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.

Only 10 days after the game’s launch date, already half a million people had downloaded the game. During the months after that, another million people obtained a copy of the game via BitTorrent. According to our estimates, Spore was downloaded 1.7 million times since early September, a record breaking figure for a game.

When we posted about the impressive download rate on Spore – inflated due to the DRM that was put into the game – EA doubted our statistics. EA’s Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and that several downloads didn’t work, were buggy, or contained viruses. We wont deny that on badly moderated torrent sites, malicious torrents probably can be found. However, this constitutes less than 1% of the available torrents, and they are not added to our statistics.

Below is the list of the 10 most downloaded (PC) games on BitTorrent in 2008, with an estimated download count for each. In second place we see The Sims 2, also from the hands of Spore creator Will Wright. Assassins Creed completes the top 3 with just over a million downloads.

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

This is exactly the gap PickyPirate is trying to fill. PickyPirate fetches the most popular movies, games and music albums from Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, two well known review aggregators, and lists them on the frontpage.

For those not familiar with meta-review sites, these websites make a ranking of the movies, games and music albums that received the best reviews from critics. The links to these entries on Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes are of course included and there you can read the full reviews.

Ehud, the developer of PickyPirate told TorrentFreak that a friend asked him why nobody created a mashup of BitTorrent and Metacritic, “I immediately thought ‘Hey, that’s a really good idea!’” he said. “Basically I never know what to download from all the stuff that’s available.”

The site currently lists most popular items from the last 30 days for all categories (Music, Movies, PC Games, Xbox 360 and Wii). The lists are updated every 15 minutes, so if the scores change on Metacritic, they will be quickly updated on PickyPirate too.

If you click on one of the items on the frontpage it automatically lists all the “relevant torrents” available on The Pirate Bay and Mininova for that title, but more sites might be added later.

BitTorrent users have a huge amount of material at their fingertips and as such, they can afford to be very picky indeed. However, not everyone has the time to be picky but with the help of sites like this, allowing others to do it on your behalf can come a good second.

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

Suprnova will be extremely friendly to BitTorrent illiterates. One of the new features is a Java applet that allows you to download .torrent files without having a BitTorrent client installed. This is not only useful for newbies, but also if you’re working on a PC that doesn’t allow you to install a BitTorrent client like some workplaces or Universities have. The Java applet that will be integrated into SuprNova will be similar to BitLet.

Torrents and Trackers

SuprNova’s aim was and is to index more content than any other site. Unlike The Pirate Bay, SuprNova will also index torrents from other sources. Upon its release it will crawl more than 25.000 trackers and have a database of more than 1.000.000 torrents. This will make SuprNova one of the biggest BitTorrent indexing sites right from the start.

Search

Suprnova wasn’t perfect, but the really annoying thing was that there was no search feature. In the early days this wasn’t really a problem, only a couple of torrents were added every day. But as the site grew bigger and bigger it became nearly impossible to find what you want without spending minutes digging through the categories. The new Suprnova will therefore have a search function, a significant change, but a good one.

Design

Sloncek, the former owner of SuprNova donated the domain to TPB under the condition that they would keep the nostalgic design more or less intact. There will be some changes design wise, but most people will still see that it’s inspired by the old Suprnova look. Brokep, one of the TPB admins told TorrentFreak: “The idea was to bring SuprNova to what it would have been today it if never closed. So, it’s supposed to be an updated version of the old beloved site! We hope that people still get the SuprNova-feeling and that it also feels like a modern website.”

Community

The new Suprnova will have its own IRC channel, just like in the old days. In fact, it is already up and running, so if people want to chat about Suprnova (or other things), go to #suprnova at freequest. As mentioned in our previous post, Suprbay.org will be the new forum for the Suprnova and TPB community, over 5000 people signed up already, and SuprNova hasn’t even been launched yet.

Another new feature related to the community is the comments system. Similar to other BitTorrent sites people are now allowed to post comments on every torrent. Apart from the usual rants the comments are useful to get an indication of the quality of the files.

Front Page

Like in the good old days the frontpage will show all the latest torrents by category. The categories will be on top of the page, and they will be the same as before: Games, Movies, TV-Shows, Anime, Music, Apps, Mac & Misc.

