Below is an excerpt of Twitters blog post revealing the threat.

It appears that for a number of years, a person has been creating torrent sites that require a login and password as well as creating forums set up for torrent site usage and then selling these purportedly well-crafted sites and forums to other people innocently looking to start a download site of their very own. However, these sites came with a little extra — security exploits and backdoors throughout the system. This person then waited for the forums and sites to get popular and then used those exploits to get access to the username, email address, and password of every person who had signed up. Additional exploits to gain admin root on forums that weren’t created by this person also appear to have been utilized; in some instances, the exploit involved redirecting attempts to access the forums to another site that would request log-in information. This information was then used to attempt to gain access to third party sites like Twitter.

So, the company blames ’someone’ of installing backdoors in a torrent site script that was sold to prospective torrent sites operators, something that has apparently gone unnoticed for years. The question that comes to mind immediately is, if this is such a serious and widespread threat, why doesn’t Twitter name the source or at least give some examples of affected sites?

All of the popular public torrent sites are custom built and cannot be the source of the exploit. From the information Twitter has made available it seems they could be blaming a private tracker script for the attack – most private trackers also operate forums which matches Twitter’s description of the sites involved.

There are quite a few private tracker scripts out there and the most established ones, such as TBDev and Gazelle for example, have been examined by untold numbers of experts and come free of charge – any suggestion that they could be involved in underhand activity is unthinkable. But there are also a few scripts that are created by middle-men whose reputations are less-easily tested.

Accusations of including back doors and exploits in tracker code are not new. The owner of Template Shares, a site that sells a heavily modified version of the TBDev BitTorrent tracker script, has been accused by several people of installing backdoors which provide access to the user databases of customers’ sites.

Template Shares is used by hundreds of smaller private BitTorrent trackers.

To warn the public, other online services and the operators of the affected torrent sites, it would be appropriate if Twitter gave out some more information. TorrentFreak will continue to look into this case and will post an update if we find out more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few hours ago ScT put up a sad and unexpected announcement for its 20,000 members, as the site’s operators have decided to close the site for good tomorrow. Thus far the staff refuses to comment on the reason for the shutdown, which has resulted in widespread rumors among the site’s users.

Some rumors say that the end of ScT may be related to the raid of a topsite in The Netherlands earlier this week. According to the Dutch news site Tweakers, the ‘ranked’ topsite LOOP had its servers raided in Amsterdam, where 40 terabytes of data was stored. LOOP was (supposedly) one of SceneTorrent’s main content provider according to insiders.

According to other rumors, the shutdown could be a planned operation instead of a response to the raided topsite. In the last weeks the site has encouraged its members to donate, offering double rewards for those who pay up, allegedly raking in as much as $10,000.

Thus far both rumors remain unconfirmed, and the same is true for an eBay auction of the site that went up a few hours ago. Since the staff of the site is not talking, it will probably remain unknown why the site will close its doors now, or what their underlying motivation is.

Update: FSF published a short chat with ScT owner ‘Feeling’ who confirmed that the shutdown is not a hoax.

Update: A new staff message claims that the shutdown is due to legal issues.

By now most of you already know that ScT will be going offline permanently.

However, due to pending legal issues, we are not at liberty to speak freely about why we’ve chosen to take down the site.
Members of our staff were arrested and will be undergoing the entire length of the judicial process.
Obviously, in the case of criminal proceedings, it would be downright foolish to comment any further on the situation;

Please bear this in mind and wish them the best of luck.

There have been several theories as to where the donation money (of the recent months) has gone. We’d like to take this opportunity to put all skepticism to rest.
The money was used to purchase new hardware that would ensure our spot as the fastest tracker on the net.
You are free to perform whatever calculations you feel necessary, but in doing so it should become very clear that running a site of this stature costs money.
We feel the overwhelming cynicism is just a product of bad timing compounded with general frustration caused by the current situation.

We sincerely hope that you’ve enjoyed being a part of our wonderful community over the past 4 1/2 years.
We’ve certainly enjoyed our members letting us be of service. We’ve always felt our user base played an equally important role in making SceneTorrents.org a model environment in the torrent world.

The staff would also like to express their gratitude to fellow trackers for their support in such a chaotic time. Several well known communities have voluntarily opened their doors, and have offered our former users a new home. We appreciate the courtesy and acknowledge the steps being taken to move forward collectively as a community. Your assistance does not go unrecognized.

//ScT Staff

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

In December 2004, the demise of the mighty Suprnova left a meteor crater in the fledgling BitTorrent landscape. This gaping hole was soon filled by the dozens of new sites that emerged to fulfil the public’s increasing demands for torrents. Mininova became the most successful of all.

