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.

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

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

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

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

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

6 Ways Savvy Internet Users Will Neutralize Hadopi

Free options

MP3 Search Engines

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

Direct Downloads

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

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

Streaming Music and Video

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

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

Premium options

Overseas MP3 Sites

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

Newsgroups

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

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

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

Anonymous VPN

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

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

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

And they would be absolutely right.

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

The new year starts without The Pirate Bay tracker, which was closed in November, and also without Mininova, which saw its site being censored and stripped down by a Dutch court. To counter these losses, several public tracker-only services have made a comeback along with multiple torrent-only storage sites.

Where do we go from here? Let’s make some predictions.

Prediction 1: The Pirate Bay will cease to offer torrent links

After closing its tracker in 2009, The Pirate Bay will further evolve by removing all torrents from its index in the new year. The site will be reduced to a BitTorrent platform that no longer stores torrent files. Users will still be able to submit torrents through a third party service such as Torrage, but instead of linking to these torrent files, The Pirate Bay will list only Magnet links.

During the second half of 2010, The Pirate Bay four will appear before the Appeal Court. They will be found ‘not guilty’ and walk away free. Shortly after this victory in court, Pirate Bay’s YouTube killer The Video Bay will be released to the public.

Prediction 2: A BitTorrent client will be dragged to court

In 2009, the entertainment industry and authorities took legal action against various BitTorrent users and numerous sites. They left BitTorrent clients alone, but this will change in the new year. A coalition of copyright holders will file a lawsuit against one of the major BitTorrent clients, in an attempt to stop the ever increasing piracy rate.

The copyright holders will argue that BitTorrent clients play a vital role in downloading and uploading copyrighted files, and that the software is assisting in copyright infringement. They will demand that the torrent client implements a filtering mechanism to prevent users from downloading movies, music or games without the permission of the copyright holder.

Prediction 3: More people will use BitTorrent anonymously

2010 is the year where copyright holders gain more control over the Internet. Three-strikes legislation will be rolled out in various countries and global trade agreements such as ACTA will result in humongous fines for casual downloaders.

As a result of this newly founded Internet police state, millions of BitTorrent users will take measures to hide their identities online. By the end of the year, a quarter of all BitTorrent users will use a VPN service or similar anonymity software, with another quarter looking to do so in the following 12 months. This will make new legislation ineffective, and lead to further lobbying by the entertainment industry for even harsher anti-piracy measures.

This cycle will repeat itself until the entertainment industry decides to innovate.

Prediction 4: BitTorrent (live) streaming will take off

Advances in technology and growing broadband penetration have brought us to a point where BitTorrent-powered streaming solutions have become reality. BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen is working on a streaming implementation and experiments have shown that it is possible to stream high definition content.

In the second half of 2010, the first BitTorrent-powered YouTube competitors will be launched. These new BitTorrent sites will mainly offer streams of pirated movies and TV-shows. Live BitTorrent streaming will gain worldwide traction during the 2010 soccer world cup in South Africa. In the second half of the year, commercial implementations will follow, allowing broadcasters to stream live content at zero cost.

Prediction 5: uTorrent will become a resource hog

In 2010, uTorrent will be transformed from a lightweight BitTorrent application into a media portal similar to its nemesis, Vuze. Unlike Vuze, BitTorrent Inc. will continue to offer a lightweight uTorrent version for the the people who don’t want to make this switch, preventing a revolt among conservative uTorrent users.

The new uTorrent will be a resource hog, featuring a full blown search engine, video conversion, iTunes integration and a video player. The browser interface will allow uTorrent to be put on set-top boxes, which opens up the possibility for BitTorrent Inc. to reopen a new and improved version of their video store that can be easily hooked up to TVs.

Due to the changes, uTorrent will obviously have to remove its tagline ‘a (very) tiny BitTorrent client.’

—–

Happy new year to all of you from TorrentFreak. Let us know what your predictions are for 2010 in the comments below. We will feature the best on our side-blog FreakBits during the coming days.

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

The legislation came into force on April 1st this year, and the very next day the Netnod Internet Exchange reported a significant drop of 30% in Swedish Internet traffic. This dramatic reduction in data transfers was attributed to file-sharers reigning in their activities on fears of being identified by anti-piracy companies.

In response to the news, Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that most experts believed that the initial “scare effect” would wear off in time. They were absolutely right.

Current data from Netnod reveals that traffic levels in Sweden have not only returned to normal, pre-IPRED levels, but actually seem on track to surpass them. This increase is partly natural, but the relatively steep climb in recent months seems to suggest that P2P traffic is on the rise again.

While anti-piracy and copyright groups are working hard to clock up successes in getting governments to implement increasingly tougher laws to deal with online file-sharers, they too aren’t sitting back and accepting defeat in the face of these new challenges. Many are turning to services which enable them to hide their identities.

Recently the Cyber Norms sociological research project reported that 10% of Swedes aged between 15 and 25 were taking measures to neutralize online surveillance, with as many as 500,000 of their countrymen following suit. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimated that 6 to 7 percent of all Swedes could now be hiding themselves online.

