Perhaps the most insidious aspects of propaganda is that you often don’t know when you’re witnessing it. One of the easiest ways to define it is as something that presents a clear position on a topic, good and bad, with little reference to the facts in an attempt to sway a group of people into believing a certain thing. There are three examples of this to draw on. One is the term ‘intellectual property‘. It’s a term that infers that copyright is a property that can be owned, and by extension, can thus be ’stolen’. In actuality, it is as its name suggests, a right of copying. However, the term ‘Intellectual Property’ continues. It’s also got the secondary aim of making it seem appropriate to lengthen terms, as by terming it property, and not a right to an action, it’s defined as an asset. Assets are easier to ‘protect’ than a right to do something, certainly over a monopoly-control of distribution.

The second is the association with ‘theft‘ and stealing. Copyrights can only be ’stolen’ if the actual rights are taken by someone. That is, if the person who owns the right has the right taken from them by someone else. That is also why copyright cases are not theft cases, although cases treated as such would actually be better, as criminal cases have a lot fewer of the problems identified in part 1, as we have also pointed out in the past. It would also significantly reduce the penalties. As Prof. Lessig pointed out in Free Culture (Pg 190), under California law the biggest penalty for stealing a CD is $1,000 – for infringing the copyright of that same CD it’s $1,500,000 (assuming 10 tracks).

The third and most important, are the oft touted ‘loss figures’ and studies. Every month or two an industry group, or company paid by an industry group publishes a ‘losses due to piracy figure’ or other claim. These figures attempt to quantify the unknown (and unknowable) and give a number that can be used in statements. The problem with all of these numbers is that they’re guesswork and estimation, just dressed up nicely. It’s impossible to tell what people are doing, and how many are actually infringing copyright so any figure on the amount of copyright infringement is just a guess. Then there is the question of how much that infringement impacts sales. So far industry data says it reduces sales, while independent studies show it either doesn’t affect them, or increases them. However, they’re not consistent on how much effect there is – some industry studies vastly contradict others with their values for the same thing (such this example)

Nor is this a new thing. Who can forget then MPAA president Jack Valenti calling the VCR the ‘Boston Strangler’ of the film companies. A few short years later that same Boston Strangler was providing those film companies with the majority of their income. The same thing happens time and time again, player pianos, radio, cable TV, the VCR, and now computers and the Internet. Like Chicken little, the sky didn’t fall down the last few times, and is unlikely to now for those companies, if, as before, they adapt and embrace the new technologies. Else they’ll go the way of the big train companies when 40-ton trucks became common, or saddlers and livery stables when the car was made affordable; an anachronism of old technology.

Of course, at the end of the day it comes down to the law. Again, there’s a problem. When you have politicians that are paid heavily by the copyright industry, or judges that are part of an industry group, then the laws are not going to have a firm basis in reality, nor will there be a fair and impartial evaluation of those laws. In some cases, prominent members of the music industry have been let off their crimes by court systems, such as in Nashville where Universal exec Ken Robold and singer-songwriter John Hiatt have had their traffic offenses dismissed.

Given everything we’ve covered, at least briefly, it’s clear that a fair trial when it comes to P2P will be impossible to be had any time soon.

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.

Despite its early release the film’s reception hasn’t been very positive. Some claim that the film is a waste of disk space while others complained about the mumbling and acting performance of 50 Cent.

Nevertheless, the film made it into our list of the 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent this week. ‘Watchmen’ tops the chart this week followed by ‘Knowing’ and ‘Streets of Blood’.

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.

With DistriBrute, distribution servers are no longer needed. The data doesn’t have to be distributed from one location, since all the workstations connected to the network actively help in the spreading the data. Every desktop in the system becomes a peer, and helps to send the data to other desktops. The result: faster distribution of updates and patches, and a significant cost reduction.

There are more selling points other than the cost reductions and speed improvement. Since servers tend to use a lot of energy, between 6000 and 7000 KWh a year, it can also be seen as a ‘green’ solution. This ‘green’ aspect has not gone unnoticed. Today, DistriBrute won the audience price of the Digikring Innovation Awards, an initiative that rewards environment friendly ICT solutions.

