After Justice Cowdroy allowed several documents to be used in court yesterday which were used by iiNet’s legal team to cross-examine AFACT witnesses, senior counsel Tony Bannon for the movie industry said he wants to subpoena the Internet Industry Association (IIA) for documents it says relates to meetings held with ISPs in 2006/2007 on how to handle p2p copyright infringement.

The documents are required for further cross-examination of witnesses. Earlier IIA had applied to be a friend of the court, an application to which AFACT objected.

Also revealed in court today is that iiNet is on the brink of launching an online kids entertainment service. Nothing particularly unusual about that, until one learns of iiNet’s business partner – TV company Village Roadshow, one of the litigants in the case. The content will be free to view and iiNet won’t even count the bandwidth its customers use on these downloads.

AustralianIT notes that iiNet was due to announce the service in around a month’s time, but will now launch it this weekend.

A computer forensics investigator who was previously a key witness in the 2004 KaZaA trial, was called by iiNet’s legal team today. Nigel Carson, a key witness for AFACT, was questioned on whether an IP address alone is enough to identify an individual infringer.

Carson admitted that any ISP account could have multiple users in the same household and could have other unauthorized 3rd-party users if a wireless router was compromised.

He further admitted that to accurately identify a precise individual, a court order and police action could be required to interview account holders and other individuals living at the address.

The open court session was also closed for the continuing cross-examination of DtecNet’s CTO Kristian Lockegaard which began yesterday.

The case continues to the end of this week, where there will be a two week gap before the court reconvenes for a further two weeks.

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

Along with thanks to the staff, members and supporters of the site past and present, the message explained that Z-Cult FM would be closed down, marking the final chapter of what Serj called the “soap opera” of Z-Cult FM.

So what caused the closure of the site – more pressure from Marvel, more threats from DC? TorrentFreak spoke with owner Serj for the lowdown.

“Well, a decision was just made to call it a day. We had no legal threats since all those ones you covered but the site was dead in the water due to no Marvel or DC comics etc. After Marvel and DC tried to sue us, we decided to remove those [links to] comics, then every other publisher started sending us e-mails so we removed those too. In end we were left with a tracker but not many torrents on it.”

Of course, a site like Z-Cult FM costs money to run just like any other, and this was a factor in its closure.

“The site is costing me cash for a server that isn’t really put to much use anymore so I just decided it was time to call it quits, back the site up and kill the server,” Serj told TorrentFreak. “If we do come back it will be after a little break but that’s just an IF and if we do it will be just a message board,” he added.

There was also an interesting addition to Serj’s discussion with us. Although Z-Cult FM has been operating in the BitTorrent/comic scene since 2004, these days that particular sector is changing – and not for the better says Serj.

“These days most comics are pirated on DC++ or sites such as Rapidshare,” he explained. “Live links are becoming the most popular because uploaders are being paid for the number of people who download their comics from Rapidshare etc, its a sad turn of events in the scene.”

The BitTorrent and comics combination is less popular these days, Serj told us.

“So we are leaving now.”

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

TorrentFreak spoke with their lead candidate, Bavarian party chairman Andreas Popp, to discuss his views on the upcoming election.

What do you see as being the most important issue in the election?

Currently the most important issue in EU (but also national) politics are the civil rights. This includes the fight against the censorship of the Internet as well as against the transformation of our western societies into police states. IT, especially the Internet, plays a very important role in these topics. The politicians who are in power right now fear the Internet and are doing everything to get control over it, just like the content industry does. What makes these topics so important is the immediate danger we are facing. If we do not fight for our civil liberties now, we might just find ourselves in a new form of dictatorship.

What is your opinion of Commissioner McCreevy’s attempts to extend copyright terms in the EU?

This extension really was some kind of a joke. They said they wanted to enhance the financial situation of retired musicians. This is already strange, since while other people have to save money for their retirement, musicians get their pension for free by copyright. But then all the experts stated that musicians will not benefit from this extension, because they normally sell all their rights in buy-out-contracts. So only music labels benefit from the law. They passed it anyways.

What about copyright in general?

I think it would take too long to explain what needs to be changed here, but you can read about it on the program (english) page of our campaign site.

How many members does the German Pirate Party have right now, and has there been any boost from the Pirate Bay trial, as the Swedish party has seen?

Nationally, we just had our 1000th member. Yes, we have had a great boost during the last few weeks, but I cannot tell you if it is because of the Pirate Bay trial or because of the new censorship law.

Are you seeing the ‘older generations’ supporting the party in significant numbers, or is it mainly 18-30 year-olds?

Of course the generation of the “Digital Natives” are the main supporting group for the Pirate Party. But there are also a lot of people who are already out of their thirties and are supporting our activities. Even if you look at our list of candidates there are only three people who have not passed thirty yet. So I would say yes, there is a significant number of ‘older’ people supporting the pirates. I think the only difference is the medium we use to communicate. You can get in touch with the younger ones mostly through the net. The older ones are more likely to come and talk to you when you are standing on the street.

