When ‘caught’ uploading copyright works for the first time, the owner of the Internet connection used for the alleged infringement will receive an email warning. On allegations of a second offense, a physical letter will drop through the door. On the the third, the account holder will be summoned to appear before a judge who will have the power to fine, or even disconnect them from the Internet.

French senator Michel Thiolliere has told the BBC that the so-called Hadopi legislation will have the desired effect, with nearly everyone warned a second time abandoning illegal file-sharing for good.

“What we think is that after the first message… about two-thirds of the people (will) stop their illegal usages of the internet,” he explained

“After the second message more than 95% will finish with that bad usage.”

It is, however, much more likely that after getting a first warning, or even before, French Internet users will try to find a way round this system. They will discover that it’s surprisingly easy.

6 Ways Savvy Internet Users Will Neutralize Hadopi

Free options

MP3 Search Engines

One of the simplest ways to find music online is to use an MP3 search engine. That won’t be difficult as there are dozens to choose from. Sites like Skreemr, Songza, beeMP3, MP3Realm and AirMP3 are very simple to use and since there is no uploading, they drive a cart and horses through Hadopi. For those who don’t mind getting their hands dirty, Google offers similar functionality with their filetype: search operator.

Direct Downloads

During 2008 and 2009, the continued rise of blogs and forums that link to music, movies, tv shows and games stored on so-called cyberlocker sites was difficult to ignore. Although links can get taken down very quickly by copyright holders, they are often replaced just as swiftly by the communities that frequent such sites. The international music industry is particularly worried about the phenomenon, as tracking those that download from sites such as Rapidshare and MegaUpload is completely impractical.

Of course there are also perfectly legal alternatives, such as the excellent Jamendo.

Streaming Music and Video

While there are dozens of sites to visit directly, for those who really can’t be bothered to look any further and don’t mind closing a couple of slightly annoying popups, OVGuide is a huge portal to thousands of movies, TV shows and general video. With the assistance of the DivX plug-in, most content can be streamed directly in compatible web-browsers.

Music fans who don’t mind to stream tracks in their web browser actually have a few dozen legal alternatives. Grooveshark is one of the most elaborate music services. It holds more content than the average download store, supports playlists and it will roll out an iPhone app.

Premium options

Overseas MP3 Sites

Just over the English Channel from France lies the UK. Research carried out there recently by the BPI indicated that usage of MP3 pay sites had increased by 47%. While users do have to hand over money to use these services, at a tiny fraction of prices they would pay in their homeland they prove attractive to those on a tight budget.

Newsgroups

Using Usenet, or newsgroups as they are commonly known, is one of the most secure ways of downloading movies, TV shows, music and video games.

While the learning curve on Usenet is considered by many to be quite steep, once an individual discovers .NZB files – the .torrent of the newsgroup world – everything is hugely simplified. Within seconds of starting a transfer, the user’s connection will be completely maxed-out.

On a practical basis, and certainly as far as Hadopi is concerned, paying a few euros each month for a decent newsgroup account means that French citizens need never fear being disconnected from the Internet. Indeed, not even the first warning email will arrive.

Anonymous VPN

While the above options require that Internet users modify their behaviors, by spending a few euros a month on an anonymous VPN account they won’t have to change any of their habits at all. They can continue to use BitTorrent, eD2K or any other P2P method of file-sharing.

Once subscribed to a service such as Netherlands-based ItsHidden (who also offer a free, but speed-limited service), Hadopi file-sharing investigators will believe that the user behind that IP address is from another country and simply move on.

As the failed and now largely abandoned campaign against file-sharers in the United States proved, scare tactics simply don’t work. There are millions of file-sharers in France and many will simply carry on their activities in the belief that the odds of being caught are extremely slim.

And they would be absolutely right.

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

In reality, the truth proved somewhat different.

No one could argue Grokster had been defeated, but the consequences for file-sharing were limited. The real impact was that providers of file-sharing services could now be held liable if it could be shown that they promoted their products for infringing purposes. Careful advertising was all that was required. Furthermore, the decision only affected the United States. Considering the epic scale of the case and the supposed victory, the results were far from devastating.

And now, 4 years later, Mininova, another file-sharing giant that rode on the crest of the BitTorrent wave since the Grokster verdict, has effectively been forced to close down the vast majority of its site, prompting many to feel that BitTorrent is heading for its twilight years.

However, with careful consideration, it may just be possible to create another Mininova that avoids its namesake’s fate, since the court’s decision was not solely related to the existence of links to infringing content, i.e the .torrent files.

The DMCA is widely known in BitTorrent circles. It is the US copyright act (but accepted by many indexers and trackers regardless of location) which many sites quote when offering to take down torrents that link to infringing content. “If you’re the content owner, let us know,” they say, “..and we’ll take down torrents that link to your works.” Complying with so-called ‘DMCA takedown requests’ is widely accepted as a way to stay within the law.

Although Mininova operated such a system, comments by the site’s staff on their forums called their commitment to it into doubt. There are many samples given in the court’s decision, here are just a few. It’s worth noting that many of them date back to 2005, when users, staff and site admins would have been much more relaxed.

“May have been just a take down request (…) i’d say just re upload it (…) thanks for sharing” (posted by site moderator)

“Thanks for reporting, I deleted the fake version and uploaded the correct one” (posted by site admin)

“I made a mistake of downloading a shareware version of Monopoly Jr. only to find out it only allows you to play it for 15 minutes and then it becomes useless,” said a user. “Check the site, it’s there now” (posted by site admin).

Mininova also took pride in their efforts to proactively filter fake files (including in the decision are comments by staff who admit to downloading material to check if it is indeed as labeled), viruses, malware, pornographic and drug-related material, but this seems to have backfired by the corresponding lack of commitment to proactively filter copyright content in the same manner.

The site also carried some very specific categories for its torrents. Not just ‘movies’ or ‘TV’, but also sections such as “CSI” and “Desperate Housewives” which are widely known to be copyright works. One section highlighted in the decision was labeled ‘Disney’. The court decided that since so little Disney material is copyright-free, the section could have little other use than to infringe.

Mininova has never denied making profits (it is a company after all) and the court ruled that the site encouraged and profited “from infringements of copyrights and related rights of the holders represented by Brein.”

To see things from a different perspective, TorrentFreak has been discussing the closure of Mininova with Aldor Nini at digital distribution and anti-piracy solutions company, Easycom, who has been following the case closely.

Interestingly, Aldor informs us that 8 out of 10 torrents on Mininova were not covered by the BREIN lawsuit, which makes us wonder if the site could’ve stayed alive if the other 2 out of 10 were removed before the court’s hand was forced.

“We are very sorry to see a platform like Mininova shut down millions of torrent files,” he told TorrentFreak. “Based on our research we have found out that only 21% of the content was infringing rights of content owners for content used in the proceedings by BREIN. This 21% could probably be the most popular files on the platform, but we cannot confirm this for sure.”

“However, Mininova’s decision to completely remove everything was to 100% conform with what the judge has ruled. A 100% working filter was requested, and the removal of all non moderated user submitted torrents is the only 100% filter available nowadays,” he told us.

In a similar way that file-sharing applications similar to Grokster’s continue to flourish post the ‘big’ 2005 verdict, torrent sites can follow suit, if they are prepared to adapt.

“We do not think that this judgment will directly apply to other torrent portals at all,” Aldor told us, “but rather the way Mininova was operated as a torrent portal.”

Aldor has some interesting thoughts on how torrent sites can continue, without making the same mistakes as Mininova. He argues that torrent sites should behave neutrally, meaning that if they remove fake and spam comments they should filter copyrighted content too.

