The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

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

However, just a few hours after we posted the article, Lily explained that she’s not a pirate but simply didn’t know any better.

“I made those mixtapes 5 years ago, I didn’t have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry back then…,” she responded.

What she probably meant to say is that she had no clue about copyright before her income depended on it. Yet, she believes that every other person on this planet should know better, or get their Internet access cut off. Way to go girl.

In fact, the old Lily from 5 years ago is not too different from the hundreds and thousands of casual file-sharers today. Copyright is a complex issue and the boundaries between right/wrong and illegal/legal are not always that clear. Instead of waging a war against file-sharers on the blog she could have tried to pass her knowledge about copyright on to the public.

She chose to make it a soundboard for frustrated artists instead, which only resulted in negative reactions from the public up to a point where Lily couldn’t take it anymore. Indeed, TorrentFreak read one posting on the site which had in excess of 100 comments – only 4 of which supported the singer’s position.

“I’ve shut down the blog, the abuse was getting too much,” she explained on Twitter a few minutes after she announced the end of her legendary music career.

Just before she pulled the blog she wrote “I will not make another record,” adding “The days of me making money from recording music has been and gone as far as I’m concerned, so I don’t stand to profit from [anti-piracy] legislation.”

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the debate Lily inflamed over the last week. While there seemed to be an endless stream of rich musicians willing to complain on behalf of bands we’ve never heard of with “we aren’t suffering, they are” statements, there were also huge numbers of music fans who were more than a little reluctant to be lectured by well-off superstars on the issue.

But most prominent were those vehemently opposed to UK plans to disconnect alleged infringers from the Internet. The abuse that Lily spoke of on her blog largely wasn’t directed at her, but at these plans and her support for them. Think again Mr Mandelson.

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

Another successful MMORPG is Entropia Universe. Designed by Swedish company MindArk, the game’s software is completely free of charge and there are no subscription fees. Instead, the game employs a type of micropayment system whereby the player can use real world money to buy in-game currency known as PED – Project Entropia Dollars. The neat part is that items purchased within the game have a real-life monetary value, since PEDs can be withdrawn from the game and changed back into real-life money.

Currently operating on Version 9.4, the entire Entropia Universe will be shut down at 00:00 UTC on Monday August 17th in preparation for Version 10 of the client which will follow a few days later.

However, for publisher MindArk the bandwidth implications for its 800,000 plus subscribers grabbing an update are significant – the Version 10 update is a whopping 4gig in size but as regular readers of TorrentFreak will be aware, it’s a cost that can be hugely reduced with everyone’s favorite swarming technology.

From last night the brand new version of the client (utilizing Crytec’s CryEngine2) was made available for pre-launch download via the Planet Calypso site – and for the first time, using BitTorrent of course.

BitTorrent use is becoming increasingly popular with MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, Project Powder, Fiesta Online and GodsWar which all use the protocol to save on bandwidth costs.

Users wanting to grab the update can do so here. If you’re new to BitTorrent and want to learn how it all works before you take the plunge, here are some handy TorrentFreak guides to get you started.

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

Blue Gold : World Water Wars from director Sam Bozzo is a movie about one of planet earth’s most precious resources – water. It examines the ‘future’ for water and how various corporations are plotting to control its supply, how governments use water for political gain and how the control of this essential liquid could be the source of future military conflicts.

Of course, when anyone uploads a movie to the Internet in breach of copyright, there is always the chance of a different type of conflict – one with the entertainment companies and their anti-piracy allies. However, this particular movie is independent and less likely to attract that type of attention. Perhaps because of this and a warmth towards independent creators, the movie’s BitTorrent uploader godcanjudgeme added a note to his release on The Pirate Bay, encouraging people to financially support the movie by giving donations to the creators via their website.

Then something surprising happened. “A message was sent to a third party ‘acquaintance’ of mine, from the film’s producer Sam Bozzo,” godcanjudgeme told TorrentFreak.

Dear Torrent users,

I thank all of you for your interest in my film. When I read the book Blue Gold, I knew immediately I must utilize my film talents to relay the urgency of prioritizing our fresh water management for the survival of our race. I had no idea of the financial and physical risks that making this film would entail at the time, and if I did I honestly would not have made the film. Luckily for the world, the film exists, and so it is my goal to follow the advise of the first press review which proclaimed “Every person on the planet must see this film”. In this respect I thank godcanjudgeme for uploading this torrent and bringing a new audience to the film.

