In these previous cases the pirated films were only on display in the stores, but the multinational electronics company LG takes it a step further. The company is selling TVs that have the functionality to accept a connection from an external USB device. This allows customers to enjoy pictures, music and videos directly on their TVs, all with a piracy endorsement from the manufacturer.

In the packaged English language manual, LG does not try to obfuscate the true purpose of this nifty USB feature – playing pirated movies. In the picture below, LG included pirated versions of The Incredibles and The Aviator, while explaining how easy it is to play the films directly on a TV.

LG seems to understand perfectly what customers want, but we doubt that the movie studios will be very excited about this piracy endorsement from the Koreans. Whether the pirated films were included intentionally is unknown, we expect that a company employee simply downloaded the movies off a file-sharing service out of habit or convenience.

Life’s Good isn’t it?

(via Fefe)

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

Just over a week after becoming available online in early November 2009, Ink pushed into TorrentFreak’s chart of top 10 most pirated movies with an incredible 400,000 downloads.

Unlike the majority of Hollywood movie bosses, the creators of Ink – Jamin and Kiowa Winans – decided to embrace their new-found pirate fans after the extra publicity pushed the movie to 16th place on IMDb’s movie meter and boosted DVD and Blu-ray sales. Kiowa wrote to TorrentFreak and said that the movie ending up on BitTorrent was “absolutely” the best thing that could’ve happened to it.

Now, Lars Sobiraj from German news outlet Gulli has interviewed Kiowa to see how things have progressed a couple of months on from the initial excitement.

As previously reported, Ink has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, so just how many of those translated into real-world sales? Kiowa says that is really hard to put an exact figure on that – they haven’t sold a DVD or Blu-ray for every download but sales have unquestionably gone up.

Money also came in from other routes too. As the movie gained popularity on BitTorrent, many Ink downloaders suggested that there should be a ‘donate’ button on the movie’s website so that fans could give money freely.

“We put that [donation link] up at the urging of some of the downloaders with the message ‘if you have watched Ink online for free and would like to contribute what you can, click here’,” Kiowa explains.

“Guess what country has been the most generous? Germany! Germans have been twice as generous as Americans so… thank you Germany. We have also shipped a lot of Deluxe Bundle fan packs to Germany so Ink seems to be a big hit there.”

Gulli asked Kiowa if she felt the movie had fallen victim to piracy, a notion she strongly denies.

“I think to say victim is to characterize piracy as an all-together awful thing. The piracy of Ink is unquestionably responsible for its popularity around the world. Sure our trailers have been out for over a year and have had plenty of views outside the US, but we think that 70% of the illegal downloads are coming from outside of the US and we do get a good number of international buyers at our online store every day,” she explained.

Before Ink was pirated, the movie’s IMDb rating was a lowly 12,991. As reported in our earlier article, it reached 16 and even moved up to the 14th position at one stage. Incredibly it has stayed as one of the top 200 movies in the world for the last two months, a feat that would have been impossible without the extra exposure.

Looking forward to future distribution models, Kiowa feels that everything will change during the next 10 years as people demand instant and simple access to media and their TVs and computers merge together into one device.

“That said, I’m not sure what the revenue model will be for films,” she notes. “Hollywood producers are quickly finding out that the instant films start circulating on DVD they will wind up on torrent sites.”

Kiowa broadly puts BitTorrent users into two camps – those who want media in an instant and those who want it for free. Noting that there are those who fall into both categories, she acknowledges the challenges that lie ahead in figuring out a way to make this situation bring revenue to the filmmakers.

“I think a reasonably-priced instant download the moment the movie becomes available would largely cure the piracy issue so we will see how it all shakes out over the next several years,” she adds.

As most observers are aware, many music and movie companies consider torrent sites as entities to be crushed and in recent years have set about a strategy to achieve that. Gulli asked Kiowa if she believes that is the correct strategy to deal with the problem.

While one could argue that non-physical digital formats such as MP3 are part of the reason that piracy has flourished in recent years, Kiowa feels that the invention of the iPod has helped to reduce piracy, largely through the existence of competition from one service – iTunes. The movie industry needs to catch up.

“Until the equivalent of the iPod is invented for film or long-format video files I think that piracy is going to be a huge battle ground, one in which I doubt Hollywood will win,” Kiowa predicts.

