About a year ago the RIAA website suffered from a similar vulnerability and was wiped clean. The RIAA fixed the problem within a few hours and eventually all the ‘lost’ content was restored, but not before thousands of people had fun with it.

The XSS vulnerability on the MPAA website was found on the about page where visitors can submit their favorite movie. In the screenshot below it says “thank you for taking the time to share your favorite movie,” which is the actual text that people get to see when they fill out the form. The Pirate Bay logo and the links to the latest movie torrents are obviously not supposed to be there.

It is “a proof of concept that demonstrates an XSS attack on mpaa.org website,” writes Vektor who covered the details in a blog post, adding that it should be taken as a joke. No lies there, as it made us smile indeed.

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

Established in 2000 by director Rick L. Winters, Annodam Productions is an independent film company. A forward looking outfit, Annodam will premiere its latest movie ‘Blank‘, worldwide today.

‘Blank’ is the story of a Johnny, a young boy who witnesses the violent death of his parents and older sister. Roll on some 20 years later and Johnny becomes involved in crime with his adoptive father – who is also a crime boss. While watching a game of poker Johnny discovers who murdered his family and sets about planning his revenge. Johnny unwittingly becomes involved with a pair of serial killers and the whole movie climaxes with a bizarre and shocking end.

While the plot may seems standard Hollywood fare, the way this movie has been financed and is set to be distributed is not – Director Rick L.Winters explains, “The thing that makes this film unique is that it is a co-op based concept where the entire cast and crew worked on a deferred percentage of the film’s gross. In other words, the cast and crew own a percentage of the film’s gross, so the profits are not going to Hollywood executives but instead into the pockets of the filmmakers themselves.”

After receiving several distribution offers for ‘Blank’, Rick turned them all down.

“I have seen firsthand the greed that lurks in the Hollywood corporate circles,” he said while explaining that after he released his first film, the cast and crew couldn’t understand why a distribution company was making all the money. So instead, Rick decided to let the audience distribute ‘Blank’ for him – via BitTorrent.

“This time around the fate of the cast and crew getting paid is in the hands of the audience who watch the film. No Hollywood bank accounts being filled to turn out more crappy remakes,” he said, while adding that the future of film is “in the home market, through peer to peer distribution.”

Today, ‘Blank’ is released on DVD for $14.99, via online streaming and of course, for free on BitTorrent. “No one should have to pay for a film they did not like,” says Rick. “No one should be denied the right to enjoy the art of film.”

The idea is that if people like the movie after they have seen it, they should go to the ‘Blank’ website and make a donation. People are asked to donate what they feel the movie is worth, and in return will be invited to follow the production of the next movie, which they will have helped finance through their donation.

Rick told TorrentFreak, “I am excited with the aspects of peer to peer distribution and the possibilities. Giving everyone the opportunity to see my film for free in hope of receiving donations is a little nerve wrecking – wondering if I will receive enough donations to make my next film. The concept is still scary for independent filmmakers who don’t have the big budgets like the big studios and most of the time drain their personal accounts and run up credit just to get their film made, in hopes of recouping the cost of making the film.”

Several large BitTorrent sites including Mininova will be offering ‘Blank’, but undoubtedly it will spread to many others too. Rick L. Winters is also writing a book which will document the whole process so that others can use the same methods to distribute their own movies.

“I can only hope for the success of this endeavor to show the world that the revolution of peer to peer distribution can no longer be ignored and the time is now,” Rick told TorrentFreak. “I decided to try the concept of a coop base film in hopes of encouraging other independent filmmakers to come together and create and share the art of film for EVERYONE to enjoy.”

Congratulations to Rick and the crew for effectively ending the piracy of their movies and we wish them the best of luck with ‘Blank’ and all future success.

You can grab the torrent for the movie from Mininova.

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

The film’s success doesn’t stop at the box office either. Earlier this week the DVD was released, and on the first day in stores 3 million copies were sold in the United States, Canada and the UK.

Alongside these impressive real-world sales, the film beat the competition on BitTorrent and other filesharing networks too. With more than 7 million downloads on BitTorrent alone, The Dark Knight now holds the title of most pirated movie of 2008. Comments on various BitTorrent sites reveal that many downloaders obtained an illegal copy after they had already watched the movie in the movie theater.