I have seen film festival audiences around the world transformed by the stories of the heroes of the water wars. I am thrilled that in the US and Canada the DVD is available via shoppbs.org and amazon.ca respectively. I respect the internet community that chooses to view films through torrents like this for whatever reason. In fact my first documentary, Hackers Wanted, focuses on the philosophy of true hackers and their journeys exploring cyberspace.

It is important to understand that independent films costs a great deal of personal finances to create, in this case over $100,000. In order that I may make other films in the future, I must at least make my money back. I respectfully ask that if you download the film you consider donating $5-$10 to the further publicity of the film via PayPal on my site www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com. Also consider reviewing the film favorably on IMDB and recommending that others buy the DVD.

To be honest, at first I was upset to see this torrent, this film ‘leak’, but some good hacker friends have suggested I embrace the opportunity to reach a new audience, and I feel honored to be doing so!

So what inspired godcanjudgeme to upload the torrent in the first instance?

“I had received a number of requests for “Blue Gold : World Water Wars” after uploading another documentary entitled “Flow : The Love Of Water” which runs along similar lines,” he told TorrentFreak. “It is a topic which should be close to everyone’s hearts. The main reason for uploading “Blue Gold” was that it simply wasn’t available outside America, and so many people were wanting to see it,” he added.

Godcanjudgeme explained that he firmly believes that the downloaders of this particular documentary are not the average ‘hit and run’ movie grabber.

“I felt that in this case these are people that would have gone to a screening or purchased a copy if it was an option,” he told TorrentFeak. “Therefore I truly hope people will realize that independent filmmakers do need our support. If this were a multi million dollar production I could expect no consideration for the producers of the film, but in this case however it was decided to ask that people give something in return to the persons responsible for providing not only entertainment but insight.”

“We all have movies that we have downloaded for free,” he added, “probably large numbers of them, in this case I think it’s time to show our support.”

Since Sam Bozzo is embracing BitTorrent, it seems appropriate to add links where people can download the movie. And in the spirit in which godcanjudgeme uploaded the movie, please consider donating.

The DVDRip can be downloaded from OneBigTorrent or The Pirate Bay .

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

More recently, however, the pressure is being applied to the administrators of public BitTorrent sites and trackers who accommodate millions of users every day. At any given point in time 25 million peers are connected to The Pirate Bay’s trackers, which dwarfs every other tracker on planet earth while making the site the prime target of the entertainment industry.

If the Pirate Bay were to close, roughly 50% of all public torrents would be put to a halt, and many of the smaller public trackers would have a hard time in coping with the extra load and could even collapse under the strain. Meta-search engines like Torrentz would have much less to index too. That said, if you’re lucky enough to be a member of a private site, the show probably goes on.

What we’re interested in is how many of you rely almost exclusively on public trackers such as The Pirate Bay and what percentage get your BitTorrent fix mainly on private trackers. For clarity, we define a public site as one that requires no membership or logins and is open to all, while a private site is one you have to join and have probably been invited to. This leads us to the following question for this week’s poll.

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

Among other tools, M-Lab will run the Glasnost application developed by the Max Planck Institute. Last year, tests performed with the Glasnost tool revealed that Comcast and Cox were actively interfering with the BitTorrent transfers of their subscribers.

The Java applet developed by the Glasnost project uploads and downloads data via BitTorrent for a few seconds, and compares that to your regular download speed. It detects if your ISP is limiting all BitTorrent traffic, or just the flow of data through well known BitTorrent ports. All in all this tool should be able to tell you whether your ISP is messing with BitTorrent traffic or not.

In their quest for Net Neutrality, Google is backing the M-Lab project with 36 servers in 12 locations. Google will also provide network connectivity for the tools hosted on M-Lab. The servers Google has promised will be rolled out over the next few months, while the PlanetLab Consortium manages the tools hosted on the site.

The project aims to reveal the throttling practices of ISPs worldwide and put an end to all the secrecy. “Transparency has always been essential to the Internet’s success, and everyone can agree that Internet users deserve to be well-informed about what they’re getting when they sign up for broadband,” says M-Lab, explaining the ideals behind its website.

Among the other Net Neutrality tools hosted on M-Lab is a diagnostic tool which allows user to test their connection speed and receive sophisticated diagnosis of any slowdowns. More tools will be added soon, Google powered.