Based on Aldor’s reasoning, it seems another option is for sites to switch to user-based moderation, where content is automatically removed after a fixed number of downvotes. The bottom line is that the site’s operators (or moderators) should stay neutral.

Further suggestions are to take the takedown procedure seriously and make it easy to use. Sites should notify users that copyrights are to be respected and refrain from using specific categories (such as Disney). Again, based on the basis that site staff should stay neutral, user submitted tags should be fine.

Other more problematic ideas are the increased co-operation with content owners and to “stop thinking in black and white” – surely great advice for both sides and ultimately, the only long term solution.

Not making any profit or donating part of the site’s income to innovative music artists and film makers, and steering clear of scammy advertisers could be further plus points.

Aldor concludes that the lessons are there to be learned from Mininova’s demise.

“The next torrent portals, which will cover the next millions of torrent files, will hopefully learn from this situation. All in all Mininova’s partial shut-down will not influence the worldwide BitTorrent activity, it has just set up the rules for the successors of Mininova.”

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

The key thing to understand is that nobody is being forced to use Magnet links or trackerless torrents. While these long-standing technologies may prove to be the future, they will co-exist with tracker-enabled torrenting for quite some time. For now, nobody will be forced to immediately change their existing downloading habits, although it may be wise to switch to a BitTorrent client that is compatible with these technologies.

In an attempt to clear some of the mystique surrounding DHT, PEX and Magnet links we will walk through all three briefly, hoping to assure those who’ve become confused earlier this week.

DHT

Using DHT instead of trackers is one of the things The Pirate Bay is now trying to encourage, and torrent downloads that rely solely on this technology are often referred to as “trackerless torrents.” DHT is used to find the IP addresses of peers, mostly in addition to a tracker. It is enabled by default in clients such as uTorrent and Vuze and millions of people are already using it without knowing.

DHT’s function is to find peers who are downloading the same files, but without communicating with a central BitTorrent tracker such as that previously operated by The Pirate Bay.

DHT is by no means a new technology. A version debuted in the BitTorrent client Azureus in May 2005 and an alternative but incompatible version was added to Mainline BitTorrent a month later. There is, however, a plugin available for Azureus Vuze which allows it access to the Mainline DHT network used by uTorrent and other clients.

Peer Exchange (“PEX”)

Peer Exchange is yet another means of finding IP addresses. Rather than acting like a tracker, it leverages the knowledge of peers you are connected to, by asking them in turn for the addresses of peers they are connected to. Although it requires a “kick start”, PEX will often uncover more genuine peers than DHT or a tracker.

Magnet links

Traditionally, .torrent files are downloaded from torrent sites. A torrent client then calculates a torrent hash (a kind of fingerprint) based on the files it relates to, and seeks the addresses of peers from a tracker (or the DHT network) before connecting to those peers and downloading the desired content.

Sites can save on bandwidth by calculating torrent hashes themselves and allowing them to be downloaded instead of .torrent files. Given the torrent hash – passed as a parameter within a Magnet link – clients immediately seek the addresses of peers and connect to them to download first the torrent file, and then the desired content.

It is worth noting that BitTorrent can not ditch the .torrent format entirely and rely solely on Magnet links. The .torrent files hold crucial information that is needed to start the downloading process, and this information has to be available in the swarm.

Pirate Bay links cf. Mininova links: When the Magnet link specification first came out, in January last year it called for a particular format (“base32 encoded”). The links that EZTV, Mininova and ShareReactor have displayed for some time all conform to that original specification. In May of last year the specification was changed, in favor of “hex encoding”, and that is the format of the links being displayed by The Pirate Bay. Torrent clients should accept either format.

Compatible Clients

All the main torrent clients: uTorrent 1.8.5, Vuze 4.3.0.2, BitTorrent 6.3, BitComet 1.16, and Transmission 1.76 (and others) support Peer Exchange and DHT (via a plugin in the case of Vuze). Neither BitComet nor Transmission yet support Magnet links but Transmission is planning to include Magnet link support in the upcoming 1.8 release. Bearing in mind that no site, including The Pirate Bay, has yet abandoned support for traditional torrent files, there is plenty of time for support to be added.

We hope that this article has cleared some of the smoke that was generated by The Pirate Bay’s announcements earlier this week. There is no need to panic, cry or be angry, and it’s not a problem if you’re still confused after reading this article. Torrents will still be available and aside from some extra downloading options thanks to sites that add Magnet links, nothing drastic will change in the near future.

Props to ‘Adapa’ for contributing to this article.

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

“This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak at the time.

In March 2009, isoHunt and the CRIA appeared in court. IsoHunt asked the court to decide whether BitTorrent search engines could be held liable for .torrent files that might point to copyrighted data, but the CRIA demanded a full trial against the BitTorrent site.

In the end the judge felt that the issues were too complex and consequences too far reaching not to move to a full trial.

IsoHunt appealed that decision but yesterday were turned down by the appeal court.

“The issues involved in this case are fundamental to the rights of creators to earn a living from their work,” said CRIA president Graham Henderson. “A matter of this importance should be considered by a court with access to all the facts and not, as isoHunt had argued, to only one party’s version of the facts. A lower court agreed with us and now so has the court of appeal,” he added.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, isoHunt’s Gary Fung said that the decision was not that sad and was expected.

“We didn’t lose (the case),” he told us, “only a motion on a form of litigation and we’ll have news soon enough on how we are to proceed suing CRIA in self defense”

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

With a net profit of close to a billion US dollars in 2008 Asus is one of the big players in the computer business. They are also no stranger to BitTorrent, as they’ve been making BitTorrent supported hardware for years, including the first BitTorrent router.

Recently the company decided to embrace BitTorrent even further, and use it to boost the download speeds on the tens of thousands of downloads they offer on their website. It is currently enabled on all larger downloads listed on the official website.

“In order to speed up software download process, ASUSTek is now implementing BitTorrent DNA technology. Through this technology, the software you need can be delivered to you with less time,” Asus informs their customers.

Consumers looking for drivers or software will now see a P2P download link next to the regular http downloads. When the P2P link is clicked Asus explains the process to first time users, after which they will be asked to download the BitTorrent DNA client.

Asus is offering BitTorrent boosted downloads

DNA stands for BitTorrent Delivery Network and is developed by BitTorrent, Inc. The software runs in the background on your computer and uses BitTorrent to speed up regular downloads, which means that customers will share the files they’ve downloaded with people who are downloading the same content.

Of course we would rather see regular .torrent links instead of the closed DNA software, and that is also the main disadvantage to Asus’s implementation. In the past BitTorrent’s DNA has been causing problems for some people and although these issues have reportedly been resolved, it still leaves a bad taste with some people.

Nevertheless, it is good to see that billion dollar companies are interested in, and willing to take advantage of BitTorrent. In the end it comes down to a classical win-win situation for both parties. Consumers get faster downloads and Asus a reduction in bandwidth costs.

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

Although they didn’t win the award, the evolution of Bitlet continued steadily. After its introduction it added features such as music streaming (currently utilized by mininova) and the ‘bookmarklet‘ which allows users to inject a direct download link into torrent search engines. Today Bitlet adds video streaming to this list, another long awaited addition.

The experimental video streaming feature allows users to stream video using BitTorrent and watch the file, even as it’s still downloading. The first release only supports videos in the Ogg format, but developer Daniele Castagna told TorrentFreak that he might extend this list, depending on how much time he can spend on the project.

In order to make Bitlet work with streaming video a few modifications had to be made, but its still good old BitTorrent technology under the hood. Daniele has put up a few example videos on the site and below them are instructions on how to stream your own files using Bitlet.

There are a few important conditions to fulfill in order to achieve an optimal streaming experience. Of primary importance is the need for sufficient seeds and peers to guarantee a decent download speed. Besides this, the playback time will depend on the quality of the video – the higher the quality, the more bandwidth is needed.

