs have terms and conditions and most forbid copyright infringement, but really this is just to cover their own backs under the law.

Do I have to be worried?

Receiving a regular infringement notice is nothing to be worried about. However, if you download copyrighted files without authorization from the copyright holder you are breaking the law in some countries. If you receive a warning without having shared anything yourself (which happens quite often) then there’s nothing to worry about.

Can I protect (hide) myself?

If you don’t want to be spied on when using BitTorrent the best option is to hide your IP-address. You can do so by subscribing to a VPN service or by using software such as TorrentPrivacy. Blocklist software such as PeerGuardian is often recommended, but it is also highly ineffective as the lists are never fully up-to date or accurate.

What’s the point in all this?

The MPAA and RIAA don’t want their products on file-sharing networks and they use these warning emails to deter people from sharing these files with others. Since it’s much cheaper (and effective) than suing people, this is now their strategy of choice. Using news outlets to spread their doom and gloom scenarios is just part of their operation.

In the future the amount of warnings they send out to alleged infringers will increase and the studios and ISPs will work together to keep the associated operating costs down, if that’s not what they’ve already been doing in their recent meetings. It’s just the old model, scaled up with a rumor or two on top.

Let’s move on already.

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