James Burt, a 24 year-old manager at games retailer Electronics Boutique, admitted uploading the game on November 6th, a week before its commercial release in Australia.

In a statement the Japanese games giant said it used a range of forensic techniques to track down the uploader and on 23rd November obtained a Federal Court search order. This was used to locate and seize items from Burt’s property in Sinnamon Park, Queensland, to be used in evidence in the case against him.

As part of the investigation, Burt was also ordered to allow access using his passwords to social networking sites, email accounts and other websites he had used.

Australia traditionally lags behind the United States and Japan when it comes to media releases, but with the release of New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii the reverse was true, leading Nintendo to refer to the leak as a “global issue”.

“This legal proceeding was commenced to protect the creative rights and innovation of game developers, and to combat the growing international problem of Internet piracy,” the company said in a statement.

The game was a sure fire hit on BitTorrent. Data collected by TorrentFreak indicated that by December 27th 2009, the game had been downloaded 1,150,000 times.

Nevertheless, the game was still a huge commercial success. The game sold in excess of 10 million units in its first 2 months on sale – that’s 1 in 6 of all Wii gamers buying a copy – making it the fastest-selling single-platform game ever.

It’s unclear how Mr Burt will be able to pay this huge amount in damages. His salary at Electronics Boutique is unlikely to cover it – if he still has a job there.

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

An NBC representative explained that the network will only cover the highlights because people “are not dying to watch lots of long-form content on a 13-inch screen.” However, at the same time NBC contradicts itself by announcing that it will do all it can to prevent people from accessing unauthorized live feeds or downloads of Olympic broadcasts.

While NBC doesn’t believe there is much demand for live coverage, it will do all it can to prevent the ‘few’ people who do from downloading or streaming the events online. “Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find,” said Rick Cotton, NBC’s Executive Vice President commenting on their Olympic mission.

Once again one of the major entertainment industry outfits has got it entirely wrong. If NBC really wants to prevent piracy they have to offer at least some sort of alternative. Cutting 2,200 hours of live web coverage back to just a few hundred is certainly not going to help in stopping piracy.

NBC reportedly has teamed up with Ustream and Justin.tv, two popular live streaming sites, to use filtering schemes in order to prevent illegal broadcasts. However, it is inevitable that they won’t be able to stop them all since there are dozens of live streaming sites. Preventing torrents from being uploaded will turn out to be even more problematic for the network.

During the Beijing Olympics two years ago, The International Olympic Committee (IOC) asked for “assistance” from the Swedish government with preventing video clips from the Olympics in Beijing being shared via The Pirate Bay. This didn’t help much and during the weeks that followed millions of people continued to download broadcasts of Olympic events.

We assume that in the coming weeks most events will again appear online, despite NBC’s efforts to prevent the Olympics from being pirated.

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.

In these previous cases the pirated films were only on display in the stores, but the multinational electronics company LG takes it a step further. The company is selling TVs that have the functionality to accept a connection from an external USB device. This allows customers to enjoy pictures, music and videos directly on their TVs, all with a piracy endorsement from the manufacturer.

In the packaged English language manual, LG does not try to obfuscate the true purpose of this nifty USB feature – playing pirated movies. In the picture below, LG included pirated versions of The Incredibles and The Aviator, while explaining how easy it is to play the films directly on a TV.

LG seems to understand perfectly what customers want, but we doubt that the movie studios will be very excited about this piracy endorsement from the Koreans. Whether the pirated films were included intentionally is unknown, we expect that a company employee simply downloaded the movies off a file-sharing service out of habit or convenience.

Life’s Good isn’t it?

(via Fefe)

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

Just over a week after becoming available online in early November 2009, Ink pushed into TorrentFreak’s chart of top 10 most pirated movies with an incredible 400,000 downloads.

Unlike the majority of Hollywood movie bosses, the creators of Ink – Jamin and Kiowa Winans – decided to embrace their new-found pirate fans after the extra publicity pushed the movie to 16th place on IMDb’s movie meter and boosted DVD and Blu-ray sales. Kiowa wrote to TorrentFreak and said that the movie ending up on BitTorrent was “absolutely” the best thing that could’ve happened to it.

Now, Lars Sobiraj from German news outlet Gulli has interviewed Kiowa to see how things have progressed a couple of months on from the initial excitement.