The streaming feature seems to be working well, and it’s actually the first live example of BitTorrent video streaming which doesn’t require the installation of any obscure third party applications. The only thing needed is an up-to-date version of Java, which most people already have installed.

Although current bandwidth prices are dropping, most video services such as YouTube are paying millions of dollars for traditional server side streaming. Especially high quality video is costly to stream, and peer-to-peer technology can certainly make a huge difference there.

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

Zabriskie, himself an avid BitTorrent user, said he has leaked all of his albums on torrent sites ahead of their official release date. And he’s not the only one doing this. “I can tell you from numerous conversations and firsthand experience that there are few artists left, even in the big leagues, that do not. You wonder where the early leaks come from? Don’t be so surprised.” he writes.

People are not going to buy any albums before they’ve had a chance to listen to them, or before they’ve seen the artist perform live, Zabriskie reasons. Indeed, the top 1% of all artists might still be able to sell an album based on their previous performances, but the average artist has to be heard first. Much to the dislike of the RIAA, file-sharing networks are the preferred way for many people to sample music.

Zabriskie doesn’t see file-sharing networks as a threat to musicians though, quite the opposite in fact. “No one should ever be upset that people are downloading their record for free. They’re listening to it. And chances are they will buy it someday if they like it. Someone who doesn’t buy it still wouldn’t have bought it if they didn’t download it, so what’s the worry?”

In fact, much like radio, file-sharing networks are a great way to promote music. Zabriskie discovered this himself, as one of his tracks appeared on the famous Indie/Rock Playlist torrent in February 2008. Many artists have seen an increase in their fanbase after one of their tracks appeared in these playlists, since they were downloaded by tens of thousands of people.

“It’s really cool, just one person’s mixtape, but a great way for people all around the world to see what’s going on in music that month. So, very suddenly, tens of thousands of people from around Portland to Poland had that song on their computer. How did Criznittle find it? I don’t know, exactly. But he did, and he liked it, and he shared it, and I found a lot of fans because of it’,” Chris points out.

So what does this mean for the music industry, one might ask. It is hard to predict the future of course, but it’s clear that consumer to consumer promotion will be much more important than the marketing budgets of the major record labels. Music is being freed from the corporate stranglehold, and although it’s a challenge to find the right distribution method for the future, the artists and fans will come out as the winners.

Zabriskie’s final words sum it up nicely.

“Bottom line: if you like something you listen to, support the artist however you can. If that means buying something, great. If that means going to a live show, great. If that means sharing it with a friend, great. If that means blogging about it, great. If that means requesting it on your local college radio station, great. If that means just scrobbling it to Last.fm so people can see that you’re enjoying it, great.”

“That’s the future of music. It’s completely in your hands, not mine, not anyone else’s who makes music. Yours. Don’t let anyone judge you for how you choose to find and experience music. The soundtrack to your life is up to you. All music is free, everywhere. Don’t take that for granted. Share it, disappear into it. It’s yours.”

Amen.

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

Uploading fakes to a BitTorrent network is relatively easy, but keeping the torrents active is a much more difficult task. The moderation teams on private trackers remove fakes as soon as they appear – if people are stupid enough to even try to upload them. Other directories such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova, however, are more difficult to police due to their open nature but these sites continually battle fakes too.

There are several forces driving this phenomenon. Of course, the likes of the MPAA and their partners like to upload fakes in order to waste downloader’s time and to monitor their activities. That said, there are others who are uploading fakes in order to make themselves money, with many of the fakes simply encouraging the use of malware such as Domplayer, or sending the user ostensibly to get passwords to view the video, but in reality directing them to spammy sites.

Unless you’ve been on Mars for a few years, you will be aware that aXXo is one of the strongest BitTorrent-related brands and as such, the aXXo name is ripe to be exploited with fake torrents and the schemes behind them. This morning, Mininova was bombarded with hundreds of fake aXXo torrents linking to various malware and spam schemes. Luckily the moderation staff at Mininova are very much on the ball, and their skills and experience allowed them to remove them very quickly. Indeed, the thousands of users at Mininova also help by informing the site that a torrent is not what it should be, but it’s an on-going battle.

When a fake is removed from the site, the IP address of the uploader is also banned, meaning that unless the uploader gets himself a new IP, he won’t be able to upload any more. However, the problem is a lot deeper than just the odd person here and there uploading a fake. Just recently malware and spam peddlers have been advertising online for people to work for them on a freelance basis, uploading fakes to torrent sites and getting paid for each one. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people have taken them up on their offers, getting paid around 20 cents for each successful upload. The scammers mitigate the effects of their worker’s IPs being banned by torrent sites by advertising for people with dynamically assigned IP addresses, while encouraging them to use proxies.

We spoke with Moe1210 at Mininova who told us that for them, although time consuming, the aXXo fakes are easiest to spot, and they are often removed from the site in a matter of minutes. However, due to these teams of hired individuals doing the uploading, the sheer number of fake torrents is significant. Even though the mod team are checking the site every 5 minutes, sometimes in that period 50 fakes could’ve been uploaded. On a regular day, the amount of fakes uploaded can reach 2,500.

In the ongoing battle the scammers are getting a little smarter, adjusting the way they operate as the challenge is met by Mininova. They became aware that at certain times of the day the fakes stayed on Mininova for longer periods before being removed, which was down to fluctuating staffing levels due to people having to sleep, rest and venture back into real-life every now and again. To counter this, Mininova now have a worldwide team which cover the major time zones.

Speaking of fake aXXo torrents, Moe1210 told TorrentFreak, “It’s a pretty pointless task uploading a torrent with aXXo in the title trying to trick people [on Mininova]. I’d say that 75% – 80% of our members know that if the torrent is not from aXXo’s account, its fake – meaning, if they check the ‘general’ tab and aXXo’s name is not in red letters, it’s fake! They [the scammers] have no way of spoofing this.”

Many fake torrents are using a tracker located at http://bt9.c7q.fast1010.info, which is hosted with Ecatel in The Netherlands. In order to trick users into believing the torrents it tracks are real, the tracker is faking the download statistics, as can be seen with this fake on TorrentPortal, which at the time of writing is reporting 76278 seeders and 82380 leechers.

The torrent contains an unusable video and a password.html file which claims to reveal a password to play the file, but instead leads the user into a quagmire of spammy sites.

Users looking to avoid these fakes should read our previous article entitled Stop Downloading Fakes and Junk From BitTorrent. In the meantime be aware that the same people behind the aXXo fakes are behind file names such as ‘Race to Witch Mountain 2009 DVDRIP XviD BangeR’, and ‘Watchmen 2009 DVDRIP SeedeRz’.

As a final thought, TorrentFreak asked Ecatel if they intend to do anything about the fakes tracker. They told us, “Ecatel does not allow any spam and malware in its network.” And then it became clear. The tracker hosted at Ecatel doesn’t host the content, the users do – like all trackers. Sometimes the law’s such an ass.

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

“This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak at the time.

IsoHunt has asked the court to decide whether .torrent files, and BitTorrent search engines in particular, are infringing copyright or not. In other words, should BitTorrent search engines be held liable for the .torrent files that might point to copyrighted data? If so, what does this mean for other search engines, and sites such as YouTube?

Today, isoHunt and the CRIA appeared in court. While isoHunt asked the court to rule that they do not break any laws, the CRIA is demanding a full trial against the BitTorrent site.

This landmark case might be the one to define how files can be distributed online. Among other things, isoHunt argues that they are just a search engine, like Google, and that they have no control over the files they find elsewhere on the web. In court today, they showed that a filetype:torrent search for Coldplay on Google returns plenty of torrent files, similar to a search on isoHunt.

