Just over a month has passed since the first stable public release of the software and PeerBlock has now managed to clock up more than 100,000 downloads. To mark this milestone, TorrentFreak caught up with Mark from the project for the lowdown.

Mark told us that the creation of PeerBlock was inspired by him upgrading his PC from 32 to 64 bit in order to utilize 6gb of RAM. Everything worked fine – until he tried to get PeerGuardian (another IP blocker) to work.

Having hacked away and jumped through hoops to get around driver-signing it would still only work half the time and often crashed without warning. As a software engineer who has worked in the commercial sector for more than 13 years, Mark – who admits to being “an arrogant bastard who truly believes he can do just about anything better than just about anybody,” decided he could find a solution. It was “put up or shut up time,” he told TorrentFreak.

Noticing that the PeerGuardian code was open-source but hadn’t been touched for a couple of years, Mark contacted another developer who had the same thing in mind, but having heard nothing back, he went at it alone.

“I started setting up a Sourceforge.net project for it so we could get free source-control, but they took too long to set it up for me so I instead created a project over at Google Code where it was ready within minutes,” he told us.

Having heard from a few people who were interested in helping out with the development side – “night_stalker_z” who’d earlier started trying to hack the PG2 code into shape, “DarC” / “DisCoStu” who wanted to help out with fixing up the installer, XhmikosR who rewrote the installer, and some testers, things moved forward.

After facing troubles due to the lack of a “signed driver” for 64-bit versions of Vista (which resulted in Mark having to set up a registered company before they were allowed to buy a $230 code-signing certificate), a couple of blogs wrote articles on PeerBlock which attracted some much-needed publicity to the project. This resulted in 10,000 downloads in just one weekend.

“We’re still getting donations from people and we now have enough to pay for next year’s annual code-signing certificate, and we’re saving up to be able to rent our own VPS with full root access etc, upon which we’ll be able to build a ‘real’ online-update system, a custom web-app to tie our forums/issue-tracker/website all together, and some other neat things,” Mark explains.

The first stable release of PeerBlock came out on September 27th, and as of November 5th had clocked up an impressive 100,000 downloads. The site now receives up to 7,000 visitors each day.

Aside from fixing one or two bugs, the team has lots of new features planned for PeerBlock. Anyone that has tried to surf the web with a blocklist in place will know how painful that can be, so PeerBlock will have some new features which allow the “whitelisting” of certain apps, such as a browser, the creation of a proxy server to let users configure PeerBlock to listen on certain ports, possibly an integral “AdMuncher” style ad-blocking feature on a per URL basis (as opposed to just an IP-address), and an encrypted chat feature.

TorrentFreak asked Mark why users should choose PeerBlock over the competition.

“Well, first off we need to ask ‘Who IS the competition?’ The only ones I’m really aware of are: Protowall by the folks over at Bluetack which is closed-source and I don’t believe was ever updated for Vista, and Outpost Firewall, which is closed-source and basically just a hack add-on to a more professional firewall product,” he responded, while noting that uTorrent’s built-in IP-filtering feature only handles one manually-updated list.

“We protect your entire machine, and give you the option to try out any P2P app you want – this freedom of choice is a very important thing, I think. And since it does everything automatically, including list-updates, it’s one less thing to think about,” he added.

Another important question relates to the blocklists that have to be used in conjunction with PeerBlock in order for it to block anything.

He told TorrentFreak that he’s a big fan of iblocklist, who serve up a staggering 10TB of blocklists every month for free. The site doesn’t create the lists, but does offer those from Bluetack, including the Level1 list (renamed to ‘P2P’ in PG2/PeerBlock, which contains both Gov and Anti-P2P IP-addresses) and others.

Mark admits that even in a best case scenario, the available blocklists aren’t 100% effective. That said, there have been studies which show that using blocklists along with software such as PeerBlock can help speed up downloads, but no-one knows how many of the potential “bad IPs” are covered by currently available blocklists.

P2P aside, Mark says there has been feedback to suggest that PeerBlock discovered a Conficker infection on a user’s machine that their anti-virus programs missed, and can also stop ads appearing in browsers that lack in-built blocking.

One other exciting thing for the future of PeerBlock is porting it to the Mac. Mark says they’re saving all the donations for additional development and this is the most-requested request right now.

Users of PeerBlock are encouraged to give as much feedback as possible to Mark’s team, via their forums, IRC (#peerblock on freenode.net) or email.

PeerBlock can be downloaded here.

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

One major site that has showed an acute aversion to saying just about anything to outsiders is Demonoid. This semi-private site has nevertheless made the news dozens of times, most recently due to its recent downtime, as reported here on TorrentFreak.

“We are experiencing power outages that have caused some ram and hard drive issues. We might have to shut down everything to fix and prevent further damage,” said Demonoid in a statement six weeks ago, warning that downtime could run to “…days maybe, until we can change the power circuit.”

However, TorrentFreak has received possibly conflicting information from Demonoid’s host, Colocall in Ukraine, who said in a statement: “There were no problems with power supply at the location where Demonoid servers are hosted.”

While information about Demonoid is always scarce, information coming out of Colocall is a rarity too, since the company has previously refused to speak with journalists about their most infamous customer. That’s why it was of great interest when Ukrainian blogger Pavel Golubovskiy contacted TorrentFreak to say he had netted an interview with Colocall. Here is a translation of the questions related to Demonoid;

Why did you choose to host Demonoid?

The customer came to us and ordered a particular service. For us it wasn’t a political decision, Demonoid is an ordinary client for us.

What exactly do you host, the inferno.demonoid.com tracker?

They brought their servers, which are now located in our data center. We don’t know what information is stored there – we do not have access to this information. These servers are supported remotely by Demonoid technical staff.

Is there a way to contact the Demonoid admins?

They will not answer you. Many people want to contact them – journalists, fans, police, local authorities from different countries. But the Demonoid admins have a very selective approach to e-mail correspondence. When the police wanted to contact them, I specifically warned the admins that they had to respond to this request.

So the police already inquired about Demonoid?

Well, our local authorities are interested in Demonoid all the time. Rightholders associations are constantly trying to put pressure on us, including pressure with the help of Ukrainian authorities. We redirect them to the admins, but do not interfere or try to negotiate.

Are they putting any serious pressure on you?

It sounds strange, but Ukraine is still a jural state. Therefore IFPI’s personal opinion is just that, their personal opinion, despite the fact that the budgets of the IFPI participants are comparable to the budget of the Ukraine.

Aren’t you afraid that there can be a similar situation with Demonoid’s servers as there was with Infostore.org site? [famous Ukrainian file-sharing site, its servers were confiscated by police about a year ago]

As a hosting-provider we take such risks into account. This can happen not only with Demonoid, but with any client. We do not control what information is stored on servers, anybody can buy our hosting service.

Anti-pirates and the media-lobby are now trying to shift all the responsibility for file-sharing onto Internet providers, so that providers will have to monitor user activities. Will this affect hosting providers too?

We have such laws in draft in our parliament periodically. But the Ukrainian law “On communication” is clear about this: providers are not responsible for what their customers do. And the fact that rights holders want to change that is their personal opinion, they are not legislative bodies. Let them buy a parliament member and lobby for such law, then we will observe this law. But until then they are nobody to us, and we are nobody for them too.

About a month ago Demonoid reported technical problems. Due to those problems all data for the last several months has vanished. In an attempt to recover from these problems the site went offline. Do you know what happened?

Some time ago several of their hard-drives crashed. But that was several months ago and we don’t know what was the reason of recent problems.

According to their admins, the man who can restore the tracker is not available. Are they speaking about some Colocall programmer?

No, all the technical support of servers is performed remotely. They aren’t speaking about one of our specialists.

Torrentfreak wrote about the president of Lithuanian antipirates, who demanded the closure of access to Demonoid. He said that it is very hard to even make contact with you. Have you spoken with him?

Yes, someone called us. We just could not speak with him: from the start of the conversation he immediately began to threaten us, he was absolutely non-constructive. We sent him to the court and have said that if he brings the court’s decision, we will be happy to execute it, because we observe all Ukrainian laws. Until then we are not going to speak with him.

Access to Demonoid is blocked for several countries including Ukraine. Is this your initiative or the tracker’s decision?

It is the tracker’s policy, not our initiative. I think this is due to DDoS-attacks.

Are there any DDoS-attacks aiming at Demonoid?

Yes, there are many large and serious DDoS-attacks. But they are always the problem of every hosting provider. We have learned how to neutralize them, so such attacks have almost no effect on Demonoid’s operations. And, incidentally, Demonoid isn’t the only site to be attacked: during the last election we hosted the server of the central election commission committee, it was constantly under DDoS-attacks.

