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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our traffic sponsor Digg is no stranger to BitTorrent. Before the MediaDefender debacle Digg’s weekly video podcast Diggnation was published on Revision3’s very own BitTorrent tracker, but times have changed.

However, with their latest Dialogg video Digg has again decided to embrace the Internet’s most powerful distribution method. They’ve teamed up with Mininova, the largest BitTorrent indexer, to make the file available to millions of Bittorrent users.

“We see BitTorrent as a smart way to legitimately distribute content amongst millions,” Matt Van Horn, Business Development Manager for Digg told TorrentFreak. “That’s why we’re excited to share Digg Dialogg via torrents as one of the ways in which people can enjoy Digg’s interview with Bruno,” Matt added.

In addition to a regular torrent, Mininova is also testing a BitTorrent-powered video stream using Bitlet’s services. By clicking on the “stream this video” link users can directly watch the stream in their browser, fully powered by BitTorrent.

Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer told us that they are delighted to be working with Digg. “We have always liked Digg so when they asked us to work together we jumped on it immediately. This was also a nice opportunity to test the new video streaming from Bitlet which we had just implemented into our Content Distribution service,” he said.

With its Content Distribution service Mininova is seeding the file on its servers which guarantees a high speed download. The advantage for the Digg team is that they save some bandwidth and don’t have to seed Bruno themselves.

The Dialogg with Bruno can be both downloaded and streamed using on Mininova. Geil!

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

The new ‘HADOPI’ (Creation and Internet) law introduces unlimited options for copyright holders to go after individuals and sites that are alleged to have infringed copyright, without having to actually prove that the accused are categorically guilty. Now, a new survey by French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) for LeJdd shows just how (un)popular this so-called ‘graduated response’ is with the public.

From a survey of 1004 individuals representative of the French Internet user, 60% of respondents said they were not in favor of the law (42% were strongly against), with a third saying they support it “somewhat”. Only those respondents over 65 years old showed greater support, with 53% in favor and 41% against. Despite this, 64% of the respondents in this category felt that the graduated response wont be affective at all.

Interestingly, there was no difference between the different age groups in the expected effectiveness of the new anti-piracy legislation. Overall, the majority responded quite negatively. Just 24% of respondents said that they felt the ‘graduated response’ would be “very” or “somewhat” effective, with a huge 69% believing it will fail.

As in most countries, illegal file-sharing is widespread in France. One in four of the respondents admitted that they downloaded copyrighted music or movies regularly. There is a clear generation gap here, as 40% of those younger than 30 years categorized themselves as active downloaders opposed to 6% in the 65 years and older group.

Not not everyone is sceptical of the scheme. While repeating the IFPI nonsense that 95% of all music is pirated, U2 manager Paul McGuiness writes that not only is the Creation and Internet law “the right solution to an enormous problem” but also “a fair and balanced solution” that “will work in practice.”

Clearly not everyone agrees. The full survey is available in French here (.pdf)

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

In an attempt to have their voices heard, a group of leading musicians have started their own lobby group, the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC). The group includes members such as Robbie Williams, Radiohead and Travis and aims to end the extortion-like practices of the record labels and allow artist to gain more control over their own work.

Last year, Travis experienced the aggressiveness of the labels first hand. When the band encouraged fans to share one of their songs with friends, IFPI went after a fan who posted the song on his website. The IFPI realized that it made a mistake and backed off, but it clearly shows that the labels are out of touch with reality.

Unfortunately, the example above is just the tip of the iceberg. In Europe, music industry lobbyists have managed to strike deals with Internet service providers to go after those people who download music illegally. The artists were never involved in these negotiations though, and many of them oppose the aggressive stance of the labels which turns fans into criminals.

“The digital landscape is changing fast and new deals are being struck all the time, but all too often without reference to the people who actually make the music. Just look at the recent MoU on file-sharing between labels, government and the ISPs. Artists were not involved,” Brian Message, co-manager of Radiohead said.

Similarly, Europe is currently planning to extend copyright on audio recordings from 50 to 95 years, gently pushed by music industry lobbyists of course. Again, the musicians prefer a lowering of the current copyright term to 35 years instead.