In this cat and mouse game, the cats have to spend millions of dollars and years of effort to achieve their aims of getting new legislation to protect their interests. However, in a crushing response, the mice spend just a few minutes in thought deciding how to spend a few dollars in order to instantly neutralize the threat.

As people around the world look forward to the festive season, it must seem like Christmas every day for VPN suppliers.

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

These findings are the result of the Cyber Norms sociological research project carried out by a group of Swedish researchers. The researchers conducted a survey among Swedes aged between 15 and 25 and found that 10 percent of this group is currently taking measures against increasing online surveillance.

Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimates the percentage of all Swedes who are hidden on the Internet to be as high as 6 or 7 percent. If this figure is accurate, it means that there are more than half a million Swedes who already use a service to hide their identity.

The researchers note that file-sharing is not the only reason for people to anonymize their connection, but the results of the survey clearly show that avid file-sharers would rather hide their identities than stop downloading. And indeed, over the past months we’ve seen that more and more BitTorrent users are seeking ways to protect their privacy online, rendering all the newly proposed anti-piracy laws useless.

Contrary to what the anti-piracy lobby had hoped for, file-sharers are not an easy catch. Their calls for harsher copyright legislation are only driving ‘pirates’ underground. According to the Cyber Norms survey, more than half of all respondents said they would take measures to protect their identities if anti-piracy laws in Sweden are toughened, as is currently happening in the UK and France.

Currently, the most common and widely used privacy services are VPNs. These services allow a user to connect to the Internet while hiding their own IP-address. Millions of file-sharers around the world use services like this to prevent being tracked by anti-piracy companies, and this number is increasing rapidly.

The recently launched Itshidden service is one of the few that offer a free service in addition to premium subscriptions. Due to its increased popularity the owners recently had to disable new registrations in order to keep the service running smoothly. In just a few months Itshidden signed up over 100,000 members. Other VPN services report an increase in signups too.

The anti-piracy laws currently being mulled have created a flourishing multi-million dollar ‘online privacy’ industry. In recent months these services have seen a massive increase in customers, with most of them paying around $10 per month to prevent third parties from logging their download behavior.

Perhaps the entertainment industry should invest some time and money in creating legal and attractive alternatives to piracy. Apparently most file-sharers are willing to pay $120 a year for unlimited and unhindered access.

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

However, none of this stopped the lobby groups, or the politicians looking to push for the ruling.

In the EU, the amendment, which would protect against 3-strikes laws by requiring due judicial process to occur before any sanction (such as cutting off Internet access), has been substantially watered down. Meanwhile, in France the Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of a slightly modified version of HADOPI – their legislation which includes a 3-strikes sanction.

On Tuesday, the Parliament gave up on Amendment 138, which had been voted on twice by the assembly, gaining a majority both times. The amendment was supposed to protect the rights of citizens from being treated as guilty upon the accusations of an industry group, and punished based on the same. It read;

Applying the principle that no restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, save when public security is threatened in which case the ruling may be subsequent.

Instead, they are now considering a version which does not guarantee the right to an effective and timely judicial review.

Christian Engstrom, the Pirate Party’s MEP, commented on the amendment in his blog. He included the differences in text that have been made since Tuesday (bold denotes added text, strike-through indicates removed) in a meeting between three negotiators for the European Parliament and representatives for the Council of Ministers.

The changes included the removal of the judicial guarantee, that any measures should come only after a fair an impartial procedure (and should now just ‘respect’ such things), and the ACTA-like inclusion of ‘National Security’ clauses.

He summarized things simply, saying: “It shows utter contempt for Parliament by totally ignoring everything it says. The Council plans to bypass Parliament and once and for all prove that it is they who make the decisions, end of story.”

Meanwhile, France’s highest Constitutional Court has approved a slightly modified version of HADOPI. While initially blocked last September, a change to require a judge to sign off on the disconnection action (rather than the Agency itself) has meant it passed the Court. However, such court measures will be ‘fast tracked’ rather than given full judicial process, a situation the New York Times describes as ’similar to traffic violations’.

This has angered many, including (of course) the Pirate Party. Laurent Le Besnerais of the Parti Pirate and Pirate Party International called it “a huge blow for Internet Freedom.”

“In June 2009, this same Council declared that Internet access is a fundamental right which cannot be restricted without judicial process,” he told TorrentFreak. “Today, the council gives a judge the right and responsibility to pronounce a closure of Internet access to anyone suspected of having shared illegally. Furthermore, the suspect will have to prove his innocence, which creates a presumption of guilt.”

With the flip-flopping over these measures, it can only be seen as a greater boost for the European Pirate Parties in future elections. However, since much of the party works and draws its support online, there is the risk that members could start having their net connections cut off. With evidential standards so low, would it really be beyond the realms of possibility that political critics of these plans could end up being cut off at the say-so of those they oppose?

If all goes as planned the agency will be staffed next month, with letters starting in the new year, and terminations starting as soon as next summer. How long the law will stay once the innocent start being punished is harder to predict. As with IPRED, the people the law aims to deal with will just use seedboxes, VPNs, and open WiFi hotspots instead of their home connections.

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

Yesterday, speaking with the UK’s The Mirror, John Petter, boss of ISP BT’s consumer division, said that measures to tackle Internet piracy will be costly.