After winning the award, DistriBrute officially launched. Thus far, it had two successful test runs at large educational institutions in The Netherlands, and the initial results are promising. At INHOLLAND, a concept version of DistriBrute is now used to send software to 6500 desktop computers across 16 different locations. It thereby eliminates 20 servers that were used before to distribute 25.6 TBs of data across the network. Even more so, the P2P based solution speeded up this process significantly, from 4 days to only 4 hours.

The cost savings for those who use DistriBrute are immense. Leo Blom, co-founder of 4M88 told TorrentFreak that they were able to cut 50 servers at ROCMN, another Dutch educational institution. The costs to manage a server can get as high as $10,000 a year, but these will evaporate thanks to DistriBrute.

DistriBrute is one of the first commercial products for business use to reveal the true power of the BitTorrent protocol. For now, availability is limited to organizations in The Netherlands, in the first quarter of 2009 it will be released internationally.

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

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of August 4, 2008…

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The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of July 28, 2008…

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The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of May 06, 2008…

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

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of May 06, 2008…

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

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of April 30, 2008…

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

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of April 22, 2008…

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

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of April 14, 2008…

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

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of April 08, 2008…

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

Today, sadly, we have to report on a new ring of BitTorrent scam sites. This particular brand notifies people who try to play a video file they’ve just downloaded that they need to download a codec if they want to play the file. The site they are redirected to is of course a scam, most of them are filled with annoying ads.

Thousands of downloaders have already fallen for this scam, and new reports keep coming in. The downloaded files are simply huge uncompressed videos, named after a popular release. This is what the message looks like: “Warning: HD Codec not detected. Please get the correct codec from [insert site here].”

The following sites have been related to these scams, but there are probably a few more.

http://www.torrentm8.com/
http://www.rapid-torrent.com/
http://www.torrent-movie-host.com/
http://www.thepiilotbay.org/
http://torrentrnate.com/
http://moviehost.rapid-torrent.com/
http://www.everybodyshappytorrents.com/
http://hdmi2.com
http://codec.uploadvid.net

Although we dispute the claim that your PC will be filled with spyware and viruses when you use BitTorrent, there are some basic steps people should know in order to avoid running into them. Below are two examples, for a detailed overview and more tips and tricks, check our tutorial on how to avoid fake torrents and other scams.

1. Read Comments

This is a simple but effective way to find out if the .torrent is legit or not. It only takes a few seconds but it’s time well spent. Very often there are requests from previous downloaders for a password to access the file or some might be asking where to download a special video player to view it.

2. Verify the Source

A good way to find out if a .torrent is real or not is to find out who uploaded the file. There are several well known users that always release torrents on a regular basis, EZTV is a good example.

Happy torrenting..

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

After the voting round the winning designs will be optimized for printing and will be sold for approximately $15, more details on this later. If you can’t wait, feel free to copy these images, and print your own T-shirt!

We don’t plan to make any profit, but if we do we will donate the money to charity.

1. Magic Numbers

2. Bear

3. Outdated

4. Puma

5. Wall

6. Error

7. Protection

8. DRM-Hurts

9. Shot

10. Rekrd

11. Anti-DRM1

12. No-Music

13. Killing-Joy

14. AACS

15. String

16. No-DRM

17. Lock

18. Anti-DRM2

19. Doesn’t Work

20. Anti-DRM3

21. Stop-DRM

22. My-Media

23. ADRM

24. Dear Me

25. Disturbed

26. Dove

27. Unlock

28. Collapse

29. Negotiate

30. No-Thx

31. Don’t Rip

32. Globe

33. Free-DRM

34. Back

35. Discriminate

36. Suffer

37. Block

38. DRM-MPAA

39. Outside

40. Dont Ruin

41. Squad

42. Martin

43. Own

44. Handicap

45. Dog

46. Not-Allowed

47. Meet DRM

Voting Round Closed!

The Winners Will be Announced Soon

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