What is the method of election in Germany for the European Parliament?

It is basically the same as in our national elections. Each party nominates a list of candidates for the election and the citizens can put their cross next to one of the party. Germany has 99 seats in the EU parliament. These seats are divided proportionally among all parties with more than 5% of the total votes.

5% would be roughly how many votes?

There are about 60 million voters, but Germans are not really interested in EU elections so only about 50% of them are going to vote. So that might be round about 1.5 million votes to break the 5%-line. 50% is rather low compared to national or local elections, but the turnout is falling. People here get kind of annoyed with politics. The 60 million figure is about 10 years old, but there is a small difference to the national elections because citizens of other EU countries can register for voting in the EU elections in Germany too. It is a fair number to base things on though.

Some say you have little chance of making that 5% barrier, so why should people vote for you?

One of the most important chances in the EU elections is to get enough votes (0.5%) to qualify for public party funding. That is one of the things I like to tell all the people out there who do not want to vote for us, because they think we cannot make the 5% threshold. Even if we do not, qualifying for public funding would be a big step. One of the parties who gets public funding and is about the same size as we are, got around 80,000 Euro (about $108,000) last year – that would mean more than tripling our funds – and making it it possible to hire people for the administrative tasks, giving us more time for politics.

How much of an issue is funding in German elections?

It is a big issue. As a small party we do not get any public funding yet, so we have to get along with the money we get from our membership fees and donations. All of us are working unsalaried right now. Considering the organizational stuff that has to be done, we are limited in activity. If people want to make a donation, they can do so either to the national party, or directly to their state party. And if they cannot afford to donate money, voluntary helpers to do local work are always a big help.

The European elections take place in early June. The Germany party has a campaign website, www.piratenpartei.net

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

The 5 minute segment focused on an MPAA funded study by a group called the RAND corporation. The study – which was widely criticized early last month – is back with a new coat of paint. This time though, it’s being broadcast to the movie-going British public with the appearance of solid fact, and has addressed none of the questions we brought up just after the study was released.

Perhaps the choice of interviewees might shed some light on ‘why?’ a bit better.

* Keiron Sharp – Director General, Federation Against Copyright Theft.
* John Woodward – CEO, UK Film Council.
* Gregory Treverton – Director of RAND, the study’s authors.
* Callum McDougall – Executive Producer for Quantum of Solace.

This selection seems to be a bit one sided to say the least. If you’re wondering what’s so special about the last name, it might be because you didn’t go to see that film at the cinema. Just before the film was played, a short advert voiced by Quantum star Daniel Craig, talked about how “piracy was costing people jobs”.

McDougall also gave a speech last winter to a UK copyright industry lobby group saying how the industry will fall “like a house of cards” if downloading continues at current levels. This same group, the Industry Trust for IP Awareness, tried to push much the same message on terrorism and piracy almost 5 years ago.

One of our readers was angered by the bias of the segment and wrote a complaint to the BBC. After a few weeks of waiting a reply came back from BBC Complaints, and it was none too satisfying.

Thank you for your e-mail regarding ‘Film 2009 with Jonathan Ross’ as broadcast on 31 March.

I note you felt the report on this programme about copyright theft wasn’t adequately balanced as it only featured interviews with people from the film industry. I appreciate you felt we allowed a distorted view of this issue to be portrayed and note you have strong views regarding this matter.

This report focused in on a legitimate problem for both the film industry and the authorities as they try to tackle what is an ever increasing and profitable criminal activity. We feel the report outlined the laws surrounding the issue of film piracy adequately and that the interviewees from the film industry were entirely appropriate people to comment on the problem.

Impartiality is the cornerstone of all our output, and we feel this report was fully balanced in it’s coverage of copyright theft. Nevertheless I appreciate our audience has a wide range of opinions and inevitably this means that not every viewer will agree with the content of every programme we broadcast. We know all our editorial decisions are subjective and we’d never expect our audience to agree with every decision we make.

With this in mind that I’d like to take this opportunity to assure you that I’ve recorded your comments, including that you believe this topic deserves a more in depth investigation, onto our audience log. This is an internal daily report of audience feedback which is circulated to many BBC staff including senior management, producers and channel controllers.

The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content.

Thanks again for contacting us.

Regards

Liam Boyle
BBC Complaints

Of course, there’s also a fine piece of irony in this show. The preceding segment was about a film called ‘The Boat That Rocked‘, a film about a 60’s pirate radio station. The irony is that it’s written and directed by one Richard Curtis. The same Richard Curtis that last year co-signed a letter to The Times urging ISPs to stop piracy.

It seems it’s only ok to profit from piracy, if you’re making a film about it.

UPDATE: The video of the segment is now available.

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

Glickman’s departure comes as many see current MPAA tactics starting to backfire. In the important teen and twenties demographics the MPAA’s messages are not getting through, and in many cases are driving resentment against them. The negative PR generated by The Pirate Bay case, initiated after intense pressure was put on the Swedish government by the MPAA (via the White House) has also worked against them, as have various pushes globally to get ISPs to agree to a 3-strikes (or ‘graduated response’) policy. Others claim that Glickman’s leadership has been lackluster, his public speaking gigs ‘bad’ and ‘boring’, and hint that the short contract extension is because of this.