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

In September 2006, Scott pleaded guilty to two charges – ‘conspiracy to commit copyright infringement’ and ‘criminal copyright infringement’. For his ‘crime’, Scott was sentenced to 5 months in jail and 5 months home confinement but his release didn’t mean his life was back to normal.

After his release in 2007, Scott was fitted with a monitoring ankle bracelet which restricted his freedom, but the government hadn’t finished limiting his life. Scott had to have special software installed on his computer to monitor his online activities, but since it was Windows only, he had to give up his beloved Ubuntu.

In the months that followed, Scott publicly shared details via his blog of his struggle to come to terms with his severe treatment for uploading a single movie, which at times made pretty upsetting reading. Thankfully his nightmare is now coming to an end.

It has been around 3 weeks since Scott was taken off the US government’s monitor list, which means that he is no longer on probation. Scott says things have been pretty good since and he can now do things we all take for granted – like being able to use Ubuntu instead of Windows.

TorrentFreak caught up with Scott who said he was happy to send a message to his friends and readers here to mark his official freedom.

“I have officially been off probation since July 12th. What a great feeling to finally be free from the clutches of evil (or the federal government). It was actually a really easy time on probation. It was 2 years, dealing once a month with my probation officer… who was really a great person,” he told us.

For those of us who remember the exact time and date of the EliteTorrents raid, it seems like only yesterday, but so much has happened since and as Scott puts it, his freedom has been a long time coming.

“I haven’t had a clear head since May 25th, 2005. Over 4 years of what I would call the worst period of my life is over,” he recalls.

But in the end the release from the nightmare comes from Scott himself and he is certainly trying to make the best of things now.

“I have been focusing a lot of time on my family. We bought a house in November, while I was still on home confinement. I am working at a local college, dealing with ERP implementations, specifically Oracle, and I am still actively participating in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and MMA,” he told TorrentFreak.

As if these things won’t keep Scott busy enough, he’s looking forward to a brighter future and a very special occasion.

“I will be hopefully starting back to school for my MBA in the spring. And I am getting married in May 2010. Aside from the economy, I couldn’t ask for anything more.”

Scott told us that he felt his story is probably no longer worthy of news, so he will take this opportunity to move back into the shadows to get on with his new lease of life.

“This will be the last time most of you hear from me – although there is sk0t.com. The good majority of you have been really supportive… so thank you all for caring, and for
those of you who didn’t care… thanks also.”

I’m sure that the readers will join us in wishing Scott all the best for the future and every happiness in his forthcoming marriage. Good luck Scott.

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

Founded in 2003, isoHunt is one of the oldest BitTorrent sites that remains around today. The site has millions of pageviews a day and searches through more than 2 million torrent files, which totals an impressive 1729 terabytes of data.

Gary Fung, the founder of the site, is in charge of daily operations from his hometown Vancouver in Canada. Below is a picture of Gary sitting behind his 2008 Mac Pro hooked up to a Dell 30″ LCD monitor (3008WFP).

What’s really keeping the site up and running is not his Mac though, rather the 14 servers located in Ontario, Canada. Below is a picture of the server rack currently in use. Gary told us that he is working on adding another cluster in Europe soon.

isoHunt is currently using four dual quadcore Opteron 2352’s for the web servers. The site’s database runs on three additional servers, two Opteron and one Intel Nehalem based. Four old dual core AMD nodes are used for various background processing, one Intel, dualcore Xeon is used by the search backend and two more for load balancing.

Below you’ll find another picture isoHunt’s server rack, all wired up. We thank Gary for sharing this with us, and we will continue our behind the scenes series this weekend with a brand new workspace of another torrent site admin.

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

From then on The Pirate Bay quickly became the largest BitTorrent tracker on the entire Internet, responsible for the communication between millions of BitTorrent users at any given time of the day. Up until today they have continued to do so in a rather unorganized fashion, but that is all about to change.

This Monday the relatively unknown Global Gaming Factory (GGF) announced that it will acquire The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million. Provided that the shareholders agree and that GGF manages to raise the necessary funding to complete the sale, The Pirate Bay will be in new hands. Undoubtedly, this announcement resulted in a tidal wave of media coverage.

It’s been nearly a week since the sale to GGF was announced so TorrentFreak took the opportunity to catch up with departing Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde to look back at the last few turbulent days and to find out what the future holds for him.

TF: Were you surprised by the negative responses to the sale?

Peter: Not really surprised, but overwhelmed anyhow. The pressure of this thing has been enormous, and not a lot of people think it’s fair for us to take a break from things. I can appreciate that a lot of people put their support and hopes in us and we’re really happy that we’ve made an impact that allows people to do that. At the same time, we’re only human and can’t keep up with everything. The Pirate Bay needs to change or it will die by itself.

TF: Hundreds of media outlets have covered the news, but it is not entirely clear what is actually being sold to GGF. Can you enlighten us?

Peter: GGF is buying the domain names for thepiratebay (under all the tlds they exist). They also get a copy of the code and the database. The database includes no logs (there’s never been any logs) and there’s no personal details stored anywhere.

TF: GGF’s future plans for the site are still very vague, but they announced that “illegal downloading” will he halted once they own the site. What’s your opinion on this?

Peter: Well, that depends on how you look at it. GGF aren’t stupid, they know that if they only allowed pre-scanned content the site is worthless. Illegal downloading? Well, torrents aren’t illegal, it could potentially lead to copyright being broken though. But don’t underestimate them. They have had a hard time in the media, which they’re not used to being in. It’s all new for them – all of a sudden BBC, CNN, all local media in Sweden and so on just hammer them with questions. It’s probably hard to answer in the beginning. But they’re not as stupid as they’ve been portrayed.

TF: How do you think The Pirate Bay will look like a year from now?

Peter: No idea really. A guess would be an updated logo, new skin for the site, some changes in features but still the same basic concept.

TF: Will you or any of the other Pirate Bay co-founders be involved in the Pirate Bay site once it’s sold?

Peter: As it looks right now, no.

TF: Will the old Pirate Bay team still be working on (new) BitTorrent related projects?

Peter: We’re working hard on other things right now, especially with The Video Bay and some of our personal projects.

TF: The money generated by the sale will go to an unnamed foundation. Can you tell us a little bit about the foundation that receives the money? Are they working on any interesting projects?

Peter: The foundation is interested in more political means than technical. Having money will make it work quite hard, but there’s nothing to present yet. A lot of projects are in the pipe-line though.

TF: What does the BitTorrent community need the most to continue being the mainstream P2P protocol?

Peter: More trackers, less centralized systems and more people standing up for the community.

—–

For the founders of the site the sale is certainly the end of an era and they deserve credit for all the work they’ve done thus far. We will watch closely to what happens with The Pirate Bay in the future but BitTorrent is here to stay with or without it.

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

Tomas Wennström of What’s Next managed to secure a recorded audio interview with The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde. In it Peter says why the site was sold, talks a little about the future for the site and touches on the huge disappointment being expressed by the site’s fans. It’s a very interesting interview, although in common with everything else going on today, it raises even more questions.

Some key points from the interview:

GGF approached The Pirate Bay with a deal several weeks ago. TPB considered GGF to be the correct company to bring the project “to the next level” since they didn’t feel capable of doing it themselves. Peter said he feels that GGF share the same values as TPB.

Peter said that TPB have been approached by companies before to sell out, but they didn’t understand the value of TPB. He said the value of the site is to be found in the userbase and nothing else. He added that if a company is interested in buying that userbase they have to keep up spirits or they will find themselves owning something that rapidly decreases in value.

Tomas Wennström said that he found it crazy that TPB would become a listed company. Peter responded that they think the concept is “super funny” and that’s one of the main reasons they are doing this.

Peter said in the past they’ve had to hide the financial details of the site and who is doing what “for legal reasons” but says that in the future there will have to be more transparency about how the operation is run, adding that people now not only have the chance to share files, but also buy shares in the site.

Peter explained that he and the original owners of TPB disposed of the site in 2006. He refused to name who took the site but referred to a single owner in one of his responses, using the word “he”.

Peter noted that the site hadn’t yet been sold to GGF and the company will have to find funding inside 4 weeks. He said he doesn’t know who the financial backers are, but if GGF cannot find the money then everything goes back to exactly the way it was before.

Peter said that the perfect situation would be if the users of the site set up something to buy The Pirate Bay. Certainly, with all the previous fund raising for buying islands etc this might have been a possibility but this has never even been put forward as an option. The idea seems optimistic considering the backlash among the users.