The artists feel that the record labels are using copyright on the artists’ work to their advantage, restricting free access. “It’s like taking out a mortgage on a house, paying off the mortgage and you still don’t end up owning the house,” Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien said.

Another worry for the artist is the revenue on digital sales. Quite often, the deals record labels make for selling music online are vague and the artists don’t get paid at all. Last year we already reported on one such artist who found his music on iTunes, but never received a penny. Frustrated, he decided to upload his music onto BitTorrent sites so people could download it for free.

According to Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien, who’s also a member of the newly formed lobby group, this is not an isolated incident. “The music companies did a deal with Nokia recently, so they could launch phones with access to all sorts of music. We think they all received advances from Nokia, but nobody is saying who got what – and we think some of that money should go to the artists,” he said.

The newly formed lobby of top musicians hopes to set the record straight, and is demanding fair compensation for all artists. They believe musicians should have control over their own work instead of being the puppets of record label bosses. We can’t say that we blame them.

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

Unsurprisingly, it began to appear on BitTorrent sites just a few hours ago, well over a week in advance.

In just 10 hours the album has already been downloaded 100,000 times, which is notable for a music album. A few month ago, some of the fans already got a preview of four of the tracks, after a fan recorded them outside Bono’s villa in the south of France.

Unlike those early leaks, the quality full album that leaked today is reportedly of a quality worth listening to. The source of the leak is unknown, but it has to come from someone close to the band as there were no preview copies sent out to the press.

U2 has always taken an anti-piracy stance and wont be pleased to hear that the album is out before schedule. U2 manager Paul McGuiness has been particularly aggressive in his stance against file-sharers and has suggested that people who share copyrighted files should have their connection to the Internet severed. Skip to 2009 and the RIAA and IFPI are indeed pushing for such legislation.

It doesn’t stop there either. In order to prevent their latest album from being pirated, they refused to send out review copies to the press. Instead they organized listening parties where journalists could listen to the album in advance.

These ‘parties’ were of course surrounded by all kinds of security measures – recording devices and even mobile phones were not allowed anywhere near the hearings. Some good that did.

Despite all the effort the album leaked early, and many U2 fans are having a party of their own now. Over 100,000 of them – and counting.

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

Faced with technical issues surrounding the DRM on the PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, developer Ubisoft made a ‘fix’ available. Unfortunately, it became clear that far from being their own code, the patch was actually a ‘No-CD crack‘ created by warez group, Reloaded.

Getting caught pirating in an attempt fix broken anti-piracy measures was probably a step too far for Ubisoft, so it has taken the radical step of removing the DRM from the PC retail version of its latest ‘Prince of Persia‘ game.

Posting on the company’s forum, Ubisoft community development manager Chris Easton announced the move.

“You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will, but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP [Prince of Persia] PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are.”

But does Chris really expect that dropping the DRM will be a success? How ‘truthful’ will people be when it comes to not pirating the title?

“Not very, I imagine,” he adds.

One user of the forum responds, “Did anyone here mention how devs blame piracy for everything these days? If the game sucks to begin with, they blame piracy. If they don’t have money or are just lazy to make a decent PC port…they blame piracy.” He finishes up with a common statement – If you make a good game, people will buy it.

“Well this time we’ve got a good game with no DRM so there really is no reason to pirate it, right? We should expect good sales because there’s no reason to not buy a copy,” notes Chris, although he doesn’t seem that confident overall.

“I’m fairly skeptical as it’s an easy answer given by a lot of people why they pirate games but if you’re going to buy this game instead of pirating purely because of no DRM in the store version, then if I ever meet you in real life I’ll happily shake your hand and buy you a drink.”

Just recently, developer 2D Boy released their ‘World of Goo’ without DRM. It was heavily pirated, but sales were high enough to make the project worthwhile. At the time, TorrentFreak spoke with Kyle Gabler from 2D Boy who told us that he believed that their customers realized that the company was trying to do “the right thing” which they hoped would translate into a certain amount of goodwill.