“There is always a smarter programmer out there that can move faster than bureaucracy. The film industry really needs to set its sights on overhauling its distribution system. Right now there are horrible things like region-coded DVDs that tie up a film’s rights in various countries and this is what has made the film business plenty of money over the years.”

The industry needs to move its thinking to encompass global distribution, says Kiowa, not concentrate on pushing movies out to dozens of separate territories.

“We are going to keep all the rights to Ink and not give them away country-by-country so that when that iPod-for-movies emerges Ink can be the first film that debuts to the whole world,” she says, adding: “That is the hope anyway.”

Looking to the future, partner Jamin is currently working on scripts for two new films, one a sci-fi psychological thriller called ‘The Frame’ and another a sci-fi fantasy called ‘Myth of Man’.

“For the time being we’re just really happy that Ink is rolling along and gaining fans around the world. How ever people come to the film, we’re just happy that they are watching it, Kiowa concludes.

“As Jamin likes to say, the battle of independent films is not piracy, it’s obscurity. Hey – at least we’re winning that one!”

The full interview conducted by Lars Sobiraj, is available here.

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

At the 2010 event held in early January, Johnny Depp fought off Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman, Robert Pattinson and Ryan Reynolds to be come Favorite Movie Actor, with Sandra Bullock triumphing in the Favorite Movie Actress category.

In music, Lady GaGa was awarded Favorite Pop Artist, with Favorite Female Artist going to Taylor Swift and Favorite Male Artist going to Keith Urban. During his acceptance speech, Urban had quite a surprise for his file-sharing fans.

After thanking people for voting, those watching the show at home and people who took the time to see him on tour, Urban gave credit to his fan club, Monkeyville, whose members work tirelessly to get his music out there.

“I don’t even care if you download it [my music] illegally, give it to your friends, I really don’t care,” said Urban. “I love the people to hear the music and come out and see us play live.”

It seems that Urban understands the positive influence the free download can have on his tour ticket sales. But speaking with Tennessean.com, Urban now says that his words came out all wrong.

“What I said came out nothing like I meant,” explained Urban. “I was referring to the old days when you’d buy a record, do a cassette tape and give it to your girlfriend, and then maybe she likes it and becomes a fan.”

That’ll be copying music and sharing it round then, just 1980’s style. Nevertheless, Urban is sure of his stance now.

“For the record, I absolutely care about my music not being taken for free,” he added. “But I love when people are passionate and want to turn friends on to music.”

Urban is on RIAA-member Capitol Records Nashville and they cannot have appreciated his comments one little bit, but apparently it was the show format that caused Urban to say something he didn’t mean.

“I’ve never done an awards show where they seem to let you talk infinitely,” he said. “I was waiting for the ‘wrap’ sign to come up, and it never came up.”

Urban’s speech was roughly 50 seconds long, so who knows what he would’ve endorsed if it had gone on for much longer.

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

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

Access Anywhere

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

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

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

Download Anywhere

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

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

Streaming

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

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

Easy Sharing

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

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

Finding Torrents

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

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

Further Improvements

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

Exciting times ahead for uTorrent users.

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

Although there has been some mainstream news coverage in the past, this week the press have really stepped up, helped along by the UK Lords who labeled the ACS:Law scheme “legal blackmail” – not exactly a shining endorsement.

Nevertheless, ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley has stood his ground, telling the media that his campaign will continue. Following criticism that so far he has taken a grand total of zero cases to court, Crossley told the BBC that cases are pending.

“It has been said that we have no intention of going to court but we have no fear of it,” he said.

While Crossley may not be scared of taking a couple of cut and dried cases of infringement against minnows to court to prove his point, it’s not entirely true that in all cases he has no fear of a court battle. In the words of the Lords, Crossley is engaged in a bullying scheme and, like all bullies, when the big boys step up to fight, the bullies shrink away.

On November 19th at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Crossley made NPO (Norwich Pharmacal Order) applications to force ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of subscribers the company claims had infringed their client’s rights. The NPO’s related to approximately 25,000 IP addresses harvested from UK ISP BT’s customer base and a further 5,000 from various other ISPs, covering approximately 291 movie titles. The order was granted and ACS:Law are now chasing these individuals for cash payments of around £500 each.

Someone present at the hearing provided TorrentFreak with information which suggested that several ISPs including Be, O2, BT, Plusnet, Enternet and Kingston were not opposed to the court order forcing them to hand over their customers’ private details to ACS:Law.