All isoHunt does is index other BitTorrent trackers and indexers, without human intervention. The files that can be found on isoHunt are scattered all over the Internet, and even these files are just metadata.

IsoHunt founder Gary Fung told TorrentFreak that the judge converted their petition into action at the end of today’s hearing. “He just thinks the issues are too complicated and consequences far reaching legally and technically, and a full trial is more appropriate for discovering all documents,” Gary said.

“The important issue is not about the complexity or ramifications of our case which we won’t dispute, but rather CRIA liking to use full action and discovery because it’s costly for all parties and the court and was exactly why we decided to bring our petition first for efficiency before they were going to sue with an action,” Gary told TorrentFreak in a response. IsoHunt is likely to appeal the order for conversion.

To be continued.

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

The Pirate Bay trial started on February 16 with lots of press coverage, protesting pirates and people handing out free candy. As the days went by, plenty of information was presented by both the prosecution and defense.

So which elements are most relevant, and which side is ahead in the polls?

On day two of the trial the prosecutor announced that half of the charges against the four defendants had been dropped. The prosecutor couldn’t prove that the .torrent files that were submitted as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker, and he had to let go of all charges that accused the Pirate Bay folks of ‘assisting copyright infringement’.

What remained is the claim that they were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’. Armed with several screenshots of web pages and torrents downloading films and music albums, the prosecution argued that this was indeed the case. The torrent files hosted on The Pirate Bay allow people to download and share copyrighted material – period – they argued.

The crucial part here of course is whether the defendants actually ‘assisted’ in making any files available, this will eventually be up to the judge to decide. The prosecution has shown that there are indeed torrent files hosted on The Pirate Bay, and that some of these indirectly link to copyrighted material. However, whether the defendants are assisting in making copyright content available remains doubtful.

The defense has argued that they are not ‘assisting’, and dragged a giant primate into court to prove it. On the third day of the trial Carl Lundström’s lawyer, Per E Samuelsson pointed out that the prosecution failed to prove that Lundström had been involved in any transfers of any copyrighted material. This became known as the now famous King Kong defense.

“The admins of The Pirate Bay don’t initiate transfers. It’s the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong,” Samuelsson told the court.

“According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström has personally interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia,” the lawyer added.

During the days that followed both sides tried to strengthen their case, but not much that was actually related to the ‘assisting in making available’ charges that are central to the case. The prosecution brought in more screenshots and some actual torrent files as evidence, and tried to get a better grip on the Pirate Bay’s anarchic ‘management’ structure.

The defense on the other hand, argued that there are many ways to share torrent files online. By playing a video in court they showed that The Pirate Bay is just one of many torrent trackers, and a tiny part of the download chain. One of the witnesses, Kristoffer Schollin from Gothenburg University, told the court that the Pirate Bay is an “open database” of .torrent files which he described as simply an advanced type of hyperlink.

In addition to detailing the charges, there was further debate on the damages claims from last week. While music and movie industry insiders claimed that piracy was responsible for a large part of the decline in sales of their respective industries, media professor Wallis told the court that the file-sharing is actually beneficial to the entertainment industry.

It is now up to the judge to review all the information presented by both parties and decide whether the defendants are guilty of ‘assisting in making copyright content available’.

If the decision was based purely on a big win via the media during the trial, there can be no question that The Pirate Bay won a decisive victory and proved to be even more popular than ever expected. However, as it stands, it’s difficult to find anyone – no matter where their preferences lie – who is willing to step out and say who they believe is going to prevail in the case overall.

What is pretty much certain is that this won’t end with the verdict that is due on April 17. No matter what the outcome it seems unthinkable that either side will accept a defeat. An appeal seems almost inevitable.

Stay tuned.

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

Answering questions from the defense, Schollin explained that .torrent files are a more sophisticated type of Internet link (such as an http hyperlink) and that The Pirate Bay is an “open database” of .torrent files. Several large companies are using BitTorrent technology said Schollin, including Blizzard who use it for World of Warcraft.

When asked about TPB specifically, Schollin noted that the site is essentially a BBS (Bulletin Board) for .torrent files, attached to a forum for debate. He was also asked, in his opinion, if TPB is illegal. “That’s for the court to decide,” he said, while noting that the technology behind the site is not illegal in any way.

Schollin told the court that The Pirate Bay may not be the world’s largest tracker, but it is the most famous one, largely thanks to the media and thanks to the trial. Right now there are maybe a dozen other big ones and maybe even a thousand others, he said.

Going on, he noted it is usually sites that are known to users, while trackers can operate behind the scenes, not seen by the regular users. The day of the very big torrent site may be over, he added, and said he believes the future could lie in meta-searches, while explaining how client-based searches like Vuze’s operate.

When asked about the type of content indexed on TPB, Schollin said, “My God, everything,” noting that both copyright and copyright-free material can be found.

When speaking with Carl Lundstom’s lawyer Per E Samuelsson, Schollin admitted that while searching for .torrents via Google (using Harry Potter as an example) more results could be found than with TPB’s search alone. Indeed, said Schollin, EU law documents are easier for him to find via Google than they are on the EU’s own website.

The so-called King Kong defense also resurfaced, with Samuelsson asking Schollin if it was possible to conclude that the torrent file uploaded by user ‘KingKong’ was first published on TPB. Schollin said it was not possible.

Touching again on the issue of whose actual tracker is used when a torrent file is activated, Schollin said that just because a .torrent is available on TPB, it doesn’t automatically follow that the file uses TPB’s tracker.

Schollin went on to explain how to make a .torrent file which links to content. He said that in the creation stage, it doesn’t even require an Internet connection and everything is done on the user’s PC with a torrent client, not on TPB. Once created the .torrent file could be uploaded on to the Internet. It would then be indexed by Google, which then allows anyone to access the .torrent via a Google search.

Then it was Prosecutor Håkan Roswall’s turn to question Schollin. He put it to Schollin that kudos could be achieved in file-sharing circles if an individual put pre-release material up on the Internet, a point with which Schollin agreed.

Roswall asked Schollin why he felt the TPB had grown so big and so popular. Schollin said that many users may feel that participation might be considered ‘cool’. The discussion again moved back to DHT (Distributed Hash Table) and then the court took a break.

On return, IFPI lawyer Peter Danowsky stepped up to question Kristoffer Schollin. He asked where Schollin’s interest in TPB began and he replied it started when there was lots of discussion about them on the Internet. Conversation moved to Schollin’s knowledge of TPB’s infamous ‘legal’ page and the ideology of some of its users.

Next up to question Schollin was Monique Wadsted, representing the movie companies. She asked Schollin if he had heard the rumor that 40% of the Internet’s traffic is down to TPB. Schollin said this was incorrect and it was more likely that they were responsible for 40% of all BitTorrent traffic. Wadsted then put it to Schollin that 50% of all the world’s .torrent files sit on TPB, and he denied this amount too, but recognized that there would be a significant number.

Schollin was then asked by the defense if he believed that TPB has a role in transmitting communications on the Internet. Schollin agreed it did. When asked if TPB might be considered a ’service provider’ under the law, he said that was for the court to decide.

Up next as a witness was Roger Wallis. Wallis is a media professor, composer and Chairman of the Swedish Composers of Popular Music and is involved in other outfits dedicated to the rights of musicians. However, Wallis previously said that he did not see the difference between TPB and other search engines such as Google and has criticized the music industry for being too slow adopting technology.

Speaking with Peter Altin, (Peter Sunde’s lawyer), Wallis said he specializes in developing the music industry on the Internet and because of this some have incorrectly drawn the assumption that he works for the industry – he doesn’t.