As previously reported, Ink has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, so just how many of those translated into real-world sales? Kiowa says that is really hard to put an exact figure on that – they haven’t sold a DVD or Blu-ray for every download but sales have unquestionably gone up.

Money also came in from other routes too. As the movie gained popularity on BitTorrent, many Ink downloaders suggested that there should be a ‘donate’ button on the movie’s website so that fans could give money freely.

“We put that [donation link] up at the urging of some of the downloaders with the message ‘if you have watched Ink online for free and would like to contribute what you can, click here’,” Kiowa explains.

“Guess what country has been the most generous? Germany! Germans have been twice as generous as Americans so… thank you Germany. We have also shipped a lot of Deluxe Bundle fan packs to Germany so Ink seems to be a big hit there.”

Gulli asked Kiowa if she felt the movie had fallen victim to piracy, a notion she strongly denies.

“I think to say victim is to characterize piracy as an all-together awful thing. The piracy of Ink is unquestionably responsible for its popularity around the world. Sure our trailers have been out for over a year and have had plenty of views outside the US, but we think that 70% of the illegal downloads are coming from outside of the US and we do get a good number of international buyers at our online store every day,” she explained.

Before Ink was pirated, the movie’s IMDb rating was a lowly 12,991. As reported in our earlier article, it reached 16 and even moved up to the 14th position at one stage. Incredibly it has stayed as one of the top 200 movies in the world for the last two months, a feat that would have been impossible without the extra exposure.

Looking forward to future distribution models, Kiowa feels that everything will change during the next 10 years as people demand instant and simple access to media and their TVs and computers merge together into one device.

“That said, I’m not sure what the revenue model will be for films,” she notes. “Hollywood producers are quickly finding out that the instant films start circulating on DVD they will wind up on torrent sites.”

Kiowa broadly puts BitTorrent users into two camps – those who want media in an instant and those who want it for free. Noting that there are those who fall into both categories, she acknowledges the challenges that lie ahead in figuring out a way to make this situation bring revenue to the filmmakers.

“I think a reasonably-priced instant download the moment the movie becomes available would largely cure the piracy issue so we will see how it all shakes out over the next several years,” she adds.

As most observers are aware, many music and movie companies consider torrent sites as entities to be crushed and in recent years have set about a strategy to achieve that. Gulli asked Kiowa if she believes that is the correct strategy to deal with the problem.

While one could argue that non-physical digital formats such as MP3 are part of the reason that piracy has flourished in recent years, Kiowa feels that the invention of the iPod has helped to reduce piracy, largely through the existence of competition from one service – iTunes. The movie industry needs to catch up.

“Until the equivalent of the iPod is invented for film or long-format video files I think that piracy is going to be a huge battle ground, one in which I doubt Hollywood will win,” Kiowa predicts.

“There is always a smarter programmer out there that can move faster than bureaucracy. The film industry really needs to set its sights on overhauling its distribution system. Right now there are horrible things like region-coded DVDs that tie up a film’s rights in various countries and this is what has made the film business plenty of money over the years.”

The industry needs to move its thinking to encompass global distribution, says Kiowa, not concentrate on pushing movies out to dozens of separate territories.

“We are going to keep all the rights to Ink and not give them away country-by-country so that when that iPod-for-movies emerges Ink can be the first film that debuts to the whole world,” she says, adding: “That is the hope anyway.”

Looking to the future, partner Jamin is currently working on scripts for two new films, one a sci-fi psychological thriller called ‘The Frame’ and another a sci-fi fantasy called ‘Myth of Man’.

“For the time being we’re just really happy that Ink is rolling along and gaining fans around the world. How ever people come to the film, we’re just happy that they are watching it, Kiowa concludes.

“As Jamin likes to say, the battle of independent films is not piracy, it’s obscurity. Hey – at least we’re winning that one!”

The full interview conducted by Lars Sobiraj, is available here.

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

The statistics for all 2010 nominees, except documentary and foreign films, show that 27 of the 34 films were available on BitTorrent in DVD quality last night. Nearly half of the films have leaked as a screener and 10 of those are estimated to be leaked by Academy members.

Although the majority of the Oscar nominees are available online, the movie industry has certainly scored a small victory. Last year all films leaked in one format or another. On another positive note for the MPAA, the median time for films to leak after their US-release date has nearly doubled to 21 days. In 2003 it took only one day for most films to leak onto the Internet.