As with every other blockbuster, ‘The Dark Knight’ was leaked onto the Internet in various formats. It began right after the premiere in July with a cammed version, which was celebrated by the folks from The Pirate Bay. The ‘cam’ was followed by a DVD-screener in early September, and a DVD in November. The latter release turned out to be the most popular among filesharers.

As we look over the rest of the top 10, we see that there are quite a few differences between popularity at the box office, and on filesharing networks. ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’, for example, came in second at the box office, but only came in 30th place in the download chart. On the contrary, ‘The Bank Job’ is the third most pirated movie on BitTorrent, but just 66th at the box office.

The data for this list is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. All formats, including cammed versions are counted, and based on previous experience a correction is made for smaller .torrent releases that we might have missed.

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

To some this might not seem like a worthy event for TorrentFreak to cover, after all, films come out every week. However, this film markets itself as “…the first time ever that a major feature-length film is debuting as a free download on the Internet – legally.” – a title that could arguably fall to Steal This Film. Yet, its the interaction between the legal and technical aspects that are the biggest story here.

First and foremost, the film’s website states that downloads are available in the US and Canada only. It states this not just once, but twice AND uses an IP lookup system to check. If you fail the IP check, you are told that the lawyers have said the film can only be offered to people in those countries.

It’s such a ’shame’ then, that they have used BitTorrent. Worse, they’ve used a set of public trackers (including The Pirate Bay), and allowed the use of both Peer Exchange and DHT. Clearly, all it needs is for someone to offer the .torrent to other people, and they can download the film, as the torrent protocol has no methods for limiting by geographical location. Indeed, as you can see on this screenshot, there are plenty of people on the torrent from outside North America.

Is this deliberate, or accidental? Moore is known for his disregard of rules (and laws) in making films (such as his Cuba trip for Sicko), and this could be the latest example. Alternatively, it could be a lack of understanding on the part of those that are providing the technical backend.

However, with a budget of $2 million for distribution, Brave New Films could have done better, and have set up their own tracker, enforcing a US and Canada only download. Not that this would have helped much. It’s the Internet, and once it’s downloaded, it can be retorrented. In that they might be foresighted enough to try and keep the downloads together, strengthening the swarm.

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

At the same time however, customers of BitTorrent’s video store – a direct competitor to Bell’s store – and BitTorrent users in general see their traffic being throttled. Why? Bell says there is not enough bandwidth available.

The claim that there is not enough bandwidth to go round is suspicious to say the least, and Bell’s response to this data crisis is even more puzzling. Instead of investing money in their network capacity, they simply slow down the connections of their subscribers while ignoring the source of the problem.

To top it off, Bell decided to launch a competing video download service. So while they throttle customers using the efficient BitTorrent protocol because they supposedly generate too much traffic, Bell launches a bandwidth-hogging download store of their own. Not only does this seem unfair to their own customers, it also negatively affects other video services that base their business model on BitTorrent.

The throttling efforts by Bell and other ISPs actually hurt companies such as BitTorrent Inc and Vuze. These companies both offer products that depend on BitTorrent and they become pretty much worthless when BitTorrent traffic is throttled.

Since Bell now has its own video store, the ISP is actively degrading the service their BitTorrent based competitors offer. That is, Bell users will probably not choose a video download service based on BitTorrent because they can get only a few kilobits per second when the network is “busy”.

Instead of investing in more Internet gateway capacity and peering agreements, Bell instead chooses to launch a video store. Perhaps it’s time for Bell and other ISPs to think ahead – BitTorrent is not going away and there will only be more ‘bandwidth hogging’ services in the future.

Or maybe this just an anti-competitive move by Bell?

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

Contrary to what most people would expect, Zwart doesn’t hold a grudge against the people who share his movie online though, as he told Nettavisen.no: “I think it’s perfectly fine that some people choose to post the movie online. It shows that people are interested in it”, says the director, and is supported by Espen Horn – the movie’s producer.