Currently the site is down after suffering a minor DDoS attack, and TPB’s TiAMO told TorrentFreak that the site’s load balancer had crashed .

Peter says running Pirate Bay has resulted in ‘bad pay’, i.e minus SEK 30 million in fines – incidentally an identical amount to the cash payment part of the deal with GGF.

Tomas Wennström put a scenario to Peter – what if GGF screws up and makes all that is good about The Pirate Bay go away – which seemed like a veiled reference to the availability of the usual TPB content.

“I’m agnostic about it, I think it could be true, could be faulty, but whatever happens at least something happens, which is the big thing here. I’d rather see The Pirate Bay die in a chance of becoming better, than just dying.”

For the time being The Pirate Bay crew will assist the new owners in operating the site. In addition a new tracker will be launched as well as a new torrent hosting service.

The interview can be downloaded here.

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

In film circles, Pallotta is known for his outstanding animation work that defines most of his work thus far. His last film, A Scanner Darkly starred Keanu Reeves and was a smash hit on BitTorrent. With more than a million downloads, the movie earned a place in our list of Top 10 most downloaded movies four weeks in a row.

Pallotta’s latest work is something totally different though. It’s a follow up documentary to film legend Martin Scorsese’s cult-classic American Boy that was shot more than thirty years ago. In American Boy Scorsese documented the life of his friend Steven Prince, who was also the inspiration for one of the best known scene’s in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. With American Prince Pallotta continues the saga.

Since Scorsese’s original documentary is a rarity nowadays, Pallotta had to ‘pirate’ much of his material on BitTorrent sites and YouTube. In return, Pallotta is giving the film away for free on BitTorrent. This of course caught our attention and we decided to catch up with the director to lear a little more about his motivation to embrace BitTorrent.

TF: First off, A Scanner Darkly – which you produced – became quite successful on BitTorrent and was downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people. Were you aware of that at the time? What do you think of people who use BitTorrent to download the film?

Tommy: Really, A Scanner Darkly was successful on BitTorrent? GREAT! I wish it was more so, I have to admit, I get jealous when I look at the top 100 downloads on the trackers and I don’t see my movies. In fact, part of the reason I am releasing American Prince on BitTorrent is for the hope that it breaks the top 100. I live in Amsterdam now, so the only way I can keep up with some of my favorite shows, events, and films is to download. I think it is great, especially for filmmakers of niche movies. My movies tend to get limited releases and are more of the cult film status, so the initial release is often overlooked or simply the movie is unavailable in many areas. For me as a filmmaker it is most important that the work I make get seen. I feel for many people and places, downloading is the only way they will get to see my movies. Waking Life is a movie that I produced that is a pretty interesting example of that. It seems more popular today that when it came out in 2001. I think BitTorrent and steaming sites like YouTube are completely responsible for that phenomena. Since I use BitTorrent, I wanted to give back to the community, that was part of the motivation is releasing American Prince via BitTorrent.

TF: The MPAA has often argued that the movie industry loses billions of dollars through piracy. Others think that it has close to no impact. What’s your position in the ongoing ‘piracy debate’?

Tommy: Well, everyone has a different opinion. It is pretty simple to me: The exact same thing that happened to the music industry will happen to the film industry. I suspect the film industry knows that and is trying to hold off the inevitable as long as they can. My guess is that they will try to make as much money as long as they can until they have to change or someone comes in and organizes and unifies the industry in the way Apple did for music. But even that is tricky because obviously Apple benefited more than the music industry. So they should be looking at alternative revenue streams, I find it hard to believe that many DVDs will be sold a few years from now. I would rather embrace new technologies and distribution methods, I feel this gives me greater and more immediate access to an audience.

TF: For American Prince you’ve used material from BitTorrent and YouTube, which is great. Did you license all these clips, or are they pirated copies?

Tommy: Yes we used material from BitTorrent and YouTube for American Prince and no, we did not license them. I did receive the Master copy of American Boy from Steven Prince himself, but we found a copy via BitTorrent that was better than that copy, so we used that! Plus, there is some confusion as to who actually owns the rights to American Boy. Part of the motivation of this film was to get a proper release for Scorsese’s American Boy. I felt this film would help uncover who has the rights and hopefully get it in front of a larger audience.

TF: Why did you decide to release American Prince for free on BitTorrent and what do you expect from it?

Tommy: Scorsese’s American Boy has been and is still generally unavailable for over 30 years, yet so many filmmakers have been influenced by it. The way we saw it is through multi-generational VHS tapes. Now with BitTorrent, there is a whole new audience and generation ready to be influenced by that film and I hope mine. Steven Prince is a gold mine of future cinema scenes and I hope a whole new generation of filmmakers will understand how he has influenced American Cinema. My biggest expectation is that the most people possible will watch my film! Also, I would really like to encourage people to talk about the film, with each other as well as on the Internet. It would make me happy to see Wikipedia entries and IMDB boards as well as Internet sites. I would love for people to get together and have screenings of it with their friends, or for universities to suggest to their class for the students to watch it. I look at American Prince as the film school I never had, what I always imagined film school to be.

TF: Do you think that the Internet and file-sharing technology will play an important role in shaping the future of film distribution?

Tommy: I absolutely believe how we watch and share movies will shape the future of film distribution. I believe it will have such a profound influence that it will even change how movies are made. I think it is a win-win for the filmmakers and the viewers. Filmmakers will have a more direct reach with audience and viewers have more to choose from. I wanted to release this film in support of file sharing and to prove to myself and others that it can have a profoundly positive effect.

TF: Amen.

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

A video mixtape is a collection of bootleg clips from movies, tv shows, home grown videos or just about any other source. These tapes grew in popularity along with the advent of home VHS and Betamax videos – the masses now had the equipment to make their own shows and compilations. Of course, nowadays while they are still called ‘mixtapes’, they are more likely to exist in digital form on the Internet or on DVD.

Mixtapes are also known for the strange and unusual material they can contain. From weird B-movies to sporting accidents and dramatic news footage, through to unintelligible TV shows and rare pilots from countries far and wide, they contain all types of mind boggling clips that most people never knew existed. The heavy doses of porn and various stomach-churning activities and curiosities turn some of these tapes into controversial items, even on the underground.

Anyone Googling “Video mixtape” will be immediately exposed to links and references to the Retard-O-Tron (ROT (NSFW)) mixtapes – possibly the most controversial and popular mixtapes around. Already banned in the US, Canada and Ireland, we caught up with ZXQL3000, the creator of the ROT mixtapes, to find out why the hell he does it.

“Before the Internet was available in every household, many people around the world used to trade music with each other by taping stuff from their collections onto audio cassettes, and sending them to each other by snail mail,” ZXQL told TorrentFreak.

“These things were called mixtapes, and were a great source for discovering music. Getting new and unknown songs from all kinds of obscure sources was only part of the fun — MAKING your own mixtape was even better.”

Projects like ROT are the natural progression from purely audio based output to video, with the emphasis on fun. “They’re made for lazy Saturday nights after (or before!) going out, for having a drink and having a no-brainer laugh with your buddies,” says ZXQL.

As Internet availability became widespread, mixtapes traded by standard mail pretty much died out, taking the mixtape phenomenon with it. “And then P2P came along,” said ZXQL, “and like it did for commercial music and movies, it changed the rules — if you wanted it to or not.”

This new found ability for individuals to take control of their own distribution coupled with the availability of cheap and even free audio and video editing packages, gave mixtapes a new lease of life. But P2P wasn’t just used for the distribution of completed projects, it was to became a prime source of raw material.

“P2P offers you a nearly unlimited library of digital media: there’s no song obscure enough for you not to find it,” says ZXQL enthusiastically. “Even better: there is SO much stuff out there that still needs to be discovered, the chase is as much fun as the catch. Mixtapes help you show what’s out there.”

Finding the source material can be entertaining in itself, ZXQL explained. “There’s so much about today’s availability of media that makes this so much fun: hunting for that perfect clip to end your sequence, exploring new music by just typing in keywords and seeing what comes up.”

“Say you start your mixtape with one single video clip of Bill Gates getting a pie thrown in his face, but it needs some music in the background. So you start looking for a song that fits the clip. Maybe you just type in “pie” in Emule or Limewire, or Google for lyrics that contain the phrase “in your face”. Maybe that song makes for an excellent link to the next clip. You’ll be amazed with where your search can take you.”

Having laughed, cried, been bemused, shocked and sickened all within the space of a few minutes at Retard-O-Tron 2 – I can see what ZXQL meant by “be amazed” at the kind of footage available. While a lot of the footage is suitable for everyone (and some of the B-movies and obscure footage is amazing), overall it is definitely one for the over 18’s. Actually, better make that 25, with a very broad mind too.