On the negative side, there were still 4 films that were available online before they they premiered in US movie theaters. In The Loop, The Hurt Locker, The White Ribbon and The Young Victoria all leaked in advance of their official premiere.

The graph below further shows that there are less retail DVD rips available compared to previous years, 44% versus 100% in 2008 and the years before. As Andy also mentions, this figure may go up a little before the official Oscar award ceremony broadcast.

Although this data suggests that the movie industry is becoming more effective in preventing screeners from leaking online, we have to emphasize that more than a third of the leaks originated from deviant Academy members who like to share the work of their colleagues.

The Oscar screener of Avatar was sent out relatively late, only a few weeks ago. It leaked onto the Internet today and is not included in the graphs above.

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

Last year several studios including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Disney Enterprises, Inc. and the Seven Network took legal action against iiNet, claiming that the ISP did nothing to stop its customers from sharing copyright media via BitTorrent.

The ISP refuted the claim with a multi-layered defense, which was heard then adjourned in November 2009.

Passing his verdict today, Justice Cowdroy ruled that while the studio’s copyrights had indeed been infringed upon, iiNet did not authorize the copyright infringing activities of its subscribers and therefore the ISP could not be held responsible.

Notably, Justice Cowdroy said that iiNet had no control over BitTorrent networks and the ISP was covered under so-called “safe harbor” provisions.

“It is impossible to conclude that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement … [iiNet] did not have relevant power to prevent infringements occurring,” Justice Cowdroy said in his judgment.

AFACT had insisited during the original court case that iiNet should forward copyright infringement warnings to its customers on behalf of AFACT members, but the judge ruled that this was not the way copyright infringements should be handled.

Electronic Frontiers Australia said the outcome of the case was the “application of common sense” and Pirate Party Australia also welcomed the decision.

“This is a good decision by Justice Cowdroy, and reflects that there is no legal basis or obligation for any ISP to act in the interest of copyright holders, or to expect that they should disconnect any entity upon allegation of infringement without judicial oversight and due process,” said Rodney Serkowski, Party Secretary.

“Essentially an ISP should be considered similar to the postal service – they simply carry data in the form of packets, and that communication should be considered private,” he added.

In a statement, iiNet said it had “never supported or encouraged breaches of the law, including infringement of the Copyright Act of the Telecommunications Act,” adding that the company had always been a “good corporate citizen and an even better copyright citizen.”

After the huge distraction of this prolonged legal battle, iiNet said it would now like to get on with business, adding that it looks forward to working with the entertainment industry to make content available legally to reduce illicit file-sharing.

AFACT executive director, Neil Gane, said his group was extremely disappointed with the Court’s ruling.

“Today’s decision is a set back for the 50,000 Australians employed in the film industry,” he said in a statement.

“But we believe this decision was based on a technical finding centered on the Court’s interpretation of the how infringements occur and the ISPs’ ability to control them. We are confident that the Government does not intend a policy outcome where rampant copyright infringement is allowed to continue unaddressed and unabated via the iiNet network,” he added.

AFACT will have to pay all of iiNet’s substantial legal costs. Thus far, the group has declined to confirm whether it will appeal the Court’s decision.

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

Today, uTorrent version 2.0 was officially released. This new release is built to be more network friendly thanks to the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP) which aims to mitigate network congestion caused by poorly configured BitTorrent clients.

uTP is a new and improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol which is designed to be more network friendly than its predecessor. The current implementation often causes interference with other applications. This is one of the main reasons why ISPs try to slow it down, or even stop it altogether. uTP aims to solve this problem.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management is quite proud of the end result, and told TorrentFreak that most ISPs have also responded positively to the implementation of the uTP protocol.

“In general the ISPs who we have explained the technology to have been quite pleasantly surprised. There are occasional noisy skeptics who think its something evil, but they are generally poor confused souls who are more interested in selling a centralized vision of the internet rather than the distributed egalitarian system we have today,” Morris said.

“I’m excited about uTP finally arriving at a full scale deployment on the internet and I really hope that ISPs take the time to understand the potential benefits to them before they take decisions about how to manage this new class of traffic on their networks,” he added.

Aside from being gentle to the ISP’s networks, uTorrent 2.0 might also have a beneficial effect on the download speeds of individual users. Since there is less congestion, uTorrent users will experience no slowdowns in web-browsing.