This was only a sneak peek at some of the changes on the new Suprnova. I guess you have to wait for the launch if you want to check out all of the changes and new features, the wait will soon be over.

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

It’s interesting how companies are starting to realise the potential of BitTorrent as a promotional platform for their content. Distributing demos of games is a great way to build up hype around an upcoming, or even slightly old (Disciples II, for example) title, and what better way to do it than share it over BitTorrent?

From BitTorrent.com:

Disciples II: Dark Prophecy returns gamers to the magical realm of the Sacred Lands where four races – the Empire, the Mountain Clans, the Legions of the Damned and the Undead Hordes – continue the battle for the destiny of their Gods. A decade after the First Great War, the final prophecy continues to unfold. Deep within the crevices of the Sacred Lands, the Chosen One has emerged, fated to bring salvation to some and destruction to others. Braced with renewed faith and newfound conviction, each race must once again take up the sword for the sake of their people and the glory of their God.

As a kid, I used to be a total strategy game buff. I not only played all the RTSes like Command & Conquer and Age of Empires, but also many turn-based ones like Age of Wonders and Disciples. Even though I only had the demo of Disciples I: Sacred Lands, me and this friend were crazy about it and spent more hours on it than is healthy. So when I finally got my hands on Disciples II, I played it constantly for days, until I finished the game.

Disciples II: Dark Prophecy is truly one of my favourite games, and I highly recommend it to anyone remotely interested in strategy games. The only drawback is that it’s Windows-only. Check out some screenshots below.

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

Not long ago the BBC said that BitTorrent aids terrorists and pedophiles, but the Hindustan Times obviously doesn’t agree. BitTorrent gives you freedom! A quote from the article:

If you have a BitTorrent client installed on your PC, you basically know what this is about. And if you dont have a client, then it’s time to be zapped. Bit torrent gives you freedom. You no longer pay for the music, movies, TV Series, books, software and games that you download. Interested? Just Google “Bit Torrent” and figure it out. Once you got it, here’s what you should download…

Don’t believe it? Check out this scanned version of the article.

At this moment India already has a higher percentage of BitTorrent users than the US and the UK, and this article might give it a little boost.

The Hindustan Times (via)

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

Today p2pnet’s Alex H did an exclusive Q&A with with uTorrent’s Ludvig Strigeus:

Alex H: Last time we spoke you guys had just released uTorrent 1.1.4. Now you’ve just released uTorrent 1.5. How far has uTorrent come with the 1.5 release? What’s new?

Ludde: uTorrent 1.5 is a significant release that’s a big milesone for us. The new major changes in 1.5 are support for Protocol Encryption (i.e. Message stream encryption) and Peer Exchange (a feature that lets peers interchange peers with each other, and reduces the need for a working tracker, it makes BitTorrent more distributed). A lot of work has also been spent on optimizing the downloading speeds, uTorrent should now download much more efficiently than before.

In combination with this, a new algorithm for optimized disk accesses has been implemented. Previous versions would hit the disk much more often, while the new automatic disk cache tries to minimize this.

The time between releases, a whopping 2 months, is the longest time ever in uTorrent’s history. This shows that 1.5 is really a big change compared to 1.4 (The number of changes is well over a hundred), and we’ve worked to perfecting it down to the smallest detail.

Other notable things that have been added since 1.1.4 (when you last interviewed us) include:

* RSS Reader: Allows uTorrent to automatically fetch releases (such as TV-shows) as soon as they are released. This helps uTorrent to become a better content-on-demand platform, since it will automatically help users download the content they need. A nice RSS tutorial can be found on the webpage for the users that are unsure about how RSS works.

* Unicode support: The same executable can be used both in Unicode mode (windows 2000 or later) or in ANSI compability mode (windows ME or earlier). This is a quite unique feature for native Win32 programs. Unicode is a relatively new universal way of representing characters inside the computer, which means that uTorrent is compatible with foreign torrents (such as those with chinese filenames), while still being able to run properly on old platforms. Support for old platforms like Windows 95 is an important goal for us, not because the user base is there, but it shows that we care about how the application performs for all users.