To be honest I would have preferred fewer sex scenes, as I think I would’ve watched more of it. We understand ROT1 is more of an easy ride. “ROT3 is in the making, and it will feature less porn,” ZXQL reassured me. “Or at least easier to view with a group of people, so it won’t be as explicit. ROT2 kinda went overboard with the porn, I think so myself,” he added.

Of course, porn aside, many of these mixtapes can hardly be considered legal. Who knows how many instances of copyright infringement there are in each one – dozens would seem conservative – but since the mixtape scene is still fairly focused and most of the source material so obscure, the creators seem to be largely left alone.

For those wanting ROT1 or ROT2 on DVD, one is available from the site, but there are other ways to watch. ROT1 was already ripped and released by a group specializing in releasing cult and b-movies called PiMPRiPPaZ. ROT2 was ripped by a similar group called ViDEOCULT who ZXQL says did a much better job and delivered a high quality, scene-standard compliant rip. He’s happy for people to grab these rips of course, adding;

“In the end, I just want the ultimate thing I can create. Not held back by copyright, censorship, good taste, a commercial drive or other barriers. I wanted a DVD for when my buddies and I chill on the couch with a beer and a bong. I love making my mixtapes, and I love watching them. It’s a hobby, it’s underground and it might even be considered art – but it isn’t about money.”

Just in case you didn’t get the message – the ROT mixtapes are NOT for kids or anyone easily offended. Absolutely, categorically NSFW – you have been warned. And don’t forget, July is unofficial video mixtape month on The Pirate Bay – who knows what it will turn up.

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.

In order to clamp down on piracy the French have proposed a new law that requires Internet service providers to cut off Internet access for persistent offenders. Under the new law ISPs have to warn alleged copyright infringers, and if they they ignore these warnings their Internet access is terminated for up to a year.

The public has actively opposed the law, claiming it restricts their freedom and privacy, while deeming the measure to be ineffective. In a recent poll 90% of the people spoke out against the legislation. Despite this protest, the law is backed by a majority in the French parliament and is expected to be adopted quite easily in the beginning of April.

However, do the politicians that will vote on the law have any clue what they are dealing with? Are they aware that the evidence gathering against alleged infringers is far from accurate, and that it’s not unusual for the wrong person to be accused? Or do they even know what BitTorrent is?

In order to test their knowledge on the subject, a reporter from Hebdo Cinéma questioned some of the politicians. They were asked what they thought was a bigger threat – BitTorrent or P2P. The results were quite revealing, and almost none of them could come up with the right answer.

Most politicians have simply no idea what they are talking about, with Herve Mariton commenting “It is beyond my skills, I admit.” Arnaud Montebourg used his trip to Washington as an excuse for not answering the complex question. “Give me a minute, because I am not aware of the details of the last amendments,” he added.

Patrick Ollier on the other hand, didn’t even understand what was said and asked the reporter to repeat the question in French. Maxime Gremetz’ response wasn’t any better, “I don’t know, I am not a technician,” he told the journalist. Interestingly, Georges Tron said that P2P was more of a threat than BitTorrent, although his explanation for it was utterly vague.

Claude Bartolone was the only one who made sense really. “From a technological point of view, I think the consequences would be the same,” he said, adding “From a consumer point of view it’s always more pleasant to listen to whatever you want whenever you want.”

The lack of knowledge demonstrated by these lawmakers signals a major problem. They are clueless about file-sharing technology and how it works, and oblivious to the potential negative consequences of the new law. Their main advisers are fed dubious and one-sided information from the entertainment industry, while the people on the streets seem to be ignored. Sad but true.

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

Now that things have settled down a little, we took the opportunity to ask one of the defendants some questions of our own. We spoke with Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde about the trial and the future of the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.

TF: Before the trial started, you said that it was going to be a theater – Hollywood style. Looking back at recent weeks, did your predictions come true?

Peter: Yeah, some days it was a really weird show outside! A lot of stuff happened in secret too, and those events will probably come out in the documentary. It’s been great theater!

TF: Are you satisfied with how the trial played out? Do you still predict an EPIC WIN?

Peter: Right now, yes. I’m very happy about it and I still predict an EPIC WIN for sure. But you never know. We expect a win but we’re prepared for the worst case scenario, so that we don’t get too beaten up if that happens.

TF: During the trial, the prosecution was heavily criticized for their lack of knowledge about BitTorrent, and how people use it to transfer files. Would you agree with this?

Peter: Yeah. We actually presented our own video ‘how-to’ to the court during the final day, to make sure the jurors got the right knowledge on how it works. The prosecution has tried to show BitTorrent as something bad and suspicious and we wanted to show that it’s legitimate and has a broader use than just STEALING FILES FROM THE POOR COPYRIGHT LOBBY…

TF: A lot of people are worried about the future of The Pirate Bay. However, the trial seems to be against four individuals, not against the site/tracker. Worst case scenario: Is there a possibility that people will have to do without TPB in the future?

Peter: If TPB is not used in the future, it is because there’s a new technology available that makes TPB obsolete.

TF: Do you think there’s a future for BitTorrent as it is now, or do you expect that file-sharing will change in the future?

Peter: I think it will evolve of course, but BitTorrent is on the right path to stay relevant for a while. The problem with a decentralized tracking system is that there’s no way (right now) to keep spammers and IP-stealers away from the network, which one can do on TPB for instance. Media Defender was a good example of that, TPB could find their IPs and lock them away rapidly without having to tell the users to update files.

Good solutions like that might appear in the future for end users, but it’s still a long way off. BitTorrent as a technology will be used for the actual sharing, or at least the basic concept of BitTorrent.

TF: There has been a lot of trial coverage online, both by traditional press and bloggers. What are some of the positive and negative surprises?

Peter:There were no real surprises. The media coverage of TPB has been somewhat the same over the past years. There are no secrets surrounding TPB that could come out and harm us, which keeps it easy to maintain a good relationship with the media. I’m just happy that people take part in the discussion about the Internet’s future, which has been promoted to debate by this spectrial.

TF: We’ve heard rumors that Anakata traveled to Cambodia after the trial. Is he meeting King Kong there or is there another explanation?

Peter: I’m not sure if he’s in Cambodia – he travels a bit for a customer that he’s working with. But, I think he’s in Asia at least. And yeah, he’s probably drinking cider with King Kong one of these days.

TF: Finally, do you have any good advice for the judge while he’s reviewing the case?

Peter: Don’t trust the prosecution – they don’t know what they’re doing.

—

The verdict is due on April 17. Links to our previous Pirate Bay trial coverage can be found below.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Summary.

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

In existence since 2006, Fanedit.org is the world’s biggest fanedit site and the people there clearly have a passion for what they do. Visited by around 2000 people every day, members of the site have created dozens of new versions of existing movies such as sci-fi greats Alien, The Matrix, Terminator and Star Trek, and regular movies like Titanic, Harry Potter and Pulp Fiction. However, things started to turn sour for the site recently. TorrentFreak caught up with the admin of Fanedit.org, boon23, for the lowdown.

TF: Please introduce yourself to the readers

boon23: I am boon23, faneditor and administrator of the biggest fanedits website in the world. I’m a preschool teacher from Europe and as faneditor I post under the name CBB (created by boon) and have so far created 29 fanedits, which is quite a lot. It is my hobby, my art, the thing I really love to do and will continue to do.

TF: Tell us a little about fanediting.

boon23: It’s actually a bit like creating a mix music CD or deleting tracks from a music album, but even more like remixing music to your own liking. Creating fanedits is a desire as old as movies themselves. People love to make things more their own or enjoy a variation on the original.

TF: How long have people been sharing fanedits online?

boon23: The online sharing of fanedits started 2004 with the fanedit: The Phantom Edit, a fanedit by Mike Nichols based on The Phantom Menace (SW Episode 1). It was shared millions of times, because people had such a big desire for a grown up version of that movie. The latest incredibly successful fanedit is Adywan’s Star Wars Revisited, which corrected every little flaw from the 2004 release of A New Hope. New special effects, sharper image, better and corrected coloring, new and improved scenes, new music, additional and corrected sound effects. It was created by one guy in 2 years, in which he did nothing else but work on this project.

Fanediting is strictly non commercial (on fanedit.org). We expect everyone interested in a fanedit to buy and own the original movie, have links for that on every page and ban and report everyone that tries to sell a fanedit. With this we are trying to keep it as legal as possible.