However, UK ISP Tiscali, whose customers had also been caught up in the ACS:Law dragnet, were strangely dropped from the court order. “Not seeking against Tiscali (previously respondent #8 in the application),” said the comment.

Tiscali were bought by TalkTalk for £236m last year. TalkTalk, as everyone must know by now, are absolutely against elements of the Digital Economy Bill and are refusing to sell their customers down the river on mere allegations of file-sharing. Could they be standing up to ACS:Law too?

We contacted TalkTalk and their response proved very interesting indeed.

“TalkTalk is the only major ISP which has refused to divulge customers’ information to lawyers pursuing alleged copyright infringers. We have held this position since the issue came into view and we continue to stick by this policy,” Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk’s executive director of strategy and regulation told TorrentFreak.

“If we are ever ‘instructed’ to disconnect or throttle a customer who has not been found guilty in a court of law, we will refuse to do so and challenge the instruction through the courts if necessary,” he added.

So, while the above-mentioned ISPs – and BT in particular – are collectively handing over thousands of their customers to be “legally blackmailed” by ACS:Law, TalkTalk will not and are prepared to fight for the rights of their customers.

TorrentFreak contacted BeingThreatened, a consumer group assisting those wrongfully accussed by ACS:Law.

“What the public want to see is a clear commitment from ISPs that they will protect their customers from the actions of these overly-litigious lawyers exploiting legal loopholes to demand money using groundless threats of court action. Given the tens of thousands of letters that have already been sent and the massive heartache caused as a result of this scheme, BeingTheatened would expect to see a concrete commitment from all ISPs,” spokesman James Bench told us.

“After all, TalkTalk’s stated position merely reflects the view of the wider industry (as stated by the ISPA) that the ‘evidence’ presented by these companies is unreliable,” he added.

“We are happy to see that one company has indicated an apparent willingness to display a degree of corporate integrity in looking after the data that its customers entrust to it and not to make this available to anyone that simply asks for it,” he concluded.

So, if you and your family are looking for an ISP run by people who are prepared stand up for your rights, look no further than TalkTalk. While Mr Crossley may not fear going to court against a lowly individual, it seems incredibly unlikely that he’ll take on TalkTalk’s lawyers.

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

While the panel consisted of representatives from IFPI, Center for Democracy & Technology, Computer and Communications Industry Association and the UK government. Notably missing were representatives from the RIAA and MPAA. They were present, says Curtis, but unusually observing quietly from the audience.

Those on the panel in favor of the “graduated response” are said not to have shied away from their positions.

In a discussion on whether the punishment fits the alleged crime, Shira Perlmutter, Executive Vice-President of Global Legal Policy at IFPI said sending infringement notices just isn’t enough, adding that termination of a user’s Internet account, however, is preferable to suing them.

When asked if “3 strikes” should come to the United States, Perlmutter pointed to the existence of the DMCA (disabling access to illicit content is already provided for under the legislation) and noted that there are “many conversations going on at different levels.”

Writing on the apparent disinterest in “3 Strikes” shown by the MPAA and RIAA by their lack of participation on a panel such as this, Curtis goes on to list several filings to the FCC which contain pro-disconnection statements by the groups, indicating that they are indeed asking the government to take action. Indeed, Curtis feels that their low profile at this panel points to the existence of “back room deals” already underway and aimed at putting their plans for the US into action.

Given that the music industry has all but given up on their strategy of suing new individuals for file-sharing (the MPAA never really started) and that IFPI has put its full-blown support behind proposed “3 Strikes” legislation in several different countries (even now carefully escalating a campaign in Sweden), it seems likely that at some point the United States will follow.

If it doesn’t come via a government mandate, says Curtis, it could come via a private arrangement between your ISP and content providers. And when you think about it, with all previous plans to end online piracy having failed, there’s very little for the copyright holders left to try. At this stage there can be little doubt that Big Media wants “3 Strikes” to become the global standard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Installr” will be released in the near future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With ReactorFeed, brought to you by the people from ShareReactor, this can be done with relative ease.

Instead of downloading the torrent directly, users can simply add the torrent to their personal RSS feed. ReactorFeed supports torrents that are hosted anywhere on the web and is not restricted to one torrent site.

When added to your personal feed, the torrent will download automatically when your BitTorrent client is running at home. That is, if your favorite BitTorrent client has RSS support. Luckily, almost all popular clients do by now.