Less congestion and a more efficient use of the network may eventually result in faster download speeds, which means that it will be a win-win situation for both ISPs and uTorrent users.

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

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.

Speaking with Swedish Radio, Lars Gustafsson, chief executive of IFPI Sweden, said that recently his group had made 20 complaints against illicit file-sharers, but only five were considered to be on a large enough scale to warrant the police taking action.

The alleged large-scale file-sharers, suspected of making available between 9,000 and 17,000 music tracks each, were raided by police yesterday.

Five different locations including Gothenburg, Docksta, Handen and Upplands Väsby were targeted, resulting in the arrest of a 28 year-old man believed to be the hub owner. According to prosecutor Frederick Ingblad, the man accepted some responsibility but denied the charges.

The others, all accused of copyright infringement offenses, had their equipment confiscated. Ingblad reports that thus far, two have admitted making music available through the hub.

“This business is still too large. There are so many new and good options there is really no reason anymore for people to steal music,” IFPI’s Lars Gustafsson told DN.

Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Party, was critical of the raids, and of the IPRED legislation which made them possible.

“When the police go in and take people’s private computers because they have shared music, it’s completely wrong,” he said.

“Record companies are running with the same argument that publishers did when libraries came into being. They warned that no one would continue to write books if it was possible to borrow them for free.”

Sweden continues to be one of the most popular countries in the world when it comes to sharing via Direct Connect. Its users are a perfect target for the IFPI, since individuals tend to share their entire music collection in one place, which makes proving large-scale infringement a breeze.

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

Yesterday the showdown of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Others v Newzbin Ltd began before in London’s High Court before Mr Justice Kitchin.

The case began at 10:30 on Monday with the barrister for the plaintiffs making his opening statement. As reported by Newzbin, in a 3 hour speech “mostly being full of how evil we are” the barrister explained what Usenet is along with a description of Newzbin.

The file format originally created by Newzbin – the .NZB – also had its functions explained along with an explanation by the barrister of how they compare to hyperlinks. Newzbin notes that much effort was put into trying to convince the Judge how .NZBs differ from hyperlinks.

Accusations were also leveled at Newzbin’s backend code, which the plaintiffs claim is designed to go looking specifically for copyright works on Usenet.

In contrast to the long speech by the plaintiffs, Newzbin took little time to state that they disputed most of what had been said so far and would address this in the evidence to come.

Later in the day witnesses for the plaintiffs were produced, including representatives from the MPAA-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

“[They] didn’t have much to say under cross-examination apart from they did a half-assed job analysing our site,” Newzbin reports.

Other witnesses included “some junior lawyers who confirmed they had harvested data from our listings but didn’t bother to check how much of it was actually under any form of copyright.”

According to Newzbin, the “star of the show” was an expert witness who was cross examined for an hour at the end of the day. Apparently he reported that it could be dangerous to auto-open an NZB meta-file file in a browser since it could lead to the user being infected by a virus. Strange guy.

Newzbin indicate they are happy with Judge Justice Kitchin, who they believe is “remarkably on the ball and switched on”. They are confident that this will be a fair trial since Justice Kitchin has already pulled up the plaintiff’s barrister on several points.

“This Judge certainly won’t blindly eat everything he’s told by the MPA,” Newzbin adds. “On the other hand it doesn’t mean he’ll accept our arguments easily either.”

The case continues.

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

At the 2010 event held in early January, Johnny Depp fought off Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman, Robert Pattinson and Ryan Reynolds to be come Favorite Movie Actor, with Sandra Bullock triumphing in the Favorite Movie Actress category.

In music, Lady GaGa was awarded Favorite Pop Artist, with Favorite Female Artist going to Taylor Swift and Favorite Male Artist going to Keith Urban. During his acceptance speech, Urban had quite a surprise for his file-sharing fans.

After thanking people for voting, those watching the show at home and people who took the time to see him on tour, Urban gave credit to his fan club, Monkeyville, whose members work tirelessly to get his music out there.

“I don’t even care if you download it [my music] illegally, give it to your friends, I really don’t care,” said Urban. “I love the people to hear the music and come out and see us play live.”

It seems that Urban understands the positive influence the free download can have on his tour ticket sales. But speaking with Tennessean.com, Urban now says that his words came out all wrong.

“What I said came out nothing like I meant,” explained Urban. “I was referring to the old days when you’d buy a record, do a cassette tape and give it to your girlfriend, and then maybe she likes it and becomes a fan.”