Noting that ISP profit margins are already small, Petter said he fears that the process could cost ISPs a staggering £365m a year.

However, according to Jupiter Reseach, whose figures the BPI uses when trying to convince others how much money they lose, the British music industry will lose £200m worth of business to online piracy in 2009.

If the BPI’s ‘losses’ figures are to be believed (and we have to go along with the ridiculous premise of 1 download = 1 lost sale in order to do so), saving £200m worth of business will end up costing ISPs almost double that amount.

“Their [music industry] claims are melodramatic and assume people would buy all the music that is illegally downloaded, which is nonsense,” said Petter, adding that laws are already in place to deal with illicit file-sharing, but the industry doesn’t want to use those particular ones because it would hurt their public image.

Petter’s final point is possibly the most important one. He believes that the war against file-sharing will lead to a technological arms race as Internet users find new ways to hide their activities.

Indeed, by spending a measly £3.00 per month on a cheapo VPN service from the likes of SwissVPN, it’s possible for any user to tunnel right out of the UK and no-one in the country will have a clue what they are doing on their connection. Not the BPI, not ISPs, not the government.

That’s around 10p per day to defeat a £1m a day system that isn’t even in place yet. Something doesn’t add up.

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

These services, such as The Pirate Bay’s Ipredator, usually charge a recurring monthly fee to pay for bandwidth and hardware bills. However, this week a new player entered the VPN market, offering their services for free – no strings attached.

Named ItsHidden, the free VPN solution has opened up a BETA test to the public, who can now privatize their Internet traffic – including BitTorrent transfers – in next to no time. ItsHidden was set up with torrent users in mind, allowing them to hide their identities from ‘third parties’ who choose to snoop on their activities.

“It has been created to put some rights back in the favor of the user and that includes us,” David from ItsHidden explained to TorrentFreak. “There are so many bodies, mostly unelected that seem to have full access to the most intimate of online details with little or no justification and more importantly, no evidence.”

The service encrypts the connection between the user and ItsHidden’s servers and prevents anyone from reading this data as it is sent or received. We were further assured that no data logs are kept of the user’s transfers. The best news is of course that it’s totally free, and they hope to keep it like this in the future.

“It is a free service, we will of course have to limit in some way eventually to stop the whole lot collapsing, but we will always have a free account. The paid account would be geared at about $5 and will add port forwarding and other features,” David said.

During the BETA phase the service uses shared IP-addresses, but once they have completed more testing ItsHidden will be able to issue static IPs. The servers are all located in The Netherlands at present, but they will spread to other locations once the service is out of BETA.

We have of course tried ItsHidden ourselves and the service is offering good speeds for a VPN, although this might differ based on the user’s location and the load on the network. Right now, we are hoping that it wont collapse once thousands of new users flood the network. Fingers crossed.

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

The results of the survey clearly showed that avid file-sharers would rather hide their identities than stop downloading. And indeed, more and more BitTorrent users are seeking ways to protect their privacy online, rendering all the newly proposed anti-piracy laws useless.

TorrentPrivacy, BitBlinder and The Pirate Bay’s Ipredator are just a few examples of services launched in the past year, targeted at concerned BitTorrent users. The goal of these and other anonymity applications is clear; hide the IP-address of the file-sharer so he can’t be tracked down while swapping files.

Currently in beta, The Pirate Bay’s Ipredator uses the same tech platform as the VPN service Relakks. For a few dollars a month it routes all your traffic through its servers, hiding your IP address. Ipredator is currently limited to 3000 users but according to the Pirate Bay team there are another 180,000 users on the waiting list, eager to join.

Running a VPN network for hundreds of thousands of hungry BitTorrent users will prove to be quite a challenge. The infrastructure and bandwidth required by a service targeted at file-sharers is significant, not to mention costly. This undoubtedly leads to problems.

The aforementioned Relakks saw its subscriptions double in just a month when the controversial Ipred law came into effect in Sweden this April. This surge in subscriptions led to to major problems with support and updates according to Relakks’s chairman Jan Erik Fiske.

Unlike more traditional VPN services, BitBlinder recently introduced a free solution. Instead of routing the traffic through a central server BitBlinder passes it on through multiple peers. Each peer in the chain only knows the IP address of the next person in the chain, not the original requester/sender.

A few days after its launch BitBlinder had signed up more than 30,000 new users. Right now registrations are temporarily closed to make sure everything runs smoothly for those already using the service, and while they iron out bugs. “We want to make sure it works, and is secure for everyone,” Josh Albrecht, one of the creators of BitBlinder told TorrentFreak.

Because of the increasing interest in anonymity, the Swedish ISP Alltele decided to offer a free service to conceal the IP-addresses of its customers. According to Alltele’s CEO Ola Norberg thousands of users have downloaded the application, which nearly killed the server it was running on.

These examples clearly show that the scare tactics of the entertainment industry are not going to work. There is no doubt that with every new anti-piracy initiative introduced, more and more users will find their way to one of the many anonymizing services out there.

Instead of stopping the pirates in their tracks the entertainment industry has simply inspired a new ‘industry’ worth millions of dollars.