Additionally, users can choose to share their feed in public so it can be accessed by others with similar interests. For those who would rather keep their feeds private, it’s recommended to set the feed as private, since URLs of the public ones are easy to guess.

Overall, ReactorFeed is a simple but extremely useful service for those who want an easy way to add torrents to their BitTorrent client on the go.

For those looking for feeds where the torrents are added automatically based on pre-selected content, we have a tutorial for that on our side-blog FreakBits.

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

File-sharers on the other hand haven’t been sitting still either, as many have chosen to negate these initiatives by going anonymous.

Users of BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks have increasingly turned to solutions that hide their identities from the outside world, rendering these new anti-piracy initiatives useless. The IPREDator service from the founders of The Pirate Bay opened up to the public this week, and is undoubtedly the most talked about newcomer in this business.

With a beta launch coinciding with the introduction of the controversial IPRED law in Sweden, the service promised to offer users an anonymous connection to the Internet. IPRED gave the copyright holders increased power to track down pirates, and with the launch of IPREDator the creators neutralized this new ‘threat’.

Much like many other comparable VPN services, Ipredator allows users to connect to the Internet while hiding their own IP-address. The interest in services like this is booming. In Sweden alone, an estimated 500,000 Internet subscribers are already hiding their identities online, and that number is expected to rapidly grow in the new year.

Ipredator is currently using the same platform as several other VPN franchises including Relakks, which means it’s not really anything we haven’t seen before. The servers are maintained and provided by Pirate Bay affiliates though, which may be more trustworthy to the average BitTorrent user than a random VPN provider.

That aside, we were told by former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde that contrary to what the legal page states, no logs of any kind are kept by Ipredator. The text that is in there is a left over from the standard template they got from the provider of the VPN platform.

And, according to Sunde, there will soon be even more advantages and added security to Ipredator.

While Ipredator owes its name to the IPRED legislation, the team behind it is also working to crush the Swedish wiretapping law (FRA) that was introduced earlier. Sunde explained in a recent writeup how they are planning to not only encrypt the connection between individual users and the VPN, but also the entire stream of outgoing data from the VPN until it has passed Sweden’s borders.

This will make it practically impossible for the Government to decrypt the data and find out what’s being sent. “The only thing they can do is to make it illegal to encrypt,” Sunde told TorrentFreak.

“People don’t understand why I want to encrypt the traffic, since they’re already hidden when they connect to our system. But they must understand that the same traffic can be found unencrypted, traveling across borders again,” Sunde told TorrentFreak. “Also, using a VPN outside of Sweden is bad for Swedes, since it will raise a suspicion flag at FRA,” he added.

Although these wiretap-busting plans haven’t been implemented yet, Ipredator does already offer a secure VPN connection. The service guarantees that anti-piracy outfits or even your ISP will be unable to record or spy on your BitTorrent downloads. Ipredator has just opened its doors to the public for those who did make the beta and are interested in giving it a try.

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

James Bench from BeingThreatened, a consumer group dedicated to helping those wrongfully accused by this law firm and their partners (such as Germany-based DigiProtect), told TorrentFreak that people are starting to receive them this week. A small number have arrived to date, fittingly by the cheapest and most unreliable regular postage method available in the UK – 2nd class.

“So far the unreliability of the evidence appears not to have been addressed,” Bench explains. “100% of victims contacting BeingThreatened as a result of this new batch state they did not commit or authorise any copyright infringement of the work they are accused of sharing.”

Indeed, the unreliability of the evidence presented as part of these threatening letters has been raised yet again, this time by the Lords involved in the Digital Economy Bill debate.

Following on from his earlier criticism, on Monday Lord Lucas noted that the firm making these accusations are “not nice people to fall foul of,” they are “not nice to deal with,” and later adding “the methods that they use to extract money are not nice.”

Lord Lucas went on to explain that ACS:Law had “been kind enough” to write to him in person, but went on to criticize the evidence their allegations are based on.

Noting that the evidence is provided by foreign companies that do not disclose the methodology used to obtain it, Lord Lucas observed: “It may well have been obtained against data protection rules – that is certainly the conclusion that the Swiss and French authorities seem to have reached.”

Describing the allegations as “totally impenetrable,” Lord Lucas said that upon receiving these letters telling account holders that they have to pay money, people have no way of disproving what they are accused of.