That’ll be copying music and sharing it round then, just 1980’s style. Nevertheless, Urban is sure of his stance now.

“For the record, I absolutely care about my music not being taken for free,” he added. “But I love when people are passionate and want to turn friends on to music.”

Urban is on RIAA-member Capitol Records Nashville and they cannot have appreciated his comments one little bit, but apparently it was the show format that caused Urban to say something he didn’t mean.

“I’ve never done an awards show where they seem to let you talk infinitely,” he said. “I was waiting for the ‘wrap’ sign to come up, and it never came up.”

Urban’s speech was roughly 50 seconds long, so who knows what he would’ve endorsed if it had gone on for much longer.

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

Billy Ray has been remixed by some big names including Junior Vasquez, David Morales, BT, Roger Sanchez and Todd Terry. By embracing BitTorrent and giving away two exclusive remixes, she hopes to reach out to a new audience.

“The reason why I chose this path is as a path to generating renewed attention to my stuff,” Billie Ray told TorrentFreak.

“I’ve been keeping up to date with online developments over the years and frankly I find it more fun than chasing indie labels around, waiting for someone to sign you for no money. It’s more fun to put out my own stuff and part of that is making sure people get to hear it.”

The remixes released on Mininova are part of the forthcoming ‘Crackdown Project’ which will kick off officially on the March 6th at the release party in Berlin.

In the past year Billie Ray has been sending out some free music to blogs, through which she received a lot of positive feedback, but this is the first time she has used BitTorrent to distribute her music.

This doesn’t mean that her music wasn’t available on BitTorrent already, of course. When we asked her how she felt about these unauthorized copies that are floating around, Billie Ray said: “It happens, so I can’t grumble really. I make some money from selling that work still so it’s all good. It’s all pocket-money these days.”

Unlike many other artists, Billie Ray doesn’t seem to have much faith in the new (legal) music streaming services that have surfaced in recent years, labeling them as rip-offs.

“Things like Spotify and Last.fm I do not wish to support. They give free unlimited streaming without paying the artists. They say they do, but they don’t,” she said, adding that she made less than $4 from these services so far. “I think they’re killing music off for good.”

She is not the first artist to complain about the revenue generated by Spotify. Lady Gaga has been complaining bitterly as well, although the labels might be to blame for this, since they tend to keep a big chunk of the money.

From her release on BitTorrent she’s not making any more direct money, that’s for sure, but seeing thousands of downloads in a week might cheer her up a little. Being heard, whether it’s through BitTorrent or Spotify, will eventually benefit artists in the long run.

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.

Most of the upcoming features of the Falcon project are still being developed, but those who download the latest Alpha release have the option to take a peak at what to expect from the future. Below we sum up some of the key features.

Access Anywhere

Allowing users to access their BitTorrent downloads from anywhere through a simple web-interface is one of the main goals of the Falcon project. Without having to configure uTorrent and home networks so that they can be accessed remotely, users can simply head over to the Falcon page and connect to their client instantly.

The easy to use web interface is as secure as it gets, a major improvement over the Web UI currently available. When logged in, it gives users all the controls they are familiar with in their regular PC client. Torrents can be added, paused and removed using an interface with a look and feel identical to that of the uTorrent application.

Those who want to try the remote access features require an invite for now. Invites are sent out regularly and those who leave their email address behind should receive one within a few days.

Download Anywhere

Aside from the added security and easy setup, accessing your torrents via the Falcon web-interface offers another advantage – remote downloading. Once a file has finished downloading you can transfer a copy of the file to a remote computer via the web-interface.

This feature is not enabled in the current version of the Falcon web-interface. However, it has been publicly announced in the uTorrent forums so we expect that it will return soon.

Streaming

Another new feature of the Falcon project is the added option to stream video files while downloading. Instead of having to wait until a file has finished downloading, users can already start watching video provided that the download speed is sufficient.

“Our hope is to transform getting media using uTorrent from a ‘load-wait-watch-tomorrow’ to more of a ‘point-click-watch’ experience,” Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak, commenting on the new feature.

Easy Sharing

Also new in the Falcon release is the “Send Torrent” feature. This feature is particularly useful when you want to share torrents with people who do not have a BitTorrent client installed yet.

Right clicking a torrent in uTorrent shows a “Send Torrent” option which then brings up a URL similar to this one. This is a direct link to a download of the uTorrent client with the torrent file included.