TF: The MPAA don’t like what happens on the site. When did you first hear that they had the site in the cross-hairs?

boon23: Three days ago I heard for the first time from them through my webhost, who was contacted by them. They filed a DMCA complaint and wanted two pages containing loads of Rapidshare download links removed. They did not get into detail, or say which fanedits were concerned. Both pages contained links to five or more fanedited movies.

TF: What exactly is their complaint?

boon23: Their problem is that people are sharing movies for free and they do not earn money from that, even if those movies are not the original versions. They see a copyright infringement in this, despite our warnings and disclaimers for legality. The MPAA demands are not clear yet.

TF: Not all studios have a huge problem with the site – tell us about Lucasfilm.

boon23: Lucasfilm tolerated and accepted fan films. A year ago we were contacted by their anti-piracy department regarding one fanedit they wanted to be removed, but they clearly stated that they had looked through the entire website and did not find anything offensive – and fanedit.org has about 80!!! Star Wars fanedits!

TF: You had a BitTorrent tracker on Fanedit.org, could you tell us more about that?

boon23: We used TorrentTrader but linked from it to external torrents only. No torrent was ever transferred by our own tracker. On the tracker we had about 400 torrent links to fanedits.

TF: Is this the first threatened legal action against the site?

boon23: Fanedit.org started in 2006 and we have not had any kind of legal problem before (except for the small and rather positive incident with Lucasfilm). The page was never private and open for all search engines.

TF: What steps are you taking in the face of these MPAA threats?

boon23: Dreamhost has informed us of the consequences – being shut down, lawsuit filing etc, so that is why we are taking down all the download links from Fanedit.org and the according forum now, which is an incredible amount of work. We deactivated our tracker yesterday and cannot bring it up again on this webhost.

TF: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, and good luck in the future.

Boon23 told us that he feels this MPAA action is a serious blow against an artform that is not harming the industry and was certainly never based on anything commercial, and he is saddened that this previously-tolerated ‘gray area’ (such as with Lucasfilm) has now come to an end.

Time will tell what the future is for Fanedit.org and fanedits in general. In the meantime, it seems clear that a US-based host is causing difficulties for the site, which may have to relocate in order to survive. Any offers of hosting will be gratefully received.

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

Nevertheless, following an investigation by UK Trading Standards, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the police, the admin was arrested. At the time, FACT claimed that he was detained due to “offenses relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet.” Except there was a problem.

There is no criminal offense of ‘facilitation of copyright infringement’ under English law. There would have been at least a civil offense if TV-Links had hosted the videos themselves, but they did not. Sites like YouTube and Dailymotion did, but the police or anti-piracy groups didn’t go after these giants. Indeed, the police themselves seemed to disagree with FACT’s reasoning for the raid, saying that the admin had been arrested for “supplying property with a registered trade mark without permission.”

…which raised another problem. The Trade Marks Act 1994 (specifically section 92) was designed to deal with physical, real-world counterfeit goods. Supplying links, if anything, could only be considered a service – definitely not a sale of physical goods. Getting a conviction on these grounds would be tricky, if not impossible. Considering the problems highlighted above, it’s no surprise that the TV-Links case has disappeared from the news radar.

TorrentFreak tracked down the now ex-admin of the site, 26 year-old Dave Rock, for the lowdown on this important case which seems to ask two questions: Can someone be held responsible when 3rd parties merely link to copyright works that are hosted by someone else, and furthermore, does this constitute a criminal offense under an act designed to protect physical goods?

It all starts on the morning of 18th October, just five days before the police raided OiNK. Dave had some unwanted visitors. At 06:20, two police officers, three FACT members, and around five Trading Standards officials descended on Dave’s home. Fortunately for him, in his case the media wasn’t tipped off, so there were no photographers and reporters outside his house. Alan Ellis of OiNK was not so lucky.

“The police and Trading Standards officers were always polite and professional, I wasn’t man handled like you see with the over acting police on the TV,” Dave told us. “I was arrested as soon as I opened the door, not cuffed and was allowed to grab a few bits, like my wallet and phone. They seized my laptop, my old PC and annoyingly, my girlfriends PC too, along with random CDs and four or five old hard drives, ranging between 8GB to 15gb.”

When we asked Dave what was on the search warrant, he said: “They ticked Video Recording Act 1984 – Section 16A and Trade Marks Act 1994 – Section 93. But, thinking about some of the questions during the interview I got the impression they were looking for DVD copying kit or they hoped to find this type of thing. FACT’s website always boasts about DVD pirate busts.”

The police officers then took Dave to the station where he was questioned. Not by the police, but by people from Trading Standards and FACT, a well known private anti-piracy company-come-lobby group. Quite why a private company is allowed to directly question someone in a criminal case that they may wish to prosecute privately is another question, and one that many people will find unpalatable.

It seemed that both outfits were disappointed, they must have expected more than just hyperlinks. In common with thousands of forums around the world, Dave didn’t know any of the TV-Links staff personally, and obviously didn’t know anything about the users. Almost 75% of the site’s visitors came from China, 10% from the US and next popular was the UK, at just 3.8%. Hardly a threat to Great Britain Ltd, but of course the implication was that Dave was making money. The reality was that he was receiving around $2 to $5 per day in donations from random site users, which he used to cover the server costs.

After six hours, Dave was released – without being charged and with no restrictions. Now, well over a year later, not much has changed. For the last 6 months or so, Dave has had no contact with the police and no contact through his lawyer with FACT or (Gloucester) Trading Standards. In fact, GTS has no further involvement in the case and has deferred to FACT, just in case they want to make a private prosecution. But, everything has gone very quiet.

TorrentFreak asked Dave if it had ever been raised that he was arrested under laws ill-placed to deal with the situation. He told us, “When it comes to law there isn’t really any point arguing after the point, you need to concentrate on identifying [in this case] how FACT will interpret the current law and, if/when this ends up in court, how they will use it to their advantage.”

Until then, it just seems like a waiting game. “I guess you could call it being in limbo, but recently I haven’t given it much thought, I’m just getting on with my life,” Dave told us. “The only thing that’s a little annoying is that FACT still have all the gear seized by GTS, apparently they’ve been given it for “forensic analysis”. Do I hear you cry ‘breach of Data Protection Act‘, for passing private data to a private company? Again this is something we are still looking into.”

So how on earth did TV-Links end up on the radar in the first place? Why was such significance put on the site and why did the response include a raid with so many people in attendance from the police, government trading standards and Hollywood-funded private company FACT?

“One thing I’d like to mention, Gloucester Trading Standards were always polite and professional,” said Dave. “In my eyes they were led up the garden path by FACT. My personal opinion is that Gloucester Trading Standards were lead to believe I was copying and selling DVDs. But, when they entered my home they only found crappy old PC gear, Laptop and no DVDs, and lost all interest – if they were ever interested in the first place.”

Despite the lack of interest and indeed grounds for a conviction, it doesn’t change the fact that TV-Links is gone as a result of the above actions. Why did it even find a place in people’s lives in the first instance? Dave believes it’s down to sheer lack of choice. “TV-Links and other linking sites are only around because the big media companies haven’t supplied the viewing public with any viable alternatives, at least until recently in the UK. The BBC iPlayer is very good, but it’s a shame it’s only 7 days of TV.”

So, with the authorities backing away, what are the chances of TV-Links making a comeback? “Running the site did take up all of my free time, it was good fun running it but I’m happy I now have my evenings and weekends free,” Dave told us. He has no intention of bringing the site back, particularly since a TV-Links.co.uk replacement site popped up many months ago at TV-Links.ws.

Finally, when sites are busted, many people are interested in exactly how the owners were tracked down by the authorities. With TV-Links, the techniques weren’t mysterious at all. They didn’t need to be. The reason why it was so easy is the very reason Dave felt free to run the site in the first place:

“To be honest I didn’t really attempt to hide my ID, as under UK Law linking to another site isn’t illegal, so I didn’t see the need.”

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

Ashwin Navin leaving BitTorrent Inc.

His position as president of BitTorrent never held Navin back much. With quotes such as “iTunes DRM Inspires People to Pirate Content,” he was very clear about his attitude towards digital rights management for example. Still, he often found himself in an awkward position, where he had to please the average BitTorrent user, but also the big Hollywood studios.

Now Navin has quit his job at BitTorrent Inc, we decided to do an exit interview, hoping he can speak a little more freely. “My BitTorrent tenure certainly didn’t feel like four years,” was the first thing Navin told TorrentFreak. “But time flies when working among good people, world-changing ideas, and great fun! What attracted me to BitTorrent in the first place, and what is still inspiring to this day, is its ability to provide people true digital freedom.”