Mininova was founded in early 2005 by five Dutch students, just a month after Suprnova closed its doors. The site started out as a hobby project created by tech-savvy teenagers, but in the years that followed the site’s founders managed to turn it into a successful business that generated millions of dollars in revenue.

With increased popularity also came numerous complaints from copyright holders, who saw their intellectual property being shared by users of the site. For years Mininova has complied with these takedown requests, but earlier this year the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN decided to take the torrent site to court nonetheless, demanding that the operators proactively filter torrents pointing to copyrighted material.

The case went to court in June and a few weeks later the verdict was announced. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringements, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.

To avoid having to pay these penalties, the Mininova team saw no other option than to disable access to all torrents except those that were uploaded to their content distribution platform. This means that only approved uploaders can share torrents through the site for now.

During the last few months, Mininova has extensively tested several filtering techniques, but none of these proved 100% effective. “It’s very unfortunate that we’re forced to take this action, but we saw no other option,” Mininova co-founder Niek told TorrentFreak.

Mininova still hasn’t decided yet whether they will appeal the verdict, Niek further told TorrentFreak. They have appealed the verdict pro-forma, which gives the company more time to decide whether they will indeed continue with the appeal. As it looks now, a successful appeal is the only option for Mininova to bring all torrents back.

In the meantime the Mininova team will focus on other projects besides Mininova, as well as growing the number of users for their content distribution platform.

The implications of Mininova’s decision will have a huge impact on the BitTorrent community. The millions of Mininova users and uploaders have to look for a new home, but perhaps even more importantly, Mininova had the largest collection of user-submitted torrents that were used by dozens of smaller torrent indexers.

More information on the consequences and background of Mininova’s decision will be addressed in a follow up article.

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

Tomorrow the exact text of the bill is expected to be made public, but according to early reports, the legislation will open all doors for a digital police state where alleged pirates will be crucified by private companies.

Judging from some of the plans that leaked earlier today, the endless lobbying efforts of the entertainment industry by anti-piracy outfits including IFPI and the BPI have definitely paid off.

Cory Doctorow has the scoop on BoingBoing and he told TorrentFreak that the information comes from someone “very close to the Labour government” who he trusts implicitly.

If accurate, the new legislation will be a disaster for the privacy of all Internet users while giving unprecedented powers to the entertainment industry. Under the new bill the Secretary of State would be able to pass secondary legislation without Parliamentary oversight in order to protect rights holders.

Three reasons are given:

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements. (for example, he could authorize jail terms for file-sharing, or create a “three-strikes” plan that costs entire families their Internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to “impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement” (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright “militias” can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

The leaked information mainly shows that the Secretary of State will have the power to introduce all kinds of draconian measures without Parliamentary oversight. More details on concrete policy dealing with alleged file-sharers and the proposed three-strikes system have yet to be announced.

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

Italy, which has seen its fair share of misery inflicted by Logistep and its partners Peppermint Jam, now has reason to be optimistic that these cynical, profit-motivated operations can be dampened down.

Although anyone with a basic knowledge of the Internet could come to the same conclusion given 30 seconds in a quiet room, the Tribunale Ordinario di Roma has now ruled that an IP address alone does not identify an infringer. According to a Punto Informatico report, on this basis the court kicked out a complaint against an individual accused of copyright infringement.

The District Attorney and judge said that the mere ownership of a connection from where an infringement took place is not sufficient to establish the identity of an infringer or liability of a defendant, especially since other people could have committed the alleged infringement.

In the UK right now, as many as 5,000 or more Internet bill payers are receiving letters through their doors from lawyers ACS:Law claiming that their Internet connection has been used to commit copyright infringement. TorrentFreak is in contact with many letter recipients and we are convinced that many people are being wrongfully accused for a multitude of reasons. Interestingly ACS:Law say that they do not necessarily claim that the bill payer committed the infringement, yet they still make threats and demand settlements for around £600 from that very individual.

They do this because they do not know and cannot prove who carried out the infringement, and simply hope that the bill payer feels responsible for what has happened and pays the settlement.

If it wasn’t clear before to some, it should be pretty clear now. As far as evidence goes, an IP address alone does not identify an infringer, merely a connection, and in the absence of additional evidence – such as that collected following an examination of the alleged infringer’s PC – it means little on its own.

Thank you Italy for your common sense.

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

In a letter sent out to several web hosts IFPI argued that the site(s) hosted by the providers make “a large number of” copyright works available to the public, and that the users of the sites are infringing the copyrights of IFPI members. IFPI ended the letter by asking the web host to take necessary actions to make sure that this activity stops, or else “IFPI intends to take necessary measures.”

This tactic seemed to work, as many torrent sites operated by Swedes closed their doors or were shut out by their host. However, the Swedish provider Portlane is not planning to cave in to IFPI’s threats and have filed a complaint at the Swedish Market Court.