Of course, there is also precedent for the head of the MPAA being let go after embarrassing or damaging public relations activities. Glickman’s predecessor, Valenti, retired not long after a showdown between the MPAA and studios over an MPAA screener ban in late 2003. In that case the MPAA backed down after a court injunction went against them, and before a massively damaging antitrust lawsuit could be brought.

In the last few years, the MPAA has become the source of much derision. In choosing a successor for Glickman, the selectors will have to look hard to find someone able to bring the industry into the 21st century (or even the latter half of the 20th) and recapture the trust and credibility of the general populace. Meanwhile, to Glickman, we utter the words made famous by MPAA member NBC, “You’re Fired!”

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

“This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak at the time.

IsoHunt has asked the court to decide whether .torrent files, and BitTorrent search engines in particular, are infringing copyright or not. In other words, should BitTorrent search engines be held liable for the .torrent files that might point to copyrighted data? If so, what does this mean for other search engines, and sites such as YouTube?

Today, isoHunt and the CRIA appeared in court. While isoHunt asked the court to rule that they do not break any laws, the CRIA is demanding a full trial against the BitTorrent site.

This landmark case might be the one to define how files can be distributed online. Among other things, isoHunt argues that they are just a search engine, like Google, and that they have no control over the files they find elsewhere on the web. In court today, they showed that a filetype:torrent search for Coldplay on Google returns plenty of torrent files, similar to a search on isoHunt.

All isoHunt does is index other BitTorrent trackers and indexers, without human intervention. The files that can be found on isoHunt are scattered all over the Internet, and even these files are just metadata.

IsoHunt founder Gary Fung told TorrentFreak that the judge converted their petition into action at the end of today’s hearing. “He just thinks the issues are too complicated and consequences far reaching legally and technically, and a full trial is more appropriate for discovering all documents,” Gary said.

“The important issue is not about the complexity or ramifications of our case which we won’t dispute, but rather CRIA liking to use full action and discovery because it’s costly for all parties and the court and was exactly why we decided to bring our petition first for efficiency before they were going to sue with an action,” Gary told TorrentFreak in a response. IsoHunt is likely to appeal the order for conversion.

To be continued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Legal Affairs Committee in the European Parliament has approved the resolution to extend the copyright term, as we have discussed in the past, from 50 years to 95 for recordings. This will now move on to a plenary vote in March.

Opposition for the extension has been considerable. Last month, the Open Rights Group (ORG) held a roundtable with several academics and MEPs, including at least one member of the Legal Affairs Committee, while scathing critiques on the proposal have appeared in influential newspapers over the past year.

Crucially, the main ‘benefit’ touted by Commissioner McCreevy – that it’s for the benefit of session musicians and the like – is significantly weakened by an amendment from the committee that gives the administration over to collecting societies. Of course, that’s assuming you can prove your entitlement to this money. According to veteran producer and musician Mike Collins, speaking at the ORG roundtable, records relating to session musician participation were not common until recently.

Perhaps worst of all, the commission has now been asked by the committee to perform an impact study based around extending the term of video performances by a similar amount. Although the study will doubtless find that there will be little benefit to any but the major content producers in performing such an extension, it will likely be ignored (as the study that said the same thing in this case was ignored) and the proposal will proceed.

There is a slight ray of hope though, in that there is a requirement to review the social situation of artists in 3 years time, and then every 4 years, to see how this has improved things. This might curtail any further extension on this subject, but the non-existent change in artist benefits from this, might prompt them to put things back how they were. Or, they could decide to make the terms even longer….

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

One of the key statistics that is hyped every year, is the piracy ratio of downloaded music. Just as last year, IFPI estimates that 95% of all downloads are illegal, without giving a proper source for this figure. Interestingly, those who take a closer look at the full report (pdf), will see that only 10% of the claimed illegal downloads are seen as a loss in sales.

Contrary to the RIAA’s arguments in court, the BPI and IFPI don’t believe in the “every pirated download is a lost sale” myth. Matt Phillips, BPI’s Director of Communications wrote in an email to TorrentFreak: “No, we don’t think every illegal download is a lost sale (and never, ever, have, if my memory serves me correctly). The estimates for lost sales revenue is [sic] not calculated on this basis.”

To come up with a ‘best guess’ of the real losses for the UK market, the music industry have commissioned Jupiter Research. For two years in a row, Jupiter estimated the losses are to be about equal to the revenue that comes from digital sales. If we combine this with the ‘only one in 20 downloads is paid for’ guesstimate, only one in 10 illegal downloads is seen as a loss in sales.

Of course we will be very reluctant to draw conclusions from research that is commissioned by the music industry itself, however, it would interesting to know what the effect is of those downloads that are not seen as a loss. Could they perhaps used by consumers to discover new music, and generate revenue in the long run?