Indeed, the BitTorrent protocol provides freedom, but that is also why the entertainment industry is hesitant to adopt it. They don’t want freedom for consumers, but they do want to maintain their cash flow. Nevertheless, one way or another, BitTorrent provides the entertainment industry with a whole new set of tools, something with which Navin seems to agree.

“For its direct and indirect benefits, I believe BitTorrent sits among the handful of important technology breakthroughs such as the printing press, broadcasting, and the Internet itself. Why? Today’s publishing technology – like blogs, BitTorrent, and video sharing sites for example – quite directly forge a level playing field for creativity,” Navin said.

“Indirectly, these tools force large media companies to realize that there is no longer scarcity or a stranglehold on distribution that locks people out of self-expression. Anyone can speak to the world in any format, without filters. Freedom of Speech has never been so available to the masses. How these large corporations respond to this fundamental realization will benefit many many millions of people–creators and consumers alike.”

Navin hits the nail on the head here. BitTorrent is a great technology with a lot of potential. The thing the entertainment industry has to do, is find a way to leverage it. Listening to consumers instead of trying to shut them up would be a good place to start. The Internet has put the consumer in control, and it’s time for the copyright holders to realize this. Or as Navin puts it:

“The free flow of information and entertainment over the Internet doesn’t diminish the relevance of high value, professional entertainment at all. It does force the publishers to be more quality conscious (make fewer flops, and more hits). And the great cardinal sin in this era would be to withhold your content in exclusive deals or to be too precious with your creation. Now’s the time to be more promiscuous with your distribution strategy than before: be everywhere at once, wherever there are eyeballs you can count.”

“In the previous era, there was a lot of forgiveness when 3 or 4 companies owned every road to the consumer. Publishers could produce a crap movie or TV show and get away with it. But when there are millions of ways to get to the user, or in other words, millions of “channels” to choose from, the best entertainment presented in the most frictionless format always wins.”

So, Navin argues that piracy leads to less crap. The entertainment business now has to make stuff people actually want to listen to or watch. Unfortunately for them, it is getting harder and harder to influence and direct consumers to see things the way they want to. Information is more free than ever before and consumers have a choice now, and that will not go away. It’s up to Hollywood to take the next step, and compete with piracy.

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

On July 1st 2008, Jeff Young, a writer with The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote an article entitled Textbook Piracy Grows Online, Prompting a Counterattack From Publishers. The article focused on TextBook Torrents and it quickly gained traction after being picked up by Slashdot and subsequently, many other mainstream publications. In this explosion of publicity the site’s membership grew rapidly, but almost inevitably, the anti-piracy hawks began to circle.

Within days, Textbook Torrents’ host and domain registrar received takedown requests. At the time, Geekman, the admin of the tracker told TorrentFreak: “We received a DMCA notice from Pearson Education a week or so prior, which we complied with, but it was a group of publishers that contacted our host.” On July 5th Dreamhost suspended Geekman’s account and refused to speak with him and it took a week to even transfer the domain. It took a month for the site to return.

“I want to see the textbook industry change such that we are no longer needed,” Geekman told TorrentFreak when we asked him in early August about his motivation to bring back the site.

Now, just 2 months later, visitors to the TextBook Torrents site this week were faced with the grim reality that the site has gone. “TextBook Torrents won’t be coming back,” Geekman told TorrentFreak. “I’ve been at it for two years and it has been an awesome two years, but i’m ready to step back and hopefully allow somebody else to rise up in our place.”

Geekman told us that he felt that when it became clear to the copyright owners that simple threats to the site and its host wouldn’t be sufficient to close down the tracker, he himself became the next logical target: “We got word from several credible sources that there was a lawsuit in the works against myself personally,” he explained.

Of course, when anyone invests a huge amount of work into a project, there will be some pain to endure when it comes to an end, and Geekman is no different. “It does hurt. Textbook Torrents was my baby and one of my proudest projects, both personally and certainly as Geekman. At the same time, running the site had become very demanding. Since the attention last summer the site nearly doubled in size in 4 months from 60,000 to over 100,000 members. In all honesty, it was all I could do to keep up with media interview requests.”

Geekman told us that he was sorry to have to shut down the site without notice, but in the absence of others immediately stepping up to take over the running of the site, he had no alternative. He also said that he was disappointed that nobody stepped in with a replacement site when TextBook Torrents was down for 3 weeks in August, but hopes that someone will do so now.

When asked if book publishers have learned anything from the whole affair, Geekman said he doubted that: “Intellectual property corporations are notorious for missing the point. Like I’ve said before, we were out to make a statement, to give out as much free stuff as possible, and I think we’ve made that statement – perhaps not as loudly as we could have given another few months and a little more perseverance – but certainly people have heard, and are talking. Piracy will never be sustainable for the textbook industry, but perhaps this is the first step towards a more sustainable model in the future.”

When a torrent site goes offline, especially when it’s quite a quick shutdown, it’s inevitable that users get nervous that somehow they could be implicated if the site’s logs fall into the wrong hands. However, ex-users of the site have absolutely nothing to fear in this respect: “Textbook Torrents files, including logs and backups, have been permanently removed from all servers where they were stored,” notes Geekman, “We no longer have any data on the site or its users.”

All donations made to the site have been secured for the possibility of mounting a legal defense, should the need arise. However, once it’s established that Geekman is in the clear, whatever money is left over will be donated to a textbook or education-related non-profit organization. For his part, Geekman says he will ceremonially take the last $12 for himself, to cover the only thing he ever paid for on the site – the domain registration.

“I’m an activist, I’ll freely admit it but I believe activism is about a lot more than parading around holding a sign,” Geekman told TorrentFreak. “There are far more effective ways to get peoples’ attention.”

There can be no denying that TextBook Torrents did just that.

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

The report caused quite a stir, with dedicated Repo! fans, known as the ‘Repo Army’, angry at BitTorrent users for “stealing” their soundtrack (more about why this is so important to them later) and BitTorrent users angry at the Repo! fans for trying to mess up their torrent sites with fakes.

Director Darren Bousman has since told his fans to leave BitTorrent alone, and there even some torrent users having friendly chats on the Repo! forums now. To see things from ‘the other side’, we caught up with Darren to find out exactly why this soundtrack is so important to the Repo! fans.

TF: Please introduce yourself to the TorrentFreak readers.

dlb: Most of you know me from the SAW films. But long before SAW I was directing this little stage play called Repo! The Genetic Opera. It was the first thing I ever read that spoke to me. I have been fighting to get it made [as a movie] ever since. It’s been a long long road – and only now, after the success of three SAW films am I able to get Repo! off the ground.

TF: What makes it so different to your previous work?

dlb: Repo! to me was about doing something completely different. I had directed three sequels. I am proud of the SAW films, but I wanted to do something unique. Repo! is that. A lot of people will hate Repo!, a lot will love it. I will admit it’s polarizing. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Repo! is so different than SAW in every single aspect. I hope people give it a chance, and don’t prejudge it because of certain cast members they may dislike, or on the mere fact people ’sing’ in it.

TF: You’ve gone on record saying that you feel very protective of the movie, as if watching over a child’s first day at school, and that’s understandable. The actual movie comes out on November 7th, however, you asked the fans to concentrate on ‘protecting’ the soundtrack instead. Could you explain why this soundtrack is so crucial to you, your fans and the upcoming movie?

dlb: I am not some muti-millionaire – and sales of this album will affect me personally. I have been begging and pleading to get this movie made since 2001. I have fought, burned bridges, sacrificed relationships, and even ended relationships all based on Repo! Why? Because I believe in the project so much. I put all my resources into making this movie. However through the entire course of making it I was told IT WOULDN’T work, that there wasn’t an audience for this. I have been met with constant opposition. At one point there was talk of not even releasing a soundtrack. I fought, screamed and fought some more to get this small release we have – on Amazon, iTunes and other downloadable sites. This was a way to gauge the interest in the film. I did this to show all the nay-sayers LOOK at our numbers. Look at the reactions.

TF: You told Alternative Film Guide that Repo! was so weird, out of the box, and avant garde that people didn’t know what to make of it. It sounds like getting people outside the mainstream familiar with the movie might be a challenge. How would you feel if thousands downloaded this soundtrack for free via BitTorrent but a proportion of those loved it and turned up at the theater as a paying customer?

dlb: I wish it worked like this but for this film it doesn’t. That’s why I had the reaction I did when I heard it was being downloaded for free. The release of Repo! is only in 6 theaters. SIX THEATERS. Even if I sold out EVERY single show – in every single city – for the entire run, it still wouldn’t make the money it needs to make. Sales of the soundtrack are the only way to prove if this film registered with fans. Our hope was – the sales would be so good on the soundtrack – we would get more theaters. More screens, more showing. Repo! will not be in the majority of cities, or countries. Its only in three cities. THREE CITIES. This album was our way of showing those in charge there is an audience for this.