“My client feels IFPI’s letter is one sided, lacking in nuance and very threatening. Portlane does not believe it should be forced to break a contract with a client because of hearsay,” Portlane’s lawyer Jonas Forzelius told Dagens Nyheter.

Forzelius argues that IFPI is breaking the law because they send out the warning letters for financial gain, something not allowed under Sweden’s marketing law, regardless of the copyright issues that are at stake here.

“What IFPI says is ‘close these sites’, and what is the purpose of that? Of course scaring as many ISPs as possible to stop providing these services in order for IFPI to increase their own sales. Not everyone can afford to process against IFPI with its financial resources, even if they feel IFPI’s claims are wrong.”

In several earlier cases, the Market Court has made it clear that these warning letters must be written in a way that corresponds with marketing ethics. Since IFPI always claims that they are losing millions of dollars (or kroner) thanks to piracy, their warning letters would be unlawful.

Thus far, the Commercial Marketing Court had tried seven cases of warning letters, not related to file-sharing. In all cases except one they were found unlawful and the judges banned the letters with fines of half a million crowns if they were sent again. IFPI await the same fate, meaning that the threats will stop.

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

But there are other more subtle ways for the company to benefit from copyright infringement. Who remembers our article from 2008, when we showed an aXXo release being used to sell Macs in a John Lewis store? Well, now it looks like another retailer had the same idea – why spend money on real DVDs when you can just download them?

On a visit to the Rivas H2Ocio shopping mall in Madrid, Miguel Ángel Moro walked into a Saturn store. There, in the Apple section, he saw demo machines – and they were all running pirate movies.

Miguel told TorrentFreak, “This is not the first time I’ve seen this stuff in MediaMarkt/Saturn, a big consumer electronics store in Europe. They sell from computers to washing machines, including DVD and Blu-ray discs.”

Displaying their own DVDs is illegal without clearance, so they might as well grab a copy off BitTorrent and safe a few bucks – right? Sharing copyrighted files is legal in Spain, but not for commercial use which is clearly the case here.

Below is a photograph taken by Miguel of a ‘Cars’ Blu-ray movie rip running on VLC Media Player, on a Macbook, in the store.

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

In the days following the verdict, several large and small BitTorrent trackers have decided to close down and more are expected to follow suit in the days to come. One of the sites that has closed its doors is NordicBits, which displays a message citing the verdict as one of the reasons for the closure.

We have to shut down the site now due all circumstances. We don’t have time to do anything to the code, we don’t have interest in it, we don’t have any more money and the biggest reason is The Pirate Bay info.

Rumors say that at least a dozen trackers will discontinue operations in the days to come including Swebits, who have already shut down their tracker but not the site itself. SeedIT, a relatively small community is another tracker that’s decided to shut – they posted their latest torrent a few hours ago, titled:

Several of the trackers that are now offline were operated by Swedes, who are worried that they might be facing legal troubles as well. In addition, there are many other BitTorrent trackers hosted in Sweden run by non-Swedes – time will tell how they respond.

The Pirate Bay continues business as usual as the defendants appeal their case, but in the meantime the Swedish anti-piracy lobby will use the verdict to their advantage. Uncertain times.

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

It’s when independent experts say that extending terms hurts the economy and stifles innovation that people should sit up and take notice. All too often though, such experts are ignored because they are just people that know the subject, rather than fund politicians campaign contributions. Moreover, they focus on facts and case histories, rather than vague associations or made-up figures.

Two such experts are Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, economists at the Washington University in St Louis. Boldrin, chairman of the university economics department, points out that what goes by the name ‘Intellectual Property’ is in fact “an intellectual monopoly that hinders rather than helps the competitive free market regime that has delivered wealth and innovation to our doorsteps.”

“From a public policy view, we’d ideally like to eliminate patent and copyright laws altogether,” says Levine, the John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics. “There’s plenty of protection for inventors and plenty of protection and opportunities to make money for creators. It’s not that we see this as some sort of charitable act that people are going to invent and create things without earning money. Evidence shows very strongly there are lots of ways to make money without patents and copyright.”

In a short video clip, Levine states that copyright shouldn’t been seen as a charitable act, which is a lesson Commissioner McCreevy needs to learn. Also, he states that Intellectual Monopoly is the more appropriate term, and that the property label is a recently-given propaganda title, a subject Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation has covered in the past.

The views of the economists are presented in their new book, “Against Intellectual Monopoly”, where they suggest that the copyright and patent systems in the US should at least be brought back into line with their constitutional establishment – that of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. In the book, they put the case quite simply – “In the decades to come, sustaining economic progress will depend, more and more, on our ability to progressively reduce and eventually eliminate intellectual monopoly.”