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

Meanwhile, a report from a political advisory committee in The Netherlands is calling for harsher copyright legislation. Presently, downloading movies and music for personal use in The Netherlands is seen as “fair use” and not punishable by law. In their advice to the government, the committee suggests changing this position in order to reduce the mass downloading that they say has become a national sport in the country.

Interestingly, the committee recognizes that the entertainment industry caused the piracy problem themselves, at least in part. They therefore say that tougher anti-piracy legislation should only be implemented if there are enough legal alternatives, something that’s lacking in The Netherlands at the moment. This all sounds very reasonable compared to what is being proposed in the UK.

The long awaited Digital Britain report was published this week, a road map of how the entertainment industries and ISPs should tackle online piracy. In short, the government proposes to track down and warn people who share copyrighted content. The personal details of repeated copyright infringers will be handed over to the entertainment industry, if they have a court order.

In reality this means that everything stays pretty much the same. UK ISPs have already started warning their copyright infringing customers last year, and the details of many alleged downloaders have been given out to the rights holders represented by law firms such as Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law. However, if the warning letters fail to decrease the piracy rate dramatically, things may get very nasty in the UK.

The report points out that when the warning letters fail, ISPs may be forced to reduce the connection speeds and download limits of individual customers, block access to sites such as The Pirate Bay or pull a Comcast and block BitTorrent traffic altogether. In addition, ISPs may block specific ports if needed and spy on their customers download habits though DPI techniques.

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse we stumbled upon some worrying news surfacing in Lithuania this week. The local anti-piracy body LANVA has proposed a rather far reaching agreement to the country’s ISPs. LANVA suggests that the ISPs start monitoring their customers’ browsing and downloading habits and report any suspect behavior back to them.

In addition, the anti-piracy group wants access to the ISP’s servers within 24 hours if needed, and the personal details of any of the ISP’s customers who are suspected of copyright infringement. The content creators on the other hand will have to equip all their products with DRM to “minimize” the piracy rate.

Not only do these proposals violate several human rights, the proposal to add DRM to all products will only have the opposite effect when it comes to reducing piracy. LANVA’s boss has previously received death threats for going after pirates and we’re beginning to suspect that this has seriously impacted his sanity.

It’s doubtful that these proposals throughout Europe will have the desired effect. If anything, it will encourage those who use file-sharing networks to share copyrighted works to become more cautious. Indeed, less then a week after the anonymous BitTorrent download application BitBlinder launched they already have 30,000 users, and The Pirate Bay’s VPN service currently has close to 200,000 people on the waiting list.

If people don’t like these laws, they will find a way to neutralize them. There is no technical solution to the piracy ‘problem’.

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

In their reporting they try to counterbalance the propaganda being spread by the various anti-piracy outlets. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the major movie and music studios who have asked the court of Nanterre to order the site to publish extracts of convictions of 27 copyright infringers.

The convictions are all related to copyright infringement and Numerama has published the first of three batches this Friday. The abstracts contain personal information such as the names, addresses, and birth dates of the convicted, as well as the sentence and the crime they’ve committed. (example)

Even though Numerama is not involved in these cases in any way, they have been selected by the court to publish the convictions as part of the sentence of the copyright infringers. The complainants in the 27 cases are likely to have picked Numerama in an attempt to ‘educate’ their readers.

It is quite shocking that a court can simply order an independent news site to publish something, but apparently that’s perfectly fine in the French legal system. Interestingly enough, the court will pay the site 10,000 euros ($14,000) for their cooperation.

Since Numerama doesn’t want to take money (indirectly) from the pro-copyright lobby they have asked their readers to come up with some ideas on how to spend the money. Their plan is to invest it in projects that promote free-sharing and online privacy.

Some of the suggestions include giving it to a Pirate Party, investing in privacy solutions such as a VPN service or buying servers to support a file-sharing network. Numerama are encouraging their readers to come up with more ideas and they have until June 28 to do so. Let’s hope something good comes out of it.

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

Maybe, just maybe, in future our answers will be different. Allow us to introduce BitBlinder, a new and free cross-platform (Mac support coming soon) open source project which not only claims to make anonymous BitTorrent transfers a reality but also hides your IP address while browsing the web. Its functionality also extends to the bypassing of some web filters and in the future will be compatible with more applications, such as email, IRC and instant messaging clients.

Although anonymity with the previously-mentioned TOR is good, using it for torrents is a big no – it’s too slow and the operators of the network do not appreciate it. BitBlinder was born to solve the problems that TOR couldn’t. TorrentFreak caught up with Josh Albrecht, one of the creators of BitBlinder, for the lowdown.

“BitBlinder is an attempt to address the aforementioned issues with Tor – we want to make online anonymity fast, usable, and ubiquitous to the point that organizations give up on spying and filtering us,” Josh told TorrentFreak. “BitBlinder is actually built on much of the same technology as Tor, though we have a completely separate network.”

The anonymity itself is provided by BitBlinder’s own P2P network, inside which everyone is required to contribute their own bandwidth to proxy other users’ data. The diagram below shows a standard user setup, without anonymity;

As seen in the diagram below, your request for data using BitBlinder is passed encrypted through multiple peers. Each peer in the chain only knows the IP address of the next person in the chain, not the original requester/sender.