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

An established, but outraged musician has decided to shun conventional distribution methods by following other recent initiatives (such as Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ promotion) by making his latest album available for free download. It’s available on BitTorrent on sites like The Pirate Bay, with so-called ‘OiNK replacement’ site, What.cd, providing the album on ‘free leech’ to encourage more downloads.

TorrentFreak caught up with Benn Jordan who told us he’s not just disillusioned, he’s ‘outraged’ that iTunes is selling his work without permission and seemingly keeping all the money.

TF: Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your musical journey.

Benn: I’m Benn and I’m 29 years old. I started playing classical guitar when I was about 5, and since then, all I’ve wanted to do with my life was make music. Now 20-some odd years later, I feel lucky to tell you that I make music for a living. I’ve been releasing albums for about 14 years on various indy labels, and in the last 5 years I’ve also been composing for television, film, and ads. Music has allowed me to travel the world, meet thousands of wonderful people, and express myself through my work. It seems impossible to me that I’m on this planet for any other reason than writing music.

My label, on the other hand, doesn’t have a complex or radical plan. Our goal is to simply compensate our artists as much as possible, and that includes utilizing the “digital revolution” to our advantage, instead of punishing our artists by punishing their fans.

TF: Tell us a little about your dealings with labels and ‘the industry’ and why you became disillusioned.

Benn: Luckily, my record contracts were always negotiated well. Once things started moving with small labels I was approached by some larger ones, but there was always some seedy stipulation that prevented me from ever signing.

Still, with a 50/50 contract, I’d be selling 2,000 albums and would get $250 for it somehow. Many people that i’d meet at my shows would say that they bought my music on iTunes, yet I’ve never signed any sort of agreement allowing iTunes to host my music, and I’ve certainly never seen a dime of money for my albums hosted there.
So I started investigating the numbers from the label, which led me to some shocking revelations about how little the artist and label was getting in comparison to the retailers. When I got around to asking about iTunes, the owner of Sublight Records pleaded with me to “leave it be”. Everyone else made an extraordinary effort to ignore my calls and emails.

When I finally got a hold of the digital distributor (I must note that “digital distributor” is the most pathetic job title I’ve ever heard), I was told that once the files are in the iTunes system, it literally couldn’t be removed or taken down for a year. So, either Apple has created a self-aware doomsday machine that cannot be stopped or reasoned with, or everyone involved is just enjoying the gravy train of ripping off artists like myself and using Apple’s backbone of attorneys as an intimidation factor.

Even after having a lawyer working for me on this matter, this is the one and only response we’ve EVER been able to get from Apple:

Dear Benn,
I understand that you are writing to the iTunes Store because you are upset about finding your own album “The Flashlight” and some of your other album as well on the iTunes Store, and that you feel that you are owned
royalties for this music that his being purchased. I am sorry that you have to found this upsetting. My name is Wendy, and I would be happy to link you to right people to talk to about this issue

So, who’s the pirate I should go after? A kid who downloads my album because it isn’t available in non-DRM format and costs $30 on Amazon? Or a huge multi-billion dollar corporation that has been selling thousands of dollars worth of my music and not even acknowledging it?

I’m not disillusioned, I’m outraged, and anyone who ever spent a dime on buying music through these distribution methods should be outraged too. Here we are pleading with people to not steal music, and then we hand them dog shit when they go out of their way to buy it.

TF: You were a member of OiNK. Could you tell us a bit about your time there and how you used the site?

Benn: OiNK was an amazing network. As an avid-collector of ultra-rare old jazz records, I’ll tell you right now that it was the most complete and diverse library of music the world has ever seen. I filled some requests by uploading some of my rarer albums there. Eventually I started being harassed by someone on the network who was sending screen grabs of my seed lists to record labels. Upon complaining, a moderator simply removed my ability to communicate with anyone on the network or post comments on torrents. I can understand the paranoia and strictness.

I guess I just sort of laughed it off and stopped using it. When Oink went down, the only thing that surprised me was that the servers weren’t hidden in some weird country.

TF: Could you tell us more about the support you’re getting from one of the so-called ‘OiNK replacement’ sites, ‘What.cd’ ?

Benn: It was really a fresh breath of air for What.cd to promote the idea of artists having involvement with their own torrents. Not only does it benefit the artist to no end, but I can’t imagine that any court in the world would be able to pin someone on copyright infringement for a torrent the copyright holder created.