What is clear from the report is that ‘pirates’ have shown the music industry what consumers really want. The music industry is slowly starting to recognize that they have to compete with piracy, by offering high quality products. In the 2009 report, for example, IFPI proudly reports that many services now sell DRM-free music, while they themselves are the reason why these restrictions were implemented in the first place.

In the report IFPI writes: “An important development in 2008 was the licensing of more online stores to sell downloads without digital rights management (DRM), meaning consumers can play the music they acquire on any portable device. In January 2009, Apple announced it had signed deals with leading record companies to offer eight million DRMfree tracks at flexible price points. The move is expected to significantly boost download sales.”

Besides the usual anti-piracy ramblings on how ISPs should help to disconnect pirates from the Internet, the report documents another interesting trend. The music industry clearly recognizes that they’ve done something wrong in the past, and is now promoting unlimited download services, either ad supported or for a low monthly fee. If done right, this ‘piracy inspired’ model might just be the future of music consumption, or at least a worthy competitor to piracy. But then again, they will find something else to complain about sooner or later.

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

The national board for youth affairs (Ungdomstyrelsen) awards money to organizations, in order to ensure that they have access in influence, to promote the next generation of politicians; indeed possibly the current generation. At least two of the board members of Ung Pirat are listed on the Pirate Party’s list of candidates for June’s EU elections.

Not everyone has been pleased about the government funding though, with the IFPI chief among them. IFPI’s Swedish director Lars Gustafsson wasn’t happy at all, saying “It is surprising. Ung Pirat works in principle to encourage something illegal. That they then receive money from a state institution is remarkable.”

This is of course, the same Gustafsson who last year urged ISPs to spy on its customers, which is of course completely illegal – not that hypocrisy from the IFPI is anything new. The board dismissed the complaints though, with Director-General Per Nilsson saying “It is our understanding that they want to change legislation around copyright issues and that is an opinion that they are entitled to.”

UP, at just over two years old, has seen a fantastic growth rate. It is now the third biggest political youth organization in Sweden, behind those of the Moderate and Social Democrat parties, and ahead of the Christian Democrats – all parties with representatives in the Swedish Parliament.

Per Nilsson recognized this as well, saying, “It is positive that the organization in a short time has managed to build a large nation-wide activities on issues involving many young people.” With this money and constantly growing support, it’s quite likely that come the next election, the Pirate Party will be voted into parliament.

“The growth of the Young Pirates in Sweden heralds the coming of a new dimension in European politics,” Ung Pirat’s Mattias Bjärnemalm told TorrentFreak, “The communication revolution has made the life of the younger generations into something altogether different from how their parents grew up, and now that cultural change will alter the very core today’s political landscape.” We wish them all the best of course.

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

This cuts to the crux of public consultations. Conclusions can only be as good as the data these consultations receive. We have seen many times how companies are willing to lie repeatedly when it comes to P2P, in order to maintain their positions. From Comcast and their ‘Sandvining’, the incorrect accusations of lawyers, MediaDefender and their entire business model, to anti-piracy agencies pushing their unique version of events to get the police to conduct raids. In an area where the people with the money and influence are well known for avoiding the truth on occasion, will the BERR release all documents to allow public scrutiny and thus ensure accuracy?

The answer, in a nutshell, is no. TorrentFreak contacted the BERR and pointed out that confidential submissions are as likely to be marked as such to cover lies and diversions from the truth as confidential business practices, and wondered how this was going to be handled. Also, as the BERR likely doesn’t contain experts that have the depth in knowledge of this subject as our readers, will they be able to spot errors without the public assistance that publishing would bring? Clare Keen at the BERR press office responded saying:

On the issue of standards of evidence, all responses received are considered on their merit. We expect there to be differences in opinions and in information respondents choose to submit in support of their position. However we do not rely solely on such submissions or a single information source when deciding policy. We use a range of sources to enable us to cross check and investigate claims to develop our own understanding and arrive at our own conclusions.

On your second point, in our experience the main reason why a company requests that their response be kept confidential is because their submission has included details of their own commercial business/contracts or operations – information they do not wish their rivals and competitors to have access to.

We would always seek to collaborate or cross-check key points of information. Additionally if a party deliberately provided false information they would risk losing all credibility within Government on future consultations or discussions.

However, it may be a moot point. The Guardian newspaper reported on the consultation saying that a proposal by Ingenious Media was getting serious consideration. The company, a London based consulting and venture capital firm, has reportedly proposed making broadband providers legally liable for copyright infringement by their customers. In return they get a small sum every time a legal download of a song or film happens. Where the money for this will come from, or what will qualify (such as Jamendo or other CC music tracks) for the payment isn’t mentioned. Also not mentioned is how an ISP is supposed to be able to regulate the actions of their customers, without using highly invasive methods, worse than the DPI methods that have already been protested.