Since decent BitTorrent-capable anonymity services cost money these days, how can BitBlinder offer the same for free? The key is to think of it as operating a little like a private BitTorrent tracker.

In order to maintain a good ratio on a private tracker, at a minimum you need to upload the same amount of data as you downloaded. With BitBlinder there is a similar system – in order to get the service for free you have to proxy X GB of data for other people inside the swarm if you want to share X GB of anonymized data. In common with some new accounts on private trackers, BitBlinder accounts come pre-loaded with some free credit to get the user going – 2GB to be precise. If anyone prefers not to be bound by ratio rules in the future, just like on many private trackers it will also be possible to buy ‘upload credit’ to use BitBlinder, but there is no reason why people can’t use it for free, as long as they share their bandwidth as detailed above.

At this point some readers will be asking how it’s possible for no-one to know what’s going on inside the BitBlinder swarm, yet somehow BitBlinder manages anonymity ratio tracking. It is possible though, and for those interested to learn about the micro-payment system BitBlinder’s is based on, further (highly technical) reading can be found here (pdf).

Of course, since traffic is sent from your PC to others in the BitBlinder swarm before reaching its destination in order to anonymize it, it won’t be as quick as regular non-anonymous BitTorrent use, but Josh told us speeds should be respectable and in any event, much faster than TOR. Indeed, within a few seconds of starting a ‘Steal This Film’ torrent from The Pirate Bay, we experienced speeds in excess of 2Mbit/s, which is massively faster than my previous experiences of BitTorrent over TOR.

For Windows users the BitBlinder package comes in a 17mb installer. The torrent client is a custom version of BitTornado and although it doesn’t have all the features of say uTorrent, more features will be added as time goes by. The bundled anonymous browser is naturally built on Firefox.

Josh told us that the BitBlinder network could be made to work with uTorrent or another browser such as Internet Explorer but unfortunately both applications are closed source, which means that it’s impossible to be certain that all data will be sent through other users (proxies) in the BitBlinder swarm and not directly to the Internet. For the same reasons, Flash is unavailable in the bundled version of Firefox.

Another trick up BitBlinder’s sleeve is the development of techniques to bypass web filters.

“BitTorrent encryption is pretty good at avoiding ISP level restrictions but it doesn’t do much for things like avoiding university or corporate firewalls. One of Tor’s goals is to circumvent the Great Firewall of China and we hope to make BitBlinder even better,” explained Josh. “Filters generally work by either blocking ports, a certain IP address, or by inspecting the traffic itself for specific protocols. We’re working hard to make BitBlinder effective against all three of these methods, but we still have some work to do on these features, so results may vary.”

Since BitBlinder has an anonymous browser, it should prove useful if you don’t want your employer knowing what you’re doing on Facebook or other social networks, for example. Indeed, if these sites are blocked it’s possible to use the BitBlinder network to access them. Of course, the anonymity would also be useful for signing up to and using the HTTP element of a torrent site.

Inevitably there are some issues with an anonymity system such as BitBlinder, and they parallel those experienced by users of TOR. Any traffic generated inside the BitBlinder network eventually needs to escape to the wider Internet. In order to facilitate this, some users need to act as an exit point. In basic terms, this means that an exit node operator’s IP address will be associated with the traffic leaving the network.

Before panic sets in, this is not necessarily bad news. Acting as an exit node provides the operator with plausible deniability, since they will have no idea what data is passing through. It would also be difficult to say if the data leaving that PC had originated from there or elsewhere, extending the deniability of their own traffic too. And it’s not as if that user’s IP address wasn’t perfectly visible already before BitBlinder came along.

For most users, however, opting to act as a beginning or middle proxy in the BitBlinder network means that no-one outside can see any traffic emanating from their PC and the good news is that this internal traffic still adds upload/download credit to the user’s account.

Time will tell if BitBlinder lives up to its dreams (and everyone else’s) but from what we’ve seen so far in the beta version, things are looking very promising indeed. That said, remember folks this is a beta and it is likely people will uncover bugs so please be patient and consider allowing the app to send crash reports, it will help the team a lot.

BitBlinder can be downloaded here – don’t forget to register and please read the instructions on how to forward ports etc, it will be good for your ratio.

New users should note that invite codes will be sent out at a controlled rate. Early adopters will be able to register fairly quickly but as more and more people apply, the longer the wait will become. This is merely to ensure a healthy network with an adequate number of quality proxies.

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

Now Karl Sigfrid, an MP with the Moderate Party and opponent of IPRED, is urging other Internet providers to follow this lead and refuse to log data that can be revealed under IPRED – no data logged means there is nothing to reveal.

Sigfrid has sent a letter to his ISP Bredbandsbolaget, urging them to stop storing data;

As a customer I ask you to stop storing information on the IP address that you assign me. The data need not be stored by law, and other Internet providers have already decided to discontinue storage.

Since you store my IP address, I can not operate an open wireless network without exposing myself to risk of having my identity extradited to the copyright holder. This is because I can not check if anyone else is guilty of illegal up-or downloading through my account.

A letter from a copyright holder and a possible lawsuit is a major inconvenience for those who have done nothing illegal, especially since a customer can ask his ISP to take legal action to protect their clients’ right to private communications.