* Mainline-DHT: This was added in uTorrent 1.2. It means Distributed Hash Table, and is a nice technology that really minimizes the dependency on the tracker. DHT allows uTorrent to receive peers through a distributed network of peers, so the tracker is not needed.

We’ve come a long way since 1.1.4, now uTorrent is really one of the serious contenders in the BitTorrent scene. We concentrate on adding mainstream features that are easy to use, and benefit the majority of the user base, and thus uTorrent is geared towards both normal users and “expert” users that know the inns and outs of their computer.

Alex H: Who makes up the uTorrent team now?

Ludde: The uTorrent team consists of:

* Ludvig Strigeus (ludde) – Sole uTorrent Developer
* And some of the most notable members of the uTorrent community:
* Giancarlo Martínez (Firon) – Support technician and my right hand.
* Timothy Su (Ignorantcow) – Website designer
* Maciej Trebacz (mav) – In charge of translations
* Carsten Niebuhr (Directrix) – Working on the upcoming webinterface
* Ludovic Arnaud (Ashe) – Working with website efficiency/admin frontend

Then there are a bunch of other people hanging around in the IRC channels/Forums helping people and helping me.

Alex H: uTorrent worked with Azureus to develop the Message Stream Encryption specs. What does it do and how does it do it?

Ludde: It is basically an encrypted wrapper around the BitTorrent traffic. This makes it a lot harder for Internet Service Providers to block or throttle the BitTorrent traffic, as they can’t determine as easily if the traffic really is BitTorrent. Blocking is obviously of interest to them, since it has been estimated that at least 30% of all Internet traffic is BitTorrent.

All data packets are encrypted with a key generated at run time, so there is no way for a 3rd party to observe what kind of files that are being transmitted by just analysing the packet stream. However, characteristics of the BitTorrent protocol, such as packet sizes, or the fact that a client connects to a large number of peers, can still be used to infer that BitTorrent activity is going on, so the encryption is not a universal solution.

Alex H: Can the PHE specifications work with other protocols, or is it a BitTorrent-only thing?

Ludde: It was designed to be as general as possible, and to not be dependent on BitTorrent, so it can (in theory) be used to encrypt other protocols. Just like SSL can be used to encrypt other things than HTTP.

Alex H: What was it like collaborating with rival developers? Was it just “Team uTorrent” and “Team Azureus”, or were there other individuals involved too?

Ludde: We are not really “rival developers” even though we work on “competing” clients. I have a healthy relationship with the Azureus team and we’re cooperating openly. My goal is not to destroy Azureus. I want to provide a lightweight alternative to Azureus for the people that believe that Azureus’s requirements in terms of CPU/Memory are too high.

Alex H: Last week Slyck.com published a story that revealed a deal between a company called PeerFactor and Ludvig Strigeus, uTorrent’s developer. How does uTorrent fit into this? Is Ludde working for the “dark side”? Have you sold out as some people are claiming?

Ludde: I can’t believe how much this deal has been blown up. The whole hysteria started with the Slyck.com article saying that uTorrent is cooperating with RetSpan and working with Anti-P2P organizations. Later the article was updated because that statement was factually incorrect. Yet I believe a large number of users still have doubts about uTorrent’s legitimacy.

The deal as such is not even about uTorrent. I will provide the company (PeerFactor, a startup company started in late 2005), with a small DLL-file that can be used for one thing only – Downloading files from BitTorrent network. The deal is not between uTorrent and PeerFactor, and it does not affect uTorrent. I’m just using some of my expertise to help them develop an application that webmasters can use to publish big content on their websites. I don’t even give out any source code.

I can’t show you our agreement, but uTorrent is not even mentioned in our deal. There are no mentions of any Anti-P2P ideas, and PeerFactor owns NO rights to the BitTorrent code. The deal is just between me (Ludvig Strigeus) as a developer and PeerFactor. It’s not related to uTorrent at all. The license has no malicious intent towards P2P users, and it does not affect uTorrent in any way. The contract explicitly states that they can only use it for the designated purpose, and not for anything else such as monitoring P2P users.

Alex H: Who was at the meeting with PeerFactor?