If the backlash linked to the terrible DRM included with Spore is anything to go by, Kyle might be on to something and time will tell if Ubisoft’s experiment pays off too. In the end, games always will be pirated, with or without DRM, and there is no reason to believe that piracy increases when there is no ‘protection’. In fact, it only annoys legitimate customers who bought the game.

TorrentFreak will count the downloads and report back in a little while…..

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

As Georgia struggles to return to some sort of normality, life goes on for businesses in the region, including the movie industry. However, the Georgian movie industry has to face some unique challenges. According to a report, along with other sites, two of the most popular Geogian movie download sites gol.ge and avoe.ge are able to operate freely. Unlike in the US, Europe and many other places around the world, there are no laws in place in Georgia to deal with unofficial movie sites.

This lack of legislation means that the movie industry has to deal with the issue in ways which differ from those of their US and European counterparts. In moves which will seem largely alien to most readers, the Georgian movie industry actually tries its best to keep on friendly terms with the unauthorized download sites in order to reach agreements with them.

Devi Gvaxaria, Manager of the Marketing Department at Cinema Rustaveli told The Financial that they deal with a unique situation in Georgia. “We are happy to have good relations with the main movie sites of Caucasus Online, who consider our request not to put films on the Internet at the same time as their first showings in the theatres,” he said, adding “But these are only some of them, there are different sites which are out of our control.”

Gvaxaria notes that most of the unofficial sites get their movies from other pirate sites internationally, but there is the language barrier, since most Georgians would prefer them in their native ‘Kartuli’. Of course, these technical limitations prove minor stumbling blocks for the resourceful.

“Several times hackers have rewritten the verbal part of a movie from our cinema,” says Gvaxaria. “They put a Dictaphone into their pockets before entering the film, which is impossible for us to stop. We can’t just check each and every person who enters our cinema.” Clearly Mr Gvaxaria hasn’t been to a big movie at a US theater recently.

Natia Meparishvili, PR and Marketing Manager of Cinema Amirani believes that the best protection against piracy is the tradition among the people of going to the cinema. However, it appears that negotiations with the unauthorized providers to keep brand-new movies off their sites for a while gives the theaters a little breathing room to make enough profit during the opening weeks.

Negotiating with pirates is something we have covered before, but it seems unlikely that US movie companies will follow this lead. Indeed, this interesting situation in Georgia will probably change too, as the article notes that the movie business is going to change “their friendly relations” with the unofficial sites and modify the discussion to be based around “the language of law”.

It sounds like Georgia is getting into a Western state of mind, in more ways than one.

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

The situation revolves around that oddest of characters, Direct2Drive (D2D) – an online games store, owned by IGN, selling games over the Internet as protected downloads. Game code is modified to prevent the standard retail DRM from inhibiting game play (as there is no actual disc to check for) with Trymedia activation utilized instead. More importantly, since the code around the DRM has been modified and changed to a different system, regular patches from the game developers can’t be used. Instead, patches must be reworked by D2D to accommodate these changes. These changes are not always quick, a point D2D does try and defuse in its FAQ.

Thus we come to Rainbow Six: Vegas2 (R6V2) which, since its release in March, has had three patches released for it. The third, 1.03 provides a lot of changes, including new play modes, so legitimate purchasers of the game were eager to try it. The problem is, those that bought it via D2D can’t use it. This is the problem inherent in DRM. Those that buy the product are the ones affected, not those the DRM is designed to defeat.

After lots of complaining and attempts to fix things themselves, one Ubisoft employee found a solution. A zip file was uploaded to the help/support site, named “R6Vegas2_fix.zip”.

If D2D users patched to 1.02, then replaced the EXE with this one, they could then update to the new patch. However, someone ran a hex edit and it appears the fix was not Ubisoft code but actually a ‘no-cd’ crack released by the Scene group RELOADED, as shown here.