Wallis referred to a report he wrote which detailed the music industry’s approach to digital technology. He said there were elements who would do anything to smother it, referring to the backlash against cassette tapes in the 1970’s.

Altin asked Wallis if there is any connection between illicit downloads and lost sales in the music industry. Contradicting the opinion of John Kennedy of the IFPI in his testimony yesterday, Wallis said that downloading caused an increase in sales of live event tickets and although there has been a reduction in CD sales, this won’t continue.

Wallis went on to explain that while some people download, these people also tend to buy more CDs than others that don’t. It’s not just downloading causing competition for the industry, other things have an effect such as the growth of computer games, he said.

Wallis believes the music industry is shooting itself in the foot by going after file-sharers, for the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph. He said that on the whole, file-sharing is beneficial to the music and movie industries, pointing out that the movie industry just had its most successful year ever. But the music industry doesn’t help itself he argues. Anyone who has bought a Beatles single in the past, simply cannot buy the same single in the digital domain due to licensing issues. “This is madness,” he said.

Next up to question Wallis was Peter Danowsky, who immediately started to annoy him by questioning his credentials. Danowsky mused if Wallis was even a proper professor, while disputing the year when Wallis qualified as such, calling him into doubt and criticizing him. “Have you no better questions to ask?” Wallis replied, reportedly visibly annoyed.

With tempers starting to fray, the court took a break.

After the break media professor Roger Wallis was questioned by Henrik Pontén from Sweden’s Anti-Piracy Office. Pontén went on where Danowsky left off and asked the professor if he could elaborate a bit more on how he acquired his title. “Can you use Google? Wallis replied “Then you could easily find my CV,” he added, and the court agreed with his assessment that they have already been over this.

Pontén then showed some graphs from a study that showed that 18% of those who download copyrighted music buy less, while only 8% indicate to buy more. These figures cause some confusion in court, and Wallis responded by saying that these figures do not correspond with his findings. “I believe that it has no relevance,” Wallis added. The prosecution asks some more questions about the contradicting results of the other study, but Wallis doesn’t want to go into it.

When Wallis left the stand he was asked whether he wanted compensation for his appearance. “You are welcome to send some flowers to my wife,” he responded.

Defendant Peter Sunde then asked the court if it’s ok to show an 8 minute clip that explains how BitTorrent works. The defense explains that the film will show that none of the alleged criminal offenses actually took place since torrent files can be shared in many ways. Fredrik Neij, one of the other defendants, further said that the SLK investigation was flawed because not all the torrents that were presented as evidence are exclusively tracked by TPB.

After a short break the film was played (available for download here) and it showed how a torrent is created. First a BitTorrent is downloaded. To make the torrent a tracker has to be added, hundreds of trackers can be found through Google the film explained. It further explained how these torrent files can be shared through MSN, Skype, through blogs like Wordpress or a website such as The Pirate Bay. The other party can then grab the torrent and start downloading.

The rest of the day the court will go over the personal charges against Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm. These are seperate cases, not related to TPB, and we will therefore not cover these on TorrentFreak. Our daily coverage on the proceedings in the TPB trial will continue on Monday.

Developing story, please check back for updates.

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

Tobias Andersson was briefly questioned about the speech Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) gave after the TPB raid in 2006. Andersson told the court that he wrote the speech for Neij, since speech writing isn’t Neij’s thing. Andersson’s appearance was over in a few minutes and by 9:15 John Kennedy was testifying in English, through a Swedish translator.

IFPI’s John Kennedy confirmed he was the CEO of IFPI and summarized his duties there, noting the group has 1500 members worldwide and it’s main aims were to ‘improve’ copyright laws through government lobbying and fight piracy around the world since “piracy has done immense damage to the music industry.” Kennedy says that IFPI takes up strategic litigation against various targets worldwide.

Kennedy said that for a long time the industry sold its product in physical form (and experienced a limited piracy problem) but with the advent of digital music this situation has grown worse, with some claiming that copyright didn’t even exist in the digital world. He noted that the main sets of previous litigation were in the US (Grokster) and Australia (Kazaa).

Kennedy then said how pleased the music industry was with the legal wins against these two companies and in the wake of their demise, The Pirate Bay took their chance to develop their business. Kennedy said he first heard of TPB in 2004 and it was quickly becoming the #1 source of illegal music and this was damaging to the industry.

Kennedy noted the transition to digital music was a great threat to them, and although more music is currently being consumed than ever before, “less is being paid for than ever before.” If music is available for free, says Kennedy, many people find that temptation too much to resist and new business models can’t flourish.

The discussion then moved to the claim for damages. Kennedy said the claims were “justified and maybe even conservative, since the damage is immense.” Talk moved to the link between the cost of downloading legally and the claim for damages. Kennedy said that for the industry, CDs were more profitable than digital downloads are today.

He said that artists, studio producers, songwriters, music publishers, studio staff and the marketing and promotion people all have get paid and the music industry spends more money than most other industries on R&D. It invests 20% of its revenue on finding new artists and although some suggest that this isn’t needed in the Internet age, they are wrong said Kennedy.

Kennedy went on to explain that music marketing is designed to take effect in “Week One” of an album’s release and in an ideal world a new release would chart at #1 and would reach its sales targets in that first week. But if products are made available on Pirate Bay during that time he said, “then purchases are taken out of the market and because of the illegal use of music, the legal use of music under-performs and in some countries that can have a dramatic effect.”

Kennedy was asked about CD sales in the last 10 years. He said they dropped from $27 billion to $18 billion. He said that the Top 10 CDs in 2001 sold 69 million units and the Top 10 CDs in 2008 sold 46 million units. 9 years ago the #1 record sold 13 million units but in 2008, Coldplay sold half of that.

Kennedy was asked what impact legal downloads have on these figures, but he denied they made up the difference. The music industry has always relied on young people for sales he said, and these same people have got used to using illegal sites. “Many legitimate sites have struggled to compete with free. It’s impossible to compete with free,” said Kennedy.

When put to him that some claim that illegal downloading promotes sales, Kennedy labeled this as old-fashioned thinking and said that people don’t think this way anymore. When asked about P2P providing live performance promotion, Kennedy said that every single live performance success is linked to a previously successful recording career/sales.

When asked about the differences between TPB and Google, Kennedy said there is no comparison. “We talk to Google all the time about preventing piracy. If you go to Google and type in Coldplay you get 40 million results – press stories, legal Coldplay music, review, appraisals of concerts/records. If you go to Pirate Bay you will get less than 1000 results, all of which give you access to illegal music or videos. Unfortunately The Pirate Bay does what it says in its description and its main aim is to make available unauthorized material. It filters fake material, it authorizes, it induces.”

Kennedy says TPB threat is growing all the time. “They are proud of this with their statistics – there are 22 million users, 1 million visitors each day, 1.6 million .torrent files and they say they are responsible for 55% of BitTorrent traffic. They pride themselves on the quality of what they deliver.”

When questioned about the IFPI’s 10X damages multiplier for pre-release material, Kennedy felt this was fair considering the damage it does to the launch of a product. Kennedy says they have teams of experts monitoring the Internet everyday for piracy.

He went on to say that people who download music from TPB spend much less on music than they would otherwise and if they didn’t get it for free they would buy it. “It is common sense, if they couldn’t get it for free they would buy it and when we ask them, they confirm that.”

When asked if downloaders have less money than others, Kennedy said that younger people have the money but just don’t spend it on music anymore. Kennedy said that the reduction in sales in the music industry is directly attributable to illegal downloading.

When asked about scientific research on the issue, Kennedy said that of several reports, only one said there was no causal link between file-sharing and lost sales – all the rest say there is. Discussion of certain reports on the issue took place, with defense lawyers questioning Kennedy on the details of the reports.