The BERR finally published the non-confidential recommendations today, and the BERR has told TorrentFreak that the number of confidential and partially confidential responses were ‘a small number’. In a nutshell, though, the only respondents that wanted a co-regulatory approach, were rights holders. Everyone else expressed no desire for it, and significant concerns were raised over transparency and privacy issues. We’ll have a more detailed look at responses later.

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

The story is the same everywhere; DRM has been a hindrance to those who encounter it on original product. However, it is not a hindrance to those that obtain their media via torrents and other peer-to-peer methods, since the files traded on the net don’t contain DRM. These versions are free from restrictions, and that is one of the reasons why Spore was pirated so often.

With DRM having gotten such bad press in general, and probably after receiving lots of complaints, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to learn more about it. It has announced a town hall meeting, to take place at the University of Washington Law School, in Seattle. The meeting, which will take place in late March, will also be webcast online.

More unusually, to those who have experienced government meetings on these sorts of topics, they’re adopting a very open policy. Not only are they accepting submissions for consideration, but the panelists are not set. In fact, they’re openly accepting requests from those wishing to be panelists, saying they’ll be selecting based on qualifications and the various perspectives. The deadline for responses on both of these is January 30th though, so TorrentFreak readers eager to get involved had better not hang around.

The FTC has discussed DRM before. In 2006, as part of a conference titled “Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade”, there was a panel discussion into DRM and its impact on consumers. Some argued it was good for consumers, allowing them to pay a reduced price for limited access – such as a book someone would only read once (clearly someone hadn’t heard about libraries). Others pointed to a study saying people would pay more for products without DRM, highlighting the fact that prior to DRM, they didn’t have to pay more. Quote of that event though, was Microsoft’s Andrew Moss, who said “What [DRM] is intended to do is give people choices”. Unfortunately, where DRM is concerned, that choice is usually centered around the decision to pirate rather than buy.

The agenda for the new meeting indicates that it will not be plain sailing for those touting DRM. It mentions the burdens on consumers, before it mentions any benefits. That alone should set warning bells ringing in the offices of DRM manufacturers up and down the country. It may be that 2009 will bring the technological change many have hoped for, with common sense finally triumphing over corruption, and giving consumers what they want, not the scraps that copyright owners want to toss them.

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

The label distributes its artist’s albums on well know BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, Demonoid, What.cd, Waffles.fm and Indietorrents – and doesn’t mind when they leak to even more sites. TorrentFreak spoke with Lloyd Cox, one of the founders of CXCR6, who is a musician himself. We asked him how the label operates, and why he feels BitTorrent is such a great way to share music.

Lloyd told us that CXCR6 is more like a collective, although it functions as a label. “The label works because it’s basically pooling resources. Under a ‘label’ we essentially share any promotion we get, because everything comes back to CXCR6. So if one of the artists blows-up, the other artists get more promotion and downloads through it,” he explained.

The main purpose of the label is to promote the artists in any way possible, free of charge. “As well as just promoting the music, we also send copies for review to various sites and publications, general ‘label’ things like that. We don’t sell anything at CXCR6 but you can donate directly to the PayPal of the artists themselves,” Lloyd said.

CXCR6 is just starting as a Netlabel, but they already have 5 artists on board. Three of them – Xihilisk, Slicepad and Severn – have posted their albums already. The other two musicians are expected to follow soon. Lloyd already has some experience with BitTorrent as a promotional tool. Last year he released one of his albums exclusively on Demonoid.

This experience was one of the things that encouraged him to motivate others to join in the concept. “Some artists I’ve found make incredible music, but aren’t getting heard by anywhere near the amount of people they deserve. With CXCR6, I can potentially get that music to a ton of people,” Lloyd said.

“I’ve been sharing my own music on BT for a few years now, but the precursor to CXCR6 was organizing a couple of unsigned music compilations on What.cd. They’ve had nearly 30,000 downloads in a few months, and that made me realize that using BT is the right way to promote new music. I don’t know many other ways you could get 30k downloads of some compilations by a load of artists no-one has heard of.”

“BitTorrent provides the ultimate convenience,” Lloyd explained. “You can try something new, for free, and if you don’t like it, you can just delete it. If you really like something, you can donate to the artist, buy one of their CDs or go see them live to show your support. And who doesn’t like getting something for nothing?”

We have to agree with him there, don’t you?

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. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

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

For every blank CD sold in Canada, 21¢ used to go to the music industry, to compensate Canadian artists. This has now gone up to 29¢. However, the levy was introduced before the first iPod was sold, and this immediately brings up one of the key problems. The question is: How many of the blank CDs that are sold are used to copy Canadian music onto it? Furthermore, is it fair to ‘tax’ all the other people who buy those CDs for other means?

It seems that the levy is outdated by technology since most private copies are made on MP3 players, not on CDs. With the rise of MP3 players, and the ways to get them connected to audio equipment, blank CDs are becoming less relevant in the audio world. Further, as most computers now come with DVD burners, CDs may be following the floppy as an outdated storage medium. This raised levy might be the beginning of the end for CDs, at least in Canada.