So far Bredbandsbolaget has refused to comply and has said that it will continue to log the activities of its customers. A request for another major ISP Telia to stop logging resulted in the same response, with both companies claiming that they will continue to log for the “security of our customers”.

“Our task is to make sure that our customers are safe on the Internet. In order to do this we have to keep records for a short amount of time, maximum three weeks. We will not automatically give away any records but will investigate any such request very thoroughly and also appeal,” said Georgi Ganev, CEO of Bredbandsbolaget.

Ganev said that Tele2’s claimed decision to stop logging will compromise the security of its customers. “If they claim that they will be able to uphold security and at the same time immediately delete records, then I’m confused. It is impossible,” he said.

IFPI lawyer Peter Danowsky is completely against ISPs stopping their logging and has attacked them, accusing them of assisting with illegal behavior. “It is astonishing that someone who claims to be a serious telecoms company wants to contribute to breaches of the law, which is the meaning of what they do,” he said, while completely failing to mention that these ISPs are operating entirely within the law.

Quite how these logs improve customer security is not clear, but for those permanently using a VPN (like this writer) there are no logs whatsoever to refer to – and I haven’t noticed any reduction in my security at all.

In the meantime, Karl Sigfrid is encouraging everyone to copy his letter and send it to their own ISP.

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

That’s not all though, the team has recently rolled out a new feature which is almost guaranteed to spark controversy. Visitors to a torrent details page on the site – such as this random Ubuntu torrent – will notice the addition of a brand new button labeled ‘Share on Facebook’.

Users clicking this button will be taken to the Facebook where the torrent will be added to the user’s profile. Anyone browsing the user’s profile page can simply click on the torrent and provided a torrent client is installed, download begins straightaway with no need to visit the Pirate Bay site.

The entertainment industries are obviously not amused by this new feature. A representative from the IFPI told the Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten that offering links to torrents that point to copyright works is illegal in Switzerland, while referring to the ShareReactor case .

Increasingly, social networking sites such as Facebook are used to share files with users linking to BitTorrent sites or file-hosters such as Rapidshare and Megaupload. Anti-piracy outfits see this as a new threat and request the site’s operators to remove the links.

Two weeks ago the Brazilian recording industry took action and managed to pressure the moderators of one of the largest groups on Google’s social network Orkut to shut down their group. But, when the 921,000 member group was closed, new ones soon took its place and the sharing continued.

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde says that they haven’t seen any complaints regarding the new feature. “As far as I know, no rights-holders have complained to us yet,” while noting that any complaints they do receive get deleted immediately.

When asked if The Pirate Bay had permission from FaceBook to implement the new feature, Sunde said they didn’t feel the need to ask. “They monitoring their protal every day – they should have noticed it long ago,” he added. Facebook declined to comment on the issue.

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

It all started with rumors about two US ISPs, Comcast and AT&T, who were said to be doing a three-strikes deal with the RIAA. It soon became known that this rumor was completely fabricated, but not before hundreds of other news oulets reproduced the story. At the end of the week it turned out that there was no news at all.

Yes, the RIAA, MPAA and other outfits do plan to send copyright infringement warnings to ISPs, but they’ve been doing so for at least half a decade. Every other month these Hollywood lobbyists pitch their anti-piracy efforts to the public, and that’s exactly what they are paid for. This doesn’t mean, however, that something is about to change.

The anti-piracy outfits are happy with all the free publicity of course, that is exactly what they are after. Their purpose is to scare people. In this post we hope to clear up some of the misunderstandings, as we show that the scary stories published this week have no substance at all.

Copyright infringement warnings?

For years, content owners such as record labels or movie studios have been sending copyright infringement notices to ISPs, who are legally obliged to forward these to their customers. Some ISPs simply ignore them, while others faithfully forward the emails to the customer account associated with the infringing IP-address. Many ISPs don’t keep records of these events.

So, is my ISP spying on me?

No. This is a common misunderstanding. ISPs don’t look into your specific downloading behavior, they never have and there is no indication that this will change anytime in the near future. All the ‘evidence’ comes from organizations that work for the copyright holders.

What do they know about me?

If you receive a warning, all copyright holders know about you at this stage is your IP-address and what files were (partially) shared via your account, or more accurately – the bill payer’s account. The MPAA, RIAA and others don’t know your name and they never will unless they get a court order forcing your ISP to hand over the information. In the bigger picture, this is very rare.

How did they track me down?

The copyright holders hire companies such as BayTSP and DtecNet to track down people who share certain titles on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks. They join the swarm and request files from others. When someone shares a piece of the file with them they log the IP-address, look up the ISP and send out a copyright infringement notice automatically. Unlike the file-sharers, these companies are authorized to download these files, so they are not infringing copyright themselves.

Will I get sued if I receive a warning through my ISP?

No. These copyright infringement warnings are not related to any legal action. Copyright holders do go after people who share their work on file-sharing networks, but this has nothing to do with the warnings they send out via ISPs.

Will they take my Internet away?

No. Although there is a lot of talk about “three strikes” policies, no ISP has agreed (or was forced) to disconnect users after they receive their third warning. In New Zealand they came close to implementing a law that would require ISPs to do this, but this proposal was pulled.