TF: Could you tell us about your hugely dedicated fans, the ‘Repo! Army’ ?

dlb: These are the greatest fans I have ever come across – the most loyal people I think I will ever meet. These people weren’t hired by me. They found Repo! A good portion of the Repo! Army has seen the movie through various festivals. And the movie spoke to them. Since I don’t have the support of most movies – I turn to them to help spread the word. I never realized how passionate they were until recently when they turned out in droves to Austin Texas to see a screening of Repo! They are as passionate about Repo! as your users are about file sharing.

TF: Of course, BitTorrent fans can spread the word for you too. An interesting group have been vocal in emails to TorrentFreak – the Repo! fans who are also BitTorrent users. Are you surprised that some of your fans in the ‘Repo Army’ are buying your material with a passion, yet appear to be using BitTorrent too?

dlb: No, not at all. I am sure tons of people use these sites. The sad fact with Repo! is that every person who purchases the album for $9.99 is making a big statement. And these statements are going to be be the difference between Repo! playing in six theaters, or seven. To the mass population this will seem trivial – but for us, who have very little support or marketing. One paid download is huge.

TF: Thanks for speaking with us Darren, and we wish you well with the movie.

The brief storm that blew up between the opposing groups has largely died down now, after being dampened by Darren’s request to his fans to stop actions against torrents. After much correspondence with Darren it seems clear to us that he never really intended to hurt BitTorrent, but acted passionately in his role as the ‘protective father’ of the movie, not as some greedy corporate fat cat.

Darren told TorrentFreak that he was sorry that his actions offended some BitTorrent users, adding “Just understand, we are not the studio system. We are not the major corporation. We are a group of people who have been fighting to get something made only to see it released in just 6 theaters.”

It’s not hard to see why this movie and its soundtrack has raised such passions, when years of planning, investment and dreams rest on the success of such a small release window. However, in the absence of a huge marketing investment by Lions Gate, the movie will live or die by word of mouth and magnitude of Internet ‘buzz’.

Big named movies and albums gain less from the publicity offered by piracy than smaller productions desperate for exposure, so at least on the surface, Repo! seems an ideal candidate to benefit. It will be interesting to see how much success this movie gets, and if the piracy situation mirrors that. Hopefully, if the Repo! soundtrack does get downloaded a lot – and loved – those six theaters will be full and extended to more, which can’t fail to boost January’s DVD release.

Of course, when you rely on companies like Lions Gate to get even 6 theaters, admitting that piracy might help isn’t going to go down too well.

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

According to reports, any minute now lawyers Davenport Lyons will send out up to 25,000 further ‘pay up or get sued’ letters, demanding around £300 in compensation on the back of their so-called ‘landmark ruling’. Unfortunately, those accused of infringement have had limited choices up to now. Pay around £200-£250 for a few minutes with a lawyer and maybe get him to send a solitary letter, or go it alone, maybe with limited help from the UK’s Citizens Advice service. Either way, it’s pretty much guaranteed to cost more than £300, in time and/or money.

Until now.

Michael Coyle is a Solicitor Advocate, which means he is entitled to represent clients in the High Court and has frequently done so. He is also a Director at his company Lawdit Solicitors and leads the company’s Commercial and Intellectual Property legal section. He’s says he’d like to help those file-sharers wrongly accused, so we caught up with him to find out more.

TF: Please introduce yourself Michael, and tell us about your company. What do you specialize in?

MC: Lawdit Solicitors was formed on 3 September 2001 by me, Michael Coyle. Almost seven years later we are a busy commercial law firm with close connections in Marbella and Rome. Lawdit’s team consists of five Solicitors and support staff. While Lawdit is a commercial law firm a large part of its client base is concerned with intellectual property and copyright of course.

TF: What inspired you to start the firm?

MC: I wanted a law firm which was fair and would not price anyone out of securing at the very least a right of response when either the client’s intellectual property has been infringed or they are defending a claim for intellectual property infringement.

TF: Please tell us a little about Lawdit’s track record, relevant to this matter.

MC: Over the years I have advised clients in many aspects of copyright infringement from both perspectives, i.e the rights holder and the copier. In relation to P2P there is a paucity of legal case law largely due to lack of funds and the lack of defences. We have advised a retired gentleman and a 14 year old child, both threatened with lawsuits and both issues seem to have gone away.

TF: Why do you think they have gone away?

MC: It may be because the rights holder does not wish to take the case further as they now know legal representation is in place or they do not want the publicity. We will never know. Litigation can often be described as a game of poker. You have to always show a willingness to commence a legal action even if this is not your intention. At the same time you always need to show you will defend. At the time its usual for a ‘without prejudice’ exchange of correspondence to be maintained.

TF: Let us know what first got you interested in these Davenport Lyons cases.

MC: I have some clients who watch with interest all these developments and either they let me know or we are generally very good at keeping in touch with copyright laws

TF: What is your opinion of the ’settle up now or we sue’ letters?

MC: It can make sense to ’settle up now’ if you have no defence to the claim and are almost certainly going to lose. It’s back to the poker game analogy. Will they sue? etc. It seems they will commence legal action as the recent case shows, however I would need to know more about each case. If there is no defence and you are sure that a claim will follow then perhaps a penalty is worth paying. If they have no defence and it is a case of ‘its not me guv’ then perhaps not. If you have a valid defence then you should fight it.

TF: What is your opinion on how these ‘default judgment’ cases have been selected and prosecuted and the blanket media coverage of a ‘landmark case’ ?

MC: The individual would have ample opportunity to deal with numerous letters from the Lawyers. Equally once a claim has been issued the defendant has over a month in many instances to provide a defence. So the individual really ought to deal with it as the ostrich approach is not helpful. Lawyers will generally want to shout about their success and I am no different. A default Judgement is still a win although a fairly one sided win!

TF: So what exactly are you and Lawdit offering?

MC: I think it’s important that individuals do have a voice in this matter. There will be some defendants who are infringing copyright with their use of the P2P software. But at the same time there will be others who may not be. I am willing to offer Lawdit Solicitors services as the law firm to represent these individuals. I will do so for free. Obviously we are a small firm and there may be limitations to this offer. That is 5 offers for help will not be a problem. 5000 may pose me a problem, but yes, we’re willing to be on the end of an email for sure.

TF: How would you like people to contact you, bearing in mind that at the moment there are a few hundred people receiving demands and this may increase to tens of thousands shortly, or so they say…..

MC: Email is best. I am often in court but the Blackberry is on and happy to help as much as I can email is michael.coyle[at]lawdit.co.uk.

TF: Thank you for your time.

Readers contacting Michael are strongly advised to be very clear and concise in their initial correspondence. A lot of people will be interested in this offer and Michael and his team are a limited resource. Make their job as easy as you possibly can, so they can help more effectively.

Update: Already Michael is reaching capacity. If any other law firms wish to step up to get involved, please contact us here.

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

After turning two other filesharing applications, Bearshare and iMesh, into pay services, a company called Discordia Ltd turned their attention to Shareaza. The company, which seems to be related to the recording industry hijacked the Shareaza domain and moved to seize the valuable Shareaza trademark as their own. Discordia even had the nerve to set their lawyers on the open source team. A summary of the entire scandalous story so far can be obtained here.

Back in May the Shareaza team announced “We’re fighting back!” and today we bring good news in the battle to neutralize the nefarious intentions of Discordia – the release of a brand new client. We interview Wout and Alex of Shareaza about their new baby: Project Panthera.

TF: The Shareaza client has enjoyed considerable success over the years. What inspired you to taper off the effort on the old software and embark on this huge effort of creating a whole new client?

Wout: Due to recent events beyond our scope of expertise, we were required to rethink our strategy surrounding Shareaza. Because we can count on the support of a massive userbase, we decided to create a new client, with some of the features requested most for Shareaza, but which we were never able to introduce.

TF: Shareaza is a very well known name in the P2P community – it’s been downloaded way in excess of 43 million times. What were the factors that led to the decision to create a fresh brand? (Project Panthera)

Wout: Well once again some people demonstrated how low a person is able to go. We learned that a company owned by Imesh (Discordia) filed for a trademark on the Shareaza brand name. Even though they have no ties to the program or the Shareaza brand. So in essence they are just doing it to benefit from the Shareaza name. This was also a factor in naming the application. We didn’t want them to benefit from our developers hard work yet again.