Finding Torrents

The Falcon release is expected to make it easier for users to find torrents. The uTorrent team didn’t want to comment on how this will be integrated, but Simon Morris has stated that they are working on “better ability for torrent sites to promote content or search within the client.”

When we asked if this means that uTorrent will come with a built in torrent search engine, Morris said that they are more interested in “APIs rather than bloating the uTorrent user experience.” We’ll see what this means in the months to come.

Further Improvements

The features listed above are just a few of many that will be added to the new uTorrent clients. The latest Alpha release also had a ‘minify interface’ option, for example, and the development team is also working on speed improvements, UI improvements and optional file security features.

Exciting times ahead for uTorrent users.

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

After years of trouble-free operation as the MPAA focused on shutting down the growing ‘threat’ of the snowballing BitTorrent scene, in May 2008 the operator of Newzbin made an announcement.

The company which owns Newzbin had received a threatening letter from the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the MPAA’s big brother. In the letter the MPA claimed that some of the site’s editors (users who report on the location of material uploaded to the worldwide Usenet system) were listing NZBs which linked to movies on Usenet which infringed their member’s copyright.

“Newzbin has recently received two serious complaints regarding the indexing we perform, and raising doubts as to its legality. It is likely that we will in the coming weeks be presented with a court case and have to defend our rights,” said ‘Caesium’, the owner of Newzbin.

Caesium added that the site had never condoned the distribution or indexing of copyright works and insisted that site staff would act immediately to remove any items found to be infringing copyright.

Noting that Newzbin would defend itself vigorously against the complainants, Caesium said he believed that linking to content on Usenet is entirely legal and that the site’s procedures for dealing with unlawful content were appropriate.

“We believe that, or we wouldn’t still be here,” he added.

In December 2008, Newzbin confirmed that it had been removing NZB files which allegedly linked to copyright works stored on Usenet. The MPA still chose to file an injunction against the site.

Now, well over a year later, the showdown of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & ors v Newzbin Ltd is set to begin next week before Mr Justice Kitchin in London’s High Court.

According to an announcement yesterday by Newzbin’s legal team, the case should last around a week but it’s unknown when any verdict will be handed down following its conclusion.

As we all know, the recent trial of Alan Ellis ended in an acquittal for the ex-OiNK admin and, just like Newzbin, his site hosted no copyright works and provided only meta data which linked to material hosted elsewhere.

However, Ellis’s charge was one of fraud, allegedly conducted by an individual and dealt with under criminal law, while that leveled against Newzbin is one of allowing and inducing illegal copying, i.e copyright infringement, but carried out by a bona fide company under civil law.

After Ellis’s acquittal, John Kennedy of the IFPI expressed disappointment at the “spectacular failure” of the criminal action and suggested that these type of complex cases should not be held in a crown court, but in the Chancery Division of the High Court.

This is exactly where the Newzbin case is being heard, so this is certainly one to watch. Unlike Ellis who faced possible jail time, Newzbin faces a claim for damages should it lose its case.

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

All around the world, hundreds of larger and smaller ISPs are actively interfering with BitTorrent traffic, allegedly to keep their networks in good shape. Thus far, only Comcast has been punished for doing so.

In 2008 the FCC looked into Comcast’s BitTorrent blocking and concluded that the company’s network management practices were unfair because they specifically targeted BitTorrent, not any other protocols.

The FCC ordered Comcast to stop blocking BitTorrent transfers, and last year the communications commission decided to take up the task of ensuring that the Internet remains neutral. At least, that was the initial plan, the reality is less hopeful.

Although it was Comcast’s anti-BitTorrent measures that sparked the current Net Neutrality debate, the FCC’s current proposals are not going to stop ISPs from slowing down or even blocking BitTorrent traffic. In fact, if these rules are implemented, BitTorrent users will be worse off than three years ago.

In the 107 page proposal detailing the Net Neutrality regulation, the FCC says that all traffic on the Internet should be treated equally, but it allows ISPs to slow down or block traffic if it’s considered to be “reasonable network management”.

So the key issue is, what are reasonable network management practices and how may these affect BitTorrent traffic? Let’s take a look at what the FCC has to say about this.

Reasonable network management consists of reasonable practices employed by a provider of broadband Internet access service to [...] (i) reduce or mitigate the effects of congestion on its network or to address quality-of-service concerns; [...] (iii) prevent the transfer of unlawful content; or (iv) prevent the unlawful transfer of content.