It might be that the Pirate Party has some intellectual support for their positions, and perhaps a Missouri party will soon be in the making.

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

Anti-piracy lobby groups are always keen to paint file-sharing as a very serious offense, and have had some successes in this respect. Despite the fact that in 2006 a Spanish judge ruled that a man who shared copyright music didn’t break the law because he made no money, and another ruled a BitTorrent tracker legal on the same basis, the anti-piracy lobby presses on.

In November, the Spanish government launched a TV, radio and print media campaign called “Si eres legal, eres legal” (If you are legal, you’re legal) which strongly criticized citizens who used the Internet to download copyright works. This campaign has annoyed many people and groups, and the opposition isn’t staying silent.

Recently a group of Spanish free-culture supporters demanded the withdrawal of the campaign and a public apology from the government. In protest, they arranged a demonstration on the doorstep of one of the leading political parties in Spain. After notifying the police, the groups – Compartir es Bueno (Sharing is good) and Hacktivistas (Hacktivists) – sat in front of the socialist party headquarters and shared copyright material. The police did nothing, suggesting a de facto acceptance of their actions.

Now, according to a report, it is the turn of Spain’s Madrid-based Association of Internet Users to make a formal complaint to the government.

An official statement from the group claims that the campaign “recklessly offers information that lacks all legal basis, with the exclusive aim of re-educating public opinion.”

Writing to Culture Minister César Antonio de Molina, the Association of Internet Users said the campaign must cease, since it risks “the manipulation of public opinion to the benefit of private interests,” i.e, come down on the public in order to serve the recording industry.

The association asserts that the campaign “includes information that is untrue, and therefore is contrary to the constitutional principle of freedom of information, with regards to intellectual property and the protection of authors’ rights, according to current legislation.”

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

In an attempt to prove the opposite, however, a group of Spanish free-culture supporters organized a demonstration on the doorstep of one of the leading political parties in Spain. The two groups, Compartir es Bueno (Sharing is good) and Hacktivistas (Hacktivists) gathered in front of the headquarters of the socialist party yesterday, where they fired up their P2P clients and started sharing copyrighted material. The police were notified beforehand about the demonstration, and were present. No arrests have been made though, as expected.

The demonstration, which was covered by several of the leading news outlets in Spain, was organized in response to the growing propaganda and power of entertainment industry lobbyists. Like many other countries, Spain is mulling a three-strikes proposal that would give the entertainment industry the right to disconnect alleged sharers of copyrighted material. This, despite the fact that sharing copyrighted material for non-commercial use is not against the law in Spain.

Previous court cases have confirmed that this is the case. In 2006, a judge ruled that a man who downloaded and shared copyrighted music was not breaking any laws since the man’s intent wasn’t to make money. More recently, a court ruled that a site providing links to P2P downloads is operating within the law.

The protesters proved this once again by sharing copyrighted material on the doorstep of the socialist party, in front of the police. The demonstration was successful, as Hacktivistas report on their website “We have shown it once more: downloading copyrighted files from a p2p network is legal in Spain, as long as it isn’t done for profit.”

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

In March, we mentioned both PizzaTorrent and NowTorrents in our top 10 YouTorrent (meta-search) alternatives. Since then, a lot of things have changed, both in design and feature-wise. We decided to catch up with Godius, the founder of NowTorrents, to find out what’s happened since Spring.

“We recently re-coded and designed the whole website,” Godius told us. “The new site has a more user friendly layout and has a bunch of new features. For example it’s now possible to filter site-by-site results, filter keyword and categories, all in real-time. We also build a popular searches caching system, this has greatly improved loading times. And we added more personal search preference settings.”

One of the new features at NowTorrents (and Gpirate) is the BoxOffice listings. The MPAA probably won’t be too happy with such a feature, but the users love it according to Godius.

“We are planning to expand the BoxOffice torrents feature with a latest Games and Music Albums charts section. We have noticed that users greatly appreciate the BoxOffice section, so we feel that adding games and music charts will satisfy their needs even more. Many people don’t know what to search for; they just want to download the latest stuff that has just been released.”

Godius is not too worried about the MPAA showing up at his doorstep, as he told us: “Basically we are doing exactly what Google is doing only we do not list non-torrent related results. We feel as long as Google gets away with it, and the torrent sites we link to get away with it, we have nothing to worry about.”

One of the downsides of all these new meta-torrent search engines is that they all rely on a handful of BitTorrent trackers, and sites that actually host torrent files. Running a meta-search engine is easier, less costly, and probably safer from a legal point of view. Nevertheless, they become useless if there are no torrent files to index, or torrents to track.

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

The first public version of Mininova went live in 2005 and was hosted at the DSL line of Niek van der Maas, one of the founders of the site. The name “Mininova” was inspired by SuprNova.org, the popular BitTorrent site that decided to shut its doors in December 2004, a few days before Mininova was launched. Not surprisingly, within a few days Niek’s connection couldn’t handle the bandwidth.