In France they are also considering three strikes legislation, but this has not passed into action yet. In Ireland the largest ISP Eircom said it would disconnect repeated infringers only if they receive a court order.

It is worth mentioning though that ISPs may cut off people whenever they think it’s necessary. Cox does this in the US for example, without an agreement with the MPAA or RIAA. ISPs have terms and conditions and most forbid copyright infringement, but really this is just to cover their own backs under the law.

Do I have to be worried?

Receiving a regular infringement notice is nothing to be worried about. However, if you download copyrighted files without authorization from the copyright holder you are breaking the law in some countries. If you receive a warning without having shared anything yourself (which happens quite often) then there’s nothing to worry about.

Can I protect (hide) myself?

If you don’t want to be spied on when using BitTorrent the best option is to hide your IP-address. You can do so by subscribing to a VPN service or by using software such as TorrentPrivacy. Blocklist software such as PeerGuardian is often recommended, but it is also highly ineffective as the lists are never fully up-to date or accurate.

What’s the point in all this?

The MPAA and RIAA don’t want their products on file-sharing networks and they use these warning emails to deter people from sharing these files with others. Since it’s much cheaper (and effective) than suing people, this is now their strategy of choice. Using news outlets to spread their doom and gloom scenarios is just part of their operation.

In the future the amount of warnings they send out to alleged infringers will increase and the studios and ISPs will work together to keep the associated operating costs down, if that’s not what they’ve already been doing in their recent meetings. It’s just the old model, scaled up with a rumor or two on top.

Let’s move on already.

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

Many file-sharers already pay a few dollars each month for a VPN service. This type of facility allows the user to protect his Internet connection with encryption while “tunneling’ data in privacy through the servers of a VPN provider, usually located in another country. The user’s ISP-designated IP address remains hidden, revealing only a second IP address provided by his VPN company.

This type of service hinders outsiders from finding the identity of an individual behind an IP address, while helping Internet users effectively side-step laws which may prove inconvenient or unpalatable in their home country.

For those who like to share files, one country set to introduce an extremely unpalatable law is Sweden. Due to come into force in just over a week, the controversial Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) legislation will make it easier for copyright holders to get their hands on the personal details of suspected illicit file-sharers.

But not if the crew of The Pirate Bay have anything to do with it.

Timed to coincide with the introduction of IPRED on April 1st 2009, a brand new service designed to neutralize the effects of the law will be launched. Dubbed ‘IPREDATOR’, this brand new anonymity service from The Pirate Bay promises to make subscribers “more anonymous” than when using traditional VPN services.

Peter Sunde, aka brokep told TorrentFreak that the service is currently in beta and will be slowly opened to around 500 users. When those users are experiencing the service bug-free, it will be opened up to everyone.

Fortunately the service won’t be limited to just Swedish users. Brokep confirmed that anonymity will be available globally for a modest fee of around 5 euros ($6.77) per month.

The weak link in any VPN/anonymity service is always their willingness (or otherwise) to hand over your customer data when pressured under the law. However, with IPREDATOR this should not be an issue since the service is promising to keep no logs of user activity whatsoever.

Anyone who would like to participate in the beta should sign up here.

Stay tuned for further updates.

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

In a nutshell, a representative from VPN4Life claimed they were about to offer a fast, 128 bit encrypted, fully unlimited and anonymous PPTP service – all for just a one-off payment of $50.00. It seemed to good to be true and in our report we said as much, warning people away from the service.

Nevertheless, since the offer was so cheap, some people decided to take the chance. After handing their cash over via PayPal, customers did not receive a PPTP VPN service, but an executable file named ‘VPN 4 Life PC.exe’. Sadly, this was neither new nor original code, but a piece of software designed to protect people’s privacy when using public WiFi networks. The ad-supported software, called Hotspot Shield, is already available for free from AnchorFree.com. The scammers at VPN4Life simply renamed the file to make it look like their own work.

Confirmation that the two files are identical can be obtained by checking the MD5 checksum, which can be viewed as a type of digital fingerprint. The results for each file are identical.

4b34079841d43799e5d0849ac16feb61 HSS-1.10-install-anchorfree-76-conduit.exe
4b34079841d43799e5d0849ac16feb61 VPN 4 Life PC.exe

The VPN4Life site now has a note on it stating that if anyone is unhappy with the service, that’s too bad. “No refunds will be given if you are dissatisfied with our services,” says the site’s recently-added Terms and Conditions. However, according to reports from purchasers, a complaint to PayPal seems to do the trick.

Too good to be true? You bet.

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

A good VPN service offering unlimited data transfers and healthy speeds usually costs around $10 to $20 per month, so when a new service launched this week, offering all this for a one-off payment of $29.00 (introductory price), it warranted further investigation.

According to their website, the people behind VPN4Life are entrepreneurs “striving to free the world from ISP monitoring, government restrictions, and capitalism’s growing influence on the Internet, one account at a time.” Offering unlimited bandwidth and 128 bit encryption through servers in the UK, Germany and Singapore with a 99.7% uptime guarantee, it certainly looked attractive. The official site carries little detail, so we contacted VPN4Life and asked a number of questions.