TF: Aside from uploading your own albums, at times you took an anti-piracy stance at OiNK, why the big change of heart?

Benn: I don’t think my stance has changed all that much. It’d be a great PR move to say that I’m pro-piracy, but I’d be lying. I keep seeing these internet news stories saying things like “The Flashbulb Promotes Piracy”. It is totally out of control. How could I be promoting piracy if I’m uploading my own material with a “buy it if you like it” message in the torrent?

What I’m promoting is the artist’s freedom to choose what can and can’t be done with his/her music, and more importantly, the listener’s freedom to do what he/she wants with their own computer, MP3 player, or internet connection.

After a journey through miles and miles of bullshit in this industry, you learn one thing: If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. Whether you’re downloading my music to check it out, to accompany the CD, or even pirating it…I want you to have a version/rip of it that I’ve listened to and approved of.

TF: You say you’re not pro-piracy yet you downloaded stuff from OiNK and also What.cd. One position seems to conflict the other. How do you explain this?

Benn: In my case I think that visible list of downloads strengthens my point. Most of those downloads are actually albums I already own (much easier to download than to record an entire vinyl album), albums I previewed but didn’t like, or albums I simply cannot find available in a suitable DRM-free format (including CD). Some of the software, like the TomTom DVD on my list, is actually impossible to technically “pirate” because you can’t buy a US TomTom GPS unit without the software. The thing is, when a tracker gets busted, the companies count these towards their losses.

So, my new album currently has 6381 downloads at the time of this interview on what.cd alone. Using that deceitful equation, my losses are over $100,000. If I wanted to, I could subtract those losses from my profit and completely get out of paying any income taxes. It makes sense from an evil, corporate, criminal-minded standpoint, right?

Beyond that, iTunes and other services simply are not acceptable to me. No company will have any control over a product that I legally own after I buy it, period.

Oink was the biggest music library in the world. People didn’t use it because they were criminals, people used it because it was literally better than any service you could pay for. It was the stubborn behavior of the record labels, artists, and government that wouldn’t allow that music library to have a cash register at the front door.

The thing RIAA is scared of is that their billion dollar backbone can no longer shelter people from exploring music themselves. Their business plan had evolved into telling the world what they will want to listen to and buy, and now they’ll have to actually compete with talented artists again. As the people regain control of the market, music will be judged by it’s content again and will be subjected to it’s own Darwinism. It is a very interesting time for the music industry…and since my entire life is devoted to making music, bring it on. I hope that this situation with my new record proves to other labels and artists that giving people exactly what they want is the smartest way to conduct any business.

TF: How do you feel about people being heavily punished for sharing music?

Benn: Obviously, the last thing I would want is anyone to be fined or imprisoned for listening to my music. Another feature of uploading my own torrent is that it creates a little legal nesting area on a network otherwise deemed illegal by most governments and RIAA. When someone else uploads a torrent of my music, it is without my approval…on the other end of things, and more importantly, when someone raids an admin’s apartment…no police officer is asking me if I want to press charges.

TF: What happens when people donate?

Benn: If you decide that you like the album, you’ll have the option of donating directly to the artist. If you decide that you’d like a CD, you’ll be able to order it directly from my label. I’ve even hired my mother to run our shipping department since she’s the most obsessive-compulsive-perfectionist office worker that I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Finally, every detail of my album’s content, release, and business is done exactly the way I want it to be done. I hope other artists realize how liberating and profitable it is compared to the distribution system we’ve all become so accustomed to.

TF: Radiohead did really quite well after they offered ‘In Rainbows’ online for free. You’re a few days into this experiment – how is it going for you?

Benn: My donations have a way to go before they match the numbers from CD pre-orders, but I’m still crossing my fingers. In a week or so I plan to release a detailed statistical report. For some reason I really like making pie charts.

TF: I’ve listened to the album – Soundtrack To A Vacant Life – and I really enjoyed it. Could you tell us some more about it?

Benn: It was 2 years in the making, and is conceptually me attempting to write the soundtrack to my own life. Of course this means that it is much more cinematic than electronic, and the songs all connect chronologically. Those who have heard my previous albums can expect this one to be a lot more melodic, tame, and instrumental. Suggested listening is with a decent pair of headphones from start to finish.

TF: I have some, I’ll try that later. Thanks for your time.