The site soon became one of the largest torrent sites, and more than 5 billion torrent files were downloaded from the site since it launched. May 2008, the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN announced a lawsuit against Mininova.

Mininova.org

Founded: January 15, 2005
Founders: Matthijs Meulenburg, Niek van der Maas en Erik Dubbelboer
News: The latest Mininova news

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

Many people are drawn to BitTorrent news as it can be both exciting, confusing, intriguing and amazing all at the same time. Today we can report on a story which has all of these elements.

Seemingly out of nowhere appears Torrent411.com. Dubbed “The Torrent Yellow Pages”, this site will have the Canadian recording industry – ADISQ and CRIA et al – tearing out its hair out today. Hosted in Malaysia, from a standing start it already has 109,006 members, which is a couple hundred more than QuebecTorrent.

In fact, all of the QuebecTorrent user accounts have been transferred there – plus all the ratio stats and pretty much everything else. Adding insult to injury, categories that were removed on QuebecTorrent in a failed attempt to avoid legal action in Canada, have now returned. “No censoring blacklists will be tolerated on the site!” claim the Torrent411 admins.

It’s hard to imagine a bigger kick in the teeth for the media industry than this. A notice on the homepage reads:

Welcome to one and all! It is with great pleasure that we launch the Torrent411.com site today. All the team of Torrent411.com wishes you the most cordial of welcomes! Here you will find all the torrents imaginable which will be for you for thousands ofÂ’ hours to come! Filled with surprises that await you!

Of course, Sebastien Brûlotte, aka ‘Doditz’ the ex-administrator of QuebecTorrent, is abiding by the terms of his injunction to the letter. He assured us that he had no part in the creation of the new site and this is backed up the admin team at Torrent411: “All the members of theÂ’ team behind QuebecTorrent.com were preserved, except for late Doditz, our old Admin, who by court order could not join us.”

One area where the sites aren’t quite identical is the number of peers currently being tracked. Of course, to comply with the injunction QuebecTorrent is currently tracking zero peers but already there are instructions on Torrent411’s homepage to get the site’s old torrents working – either a simple edit of the .torrent file’s ‘announce url’ to match the format on Torrent411 – or users can simply re-download matching torrents from the site and use those instead.

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

Nonetheless, a few days ago (edit: someone who pretends to be) Dependent records’ CEO Stefan Herwig decided to upload all the albums from his label -which mainly features aggrotech, electro-industrial and futurepop artists- onto The Pirate Bay.

In the description on the torrent download page (edit: the fake) Herwig writes: “I closed down my record label Dependent Records for good. But since I want my music to be heard by the people out there, everything I have ever published is now available on The Pirate Bay,” stressing that it’s a legal torrent, approved by the label.

Over the past few months, more and more artists have decided to make their music available for free on BitTorrent sites. However, this move from Dependent Records seems to be a bit odd, especially when you read why the label decided to close its doors. Perhaps the Stefan who posted the albums onto The Pirate Bay isn’t the real one?

Little over a year ago, (edit: the real) Stefan Herwig wrote: “We are not closing our doors because of the existence of pirate websites, but because there are simply too many people who enjoy our bands and their songs who do not wish to pay for them.”

Herwig and his team got frustrated when they saw their albums appearing on P2P networks. They don’t seem to buy the argument that indie artists actually profit from these new technologies, as Herwig writes: “A popular claim often seen on Internet fora maintains that the P2P culture weakens the majors and bolsters the independent labels. This is, we can assure you, 100% bullshit. Even if there are listeners who download first and buy later, they are clearly in the dwindling minority.”

We understand Herwig’s frustration, but 100% bullshit is not completely accurate. Several studies have shown that most artists, especially those who are not mainstream, profit from filesharing. The dwindling minority Herwig is talking about probably exists because of filesharing, and may have never discovered Dependent Records’ artists if their albums weren’t available there.

Music consumption has changed significantly the last decade. People consume more music simply because it is available, illegal or not. The challenge for the the recording industry is to find ways to monetize this demand, for example by all-you-can-eat plans for a fixed price. The bottom line is, piracy has shown that music is more popular than ever, and no artist will ever argue that this is a bad thing.

Update: Stefan, and a colleagues from Dependent Records officially deny that they have anything to do with the leaked albums. They claim that the albums are uploaded by someone who pretends to be Herwig, and has access to the entire catalog of the label. “We never decided anything like that. The offer is completely illegal.The Person who create an account with the nickname Stefan_Herwig has absolutely nothing to do with our label owner of the same name.”

