Over the past three years, TorrentFreak has reported on various messes generated by DRM, and how that has impacted people all over the world. Now someone has decided it needs looking into, and so the Federal Trade Commission in the US has commissioned a Town Hall meeting on the subject.
An increasing number of musicians are experimenting with giving away their music for free on BitTorrent. This trend has led to the formation of a new Netlabel, CXCR6, which specifically targets the BitTorrent community with new album releases. We got in touch with its founder about his motivation to promote free music.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Eagle Eye” tops the chart this week, and there are five other newcomers.
Canadian users again face an increase in the cost of blank CDs, as the Copyright Board has increased levies on them by 38%. The raise was authorized in response to rises in music compression and increases in songwriter royalties. With this rise, the Copyright Board is simply ignoring all technological advances since 1999, while the music industry enriches itself.
A common criticism leveled at most p2p clients is that they just ‘help people steal’, but they are actually a great tool to help promote undiscovered artists. This is exactly what FrostWire is trying to accomplish with their new FrostClick service. The results from their first featured artist are very promising.
Making a torrent properly is one of the most overlooked aspects in torrenting. Most users of bittorrent only create the .torrent files occasionally, if at all, and others make bad choices and mistakes, which can antagonise people, or make torrents slow to propagate, and lead to an early death.
The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, “Tropic Thunder” tops the chart this week followed by WALL-E and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.
Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij gave a keynote speech at the Hack In The Box Security Conference 2008, entitled “How to dismantle a billion dollar industry – as a hobby.” The two discuss how The Pirate Bay grew to be the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, and some of the challenges they face today.
Spore, love it or loathe it, Will Wright’s new game has stayed in the news in the way his previous games have never managed. The game could also bring about big changes in both DRM and copyright law, as the debate heats up over it’s DRM. While EA puts a brave face on things, as a class action suit is filed.
There is a continuing battle surrounding Digital Rights Management (DRM). While most rights holders see it as a way of maximizing their profits, users see it as a way to reduce their ability to actually use the products they bought, the way they want to. Ironically, one of the books that spells out what is wrong with DRM, is now available with DRM.
Michael Moore’s new film about the run up to the 2004 US election was released online today, only for US and Canada residents. In order to maximize capacity, they’ve even embraced BitTorrent, and the official download is using the Pirate Bay tracker. To the dismay of their lawyers, however, this also lifts the geographical restrictions.