The defense lawyers pointed out that in one of the reports Kennedy refers to, lesser known artists appear to be downloaded a lot on TPB but Kennedy said although he is 56 years old, he recognizes nearly all of the artists in the TPB Top 100 list.

Carl Lundstrom’s lawyer asked about the profit on the industry’s $18bn turnover from 2008. “Terrible,” Kennedy replied. Of the big players “..only one company is making a profit.” Kennedy was pushed, if he knows the turnover, why doesn’t he know the profit. He said it was difficult to say.

He was also asked how much of this $18bn turnover is used to fight piracy, Kennedy said there are three main areas of expenditure. Funding the RIAA in US, IFPI globally and more local groups such as IFPI (Sweden). They all have budgets and a large proportion of this is used to fight piracy.

The global amount used by IFPI on lobbying and fighting piracy is £75 million.

Kennedy said he qualified as a lawyer since the 70’s but hasn’t practiced recently. He was asked if he understood BitTorrent. Kennedy said he did, but in “very vague terms.” When the defense lawyers asked more detailed questions, about uTorrent for instance, Kennedy said he’d heard of it but had no idea of the details. It was very clear he knew nothing about any remotely technical issues.

Kennedy was asked if IFPI has taken any action against the actual sharers of the music made available via TPB, as detailed in this case. He said he couldn’t say and didn’t know who these individuals are. He then admitted to not knowing how The Pirate Bay works so the defense lawyers put it to him – if you don’t understand how TPB works, how can you say they are to blame? Again he was pressed why he took no action against the actual sharers but he said he didn’t know and admitted “It’s probably unlikely we took action.”

Kennedy was asked why they haven’t sued Google the same way as TPB. He said that Google said they would partner IFPI in fighting piracy and he has a team of 10 people working with Google every day, and if Google hadn’t announced they were a partner, IFPI would have sued them too.

When pressed on the earlier reports that Kennedy referred to, the defense lawyers wanted to know if IFPI had commissioned any of them. Kennedy said he didn’t know.

The court then took a morning break.

After the break the hearings continued as Bertil Sandgren, a board member of the Swedish film institute took the stand. He was asked to explain what he knows about file-sharing, and told the court that he knew that some movies leak on filesharing networks before they premiere, that there is no copy protection on these files and that there are even subtitles available.

The court then asked to keep the questions relevant to the damages that are claimed. Sandgren went on to say that he believes that the impact of file-sharing on the movie industry started in 2002/2003. He claimed that there is statistical evidence that illegal file-sharing has affected the number of seats sold per film. In Sweden, the ticket sales between 2002-2006 have fallen by 31%, Sandgren explained.

“The reason for this drop is that the number of premieres have increased but sales have decreased. File-sharing has somewhat made the market thinner. The difference between number of sold tickets on average has dropped 10,000 per film per year. That equals between 800,000 and 1,000,000 SEK per film,” Sandgren said.

Sandgren further told that the damages they claim are based on a fictitious license fee. They have calculated the total number of movie downloads in a year, and use the film’s market share (4% for the movie “Mastermind”) to come up with the total number of downloaders . “If there were 1 million downloaders in total, it’s probable that 4% downloaded Mastermind,” Sandgren said. “Of those, 28,5% were downloaded from TPB. That gives 12000.”

After his explanation of how the damages are calculated, the defense lawyers questioned Sandgren. Most of their questions focused on the link between downloading and the decline in ticket sales. According to the defense lawyers there is research showing this link is not that straightforward, while stressing that 2008 has been the best year for the Swedish movie industry ever. Sandgren said that he didn’t want to comment on factors underlying the success year.

Around noon the court took a lunch break.

After lunch Per Sundin, CEO of Universal Music and Louis Werner of IFPI Sweden were questioned. Again, most questions dealt with the amount of damages the entertainment industry suffered, with the defense questioning whether the figures presented by the entertainment industry are justified. Werner told how music sales declined in 2002 and 2003, but as blogger Anna Troberg points out, IFPI’s own data seems to contradict this statement. Illegal file-sharing was the main reason of the loss in sales in recent years Werner stated.

When Per Sundin was asked whether the decline is sales could be fully attributed to illegal filesharing, he said yes. Sundin went even further and claimed that 50% of the loss in sales the music industry has suffered can be linked to The Pirate Bay. He had to admit, however, that he has no evidence to back these claims up. “It is what they see and experience every day,” Sundin said.

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde and Universal Music CEO Per Sundin bumped into each other after the hearings. Peter just Twittered “I just played the angry game with Per Sundin, Universal. Always fun at #spectrial! Oh, and I won of course.”

At 16:00 the court decided to end the hearings for today.

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

Gottfrid, aka Anakata of The Pirate Bay offered to become Mininova’s temporary host, with the site moving again later on to be hosted by Gary Fung of isoHunt. As the site continued to develop, Mininova needed their own servers and in the years to follow its growth has been nothing short of spectacular.

From a standing start in 2005, by mid-2007 Mininova had entered the list of Top 100 most popular sites on the entire Internet with 2 million daily visitors, an amazing achievement.

Then, at the tender age of just three years old, Mininova was breaking more records. By January 2008, the site was serving 3 million daily visitors who were downloading almost 10 million .torrent files every day. In February the site introduced torrent streaming and by the end of that month had served over 4 billion .torrents.

The innovations didn’t stop there. In March last year, Mininova began its Beta testing of BitTorrent powered video streaming. The new streaming feature allowed users to watch videos instantly, streamed from .torrent files. The Open Source “Swarmplayer” was developed in collaboration with the Tribler team from the Technical University Delft and Free University Amsterdam.

In April 2008, the BitTorrent community realized just how big Mininova had become, after technical problems took down the site, resulting in massive traffic surges on other indexers. Although the site quickly returned, May was disappointing, as anti-piracy outfit BREIN flexed its muscles and threatened the site – filter, or else. However, by the end of the month it became clear that Mininova’s popularity was far from on the wane, as it served up its 5 billionth torrent.

Niek, CEO of Mininova, told Torrentfreak: “The growth rate is above every expectation. Mininova’s download numbers almost doubled this year – and the number of visitors grew almost just as hard. We are excited about the coming year and its challenges: stay tuned for some important announcements in the coming months.”

Just a few days ago, Mininova announced it had delivered its 7 billionth torrent, which left everyone wondering where it was all going to end. Today, the BitTorrent behemoth reached its 4th birthday and like someone else with a birthday today, the dream appears to have turned into reality.

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

There are thousands of open BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, and most of these don’t actually host all the files on their website. However, since they are open, anyone can add the tracker to their torrent file. The tracker owner has no knowledge of the files being spread via his or her tracker. Recently the popular Internet TV network Revision3 was attacked by MediaDefender because they were running an open tracker, and they are not alone.

This week, ‘Open Source Torrents‘ had to deal with some remarkable consequences of hosting an open BitTorrent tracker. The tracker, dedicated to sharing Open Source Software through BitTorrent, was taken offline because it allegedly infringed the copyright of the game ‘Command&Conquer Red Alert 3′. There was never a .torrent file for this material stored on the server though, only hashes of data.

The webhost, Liandra Tech, took the tracker offline after it received a copyright infringement notice from ESA. “We have to terminate your webhosting account with us, due to complaint about copyright material infringement on ostorr.org,” they wrote to the founder of the site, as they forwarded the email they got from ESA.

Akash, the founder of the tracker was very surprised by the decision of his webhosting company, to shut down his site without even consulting him first. “These folks shut me down for “Command and Conquer” supposedly going through my tracker. I’ve never even played the game,” Akash told TorrentFreak. “We did host some actual files, but only mirrors of the open source software we track, which is definitely perfectly legal.”