First of all, the $29.00 payment looked like an introductory offer, so how much would the service cost normally? VPN4Life told us the 20mb/sec fully BitTorrent compatible unlimited bandwdith PPTP service would cost “between $45 and $50″, while confirming that the payment is indeed a one-off for a lifetime subscription.

Since there is no privacy policy on the site we asked a few questions along those lines. VPN4Life told us that they do not log what any of their customers do. We asked about the lack of a displayed Terms of Service and their response was it wasn’t needed. “Customer pays, we provide VPN,” they told us, while assuring that they would never divulge any customer information to 3rd parties, since they have nothing stored to give them.

$50.00 for life sounds an amazing offer – but is this super-low price sustainable? The immediate difficulty with a lifetime subscription is that once off the ground, the company is then responsible for providing a service to thousands of members forever who paid very little in the first place. More and more new signups are then required to pay for the spiraling hardware and bandwidth costs and since VPN4Life offer unlimited bandwidth, it’s difficult to see how the whole operation can be sustained.

As far as the real costs of bandwidth go, we spoke with Bruce at VPN provider Perfect Privacy who told us: “There is a reason why we currently charge about EUR 10.00 to EUR 15.00/month (depending if you pay for 3 or 24 months in advance), namely that 1 mbps of dedicated bandwidth in the West costs about EUR 10.00 to US$ 15.00 at the very minimum. In Asia it costs about US$ 80.00/mbps. That’s US$ 1,500 (U.S/Europe) to US$ 8,000 (Asia) every month just for 100 mbps.”

In the face of these figures, the VPN4Life offer starts to look vulnerable indeed. “How are they going to pay for their ever increasing bandwidth needs if the number of paying members becomes ever smaller in relation to the total number of members?” asked Bruce, rhetorically. He has a very, very good point. It looks impossible, much like the classic pyramid scheme.

Some might feel that at $50.00 this service is worth a try but I strongly believe that if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is. Time will tell, but I won’t be changing provider, that’s certain.

Update: Important – Anyone considering purchasing should read here first

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

Like the other sites we mentioned, Instant-Torrents downloads the torrents to their servers. When the download is finished, users can download it to their computer. What’s different is that once a torrent is downloaded to Instant-Torrent, it will stay hosted on the server, and other users can find the files via the site’s search, and download them instantly.

Instant-Torrents is still low on content, but with enough users it will become unnecessary to add torrents by yourself, since most popular files will be hosted on the server anyway. The downside for the owners is of course that the MPAA, IFPI and RIAA will be keeping an eye on it as well.

Instant-Torrents shares all torrents till they have uploaded what they have downloaded, which makes it ’share friendly’. Users are allowed to have 5 torrents running at the same time, and there is no limit in size or numbers for completed torrents. “As long as there’s enough disk space, people can download as much as they want,” ‘Zero Endorphine’, one of the Instant-Torrents co-founders told us.

The service also has an option to make a watch list, to downloads torrents based on specific keywords, as soon as they are available. In addition, the site has lists of the last added, most downloaded and most recommended torrents, and it allows users to recommend torrents to their friends.

Instant-Torrents is itself a free service, but in order to download you’ll have to get a VPN account at Ivacy. This is because the files can only be downloaded to your PC if you’re connected to the (private) Ivacy network. There is a free 1GB trial available, so potential users can play around with it for free. A paid account costs 0.50 Euro ($0.70) per GB, or 10 Euro ($14.20) a month for unlimited bandwidth.

‘Zero Endorphine’, one of the Instant-Torrents co-founders told us that they get a revenue share from Ivacy, to cover the expenses they incur, such as bandwidth and server costs. The site has only been up and running for a few weeks, and ‘Zero Endorphine’ ensured us that they will add more innovative features in the near future.

“We already added Usenet support, in a few days we will support Rapidshare downloads as well, and we’re also working on integrated BitTorrent tracker search,” ‘Zero Endorphine’ said. Instant-Torrents offers an interesting addition to the most basic BitTorrent download services. Although we prefer BitTorrent to be free, the private nature of the site, and the instant downloads might make it worthwhile for some.

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

Before the law was passed, The Pirate Bay crew spoke out against it, and now they are upping the ante. In an initial response they went out putting “wanted posters” up, of politicians who voted in favor of the law. Their next move is to ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, according to Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde.

“Together with other people that work against this law we’ve talked about asking international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden,” Peter writes on his blog. “Yes, that’s right! We want Sweden to be banned from the Internet. The ISPs need to block Sweden in order to protect their own customers integrity since everything they do on Swedish ISPs networks will be logged and searched.”

That is not all though. In addition to these lobbying efforts The Pirate bay will also add SSL encryption to their site, and they will inform their users on how to protect their privacy. For Swedes they already have a VPN solution up and running, which they will open up to international users in the near future.

“We’re going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law,” Peter writes. “This week we’re going to add SSL to The Pirate Bay. We’re also going to help out making a website about easy encryption – both for your harddrives and your net traffic.”

It’s good to see that The Pirate Bay team will not give up their privacy as easy as some of the politicians. “Trust me, this war is not lost,” Peter told TorrentFreak. “We will win. We have many aces up our sleeves and we’re gonna use them. No worries.”

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