In short, this means that ISPs have plenty of options to target BitTorrent traffic and keep the Net Neutral at the same time. Let’s take a closer look.

As the EFF has also pointed out, the latter two conditions (iii and iv) would make it perfectly reasonable to block BitTorrent traffic for the purpose of preventing piracy. The terminology is rather vague, but we expect that when the MPAA or RIAA produce a report stating that 95% of all BitTorrent traffic involves copyright violations, blocking BitTorrent may become perfectly reasonable.

And that’s just one of the many loopholes. There are also plenty of options for ISPs to target BitTorrent traffic without going for the piracy/copyright angle. In fact, congestion issues and quality-of-service concerns are even more viable and can be implemented to target BitTorrent traffic specifically, but indirectly.

Under the proposed plans, ISPs could simply manage their networks by slowing down connections that use “too many” TCP connections, one of the key characteristics of BitTorrent traffic. There are plenty of arbitrary rules that may look reasonable and neutral, but will specifically (not exclusively) hinder BitTorrent transfers to ease the strain on the network.

In fact, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which develops and promotes Internet standards is working on a proposal that might kill BitTorrent traffic if implemented. The proposed protocol will mark all packets which are expected to cause congestion as “negative packets,” which is likely to apply to and slow down most peer-to-peer traffic.

One way or another, the FCC’s Net Neutrality plan is no guarantee that BitTorrent will be able to download at full speeds. On the contrary, the plans might actually encourage ISPs to use Deep Packet Inspection technologies to check if the traffic of its subscribers is lawful, if it’s the last resort to slow down BitTorrent. We don’t want that to happen do we?

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

Although there has been some mainstream news coverage in the past, this week the press have really stepped up, helped along by the UK Lords who labeled the ACS:Law scheme “legal blackmail” – not exactly a shining endorsement.

Nevertheless, ACS:Law owner Andrew Crossley has stood his ground, telling the media that his campaign will continue. Following criticism that so far he has taken a grand total of zero cases to court, Crossley told the BBC that cases are pending.

“It has been said that we have no intention of going to court but we have no fear of it,” he said.

While Crossley may not be scared of taking a couple of cut and dried cases of infringement against minnows to court to prove his point, it’s not entirely true that in all cases he has no fear of a court battle. In the words of the Lords, Crossley is engaged in a bullying scheme and, like all bullies, when the big boys step up to fight, the bullies shrink away.

On November 19th at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Crossley made NPO (Norwich Pharmacal Order) applications to force ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of subscribers the company claims had infringed their client’s rights. The NPO’s related to approximately 25,000 IP addresses harvested from UK ISP BT’s customer base and a further 5,000 from various other ISPs, covering approximately 291 movie titles. The order was granted and ACS:Law are now chasing these individuals for cash payments of around £500 each.

Someone present at the hearing provided TorrentFreak with information which suggested that several ISPs including Be, O2, BT, Plusnet, Enternet and Kingston were not opposed to the court order forcing them to hand over their customers’ private details to ACS:Law.

However, UK ISP Tiscali, whose customers had also been caught up in the ACS:Law dragnet, were strangely dropped from the court order. “Not seeking against Tiscali (previously respondent #8 in the application),” said the comment.

Tiscali were bought by TalkTalk for £236m last year. TalkTalk, as everyone must know by now, are absolutely against elements of the Digital Economy Bill and are refusing to sell their customers down the river on mere allegations of file-sharing. Could they be standing up to ACS:Law too?

We contacted TalkTalk and their response proved very interesting indeed.

“TalkTalk is the only major ISP which has refused to divulge customers’ information to lawyers pursuing alleged copyright infringers. We have held this position since the issue came into view and we continue to stick by this policy,” Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk’s executive director of strategy and regulation told TorrentFreak.

“If we are ever ‘instructed’ to disconnect or throttle a customer who has not been found guilty in a court of law, we will refuse to do so and challenge the instruction through the courts if necessary,” he added.

So, while the above-mentioned ISPs – and BT in particular – are collectively handing over thousands of their customers to be “legally blackmailed” by ACS:Law, TalkTalk will not and are prepared to fight for the rights of their customers.

TorrentFreak contacted BeingThreatened, a consumer group assisting those wrongfully accussed by ACS:Law.