“I think most of their [ACS:Law's] income comes from people who just pay,” he said. “I am not aware that there have been many court cases at the end of this because of the element of bluff.”

To be more precise, ACS:Law have never taken anyone to court on file-sharing allegations, even though they threaten to.

Of course, the “bluffing” strategy can work two ways. Those who refuse to pay, admit nothing and stand their ground against any wrongful allegations, can also find that they come out on top.

So, how does a complete novice in legal matters stand up to these threats and summon the courage to do so in the face of these “totally impenetrable” allegations?

Simple. All they have to do is grab a copy of the ‘Speculative Invoicing Handbook’ just released by BeingThreatened under a Creative Commons License.

If you have been sent a letter demanding cash for an alleged copyright infringement, do nothing until you have read this handbook cover to cover – it is 100% free, absolutely comprehensive and could save you hundreds of pounds.

It can be downloaded here.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The case continues.

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

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.

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

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

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

DRM

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

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

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

Delay

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

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

Digital Ban

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Their scheme has attracted much negative press, even provoking statements from Members of the House of Lords in the UK.

“Of late, we have seen a proliferation of lawyers’ letters, acting for the pornography industry, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, pointed out, often against innocent people asserting copyright claims and threatening court action,” said Lord Clement-Jones recently.

Now there has been a surprising “Christmas update” from ACS:Law. Referencing earlier legal threats they made to thousands of individuals in the UK (you’ve been caught file-sharing, we can prove it, and if you don’t pay up we’re taking you to court), the law firm has announced that it will drop many of its cases.

As Christmas approaches, here at ACS Law we have been working hard dealing with our file sharing projects. We have been reviewing all cases which are currently open, and a good number of these cases have been dropped, where we do not either consider litigation to be a viable option or to be beneficial to our clients.

So, despite the “forensic” standard proof the company claims to hold on individuals, it appears that, as we’ve said many times here on TorrentFreak, this scheme is all about money. If individuals have no money to pay, ACS:Law cannot get blood from a stone.

Furthermore, when trying to force others to pay up who may actually have the money, faced with holding a single IP address as evidence and absolutely no way of identifying a specific individual sitting at a keyboard and conducting or authorizing the actual infringement, they have little choice but to back down.

James Bench, who works with Being Threatened, a consumer group which offers resources to individuals who are targeted by ACS:Law, says that those accused are becoming increasingly empowered by the knowledge currently available.

“Recently leaked documents exposed the inner workings of the process, dubbed by some ‘speculative invoicing,’ showing that claims are assigned a ‘litigation rating’,” he told TorrentFreak.

“Factors affecting the rating tended not to be based on the evidence supporting the claim but on the appointment of legal representation, technical ’savvy’ and the finances of the client – or lack thereof,” he added.

So does this mean that ACS:Law will be backing down completely? Hardly. The law firm says that following the court orders they obtained in November, more threatening ‘pay up or else’ letters will be sent out in January 2010.

Anyone receiving a letter from ACS:Law should refrain from replying to the company until they have spoken to the support team at BeingThreatened.com, who will give completely free advice.

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

By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was already tracking a million peers and more than 60,000 torrent files. Around the same time the founders also became aware that it wasn’t just Scandinavians showing an interest in their site. Because of increasing worldwide popularity, The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages from then on.

This change was much appreciated by the site’s non-Swedish speaking users, but hated by anti-piracy outfits. They saw the tracker as a serious threat, and in response launched a dozen lawsuits to have it removed from the Internet. Today, while nearing the end of the decade, The Pirate Bay has changed its homepage back to its 2003 look, Swedish only.

Despite all the legal trouble, the buyout soap and the decision to close the tracker, The Pirate Bay website is still around at the end of the decade. According to the Pirate Bay team, they are not yet ready to give up or throw in the towel.

“We believe that we have changed something. Not just us, but all of us. The Pirate Bay has always been something extra. We didn’t just wanna run another tracker. We wanted it to mean something. And you our users have helped us with that. The history of the bay is still being written, it’s way too early for a conclusion,” The Pirate Bay team writes.

“2010 has no room for boring debates about old worn out values that old rotting industries try to shove down your throats. 2010 will be the year of the hydra. Let thousands of new exciting projects emerge,” they add.

The past has indeed shown that with every setback the Hydra grows stronger. More new sites and trackers will emerge in the new year while old favorites fade in the background.

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