Since then, the zip file containing the fix has been pulled from the Ubisoft support site, so we’re unable to verify. The game’s community is as baffled by this as everyone else. Since the claimed origin of the fix, 10 days ago, there has been no word on it officially from Ubisoft, beyond a ‘Community Manager’ who states

We’re looking into this further as this was not the UK Support team that posted this, however if it is an executable that does not need the disc I doubt it has come from an external source. There’d be very little point doing so when we already own the original unprotected executable.

As soon as we find out more about this we’ll let you know.
_________________
Ubi.Vigil
Community Manager
Ubisoft UK

Although it is not unknown for a Scene release to be used to ‘fix’ a retail product, it’s certainly rare to have that fact promoted. That the ‘no-cd’ patch works, might have some relation to how brutal the Scene is when it comes to the quality of their work, especially in games. Whilst this is a validation that the Scene isn’t as bad as the lobby groups would have you believe (they fixed the game, and did it for free) you can bet that Ubisoft won’t be smiling at E3, and that they, and Direct2Drive, will continue to use DRM to annoy and inconvenience paying customers.

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

Other artists supporting the project include Powderfinger, Silverchair, Jimmy Barnes, Operator Please, Gyroscope, Dawn Collective and punk band, Frenzal Rhomb.

Actually, to say that Frenzal Rhomb support the video is not exactly true. Their guitarist, Lindsay McDougall, is not a happy man this morning as he tears into the music industry, claiming he was “duped” into appearing in the video.

McDougall, who is also a presenter on radio station Triple J, told SMH that he was furious at being “lumped in with this witch hunt” and that he had been “completely taken out of context and defamed” by the Australian music industry. McDougall was told that the video was all about surviving as an Australian artist and no-one told him it was part of an anti-piracy drive.

He said: “I have never come out against Internet piracy and illegal downloading and I wouldn’t do that – I would never put my name to something that is against downloading and is against piracy and stuff, it’s something that I believe is a personal thing from artist to artist.”

McDougall goes on, stating: “I would never be part of this big record industry funded campaign to crush illegal downloads, I’m not like [Metallica drummer] Lars Ulrich. I think it’s bullshit, I think it’s record companies crying poor and I don’t agree with it.”

Echoing the words of many artists in recent times, McDougall decries the methods of the record labels, in that they are the ones making all the money and still complain about what they see as a lack of revenue, even though they failed to adapt to the digital age:

“I’m from a punk rock band, it’s all about getting your music out any way you can – you don’t make money from the record, the record companies make the money from the record. If they can’t make money these days because they haven’t come onside with the way the world is going, it’s their own problem.”

Sabiene Heindl, general manager at MIPI said they were very clear in indicating where the video originated and that it would be distributed to schools, but clearly McDougall is still concerned about his image being sullied by association.

“I don’t think i’m going to sue anyone but I would say that already this morning people’s opinion of me has been lowered,” he said. Not now you’ve set the record straight Mr McDougall.

Coincidentally, TorrentFreak has recently been in touch with a punk outfit who are embracing the power of the digital revolution and BitTorrent in particular. CEO Nick Vivid of MegaPlatinum.net said of their fledgling “Spread This!” BitTorrent network : “We are really enjoying the ability to embrace the punk aesthetics of ‘Do it yourself’ and ‘Call for Change’ – our aesthetics – with this system. There’s an amazing amount of chaos in the record industry. This total deconstruction of the system is exactly what helps us thrive. Our bands feed off of that energy, just as we do.”

Commenting on this situation, Nick told us: “It’s funny how organizations with intimidating names and non menacing acronyms will use deceptive means to warp the words and ruin the reputations of people like Lindsay McDougall – people who have a certain amount of credibility they’ve worked hard to get – in any way possible so that it fits their agenda. More sad proof that a large part of the music industry doesn’t care about the artists or the fans. It’s something else entirely they’re after. I’m surprised Australia let such propaganda in the schools. Microsoft recently proposed something similar in the USA. Thankfully enough people in our educational system saw the ridiculousness of the idea and squashed it.”

Stay tuned for an interview soon.

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

First a little introduction to Andrew. From his site, NewMusicStrategies.

My name’s Andrew Dubber. I’m the Degree Leader for Music Industries at UCE Birmingham, UK. I’m a senior lecturer and researcher with a particular interest in online music, radio and new media technology.