“What the public want to see is a clear commitment from ISPs that they will protect their customers from the actions of these overly-litigious lawyers exploiting legal loopholes to demand money using groundless threats of court action. Given the tens of thousands of letters that have already been sent and the massive heartache caused as a result of this scheme, BeingTheatened would expect to see a concrete commitment from all ISPs,” spokesman James Bench told us.

“After all, TalkTalk’s stated position merely reflects the view of the wider industry (as stated by the ISPA) that the ‘evidence’ presented by these companies is unreliable,” he added.

“We are happy to see that one company has indicated an apparent willingness to display a degree of corporate integrity in looking after the data that its customers entrust to it and not to make this available to anyone that simply asks for it,” he concluded.

So, if you and your family are looking for an ISP run by people who are prepared stand up for your rights, look no further than TalkTalk. While Mr Crossley may not fear going to court against a lowly individual, it seems incredibly unlikely that he’ll take on TalkTalk’s lawyers.

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

While the panel consisted of representatives from IFPI, Center for Democracy & Technology, Computer and Communications Industry Association and the UK government. Notably missing were representatives from the RIAA and MPAA. They were present, says Curtis, but unusually observing quietly from the audience.

Those on the panel in favor of the “graduated response” are said not to have shied away from their positions.

In a discussion on whether the punishment fits the alleged crime, Shira Perlmutter, Executive Vice-President of Global Legal Policy at IFPI said sending infringement notices just isn’t enough, adding that termination of a user’s Internet account, however, is preferable to suing them.

When asked if “3 strikes” should come to the United States, Perlmutter pointed to the existence of the DMCA (disabling access to illicit content is already provided for under the legislation) and noted that there are “many conversations going on at different levels.”

Writing on the apparent disinterest in “3 Strikes” shown by the MPAA and RIAA by their lack of participation on a panel such as this, Curtis goes on to list several filings to the FCC which contain pro-disconnection statements by the groups, indicating that they are indeed asking the government to take action. Indeed, Curtis feels that their low profile at this panel points to the existence of “back room deals” already underway and aimed at putting their plans for the US into action.

Given that the music industry has all but given up on their strategy of suing new individuals for file-sharing (the MPAA never really started) and that IFPI has put its full-blown support behind proposed “3 Strikes” legislation in several different countries (even now carefully escalating a campaign in Sweden), it seems likely that at some point the United States will follow.

If it doesn’t come via a government mandate, says Curtis, it could come via a private arrangement between your ISP and content providers. And when you think about it, with all previous plans to end online piracy having failed, there’s very little for the copyright holders left to try. At this stage there can be little doubt that Big Media wants “3 Strikes” to become the global standard.

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

At the end of July 2009, new anti-piracy legislation took effect in South Korea which aggressively targeted illicit file-sharers and other online copyright infringers. The laws, created by the country’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, gave the authorities the power to disconnect pirates for up to 6 months.

According to the annual report of state-run piracy monitor the Korea Copyright Commission, it detected 35,345 cases of copyright infringement from so-called ‘cyberlocker’ services and P2P sites in 2009, nearly three times as many as the 2008 total of almost 12,000. Video and music infringements accounted for around 32% of all violations. Cases against individual file-sharers are still to be revealed.

This tough legislation was welcomed by the IFPI, who in their Digital Music Report 2010 labeled the action as the correct response to a “crisis”. The music group noted that digital sales had jumped 53% in the first 9 months of 2009, although sales of the same had already risen by 18% in the first 6 months of the year – pre-legislation – largely due to the fresh availability of legal alternatives.

However, according to the results of a survey carried out by Hong Kong-based Music Matters of 8,500 people in 13 countries, South Koreans still committed the second greatest number of online music infringements in 2009.

Released at the 2010 MIDEM event, the results revealed that the top spot was taken by the Chinese, with around 68% of users admitting they had downloaded music without paying for it. The South Koreans took second position with 60% with the Spanish coming in third with 46%.

The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has cast doubt on the report though. Apparently the question asked by Music Matters to those surveyed was a rather ambiguous “Have you downloaded music from the internet without payment?”

It’s impossible to say if the respondents felt that, for example, an ad-supported service like Spotify or other legitimately free services should be taken into account when giving a response.

In the meantime, the South Korean government has asked news outlets not to publish the results of the survey until they’ve had a chance to look into its validity. Those calls have been widely ignored.

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