“In the IT society of today it’s naive to think that this wouldn’t happen. We consider it a huge compliment. After all, what has happened is that someone has smuggled a camera into a theater and then recorded the whole movie” he added.

Zwart doesn’t mind that people share his movie online, he did, however, make some negative comments about the quality of the recording. “The movie was filmed using a video camera in a local cinema somewhere. The quality is bad, and the movie definitely is better in theaters,” Zwart said.

Espen Horn, the director of the movie, thinks that piracy is inevitable, as long as there are no alternatives available. Horn said that some forms of piracy are “unfortunate”, but he would rather one “beat the pirates to it” instead of hunting them down. For example, by making the movies available for sale online, soon after they premiere in theaters.

“People today have all this equipment available at home, and it’s a simple thing for them to copy movies and music. This is the time to play on the same team as the ones who make available this kind of materials. I hope those who watch this copy will think the quality is bad, and go watch it at the movies instead.” Horn added.

Indeed, one of the driving forces behind piracy is still the lack of alternatives. Restricting people’s choices often has the opposite effect.

Thanks SantaBJ!

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

Crudden claims that the film would not gain coverage in Ireland, due to certain clips contained in the film, pointing out the American taking pictures around 16 minutes into the film, to TorrentFreak as an example. Usually, such low-budget independent releases would have been put on videotape, copied a few dozen times, and passed around those already interested in the topic, a videographic samizdat as it were. With the advent of BitTorrent, the reach of the film-maker has exploded.

When asked why he decided to to release via BitTorrent, Crudden, who described himself as ‘pretty untechnical’, said “Basic answer is I saw Steal this Film and read I stuff kind of in an academic way by Eben Moglen and an Irish guy called Alan Toner and they just argued that this was the maximum efficient system in history for distributing stuff. I also thought it might get out of an activist ghetto that way too.” And get out of the ghetto it has. Whereas, he explained, it used to take “months and months to get rid of 100 VHS tapes of a documentary back in the day,” according to the tracker stats, since its release it was downloaded more than 1000 times.

One of the comments to the first part asked “can we get the cost to make a film low enough to enable a blue-collar moviemaker scene?” Eamonn thinks so, and is working on that, as a part time tutor in film production in Queens University, Belfast. He also has a word of warning for the major Hollywood studios. “[It] makes entry level at a global level easy for people without gatekeepers and cliques determining what gets made. It will get very interesting when a generation really familiar with it start bypassing institutional production AS WELL AS distribution”

The production and dissemination of work which may otherwise be censored is a significant non infringing use of P2P that no court should be quick to dismiss. No court that values free speech anyway.

The torrent for Route Irish is available here.

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

We made a list of the most downloaded movies and TV-shows of 2007, including the number of downloads the most popular torrents got on Mininova. Note that the actual download count is much higher since there are often more torrents for the same file, and there are more BitTorrent sites of course.

The data used for these lists is retrieved from Mininova and considered to be a representative sample.

Movies

TV-Shows

As we have pointed out before, the entertainment industry should learn how to embrace technology and compete with piracy, instead of fighting its customers. The rise of illegal downloading is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels, it’s more about availability than the fact that it’s free, as illustrated by the huge number of downloads TV-shows have.

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

You might be of the opinion that it serves those nasty Harry Potter-reading pirates right. But this doesn’t have anything to with “piracy”. Fans of the book are so upset that Len’s done this, they’re posting death threats on his site. Here’s one:

Go f*** yourself

Len, if you don’t like this world and what we do, then go slit your fucking wrists rather than spoiling a perfectly good film and shocking little kids.

P.S. I work as a butcher.

Drastic, for sure. But it shows you how much people love J.K. Rowling’s books and how far they’re willing to go in order to ensure they aren’t “spoiled” before they read the book. Possibly fearing such a backlash after the leak, Rowling posted a message on her website, requesting fans not to spoil the book for others. She didn’t seem to care that people were downloading it illegally, though.

I’d like to ask everyone who calls themselves a Potter fan to help preserve the secrecy of the plot for all those who are looking forward to reading the book at the same time on publication day.

Here’s a clip from the “Evan Almighty” DVDrip with the spoilers in it. Blind dragons and book 7 spoilers ahead. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.