My background is in both radio and the music industry, and I’ve written numerous articles, book chapters, and conference presentations about these sorts of new strategies and technologies in both of those sectors.

In the context of a blog about the online music world, I thought you might be interested in an email exchange I’ve had this evening with a board member of both the IFPI and the BPI.

I’ve had an email conversation with Paul Birch of Revolver Records this evening. Rather than comment on it, I’ll just post it here for your information, in full and unedited, with his permission.

_______________________

Andrew

Looking at your site I do think allowing indiscriminate criticism of the RIAA is inappropriate for a Government funded institution.

Paul

_______________________

Hi Paul,

You might be right, but I’m not a government funded institution, and nor do I consider my criticism of the RIAA indiscriminate.

However, if you find something that’s factually incorrect, I’d be more than happy to amend it.

Thanks for checking out the site.

Cheers,

Andrew

_______________________

Let’s talk about it when we next meet-up, as I don’t intend to write a thesis on the subject.

However, I stand by my assertion.

Regards

Paul

_______________________

Fair enough. But if you do happen to stumble across something that you have a particular problem with, if you could point it out to me, that would be most helpful.

Look forward to catching up.

_______________________

Andrew, Well I am in regular contact with the RIAA and both they and the IFPI are subject to hate mail as a consequence of hubcap, our litigation against consumers for illegally downloading our copyrights.

This manifests itself into individual members of our RIAA management being singled-out for malicious statements and blogs on the internet. As an example you probably saw the case earlier in the week of a Chinese Laundry in the United States being sued for $54M for loosing a pair of trousers, belonging to a lawyer. If you take a look at the criticism on your blog of the RIAA by one of the contributors, they are engaging in a similar malicious prosecution in the US courts but go further and make a number of assertions through your blog that gives credibility to illegal downloading.

I am not concerned that people decide to take out law-suits against our organisations; we have the resources to deal with that. What does concern me however is the repeating of malicious falsehoods that occur in a number of internet blog, and are re-reported as having validity contribute widely to the assertion that right is on the side of wrong-doing.

You might argue that your professional blog is your opinion alone, however you are interwoven into the views and policy of the University of Central England and I think that puts you in an exposed positon Andrew.

It might not be nice to be sued by the RIAA and potentially put in a position of being made bankrupt; neither is issuing redundancy notices to hard working staff. People don’t have to download; they do however have to work. Consumers that enjoy music have a lot of options and enjoying it free on the radio is at least one of them, with last FM and You Tube there is near on demand service free at the point of use. But stealing isn’t clever, but presumably most people don’t really wish to steal, and only share because it is so easy and seems harmless/victimless. If people need to affirmatively hide their activities, then there is an understanding of wrongdoing. I feel that your blog underpins the misuse of our copyright and attacks our trade associations.

There are very serious allegations made in this anti-RIAA link on your blog, and I don’t think its appropriate that you link to them.

Paul
_______________________

2 questions, then please Paul:

1) Which link?
2) Would you be willing for me to post this email to the blog to present a counterbalance to the anti-RIAA position?
_______________________

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/06/06/

riaa-extortion-and-conspiracy-in-the-same-sentence

Above is the link, I am not sure how I navigated to it from your blog.

I am willing for you to publicise anything I say here, but I think that what is more desirable is to take down links from your site that promote this hatred of the recording Industry, because the assumption is that by linking to them that you support the extreme view heralded. That might be unfair to you by the way as you may or may not hold those views. I can only seek to reason with those views but my argument about biting the hand that feeds it is I feel valid. I respect everyone’s right to dissent but I am anxious that Individual managers within our trade association have the right not to be publicly hounded.

Best wishes

Paul
_______________________

I remember that article. I can see how it would be seen as undesirable PR for the RIAA, but I’m not at all convinced it either represents an extreme view or promotes the hounding of individual managers represented by the recording industry association.