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

Born out of the VPNTunnel Project, the TorrentFreedom ‘manifesto’ is an interesting document, particularly if you’ve ever worried about being tracked, traffic shaped, blocked or censored on the Internet. With a suitably clandestine feel, the manifesto states:

“Today, there is a nexus of Schumpeterian creative destruction to be found at the asymptotic fringe of intellectual property law and networking technology. Everyone says there is an ‘arms race’ between the unwashed filesharing masses and the forces of Big Brother – we like to think of ourselves as the suitcase nuke for the little guys.”

TorrentFreak got in touch with ‘Faust’ of TorrentFreedom to find out what on earth they’re talking about.

TF: Tell us about this ‘creative destruction’ and what inspired you to create TorrentFreedom.

Faust: It’s all but trite to point out nowadays that we’ve undergone a revolution in how human knowledge is created, stored, and shared. And, much as Schumpeter himself had predicted, the creativity unleashed has more than made up for the detritus of old forms of information transmission that now scatter the landscape like broken, forgotten toys. This is as it should be. The backlash from the praxis of stasis threatens to drown the organic reinvigoration that innovation technology has always brought forth – there would be no 95 theses without Gutenburg, remember.

So our inspiration comes from a deeper, historical appreciation for the transformative role of new technologies in human social organization. Nobody knows where creativity, academia, and knowledge creation will evolve as our tools allow for more and deeper interconnection between physically disparate peoples – but we do know that hampering that process isn’t part of making a better world for all beings. We’d like to see people keep sharing, keep learning, keep exploring. . . and they can’t do that if there’s roadblocks and threats of censorship every step of the way. Make it easy and make it work, that’s our approach – then the creative destruction can continue apace.

TF: There are number of evils you appear to tackle head on with this service, such as traffic shaping, packet raping, blocking, censorship etc. I expect lots of Comcast customers will be interested as you specifically mention the ‘Sandvining’ technique they employ. How does your system work and how will it benefit each type of problem?

Faust: Metaphorically, the system is quite simple: think of the difference between sending postcards in the postal mail, versus sending sealed envelopes. A postcard can easily be read by anyone along the way, and if they don’t like what it says (or who it is addressed to), they could just throw it out – oops! A sealed letter isn’t vulnerable like that – the contents aren’t readable whilst in transit. Even more than that, our system protects the address (sender and receiver) on the envelope as well – so nobody can block the message just because they don’t like where it’s headed (or where it’s come from).

At a deeper level, our server farm is based in the Netherlands. Everything passes in and out of these machines, and all IP addresses are associated with them. The activities of our customers – once their sessions decrypt and leave our server farm – are fully and unambiguously decoupled from their RL info (including local/physical IP address). Big Brother isn’t going to show up at their doorstep with a fishing-expedition summons or subpoena. We took it a step further, however – we’ve broken the link between RL info and public IP for our customers inside our systems as well – once an account is set up, it is methodologically impossible for anyone to back-connect a given external TF IP address to a customers’ specific account, ever.

TF: You’re called TorrentFreedom so it’s fairly clear which crowd you’re aiming your product act. What sort of dedicated optimizations can BitTorrent users look forward to when using your service?

Faust: We’ve tested the service extensively with just about every BT client out there. They all work seamlessly. We also don’t penalize our customers for running lots of network traffic over TorrentFreedom – there are no monthly caps, and no drama if someone uses a lot of gigs with us. That’s cool – it’s why we built the system!

OpenVPN, in its rawest form, will work with BT traffic – but getting it to do so consistently and smoothly is nontrivial. We’ve done all that work, so our customers don’t need to become experts in subnet addressing, MTU window sizing, and the 100 other little tweaks one needs to do to really make BT over a VPN sing. We also hand out real, public IP addresses – so no port forwarding garbage, just fast connectivity.

TF: Please give us a brief rundown on how your system works.

Faust: On a technical level, it’s an implementation of the TLS-based OpenVPN project’s codebase (which itself implements various OpenSSL crypto algorithms). Starting from there, we’ve created a Java-based client that handles all the encryption and coordinates OpenVPN’s handshake tasks, to ensure that every packet coming and going from our customers’ PCs is tightly encrypted (including DNS queries, unlike pptp). The really cool stuff comes in the firewall-busting tricks that our client has up its sleeve – there’s very few local network configurations that we can’t tunnel through. . . with no customer tweaking of the software needed. We’ve also implemented a rather clever port 443 wrapper so that, unlike many VPN instantiations, the TorrentFreedom service can’t be blocked unless the entire HTTPS capacity is also shut down – unlikely.