Of course, the advances in technology were totally ignored by the Copyright Board. The only technology mention dealt with compression. Two reasons were given for the raise by the Secretary General of the Copyright Board of Canada, Claude Majeau.

“Two main factors led the Board to raise the CD levy rate to 29¢. First, the mechanical royalties that record labels pay to record a song onto a prerecorded CD have increased. Second, because consumers now use compression technology when they record music, the average number of music tracks copied onto a CD went from 15 to more than 18.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Majeau, the second point is greatly undermined by the fact that, according to the audio CD standard (commonly known as Red Book), CDs shouldn’t be compressed at all. If he was referring to mp3’s, then reducing the average size from 43Mb to 36 (assuming a 650Mb CD) is also unusual.

How fair the levies are is debatable. First, while it claims to be for compensating artists, the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) FAQ makes it clear that only Canadian performers and record companies qualify for payment. This is a significant blow against non-Canadian artists that don’t have a Canadian representative – the small artist. Worse, the payout of the collected levies is based on radio airplay and retail sales (physical and download). So, a starting Canadian artist that decides to burn 1000 CDs of his demo, he or she is actually paying $290 to established musicians and record labels.

There is also the question of payment. By their own figures, the CPCC had collected almost $242M between 1999 and 2007, of which just under $207M was available for payouts, but only $148.8M had been distributed, leaving $58M or so sitting around, roughly equivalent to the levies collected in 2006 and 2007.

Perhaps most unusually of all though, is that some consumers may be entirely unaware of the levies, let alone their rise. Despite the rise from 21¢ to 29¢ per disc, newegg.ca is selling spindles of 100 for under $20. Considering the levy cost on them is now $29, that’s quite a financial hit. The price of blank CDs may rise soon to compensate, putting them at similar prices to blank DVDs which have no levies. Fortunately for consumers, most DVD players can handle MP3s now. Another great example how technology has advanced since 1999, and also ignored by the Copyright Board.

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That’s where sites like Jamendo and last.fm come in. Often they work in a relational way – “you like this, so we think you’ll like this…” – and can draw a number of new fans. However, it’s rare for peer-to-peer clients themselves to start promoting artists directly, but that’s what FrostWire has done.

Through their new welcome screen, FrostWire users were offered the 6-track album “Oh My” from Sean Fournier for download via BitTorrent. To make things even easier, streaming versions were also available to play, so the music could be sampled without even using the torrent. The key here is the simplicity. With one click, the songs could be played. With another click, the torrent for the songs was launched in the client, and the tracks downloaded.

The question that first comes to mind is: Was it a success? Well, in the first weekend, there were over 25,000 downloads according to the FrostClick site. Now, there are over 32,000 completed, and over 1 terabyte of data transferred via BitTorrent. While it’s no longer being promoted, and due to the limited reach and knowledge of the torrent (to FrostWire users), the growth is still impressive.

The rulings involving peer to peer software over the past few years have directed p2p software companies from trying to build the best network for swapping your Madonna and Metallica mp3s, to ones that actively promote their ’significant non-infringing uses’. It may cost the company a little in bandwidth (for the streaming of the example tracks) but the cost of this is less than lengthy court cases around vicarious infringement. The goodwill generated is also a nice bonus, being known as a p2p client that actively promotes small artists is good publicity.

For artists, FrostClick is a unique opportunity to reach out to an audience of millions of music fans. Sean was impressed with the results of the campaign, stating on his blog “My downloads have spiked tremendously since FrostClick / FrostWire stepped in so I wanted to take time to thank everyone over there and let them know that I appreciate all the support! This is awesome!”

FrostClick’s Kademlia told TorrentFreak they want to promote people that could get signed. “We’ll be constantly looking for more professional independent content creators to give our users more legal alternatives and great media for free.” FrostClick is currently promoting Audra Hardt, and they have several other artists lined up for their free promotion service.

Disclaimer: FrostWire is one of our ’sponsors’. This article is written out of free will though, independent of any sponsorship.

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Trackers

A mistake that was common just a few months ago, was throwing out torrents with multiple trackers listed on it. Until recently, a number of torrents listed on the Pirate Bay, had the same tracker listed multiple times under different aliases, something they have since corrected. There are also occasions where up-to a dozen different trackers are listed, all for one torrent.

Some might argue that adding more trackers to a torrent is a good thing, but the fact is, it’s often harming things. Clients that can only handle one tracker, will only announce to the first one listed, and ignore any subsequent trackers listed. Multi-tracker capable clients will announce to the first tracker, as well as any subsequent ones, depending on how they are grouped. The thing is, every peer on the second tracker, will also have announced to the first tracker, and would be available there. However, the peers on the first tracker may not be on any other trackers.

At the end of the day, you’ve gained no new peers (unless the initial tracker was overloaded or down) but used up connection time and bandwidth on your connection, and more importantly, you’ve added an extra load to a tracker. While it may not seem a lot, with even a single thousand-peer torrent, and a 15 minute limit on re-announcing, that’s 4000 extra, needless connections per hour, per torrent.