Ludde: I have not even met anyone in person, I havn’t even talked to them on the phone! All our communication has been on e-mails and IRC. This is not a big contract. It’s just a small side project to try to get some payment for the effort involved in writing a BitTorrent protocol stack.

Alex H: What does this .dll file do exactly?

Ludde: The DLL file component that I have exports a few basic functionalities such as

* Start downloading a torrent
* Stop it
* Pause
* Remove it
* Determine how many % was downloaded.

It contains no functionality whatsoever for retreiving IP-addresses of peers.

The DLL file wasn’t written specifically for PeerFactor. It’s a generic download DLL with a small size/footprint that I have developed as a separate project. I just made some minor adjustments so it would meet PeerFactor’s requirements.

Alex H: Do you know, or can you speculate on what PeerFactor plans to do with the .dll?

Ludde: The goal is to use unused bandwidth of Internet users to distribute big files, like trial games, free trial music and trailers. It is not related to fake files.

Alex H: How is the deal structured? Is it a straight sale or a lease? Is there some kind of royalty payment to Ludde?

Ludde: It’s a 6-month lease. PeerFactor will evaluate if the DLL fits with their requirements. No source is involved, and all ownership to the code belongs to me. I have not been paid anything, but if the service turns out to work, I will get some form of payment. I don’t have an employment contract with PeerFactor. I do not work for them, and they do not have control over any decisions I make related to uTorrent.

Alex H: PeerFactor has ties to French anti-P2P company RetSpan. Is there still a relationship there?

Ludde: No, the person I’ve been in contact with has assured me that there is no relationship at all between PeerFactor and RetSpan. I trust him, and if it turns out that there is a connection, I will not work with them.

Alex H: The uTorrent website was put on a block list a few days ago. How did it happen? Is there anything on the uTorrent website that is a security risk for users?

Ludde: These blocklists are created by a bunch of over-paranoid people (Bluetack). The software PeerGuardian has temporarily handed over list creation to Bluetack, and Bluetack prefers to be better safe than sorry. Their decision was based on incorrect facts, and it will take some time before the block gets removed.

Alex H: There is a certain level of mistrust directed at closed source applications like uTorrent. Why is the uTorrent source code not available? Will uTorrent ever be open source?

Ludde: There are no plans to make uTorrent open source. If uTorrent becomes open source, it will result in hacked clients, or companies modifying the code and creating malware clients. If uTorrent is closed source, I can make sure that the quality of uTorrent stays high and that it doesn’t become a bloated client. Further, it makes sure that the source code is not used by dubious companies or for dubious purposes.

Alex H: Is there anything in the uTorrent source code that would be considered a security risk to users, such as a “phone home” component or something that builds up a profile of the user?

Ludde: Not at all, uTorrent has an optional feature (enabled by default) that sends a unique random ID number when checking for new updates. This is used solely for the purpose of computing how many users that are actively using uTorrent. Azureus does the same thing, so it’s nothing special really. A lot of internet-enabled programs do this without even telling the user. With uTorrent you have the option to turn it off if it’s of concern to you.

Alex H: uTorrent is free, but donations are accepted. What other kinds of work have you done to make ends meet? Is there anyone you would refuse to work for?

Ludde: Working with an Anti-P2P company is certainly not a good idea, considering my interests in making the best BitTorrent client. I would not do that. Apart from that, I don’t know. I will have to evaluate any possible offers and see if they match with what I think is fair and makes sense.

Alex H: I asked a similar question to this in our previous interview: How do you see BitTorrent developing over say, the next three years?

Ludde: This is a very hard question to answer. I definitely believe P2P is here to stay. I think ISPs will get a bigger role and start developing solutions to help P2P instead of working against it, for example cache mechanisms. I like the new law in France that legalizes P2P, and I hope that more countries will follow.

I think we’ll start seeing BitTorrent more in embedded devices, such as set-top boxes. More services will be developed around BitTorrent to distribute legal content, and subscription based services such as high quality movies-on-demand instead of renting DVDs in the rental store.

Alex H: Thanks for your time, and good luck for the future.

Ludde: Thanks.

P2Pnet

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