Benn Jordan’s blog can be found here.

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

The project, so named according to one of the developers because “It’s sleek, fast, and generally awesome” (and ironically, commonly targeted by predators) aims to be a new tracker script that would make even high volume sites run smoothly. Currently, what.cd, like most others, is based around the ageing TBsource, a site template with a large number of holes, and little documentation.

Whilst some might think that it would be easier, and perhaps quicker, to update and close the holes in the existing code, the development team had other opinions. “You’d think so, but in the end, it would take 10 times the manpower, and much more time than it would take to rewrite it. The TBSource code is scary – there are no comments, things on one page can be implemented differently from those on another page.”

The overall aim is to produce a torrent site that will be faster for end users, easier to use for site administration, able to use optional modules, and allow a lot more users on the same amount of hardware as a TBsource system. As one developer explained “The ‘catch up’ feature on the forums, as found in TBsource, runs 2 queries per post. As we have it, that is over 80000 queries each time a user loads the page. Our sourcecode has this down to 2 queries”.

They are not alone in these attempts, back in late June the popular UK TV site UKNova also moved away from TBsource, also moving to a system based around XBTT. However, there are currently no plans for UKNova to make their system public as yet. Project Gazelle aims for a closed beta within the next 6 weeks, and will be implemented on what.cd when it is stable enough to do so. Eventually it will be released to the public, under either a GPLv3 or AGPL license. However, warned one of the development team, “some of our tools, such as cheater evasion, will not be included in the public version of the source, for obvious reasons.”

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

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of October 22, 2007…

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

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of October 6, 2007…

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

We received a letter from a lawyer representing the CRIA, they were threatening with legal action and we need to start blocking Canadian traffic because of this. Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience.

This confirms our earlier reports this week, and show that the CRIA was indeed responsible for the downtime. It’s been a controversial week and at times emotions were running really high. In the absence of any official announcement it was really hard to separate fact from fiction, with rumor and counter-rumor.

The bad news of course is that Demonoid is now unavailable to Canadians. Unfortunately it is not the fist time an anti-piracy organization effectively shuts down access to a part of the BitTorrent community. Earlier this week Isohunt had to ban US users from its trackers, and last month TorrentSpy blocked access to US users, both by pressure from the MPAA.

At the time we write this article, the forums are still offline, but it probably wont take long before these are back online too. The first sign of Demonoid’s return came yesterday when the trackers started responding again.

When an avalanche of upset Demonoid users came to TorrentFreak this week, the mood was grim when not only their site disappeared but also doubts were cast on our report. We aim to be a credible news source and understand the responsibility we have in the BitTorrent community. While understanding how Demonoid’s Canadian users must be feeling right now, it’s great that we now get the chance to share in the relief of the majority of Demonoid’s dedicated userbase.

The second most popular BitTorrent tracker on planet earth has returned, that’s the most important thing.

Update: Demonoid is having some problems again, this message now appears: “The latest changes to the site are giving us some problems – We’ll be back soon”

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

Most people who have been exposed to his music would agree, Prince is a truly great artist having written and produced literally hundreds of mostly good tracks.

Back in May, Prince announced the “Earth Tour” consisting of many concerts at the very reasonable price of £31.21 – priced deliberately low so that everyone could afford to go. All attending also received a free copy of Prince’s latest album, ‘Planet Earth’. In June, the UK’s ‘Mail on Sunday’ newspaper announced that it had struck a deal with Prince to give his new album away for free with its July 15th edition, in a never-seen-before groundbreaking deal.

After being forward-looking with this giveaway, Prince has now reverted back to the usual anti-piracy stance and according to MediaGuardian he is going to take action to protect copyrights “not just for himself, but for all artists in the digital age” and is aiming to “reclaim his art on the internet”.

So, exactly how does Prince aim to do this? Apart from an attack on commercial physical pirates operating out of eBay, his main focus will be YouTube and of course, The Pirate Bay.

Prince’s spokesman explained further: “Prince believes strongly that as an artist the music rights must remain with the artist and thus copyrights should be protected across the board. Very few artists have ever taken this kind of action over their rights. Yet, Prince has showed time and time again he is ready to challenge the system in new ways to put artists and music first”

In a move which shows that Prince (or at least his advisers) have a sense of humor, they have hired the infamous Web Sheriff (a division of Entertainment Law Associates), headed up by John Giacobbi to deal with the enforcement. They send out letters like this one – the site in question is of course, still up and running.