We’ve built most everything with open code, and we’re pushing further in that direction (with perhaps full distribution of the source for our client extensions in the works). “Just trust us” crypto isn’t worth anything – if it’s not open, it’s not reliable. We run 2048 keylength RSA algorithms so, to the local ISP or anyone else “listening in” to our customers’ packets, the data all looks like a stream of secure web traffic, back and forth. This is true for ALL IP traffic coming off a machine, all protocols and all applications. So there’s no need to tweak individual applications to get them to “work” with TorrentFreedom – just set up the client, connect, and everything is encrypted all the time.

TF: There are other well known VPN services that say they are strong on anonymity and hide your IP address, yet all of them will give up your personal details at some point. How is TorrentFreedom going to live up to the claim in the manifesto that BitTorrent users using your service will be “just about as traceable as dusty footprints in a windswept street. You can’t subpoena what doesn’t exist” ?

Faust: Ok this is where the rubber really meets the road. An “anonymizing” service that keeps detailed records of their customers’ activities is just a problem waiting to happen. There’s no point in hiding an IP address only to keep records that connect that IP address to the one that’s used to cover for it! And, reality is that there is no place in the world that isn’t subject to some form of legal jurisdiction – just saying “we won’t turn over records” is silly. When the authorities show up – with court orders or guns – and people start talking about jail time and contempt, those records are going to get coughed up, period. Despite our respect for the company overall, Hushmail’s admission that it provides “secure” email information to certain government authorities demonstrates all too well that even a good team will fold if the pressure gets too high – and if they have information to provide in the first place!

We built the system from day one so that there’s no correlation between an IP+timestamp and a username – this means we can’t hand over logs of “who was on what IP at what time”, and therefore the user can’t be tracked back from their online activity. Our payment system is fully abstracted from the operational environment – billing events are passed to the VPN engine via temporary “tokens” that are one-way-factors – there’s no link between the VPN account and the details of the billing transaction, ever.

We keep a little bit of data on file to make sure we can monitor the performance of the system overall, but we don’t have “server logs” like everyone else does. They don’t exist. So, we can be forced to turn over those logs – but they don’t link back to anything. Not to mention all of our operational VMs run in fully-encrypted partitions, etc. Someone seizing any of our servers has nothing but an expensive doorjam for their troubles. Even someone with full access to every machine we have cannot link people to their past network traffic through TorrentFreedom. It’s structural anonymity, at the most fundamental level.

Now, there’s lots of other VPN services out there and some of them are sorta ok. Most, let’s be honest, are based on pptp – it’s really insecure with several known weaknesses. Plus, it’s closed-source/proprietary, so who knows if it has backdoors or not? The reason people use it is because it’s easy to set up – Windows machines come with it pre-installed. Well, we did the hard work of getting a real VPN implementation (OpenVPN) to work just as easily as pptp – but without the security problems.

Some of the stuff we did is a little complex, behind the scenes, but the end result is a service that’s really easy to set up and use. We’ve got clients for Windows, Macs, and Linux. We don’t limit bandwidth, and we’ve got some very fast servers backing it all up. It’s all done right.

TF: Any final thoughts?

Faust: Using TorrentFreedom for online security is like bringing a machine-gun to a knife fight. . . it might not be ‘fair,’ but the outcome isn’t going to be in question either.

TF: lol ;)

Update: the free invites are gone.

Alternatives: (not free)

Relakks
Smarhide
VPNtunnel

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

The first public version of Mininova went public on January 15, 2005 and was hosted at the DSL line of Niek, one of the founders of the site. The name “Mininova” was inspired by SuprNova.org, the popular BitTorrent site that decided to shut its doors in December 2004, a few days before Mininova was launched. Not surprisingly, within a few days Niek’s connection couldn’t handle the bandwidth.

Gottfrid of The PirateBay was so kind to offer them a hosting account until they found a more permanent solution. After a while Mininova temporarily moved to Gary of IsoHunt, but soon after that they got their own servers. Since that time, Mininova continued to extend and upgrade their server park, which consists of 27 servers at the moment.

What are Mininova’s plans for the future, you might wonder. We talked to Niek from Mininova and he told TorrentFreak: “We want to focus on getting more publishers for our recently launched Content Distribution service. Currently we have over 200 publishers and we’re sure this this number will grow tremendously the coming months”

There is no doubt that Mininova will continue to grow throughout 2008, we wish them all the best with their future endeavors.

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

Shortly after we published, we had a contact from Milen Georgiev Dzhumerov, a regular reader of TorrentFreak and Mac software programmer. “When I saw the Tracker Checker I thought it was a great idea – so simple and useful” he said, “I’m waiting to start uni in October, I’ve got nothing better to do except write software! As I am a Mac user, I decided to create a Mac version of the app.”

The application arrives in .DMG format at just 221kb. Full installation instructions are included in the README file but it’s simply a question of dragging the software’s icon (created by YellowIcon) into the ‘Applications’ folder.