Although OStorr.org is a relatively small tracker, it has helped to spread more than 50,000 copies of The Open CD, and thousands of copies of other free and Open Source software. So, the only torrent files listed on his website were of Open Source website. The tracker was also open to anyone else, like many others, but Akash has no way of telling what files are tracked.

Akash is forced to find a more understanding host now, but he assured us that the tracker will return. “Open source software is about as legal as it gets. Apparently not. Time to find a new host,” he said.

Update: Looks like the webhost made the right decision after all, Akash just wrote us: “After a lengthy apology from Liandra due to a misunderstanding that I had uploaded the C&C torrent (I’m told C&C is actually a pretty dodgy game…), I’ve been offered three months of free hosting. The site’s up and running and I’m going to block all non-authorised torrents.”

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

1. Download via RSS

Let’s start of with the most important part – downloading .torrent files from an RSS feed. There are a couple of BitTorrent clients that are able to handle RSS feeds. Bitcomet, uTorrent and Vuze for example all have an RSS feature. A list of all compatible clients is available on Wikipedia.

The process of setting up RSS downloading differs for each individual client, but it’s not hard to figure out. uTorrent has published an elaborate guide on its website that walks you through the various steps and options. The most important part, however, is where to find the RSS feeds. The next tips will cover this.

2. Search Based RSS Feeds

Most of the larger BitTorrent sites offer search-based RSS feeds. The reason they’re called “search-based feeds” is because they are feeds that relate to particular search terms. For example, if you search for ‘TorrentFreak’ the search results will have a link (orange button) to a feed that will send you updates on all torrents that match this search term.

3. Uploader RSS Feeds

The search feed may work well for less generic searches, but in some cases feeds based on torrent uploader might work better. User based RSS feeds might be a good idea if you want to download all the content that is uploaded by a specific user, aXXo for example. Uploader RSS feeds are supported by The Pirate Bay, Mininova and several other sites.

4. Premade TV-Torrent Feeds

Since quite a few people use BitTorrent as a VCR or TiVo alternative, RSS feeds are a great help in automating TV-show downloads. There are several ways to import your favorite TV-shows into your download queue, but perhaps one of the most convenient is FeedMyTorrent. FMT offers several pre-configured RSS feeds that won’t list any duplicate episodes. The site only launched recently and as such is still in Beta, but the feeds are fully operational.

5. Create a Custom TV-Torrent Feed

Premade feeds are convenient, but impossible to customize. BitTorrent users who want some more control over what appears in their RSS feed might want to give tvRSS a try. With the advanced search options everyone can generate a personalized TV-torrent feed in no time. Detailed instructions on how to do this can be found in one of our previous articles.

6. Download Torrents Remotely with RSS

Instead of relying on content from specific users, tags or searches, there are also ways to add torrents to a feed manually. This can be used to download torrents remotely, so when you’re away from the computer your BitTorrent client is running on in the background. An easy way to add torrents to a personal feed is to use mininova’s bookmark feature. Another service that offers custom feeds, not restricted to mininova is FeedMyTorrents. For both services you’ll need to have an account.

7. Ted

Ted, the torrent episode downloader, is an advanced TV-torrent downloader that makes it easier to import TV-torrents into your BitTorrent client. Ted keeps you up-to-date by checking the RSS feeds of your favorite BitTorrent site for new episodes of your favorite shows. The application comes with several pre-added feeds, so there is no need to find the RSS feeds yourself.

8. Broadcatch with Miro

A great example of an all-in-one BitTorrent solution for video downloads is Miro, formerly known as the Democracy player. Miro is an Internet TV player that allows you to automatically download and watch the latest TV shows, video podcasts and more. These players are especially useful for people who only use BitTorrent to download video files, since the BitTorrent client is built in. Miro is platform independent and comes with several predefined channels. However, you can also add your own RSS feeds for your favorite TV-shows.

9. Read Those Feeds

In the first tip we explained how RSS feeds can be used to download torrents automatically. However, RSS feeds can of course also be used as a notification system. That is, you can use BitTorrent feeds with your regular RSS reader, and decide whether you want to download the torrents that appear in the feed yourself. This way you will have total control over your downloads. The downside is that the downloads will not be loaded into your BitTorrent client automatically.

10. The Latest BitTorrent News

Last, but not least, we encourage every BitTorrent enthusiast to add our RSS feed to their feed reader. Not only will this keep you updated on everything that happens in the wonderful world of BitTorrent, you might also stumble upon some useful tips every now and then. For those people who want to watch TorrentFreak’s latest news, a BitTorrent compatible feed for our TV-show is available here, or alternatively you can subscribe with iTunes.

Do you have any tips or suggestions we missed? Drop a comment!

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

On a free account, users of Google’s App Engine can host 500MB data, and serve up to 5 million page views a month. This is more than enough for a medium sized BitTorrent site. At the moment it is not possible to upgrade these limits, since paid accounts are not yet available, but this might change in the future.

Both sites are totally ad free, and great resources to search for torrents. V0rtex currently searches 12 BitTorrent sites, including established sites such as Mininova, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. The site itself has a clean look and feel, and the search results are sortable by date, peers, seeds and more.

TorrentFreak spoke with Reda, the developer of the site, who told us that he started the project to learn how to code. “It was really fun and exciting to learn Python and Javascript/Ajax,” he said. His goal is not to compete with the big players though. Reda hasn’t even bothered to register a domain name for it since it was mainly a learning experience.

This is different for the other BitTorrent meta search engine hosted on Google’s App Engine, which does have its own domain. TorrentTab, which is a project of David Sánchez, is also using Google’s architecture to search for torrents. The site currently searches 10 sites, and presents the search results in tabs using Google Ajax Feed API.

David told TorrentFreak that he initially started the site on his own Internet connection. When the site started to attract more visitors, he had to find an alternative. Google’s App Engine seemed to be a great solution, so he recoded the site in Python and moved it over to Google’s infrastructure.

Unlike some of the other meta-search engines that use tabbed search results, TorrentTab is not merely loading the results from the other sites in a frame. Unfortunately there are no sorting options for the search results, which makes it hard to find the best seeded files, or the latest uploads.

Although V0rtex and TorrentTab are are not revolutionary in terms of features or functionality, it is great to see that Google is providing a free playground for BitTorrent startups. It’s always good to see some variety.

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

Of equal annoyance, is a new torrent which the user knows is well seeded, yet for one reason or another it is impossible to connect to the tracker in order to complete the download. Maybe the tracker has gone down or is simply too busy to accept the connection – either way, the download isn’t getting very far without it.

The good news is that with a little perseverance it’s possible to resurrect a seemingly moribund torrent. The key to bringing the torrent back to life is the hope that an identical release is available on another tracker, and in that swarm there are people that have enough data to complete the download. But how is it possible to find the same release on other trackers?

There are manual solutions involving Google, but quick and easy is my preferred method and btReAnnouncer offers just that. The site is really easy to use, so, although it is well seeded, here is a walk-through to find more trackers tracking Michael Moore’s ‘Official’ ‘Slacker Uprising’ torrent – the same technique can be used for any release, especially ones with tracker or seeding issues.

First of all I downloaded the .torrent file from The Pirate Bay onto my PC and uploaded it to btReAnnouncer. Within a few seconds the site displayed the current primary tracker – http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce. However, it also displayed a list of 17 other tracker URLs identified as tracking the same torrent – any one or combination of which could help you to complete a stubborn download. Note that it doesn’t make sense to add more than one tracker from the same url (e.g. thepiratebay.org) because they often track the same peers.