Apparently, following Web Sheriff threats, more than 2000 Prince clips have been removed from YouTube and 300 eBay auctions taken down but understandably, after Web Sheriff’s last contact with Pirate Bay ended in complete humiliation, they have decided to deal with them last. After they unsuccessfully demanded that PirateBay take down some ‘White Stripes’ torrents and unwittingly laid themselves open to mountains of ridicule on the infamous legal page, one can assume they plan to tread carefully next time.

TorrentFreak spoke to Brokep from The Pirate Bay to see how they feel about Prince’s plans, backed up by the fearsome Web Sheriff: “Well, ‘way to go on losing all your fans’” he said. “I truly respect the son of a king’s work as a musician but he seems like he has some kind of problem in getting to deal with his fans.” Commenting on the free CD album giveaway brokep continued, “And he’s desperate for media attention..

Earlier in the year, Web Sheriff ordered some torrent sites to publicly apologize for their activities by taking out half-page advertisements in Billboard Magazine, Music Week Magazine and Music & Media Magazine so maybe this will happen to The PirateBay?

Characteristically unfazed by the threat of Web Sheriff intimidation, brokep says: “He’s welcome to try and sue us in Sweden, there’s no basis. And it’s so funny that he’s teaming up with the joke of the anti piracy world – Web Sheriff. They are also in a big time need of some media attention, so I guessed they teamed up for that reason.”

Bloggers are also getting familiar with the Sheriff’s informal style of takedown request, which have no basis in law whatsoever. Some bloggers even feel like ‘they have arrived‘ when the Sheriff first comes-a-calling.

With his fans around the world, John Giacobbi isn’t short on publicity. His photos are all over the web but my favorite is this one of him relaxing on the hood of a classic car, not on a horse as everyone expected.

There again, maybe he’s not a real sheriff….

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

The ‘Social Center Elimäenkatu 15′ isn’t an official social gathering place – it’s a squat, a disused building into which the organizers wish to breathe new life by showing the latest blockbuster movies, free of charge to all who attend. August 8 2007 saw the screening of ‘Transformers’ at 19:00 followed by ‘The Simpsons Movie’.

At the Elimäenkatu 15 social center they aren’t just showing movies – in the last week there has been a silkscreen printing workshop, a presentation on Korean Left-Wing movements, their own ‘Fight Club’ which teaches self defense skills and even a full beach party – minus the beach of course.

Around 20 people squeezed into the ‘Pirate Cinema’ (or Occupied Autonomous Center as the organizers refer to it) on August 15 when they were offered the chance to watch more free movies, specifically Planet Terror and the latest Die Hard movie. However after what was presumably a good night, the viewers left the social center only to be confronted by police.

Finland’s Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre (CIAPC) had prompted the police to investigate the ‘Pirate Cinema’. As the organizers tried to leave, their car was prevented from doing so by three police cars. Officers handcuffed and detained two people from the car and arrested one of the organizers along with a laptop computer used to play the movies. According to reports, although the viewers aren’t in any trouble, the organizers are facing charges of breaking copyright law. The driver of the car was later released.

When speaking with Helsingin Sanomat an organizer said: “It is ridiculous that under the new copyright law, a large number of people are criminals”, adding that copyright legislation only benefits large companies and big stars: “Copyrights do not solve the livelihood of culture workers, and the enforcement of piracy laws will not promote it”

A statement on the organizers site said: “The idea of Pirate Cinema has been to show movies for free for everybody. Everybody don’t afford to go see movies in the movie theatres. At the same time Pirate Cinema has been a statement for the right to share files. P2P filesharing is a mass movement: millions of people are sharing files everyday in P2P networks, and no kind of repression will ever stop this.”

Antti Kotilainen, Executive Director of anti-piracy group CIAPC commented: “We are pleased that officials have taken action. They say that they are anarchists, fighting against big movie moguls. Then the only recreation that they have is to show movies produced by the companies that they despise so much.”

The people at Projekti Sosiaalikeskus (the organizers) are in defiant mood, as is clear from a posting to their site: “True pirates never die! Despite recent repression Pirate Cinema will continue, just wait a bit for updates. We won’t back off or give up. Stay tuned!”

According to the site, the next movie screening is set for August 22.