Alex: We basically got mugged by a gang armed with lawyers. This meant we had to reconsider our whole approach to managing Shareaza’s development to ensure the long term survival of the project. We can see a real danger that this may happen to other popular free software projects too.

Something interesting we’ve discovered: did you know that the United States Patent and Trademark Office aren’t connected to the Internet? When Discordia Ltd. filed for the trademark on our name, we wrote to the USPTO and pointed out that we’ve been using the Shareaza name for years. They said they can’t investigate sources external to their own database. We said “Couldn’t you just spend 30 seconds Googling the name of the application?” They said their procedures don’t allow them to do that. This rubbish is actually the basis of intellectual property law in the U.S. and many other western nations. Is it any wonder people are going out and creating their own licenses like the GPL and the various flavors of Creative Commons out of sheer bloody frustration with the IP laws?

According to Alex, “F**king heaps!” of time and effort have gone into the development of Panthera, “a massive job” which has been underway since April 2008, and in part personally financed by members of the team. As Panthera is (of course) an open source project and does not include any adware or bundled software, Wout told us that the team are counting on donations to help them make this software the best of its kind.

TF: What are the key features of ‘Panthera’ and why is this release superior to the ‘old’ software? Why should people switch?

Wout: Panthera has every feature Shareaza has and much more. Panthera includes decent BitTorrent support (libtorrent), skin support, proper Gnutella1 support, no use of the registry and a completely revamped media player. There is no denying it – we looked at Shareaza a lot when coding this app, and whenever we found some code that was interesting, we asked ourselves: “How can we make it better?”

TF: Panthera is a multi-network client, including BitTorrent. Tell us a bit more about the implementation and the support for other networks.

Wout: Panthera supports Gnutella1, Gnutella2, BitTorrent and ED2K (not in beta but it will be in final release). The BitTorrent in the beta release will be the default QT (more about this later) BitTorrent sample client. This is for testing purposes only. Once we have enough test data, we will replace this with Libtorrent from Rasterbar.

Alex: Shareaza has a long history with BitTorrent – we were the first client to experiment with decentralized torrents for example – but since the BitTorrent scene has just exploded, our home grown implementation has fallen behind the times which is why we’ve decided to implement the libtorrent library. One other reason is that as we’re free and open source, we figured it was about time we started taking advantage of our right to use other people’s free and open source code where its better than ours. Why reinvent the wheel when there is a perfectly good solution just sitting there waiting for people to use it under the same copyleft conditions we believe in?

TF: Panthera is multi-network, and multi-platform too. Tell us more about this.

Wout: Multi platform means more users, means more files, means more and faster downloads. No other P2P program allows to connect to virtually all the most popular networks on every operating system.

Alex: Linux especially is starting to become a viable alternative to Windows and many of our developers and supporters are either dual booting or have switched to Linux environments completely. The next logical step is native multi-platform support. As Wout says, broader coverage = win.

Clearly a project of such ambition can consume considerable resources. Wout and Alex agree that they will take all the help they can get, noting that they “absolutely need testers and feedback” and welcome anyone who is prepared to code, test or donate. In particular they would be very grateful for offers of help from developers – the program is based on the QT framework and is coded entirely in C++, and anyone with experience of Rasterbar’s Libtorrent.

It is possible that Discordia might just be successful in stealing the Shareaza brand name but the team remains upbeat and is full of enthusiasm for Panthera.

“It’s given us a chance to re-write a fantastic P2P app and make it even better,” says Alex, “which is a perfect example of the file-sharing Hydra in action.”

Panthera Project will be officially available on August 25th but in the meantime, temporary test builds are available here.

Anyone offering project support should contact the team on contribute@pantheraproject.com.

Those able to donate, should do so via donations@pantheraproject.com

Don’t forget, the real Shareaza project is located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/shareaza/

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

One could argue that their availability on BitTorrent actually helped ‘Lost’ and ‘Heroes’ to build a stronger fanbase. With torrents, no-one has to miss an episode anymore which keeps the fans more engaged. So called “pirates” advertise the shows to their friends, or write about it on their blogs. Accordingly, when we asked Jesse Alexander whether he thinks that BitTorrent might have helped to reach a broader audience, he answered with a clear cut “Yes”.

Not that Jesse wants everybody to get the shows off BitTorrent, but he said that it certainly signals that there is a market for on-demand and interactive TV. “People watching shows such as Lost and Heroes on BitTorrent is the present world reality,” Jesse told TorrentFreak. TV networks have to recognize this, give their viewers more ways to interact with the shows, and find ways to generate revenue from every member of the global audience.”

“It’s the same for music artists. The reality is, people share music. Artist now make money by driving people to concerts, through community websites, and by offering exclusive events. TV networks are focusing too much on one exclusive product, instead of building a community. This is a mistake I think.”

The success of Heroes on BitTorrent didn’t pass by the cast of the show unnoticed either. “The cast and the people behind the scenes have all been talking about it,” Jesse said. As an example he mentioned last year’s promotional tour in France, where the actors were recognized by hundreds of fans, even though the show had not even premiered on TV yet.

Alexander has hit the nail on the head. This is in fact one of the main reasons why shows like ‘Heroes’ are so popular on filesharing networks. It can take up to six months after the US premiere before these shows are aired in Europe, Australia and other parts of the world. Jesse agreed that this is indeed one of the major causes of piracy. “This gap is something that is certainly going to change in the future,” he added.

Jesse went on to say that in the near future, thanks to the Internet, the viewers of TV-shows will see more interactive components and alternate realities they can participate in. The future of TV will be more international, with real interaction, and shows will be more and more integrated into the core part of an online community.

When we asked Jesse if he has ever downloaded TV-shows off BitTorrent, he told us: “I can’t confirm or deny, but I’m familiar with all kind of new technologies.” I guess we all know what he’s trying to say.

It is no surprise that Jesse is more positive towards new technologies than some others in the entertainment industry. Last week we reported on the upcoming “Pirate TV” show that he is working on, together with Matt Mason, the author of ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’.

“Matt’s book needs to get a broader audience,” said Jesse. “We want to discuss the negative and the positive side of piracy, and place things in a broader historical context. We want to start a real conversation about the future of intellectual property.”

We’re happy to join the debate, what about you?

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

It all began last year when, having released his album “Guidelines For An Emerging Century”, Mr.Suitcase received a payment from Stim, the Swedish Performing Rights Society. Included in it was a refund from the tax that is put on all recordable media in Sweden. Whenever CDRs, mp3-players or similar items are sold, an extra fee of 0,04 crowns/megabyte is added and later paid back to the artists.

“First, I got a bit put off by receiving the money because to me, that kind of arbitrary hand-out of alms is a ridiculous system,” Mr.Suitcase said. “Then I thought, why not see it as an opportunity and earmark the money for something creative. And since the money came from piracy, I had to use it for more piracy, right?”

With the money, Mr.Suitcase bought old used effect boxes and began experimenting. Without knowing where it would take him, he started sending fragments and loops from other people’s songs through the effects.

“I’ve always been fascinated by cut-and-paste aesthetics. I grew up with artists like The Future Sound of London and Saint Etienne who layered samples and combined the bits and pieces to create something brand new, something that became more than just the sum of the elements.”

He says the project “got completely out of control” when friends started to drop by the studio to record new instruments and vocals over the samples. In the end, he had an album’s worth of new songs, although they all were rooted in someone else’s work.

“As the project grew, I lost count of how many original songs that were used in it. Nearly a hundred, I’d guess. It’s very diverse, from Prince to The Rice Twins, from Ashanti to Zongamin. In the end, I realized it wasn’t a mixtape or mash-up but it wasn’t an album either. I decided the tracks were all frauds, called it a wrap and posted it on The Pirate Bay.”

Mr.Suitcase thinks artists should be more relaxed about non-commercial use of their work. Since the world went digital, he feels the availability is a natural consequence that should be embraced rather than hopelessly opposed.

“The way Internet works, there’s no reason to argue for or against file sharing. We can just conclude here and now that file sharing ‘is’. For me, I’m very attached to the idea that the top-down structure of producers and consumers has turned into a blur, and that anything created isn’t only there to be experienced but can also be a building-block for new creations. It’s fantastic! I was absolutely thrilled when techno producer The Field used one of my recordings for his brilliant track ‘Istedgade’.”

“To me, ‘Frauds’ is a statement. There’s so much negativity in the debate. ‘File sharing means artists can’t…’, ‘File sharing means nobody will ever…’ I think it’s the opposite, I think the beautiful aspect of the digital era is that anything recorded can be remixed, tweaked and modified.”

Mr.Suitcase’s album “Frauds” can be downloaded via BitTorrent at mrsuitcase.se.

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