At this stage it is possible to select a new primary tracker for the torrent by ticking the checkbox and pushing the ‘ReAnnounce’ button. Then check any of the other trackers in the list to be used as an alternative and click ‘ReAnnounce’ again. To finish up and start downloading the .torrent, download it by clicking on the hyperlinked text underneath ‘Download ReAnnounced Torrent…’ and import it into your favorite client, not forgetting to point it at your previously incomplete download.

btReAnnouncer can also be used to find public sources for otherwise private torrents, just don’t forget to remove any passkeys etc from the announce URL in the torrent. If your BitTorrent client doesn’t allow you to edit or add trackers manually, this can be achieved by using another online service, TorrentEditor.

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

The BBC is one of the parties currently testing the new BitTorrent streaming format, which is part of the P2P-Next project. The scientific director of the project, Johan Pouwelse, told TorrentFreak that it’s not just the BBC interested in this new technology: “We are working with a lot of interested parties. Through the European Broadcasting Union we are getting a lot of feedback. We are expected to do more field trials in the near future.”

If the technology turns out to be a success, broadcasters can save millions of dollars each year on video streaming projects. ISPs on the other hand will be less excited, because they now pay for this bandwidth. Most importantly, however, is that this technology allows individuals to broadcast their streams to thousands of users, without having to invest in lots of bandwidth. YouTube 2.0, sort of.

Pouwelse further told TorrentFreak that, unlike services such as Joost, they are fully committed to open standard and Open Source. “As a research project we, by definition, need to make things that others don’t already have, without needing to worry about business models,” he said, going on to explain how they got live streaming via BitTorrent to work.

“To be relevant we remain BitTorrent compatible,” Pouwelse said. “However, traditional BitTorrent is not compatible with streaming. We solved this problem by dropping the tit-for-tat protocol and making something which is more generic, which we call Give-to-Get.”

“Give-to-Get tries to obtain video blocks just in time for displaying. Tit-for-tat rewards people that give bandwidth to you, which does not work in the streaming case. Instead, Give-to-Get gives bandwidth to people that are nice to others. This is more powerful, but proved to be quite tricky to get working.”

Indeed, streaming a webcam feed is totally different than downloading a huge video file. What the Swarmplayer does is download and buffer one minute’s worth of data, which is then traded with other people in the swarm. The users are actively trading the buffered data.

A key breakthrough was that Dr. Arno Bakker got the “UnDownload()” functionality working. This is needed, because the player has to drop data after a while, since you’re watching a continuous stream. This turned out to require momentous revamping of 7 year old code.”

For those who want to test the BitTorrent live streaming, there is a streaming test where you can tune in to a webcam in Amsterdam, or a 5 minute weather report (not live) from the BBC. You can provide feedback and check out some of the statistics here. More details about how to set up your own BitTorrent live stream are also available.

The Swarmplayer and the BitTorrent live streaming technology are still work in progress. “We hope that we can get this code solid and stable in a month,” Pouwelse said, “then we can focus on the next milestone of sharing ratio enforcement, where we give better video experience to those that upload more.” We will certainly keep an eye on these developments, as it may change the way we watch video online.

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

No more slow downloads, viruses, or adware/spyware required to find the files you are looking for. The Rhever application has a built in easy-to-use search engine to find what you are looking for and does not require you to troll websites looking for .torrent files.

Unfortunately for Rhever, there is no Internet ‘buzz’ around their brand, people just aren’t taking about it, which is a bit strange for such a seemingly great product. If you do a search, 95% of the stuff you’ll find are press releases – and they only appear to be designed to worry people onto their new service.

They play an awful lot on the closure of TorrentSpy in their attempts to generate fear, uncertainty, doubt – and new business for them.

The ‘launch‘ press release lays off most of the scare tactics but is still littered with strange and misleading statements. Rhever spam is posted on dozens of forums, like this one and there are also some ‘interesting’ articles and blog posts around (tagged ‘Rhever’) proclaiming the end of BitTorrent sites. Even Digg doesn’t escape Rhever spam submitted by the company itself.

Also, Rhever use the most contentious music industry statistics to ‘prove’ that other P2P networks are dangerous, and refer to the IFPI as “respected industry analysts.”

If the fear doesn’t work, maybe the comedy angle will get them some subscribers? Rhever has produced a series of (admittedly quite funny) promotional animations showing the benefits of using Rhever over existing file sharing networks. Take a look at the ‘Rhever vs LimeWire’ video below which says that Rhever has done the impossible – and completely eradicated viruses from its network. In its own words:

Each of its [Rhever's] 60,000 servers are run by an administrative team that monitors the servers for any rogue files – viruses, fake uploads and other negative features that are removed instantly

LimeWire vs Rhever

BitTorrent vs Rhever . In this video you will find the secret of the Rhever network..

So it seems Rhever is selling access to good old Usenet and advises its subscribers to use NZB files to get their material, recommending its own (currently non-operational) site to get them – NZB.net.

Considering that Rhever’s strategy is to worry people about the legality of their chosen method of sharing files so much that they sign up, they’re quite cavalier about their own legal position. NZB sites in the US don’t have a great lifespan and offering a full package with Usenet seems very brave.

Finally, here is the KaZaA vs Rhever video:

Rhever is keen to play on the adware bundled with KaZaA, and that proves interesting when armed with WHOIS.

Rhever.com and NZB.net are both owned by a company called JMH Media. JMH Media are the current owners of the MySpaceBar.com domain, which was previously connected to the Scam.MySpaceBar malware. Unsurprisingly, McAfee doesn’t like it at all.

I’m not exactly inspired with confidence to try this Rhever but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Time to sign up. Unfortunately, no matter what I put in I get errors, a point not lost on the solitary poster on the Rhever forums:

No mention of prices anywhere. No contract information. No proper terms or conditions. No company information. No privacy statement. No contact information. No postal address.

There is however, a link to the Rhever client, named ’setup.exe’…..

Maybe Rhever’s fear-marketing has got to me? Far from being scared into leaving BitTorrent, all this uncertainty means that i’m too scared to even install ’setup.exe’ due to what might be inside it – an instinct I acquired in my days as a LimeWire/KaZaA user. I think something just backfired.

Well then, another couple of hours wasted looking for The Holy Grail, only to realize that much like the French soldiers in the movie of the same name, I already have one.

What we really need now is a talented animator to make a proper ‘BitTorrent versus Rhever’ video….

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

Mininova is currently the largest BitTorrent site with over 30 million unique visitors per month. Mininova displays user submitted torrents and carries legitimate premium content from publishers such as CBC. Unlike The Pirate Bay, the site does not have their own BitTorrent tracker.

It transpires that BREIN and Mininova have been secretly trying to reach a mutually beneficial agreement for more than a year now, but when one side believes they are acting within the law and the other side believes the opposite, a legal clash seems inevitable.

Erik Dubbelboer, one of the co-founders of Mininova, told TorrentFreak that Mininova will not cave in to pressure from BREIN. He expects to have more details about the upcoming lawsuit later this week: “We will proceed to court with full confidence. We operate within the law, as we maintain our ‘notice and take down’ policy. That is, we remove search results if a copyright holder asks us to.”

Sites like YouTube operate in a similar manner – if the site receives a demand from a copyright holder that it should take content down, it does so under its DMCA obligations and there is no further action. Mininova doesn’t even host any unauthorized content, only .torrent files, which should make it even less of a target than YouTube. Typically, BREIN doesn’t see it that way.

Tim Kuik, managing director of BREIN, said that Mininova’s business model is based on illegal activity. “A notice and take down procedure is absolutely insufficient for a site that makes use of unauthorized files, structurally and systematically,” he added.

The announced legal action will focus on the question whether Mininova has to filter their search results or not. BREIN wants Mininova to install such a filter, Mininova on the other hand doesn’t want to censor the search results. The outcome of the case is likely to have a huge impact on the future of other BitTorrent sites, and even sites such as Google and YouTube.

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