Thanks to Xtacy for the translation

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

Big Crook

First off, we’ll look at ‘Big Crook‘, the Hong Kong BitTorrent user jailed for 3 months for admitting uploading the Hollywood movies “Daredevil”, “Miss Congeniality” and “Red Planet”. Going to jail for using BitTorrent is a powerful headline which was designed to scare Hong Kong sharers away. Initially it worked with the HK BitTorrent community reduced by 80% after ‘Big Crook’s’ arrest. Unfortunately for the headline grabbers, the community size has since recovered and although there are undoubtedly significant numbers of people sharing Hollywood movies via BitTorrent, no-one further has even been arrested, let alone looking at prison. This ‘trophy’ bust which only has implications for Hong Kong residents, seems to have failed. Add that to the fact that this guy mounted the most ridiculous defense that was always destined to fail, this isn’t a really important verdict.

The Prince of Pirates

What about suppliers of material to file-sharing networks? Hollywood resident Johnny Ray Gasca – known as ‘The Prince of Pirates’ managed to get himself arrested three times for camcording movies in theaters. He’d hang around preview screenings and pass himself off as a movie insider in order to get access. He tried to argue that he didn’t profit from his activities but unfortunately notes in his diary said he’d made $4000 each week. When he didn’t get his confiscated equipment back he threatened the MPAA that he’d release even more movies online and said he would “laugh all the way to jail”. He was found guilty of criminal offenses (non-commercial file-sharing not involving pre-release media is a civil offense) and received 7 years in jail.

Pre-Release Leaks

In the United States ONLY, dealing in pre-release material or movies still in the theater was made a criminal offense when the Family Entertainment Copyright Act came into force. Up until then, things were dealt with under civil law. However, as soon as the changes were made, the government in the US (and the FBI) naturally got involved and they were quick to draw blood. For getting involved in the pre-release distribution of Star Wars Episode III, people who help to run the EliteTorrents website were all heavily punished. Scott McCausland, Grant Stanley and Sam Kuonen all went to prison. On July 23rd, Scott D. Harvanek will find out if he will join them.

Other people have also fallen foul of the law in the US when getting involved with pre-release material became a criminal offense. Salvador Nunez Jr is looking at a possible 3 years in jail for uploading the (pre-release) movies ‘Flushed Away’ and ‘Happy Feet’.

Jorge Romero uploaded 4 episodes of ‘24′ to the video sharing site ‘LiveDigital’ in advance of their official screening, making him guilty of a criminal offense in the United States. He is facing the possibility of 3 years in jail.

International Warez Leader

Just last week, Hew Raymond Griffiths, leader of notorious warez group ‘DrinkorDie’ was found guilty of “criminal copyright infringement” as a result of Operation Bucaneer and was sentenced to 51 months in a US jail. Even though he was a British citizen living in Australia who never committed any offense on US soil, he was extradited to the US on criminal charges. This is quite important. The MPAA went to the UK and threatened Alexander Hanff, (owner of the BitTorrent tracker DVDR-Core) with all sorts but he showed some great spirit and understanding of the law and refused to comply. They wanted him to come to the US to face them in Court but sadly, he didn’t want to go and because it was a civil case in another country and unlikely that he would be extradited, everything just died away and it seems they left him alone.

Conclusion

So in summary, if you live in Hong Kong and are caught uploading Hollywood movies and mount a ridiculous defense, you may be the unlucky one in hundreds of thousands to be made an example of.

Camcording movies is a very risky business in the US and will almost certainly result in some criminal charges, but as the millions of file-sharers around the world aren’t generally camming, these convictions have no effect on them.

Dealing in pre-release movies in the US automatically involves the FBI. That’s uploading, supplying, facilitating or operating a site, possibly any link will do for the FBI to start looking at jail, including if you upload something like SiCKO to YouTube. However, US law isn’t valid outside of the US so the millions of non-US file-sharers remain unaffected.

As for the DrinkOrDie case, 99.99% of all file-sharers aren’t being accused of pirating millions of dollars worth of material, so they can ignore this headline too. No small time downloader has been to jail for sharing applications.

If you’re a citizen of any county in the world apart from the US, the chances of going to jail for non-commercial file-sharing appear to be minuscule. Even a US citizen could achieve a similar level of security by not being the original suppliers of pre-release material.

Jail for Sharing? If I can find an offense that fewer people are in jail for around the world, i’ll be sure to report it.