The solution, use DHT if your client supports it, or if you’re strongly adverse to DHT but feel there is a possibility that the tracker might go offline, you can use a second fall-back tracker. Don’t disable DHT for the torrent though (by setting the private flag) because it can help the torrent die that much faster.

Padding Files

This is a little foible that’s pretty much unique to the BitComet clients. A padding file is an extra file, comprising junk data that’s added to torrents, so that files all start at the beginning of a torrent piece. In theory, this means that if you only want certain files in a torrent, you don’t have to download an extra part, belonging to another file. It is also supposed to make torrent ‘previews’ easier.

However, you don’t save any data downloaded. What you gain from the front will even out with the added data needed for the larger padding file needed at the beginning. Worse, if you’re downloading multiple files, the padding files can add up in size, and examples have been seen where padding files have been 25% of the total torrent size.

For the average user, there is no good reason to use padding files. The is certainly no reason that compensates for the added irritation those files give to other users, or the increased data bulking up the torrent.

Piece Size

Piece size is the bit that can make a torrent seeded on a home connection scale well, or make even the best seeded torrent bog down. At its heart, it’s how big each piece is that is checked, and distributed, but also how much data you discard for a hash-fail. Make the pieces too few and big, and it can be very hard for a peer to get started, too many small pieces will use more of a peers connection for overhead.

It’s a delicate balance, that is not easily found. Small pieces make it less susceptible to poisoning attacks (as practiced by MediaDefender, among others) and will help a torrent deal with sudden increases in peers, by making it easy to get a piece or two to trade. However, keeping track of who has what piece requires bandwidth, and small pieces mean that you will be telling connected peers about pieces you have just got more often.

After a number of years toying around, the optimum number of pieces seems to be between 1200 and 2200. Most torrent creators will only allow piece-sizes in multiples of 16kb, so you should, with few exceptions, find a size that fits in that range. A 700Mb torrent should be 512Kb pieces (giving 1400 total) and similarly, 350Mb would be better with 256kb. A 4.5Gb torrent would have 2,250 pieces, roughly, with a 2Mb piece-size. Or 1,125 with 4Mb. Either way would be fine, but 256kb pieces would mean 17,500+ pieces, and is too many.

File Layout

The file-layout is something that can be key in determining how long the torrent lasts. The layout of a torrent and the data in it, is one of the most important factors in torrent longevity. In general, rars are not encouraged, and can lead to a shorter torrent life. Mainly this is down to the doubling of space this requires, space for the files, and space for the torrented rar. The only observed exception to this seems to be ’scene rars’ where the rar files are widely available from multiple sources.

For multiple file torrents, directory names are also as important as file names. An accurate, and descriptive directory name frustrates less, than one called “temp” or “001” which can clash with similar named directories on client computers. It should also be noted that although most torrent creators will name the torrent file after the parent directory in the torrent, the torrent file can later be renamed without worry. There is a general misconception that torrents can only contain a certain number of individual files, which is not true.

Also, be wary in adding extra files, such as small text files with a hello, or attribution. Without this exact file the piece can not later be resurrected in a reseed. The more complex the file, the harder a reconstruction, if someone else wants to reseed. That music video of your band might be on someone’s hard drive, but if you had a fancy nfo file full of ASCII-art, which someone has deleted, it not only won’t reseed, but will delete the end of the re-seeders copy of the video when it is hash-checked.

Connection Settings

Finally, and not directly related to making a torrent, make sure your connection settings are optimized. We have published hints on optimizing µtorrent and Azureus/Vuze in the past, as well as more general guides. Make your torrents right, and they will last longer, providing you follow one last tip – SEED. Without seeding, any torrent will die sooner.

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The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. Currently both DVDrips, DVD Screeners and R5 rips are counted.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

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The two, who just turned 30, have a long history of copyright infringement which started back in the ’80’s, with Peter cracking Amiga games and Fredrik copying Commodore64 software. At the time they had never heard of copyright infringement, they were just doing what everybody else did. To the amusement of the audience, Peter said he didn’t think piracy was ‘wrong’ when he was a kid, but now that he’s an adult, he knows it’s not.

Years later, in 2003, they got involved in founding Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy), a pro-piracy organization that was created in response to anti-Piratbyrån. The goal of Piratbyrån was to start a debate on copyright issues, and how they affect society. Until then, most press in Sweden would simply take everything anti-Piratbyrån said for granted.

In the years to come, Piratbyrån started several pro-piracy projects, and the most influential is without a doubt the founding of The Pirate Bay on November 21, 2003. “We needed to have a filesharing network in Sweden, because there was none,” Peter said. “At this time there was one big torrent site, which was called Suprnova, but they mainly had international content. We and Piratbyrån wanted more Swedish and Scandinavian content. So we started a big library, and that is The Pirate Bay.”

Fredrik, who ran one of the earlier versions of the tracker on his laptop, explained that when The Pirate Bay went live, it was hosted in South America. “The Pirate Bay originally started out in Mexico, on a Mexican server where Anakata, the third guy of The Pirate Bay was working at the time,” he said. Anakata hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for, but it was soon overloaded since the site grew so rapidly.