Launching is achieved by browsing to the app and double-clicking it. The .DMG file comes with a trackers.xml file (containing the tracker information) and is pre-configured with 67 trackers. Simply navigate to the .DMG, select the trackers.xml and import it.

There are 4 main buttons on the toolbar (created by Matt Ball Design):

Reload – Manually “reloads” all trackers
Add – Adds a new tracker to the list
Remove – Removes the currently selected tracker
Info – Opens the “Tracker Inspector” allowing the modification of tracker properties.

In the lower right corner there is a setting for selecting how many concurrent connections to open when checking the trackers. Tested on an 8mbit down connection, 15-20 connections produced ideal results.

Positive match type in the ‘Inspector’ is defined as marking the tracker as open if the find string is found and negative is just reversing the result of whatever the positive is returning, i.e if it doesn’t find the string you have selected negative, the tracker will be marked as open.

One of the criticisms leveled at the PC version of Tracker Checker 2 was that it checked sites for signups at a too regular interval of just 60 seconds. The Mac version addresses this with the chance for the user to choose the update interval.

Milen goes on to explain that he had another motive to develop the app: “The other reason for doing it was to actually see how good Cocoa stacks up against .NET/Java for simple applications like this one. I wanted to prove to myself that you can write applications in Cocoa rapidly. I would say that the app took me about a day/day and a half of proper work (I’m subtracting the time where I jumped in to play some games or watch a movie). I didn’t encounter any problems when using Apple’s well-designed frameworks and I’m very happy with how it turned out.”

More features are planned for the next release:

- Localization (definitely German + unconfirmed others)
- Growl support
- HTTP authentication and redirection support

Anyone wishing to translate the app, suggest features or report bugs, should get in touch with Milen on gamehack@gmail.com

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

Ashwin Navin, President of BitTorrent Inc has revealed his thoughts on the recent blanket banning of P2P at Ohio University. Noting that the University acknowledges the legitimate uses of Peer to Peer technology but remains firm on the the total ban, Navin doesn’t pull his punches. “By instituting this ban, Ohio University has demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of P2P technology’s value and role on the Internet. Furthermore, the school has closed its doors to innovation and shirked its responsibilities as an educational institution”. Tough talk indeed.

As Navin points out, the term P2P is often used synonymously with ‘Illegal P2P File-Sharing’ but sharing unauthorized files is just the tip of large iceberg of possible applications. Skype, the popular internet communications application and Joost, the forthcoming video distribution platform are both P2P technologies and both are banned at Ohio.

Peer to Peer networks rely on the processing power and bandwidth availability of their users, allowing them to communicate directly, rather than placing a heavy reliance on shifting lots of data through a central server. The P2P method of communication offers massive cost savings over the traditional central server based system, taking online distribution of content away from expensive professionals and into the hands of the cost-conscious, regular internet user.

Students at Ohio will be excluded from the revolution, a point not lost on Navin, “Many artists, along with nonprofit and budget-conscious organizations, depend a great deal on P2P to reduce the costs of publication on the Internet. A blanket ban, then, will cripple the basic Internet experience for the very students and organizations that need it most.”

Looking at the broader issue of the average web user’s endless desire for more bandwidth and it’s toll on the internet’s structure, Navin explains “What Ohio University and others fail to realize is that within P2P lies a much-needed fix for the Internet itself. The way we use the Internet today — to stream YouTube videos, to make Voice over IP calls, or to download software and video games — is actually taxing the capacity of our networks and servers beyond their design. If applied intelligently, P2P can provide more capacity to congested networks by harnessing abundant and unused computing capacity and bandwidth we have in our own PCs”

P2P can help to more evenly distribute stresses on the internet’s structure and to this end, Navin suggests an improvement to our online, digital environment, “The best way to alleviate the stress on the central backbone of the Internet is to decentralize the onus of distribution to a local level using P2P.” Hinting at the bandwidth and costs efficiencies of using P2P he continued, “If P2P is like a hybrid car, BitTorrent is the Toyota Prius.”

In an ironic twist, legitimate online businesses ostensibly set up to combat piracy, will also suffer from the Ohio ban. Navin’s own BitTorrent Entertainment Network is also banned at Ohio. No wonder Aswin and co aren’t happy.

If the likes of the RIAA and MPAA are smug at the news of a total P2P ban at Ohio they probably need to think again. While file-sharing with the outside world may be banned, the trading of material within the school network survives intact via a student operated DirectConnect (DCC+) hub. It offers a huge 3 terabyte library of content with downloads completing many times quicker than those from the banned networks.

Before the ban, the RIAA could monitor external P2P student activity in order to demand cash settlements for alleged copyright offenses. Unfortunately for them they are unable to access the internal DCC+ hub, so the students still get their files plus their privacy back and the university will no longer be plagued by the administrative effects of infringement notices.

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