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

However, RedSwoosh assured us that future versions will embed perfectly within Firefox, more so than the open source equivalent BitFox. They see a bright future for the Firefox extension, as well as their desktop client. A RedSwoosh employee, who prefers to stay anonymous, told TorrentFreak that their client will be more popular than uTorrent, the popular Windows client that was recently acquired by BitTorrent Inc:

“One year from now, we’ll have the most popular torrent client on the planet. The fastest. The easiest. Hands down. We’ve basically rewritten the entire BT protocol. Bram [Cohen] is going to shit his pants when he takes our client for a spin.”

Personally I think that RedSwoosh is a bit overconfident. It might not be a good idea to downplay uTorrent and BitFox, before they have a working BitTorrent client themselves. Perhaps they are frustrated by the fact that BitTorrent managed to dominate P2P traffic in just a couple of years. I mean, stating that your company was founded before BitTorrent on your “about us” page wont impress many people. It might be a good idea to stop talking, and start coding. At least they will please Mark Cuban, one of the biggest investors in RedSwoosh, who doesn’t seem to be a BitTorrent fan himself.

It is hard to judge this extension from this initial beta version, but it’s good to see that people have started working on adding BitTorrent support to Firefox, something that Opera has had for months now.

In the meanwhile, feel free to test the internal beta release of FoxTorrent (Windows only).

Update: RedSwoosh CEO Travis Kalanick apologized for the statements released by one of his part-time employees.

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

Vadim Andrianov, one of the BitTorrent tracker admins, thinks that the shutdown of his, and other sites could be part of a new anti-piracy campaign. Andrianov is still waiting for an official response from his ISP. He is not worried about any form of legal action, because his site was only offering Open Source software.

Bandwidth management could be an alternative explanation for the closure of the BitTorrent sites. Immediately after the trackers were shut down, p2p traffic dropped drastically, to 20% of what it used to be. Could this be an attempt by Tomsk’s ISP to cut down the bandwidth generated by BitTorrent transfers? It sure is more effective than most traffic shaping devices.

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

What do they offer?

Master flash files and bitmaps of every piece of art used in this season of Odd Job Jack. Every character, prop, and background from every episode plus tutorials and other support material. All free to hack, use, remix under a share-friendly license.

And why?

We love animation and we just know you do too. We’re proud of Odd Job Jack and we’ve put lots of work into our show. Our art deserves to live beyond broadcast and who better to give a free gift to than the entire planet?

The torrents are tracked by legaltorrents.com, and can be found a the freejack site. This is a great initiative, let’s hope more will follow.

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

I am a technological activist….. I further my goals with technology. I build systems to disseminate information, commit digital piracy…… link

Earlier this year Bram Cohen was facing legal threaths because of an old (1999) agenda that was buried on his website. His reaction:

“That was written in a combative confrontation style; I wasn’t really talking about anything. It was a reaction-getting thing…. I think it’s pretty clear the way that was written is that it was written in voice. It was an exaggerated character speaking it.”

2. Bram on 24×7

A video of Bram talking about himself and BitTorrent for the 24×7 film experiment.

3. Bram about his Asperger’s syndrome

Q: You’ve been open about being diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. How has that affected you as a software author?

A:“It makes you less emotional when you’re coding. It’s like you don’t take it personally when the computer doesn’t work well.”

4. BitTorrent is like a car

“I make a tool. It’s a very powerful and general-purpose tool, but it is a lot like a car. Its primary function is a very, very utilitarian one. Cars kill people, you know, a lot more than guns do, but we still love our cars.”

5. Bram about Avalanche, Microsoft’s BitTorrent

“It’s Vaporware.”

6. Bram about Windows

“I hate dealing with computers in general, so I’m typically OS-agnostic, I’ve most recently been abused by a windows machine, so I hate that the most for the moment.”

7. Bram loves Paris Hilton

The only shows he watches are those he buys on DVD. He particularly loved the first season of Paris Hilton’s The Simple Life. “You can watch that show for six hours,” Cohen says, “and your brain is still empty.”

part 1: A rough start
part 2: Legal stuff
part 3: Going Down
part 4: Bram Talking
part 5: Filling the gap
part 6: Torrent Clients
part 7: Advancing

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

Unfortunately not everybody knows every movie listed, so you probably want to check some extra info on IMDB. To make your life a little easier, skender wrote a script to list all the movies on publicdomaintorrents by their IMDB rating.

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