In fact, from my time online reading articles about the music industry, I would say it’s about par for the course. Most independent commentators take the position that the suing of individuals by the RIAA has been a public relations disaster, and that rather than deter illegal activity, they have simply turned the record-buying public against them. If someone is taking a countersuit against the organisation, I’m afraid that’s comment-worthy. As it happens, I think I remember hearing that the case was thrown out, but I’d have to check the facts.

The way I see it is this: what I’m linking to is opinion about a news story. It’s genuine news and it’s legitimate opinion. You may not agree, but I don’t see anything there that warrants a take-down notice.

I would never endorse hate speech or the encouragement of the victimisation of any individual no matter what their job. That link doesn’t even come close to either of those things.

More importantly, as someone who comments about the industry, only linking to items that echo the official position of the major label organisations would pretty much make my site valueless to its readers.

Download Squad, the source of that article, is pretty much uniformly interesting, relevant and linkworthy. I don’t think this was an exception.

But I think it’s important that both sides are put, so I’ll post this email exchange up on the site. If there’s anything else you’d like to say on this, then pop it in a reply to this email, and I’ll leave it at that.

I think it’s great that you’re willing to have this discussion in public. Much appreciated.

_______________________

Andrew

It expresses opinion, it’s not factual. If you persist then I shall make a formal complaint to the University.

Your choice.

Paul

_______________________

The End. Always good to end on a threat, RIAA-style….

The full post and comments can be found here.

Andrew has also kindly given every TorrentFreak reader the chance to download his eBook, The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online.

UPDATE:Seems like Andrew Dubber’s webhost (UKHost4U) has suspended his site. It’s unclear at this stage exactly why.
UPDATE2:Andrew’s site is now operational but clarification on the reason for the take-down is still being sought.

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

The first thing to do is make sure you have the latest version of Java installed. Open up Applications > Accessories > Terminal and type in the following.

java -version

If your version of Java is 1.5 or above, you’re good to go. If it’s an older one, you need to upgrade it. To update to the latest version enter the following in Terminal.

sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jre sun-java5-plugin

Next up is an important step to make if you want the current releases of LimeWire and ForstWire to work on Ubuntu 6.10. One of the changes in 6.10 is the switch to Dash as the default Command Line Interface. We are going to make Bash the default CLI. Paste the code below into Terminal. When you are prompted to install Dash, select “NO.”

sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash

Now, download either LimeWire (free version .rpm) or FrostWire (.deb).

The advantage with FrostWire is that an Ubuntu (Debian) installer package is available. Since LimeWire only comes as a .rpm file, you will need to open up System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager and make sure you have ‘alien’ installed. Alien converts packages designed for other Linux distributions so that they work on the distribution you are using, Ubuntu.

I tried out both, and in my case, FrostWire failed to connect to the Gnutella network. Others seem to be having no problem with it. If you have downloaded FrostWire, just double-click the .deb file and install it. It will now show up under Applications > Internet. If you have downloaded LimeWire, type the following into Terminal to convert the package from the .rpm it is to a .deb file.

alien -d limewire.rpm

Once it has been converted, double-click the new .deb file to install LimeWire. That’s it, you’re done. Enjoy sharing Creative Commons music ;-)
Here’s a good song to start with: Noite de Carnaval by Code (mp3).

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

At least, according to a chat Chris Pirillo had with MS Mindshare Manager Aaron Coldiron. Coldiron said:

We are pumping out bits as fast as we can. If we pushed out bits any faster there would be a measurable impact for the Internet. So, we are literally saying that if we increased our bandwidth any further there’s a possibility of taking down the Internet

When Chris asked why they couldn’t just seed it as a torrent, Coldiron responded:

There are legal and privacy issues which unfortunately make that not an option for Microsoft to officially sponsor a BitTorrent. I really wish we could do it, but we can’t. If someone [seeds or downloads a torrent] we can’t guarantee that they’ve got an unaltered copy, etc.

This is obviously bullshit, Legal and Privacy issues? Sounds to me like Microsoft just isn’t capable to produce an MD5 hash, like Chris Pirillo already noted.

Update: BitTorrent.com and vistatorrent now provide clean Vista Beta torrents

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