The Pirate Bay was initially available in Swedish language only. However, after a year they found out that, although their site was initially targeted at Scandinavians, over 80% of the users came from other parts of the world. In fact, one of the most popular torrents was a Swedish language course. Because of increasing worldwide popularity, The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages.

The popularity of the site didn’t go unnoticed in Hollywood. Like many other BitTorrent sites, The Pirate Bay also received several takedown notices. However, the way they responded to these was quite unique and some have become news stories in themselves. Threats from the entertainment industry didn’t stop at sending letters. In true Hollywood style, The Pirate Bay admins soon saw private investigators watching their every move.

“They’ve sent private investigators after us, which is really stupid if you do something online,” Peter said. “What are they going to find, that we are sitting behind our computers?” Fredrik added: “I guess the private investigator that went after me in Gothenburg got to see a lot of good bars, a lot of late nights, but probably not a lot of evidence gathering.” Peter then noted that someone from the IFPI was actually at the conference, “still trying to find out what we’re doing.”

Eventually The Pirate Bay got raided, following pressure from Hollywood and the USA. Fredrik recalls the day vividly: “I got a phone call like 10am in the morning, it was Anakata.” He told Fredrik that there were police officers at their office, and asked him to get down to the colocation facility and get rid of the ‘incriminating evidence’, although none of it, whatever it was, was related to The Pirate Bay.

As Fredrik was leaving, he suddenly realized that the problems might be linked to their tracker, so he initiated a full backup of the site. At the colocation facility there were 65 police, some in civilian clothing. Fredrik asked them: “Who are you? What are you doing here?” To which they responded, “Who are YOU? What are you doing here?” After questions back and forth, Fredrik eventually told them his name, and a police officer said, “Oh, we’ve been looking for you.”

During the subsequent questioning, the Pirate Bay trio gave up very little information. Anakata quickly confessed to his crime – of killing the Swedish prime minister when he was 2 years old, but that was all they got. It is up to the court to decide whether the Pirate Bay founders are operating illegally or not. Until then, The Pirate Bay is still up and running, stronger than ever.

As always, there are a lot of plans for the future, and Peter and Fredrik briefly discussed some. One of the most interesting plans is to encrypt tracker connections, so anti-piracy organizations can’t spy on their users. We will probably hear more about that in the future. The keynote speech by Peter and Fredrik was streamed from a mobile phone last night, and we embedded the recording below. The sound quality is far from optimal, but it’s watchable. The talk starts at 13m 00s

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EA has downplayed this, naturally. In comments to video game developer site Gamasutra, EA’s Mariam Sughayer said “Stepping aside from the whole issue of DRM, people need to recognize that every BitTorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale. We’ve talked to people that made several unsuccessful attempts to download the game and ended up with incomplete, slow, buggy or unusable code. In one case, a file identified as Spore contained a virus. To say that every download represents a successful copy of the game –- or that there’s been more than 500K copies downloaded — that’s just not true.”

Of course, it should be pointed out that when TorrentFreak computed the download figures previously, the basis was only a few torrents, all known to be working and virus free, and similarly with figure earlier. TorrentFreak is not new at this, and we know how to tell the difference between an incomplete, a virused, buggy, or even encrypted with a password, and one that would work if downloaded. To attempt to spin it otherwise is rude and condescending, and shows how hard EA is attempting to salvage the reputation of itself, and Spore.

When we suggested a few weeks ago that the DRM was the cause of the high rate of downloads, we said it only hurt legitimate purchasers (and those that steal it) and we are not alone. A class action lawsuit was filed in northern California on September 22nd, targeting EA for the use of SecuROM. The lawsuit asks for damages based on the secret installation of a program, which can adversely affect your system, without telling you. It’s basically the Sony Rootkit debate again.

The lawyer that filed this case, Alan Himmelfarb, told TorrentFreak “People have an absolute right to control what does and what does not get put onto their computers. When companies resort to secret, undisclosed installations – for whatever purpose – they cross a line. Our lawsuit is the result in this case. First there was Sony with its Rootkit. Then there was Ubisoft with Starforce. Now we have EA with SecuROM. In each case, corporate executives failed to see anything wrong with installing a secret, uninstallable, administrative level program directly into the heart of the command center of the computer, so that they could control how you use your computer. So that they could decide what programs you could run, and what hardware you could have installed. All without asking. All without any attempt to obtain your consent. It is simply wrong, and we will continue to bring similar actions against any company that acts as if they obtain ownership rights to a consumer’s computer simply because someone plays their game or listens to their music.”

Thanks to DRM, Spore may well be the most downloaded game of all time, if not now, then in the next month. However, EA sees the facts a bit differently. On their support page dealing with DRM and Spore, they describe why they went with SecuROM

Q: Why are Maxis and EA implementing this new authentication process?
A: This solution serves to protect our software from piracy.

Yeah, it’s worked REALLY well.

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