Ink was downloaded more than 400,000 times last week and ended up in fourth place in our weekly chart of most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, where Zombieland occupied the top spot.

Zombieland co-writer Rhett Reese has been following our most pirated movies chart as well, and thus the online success of his film. “Zombieland currently the most pirated movie on bit torrent. Over one million downloads and counting,” he tweeted a few hours ago.

However, unlike the makers of Ink, Reese is not pleased with this achievement, claiming that this piracy disaster may very well prevent a Zombieland sequel from being shot. “Beyond depressing. This greatly affects the likelihood of a Zombieland 2,” he wrote.

Reese’s comments are the classic Hollywood response we wrote about yesterday. Piracy is causing billions of dollars in lost revenue and prevents new movies from being funded, is the doomsday scenario they often paint. But is there any truth in this hunch, or is it just another Hollywood performance? Facts seem to support the latter.

More piracy is not necessarily linked with a drop in box office grosses or DVD sales. ‘The Dark Knight’, which was the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent in 2008 sold millions of DVDs, and grossed a record breaking billion dollars in cinemas worldwide. But what about Zombieland?

The Hollywood Insider wrote that the movie is “alive and kicking” at the box office, putting its success down in part to “strong word-of-mouth”. The release also marks the most successful debut of Woody Harrelson’s career, hitting the No.1 spot and taking $9.4m on its first day and a worldwide $84m to date – all this on a production budget of less than $24m.

Zombieland grossed more than $60.8 million in 17 days, even surpassing the remake of the Dawn of the Dead to become the top-grossing zombie film in history. That does not really sound like something that will prevent a sequel to us.

On the contrary, if anything success on BitTorrent has a direct relation with success at the box office. Since unauthorized ripped versions of virtually all movies appear on the Internet nowadays, it would be a really bad sign if no pirate would want to download it.

But of course, Reese and others could still argue that they would have made even more money if there was no piracy. There are no hard facts to refute this, but with the box office revenue steadily increasing since P2P file-sharing became mainstream, it has to be doubted as well. The same can be said for the claim that less films receive funding.

As many independent filmmakers have already experienced, BitTorrent and the Internet in general can be a boon to the film industry. Instead of seeing it as a threat Hollywood might want to embrace it before it’s too late.

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

Titled “Escape From Terror Byte City” the book tells the story of two young boys who attempt to download the latest Transformers movie from a P2P website. Of course, when the two fire-up their file-sharing software all hell breaks loose.

Surprisingly, the story itself has nothing to do with the consequences of copyright infringement. The comic book that is supposed to educate children about file-sharing is nothing more than a scary story about viruses, worms, trojan horses and identity theft.

It’s quite sad really when you think about it. Apparently the MPA and their anti-piracy partners have decided to give up on the message that piracy hurts their business in the hopes that horror stories about infected computers will deter youngsters from downloading copyrighted works instead.

That aside, the risks of being exposed to viruses and malware on P2P networks have always been greatly exaggerated. If we follow the logic of the MPA we might as well ban email because of all the trojans and phishing scams that are sent around. Or stop selling USB drives because people might lose them and potentially expose personal information that shouldn’t be on there in the first place.

The comic is conveniently avoiding the word copyright, perhaps because the 10 year crusade against copyright infringement hasn’t led to any results. The propaganda doesn’t work without providing alternatives, and every parent knows that forbidding something quite often leads to the opposite result.

Still, the entertainment industry seems unconcerned with innovation and new ways to adapt to the digital era. Instead they prefer to focus on promoting new ways to punish potential consumers. Aside from pushing the comic book, the Hollywood lobbyist also lobbied for the return of the controversial ‘3-strikes’ legislation which was scrapped earlier this year after public pressure.

Will they ever learn? A scanned copy of the full comic book is available on Mininova. This one’s going to be a collectors item, for sure.

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

Seven weeks ago, the Canadian government launched the first national copyright consultation since 2001. The consultation, which has featured town hall meetings, by-invitation-only roundtables, an online discussion forum, and an open submission process, has attracted considerable interest with over 4,000 submissions to date.

While the overwhelming majority of those submissions have called for balanced reforms that would strengthen fair dealing, create a liability safe harbour for intermediaries, and link any new anti-circumvention rules to actual copyright infringement, there is reason for concern.

There are only six days left in the consultation and the thousands that have spoken out for fair copyright – the students, teachers, Internet users, software programmers, privacy advocates, librarians, and a growing number of creators – now find themselves under attack from two sides.

On one side stand well-known copyright lobby groups such as the Canadian Recording Industry Association, the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, and the Entertainment Software Alliance. These groups largely represent foreign interests and have consistently called on the Canadian government to adopt the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act as its legislative model.

They invariably claim that Canada should be embarrassed by the current state of copyright law and propose solutions that involve a combination of DMCA-style anti-circumvention rules, a three-strikes and you’re out system that could see users cut off from the Internet, and a rejection of any new flexibilities within fair dealing.

To support those positions, the groups turned out en masse for a public town hall meeting in Toronto late last month, resulting in multiple interventions from record label executives (four from Warner Music alone). Packing the room ensured that there was virtually nothing heard from education and consumer groups, many of whom could not even attend the town hall since all the tickets were scooped up in less than five days.

Standing on the other side are copyright creator groups such as Access Copyright and the American Federation of Musicians. Access Copyright opened the consultation by ominously warning its members that “users outnumber us” and claiming that the debate is dominated by people do not believe that authors should get fair compensation for digital and other reproductions of their work (so far five out of 4038 submissions have called for the elimination of copyright).

Meanwhile, the American Federation of Musicians circulated an email to creator groups calling a leaflet distributed by an opposition Member of Parliament “disgusting” since it supported stronger fair dealing. These groups are pushing for an expanded levy system and have been quick to criticize users that don’t agree or offer up alternatives.

Faced with these vocal lobbying efforts, Canadians have just a few days left to ensure that their voices are heard. The town halls and roundtables are now over. The best way to speak out is through the online submission process that takes only a few minutes to complete. Authors such as Cory Doctorow and David Collier-Brown, technology companies such as Tucows, and groups such as Project Gutenberg Canada, the Documentary Organization of Canada, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations have all already done so.

Now is the time for Canadians concerned with copyright to add their voices. Websites such as SpeakOutOnCopyright.ca, CCER.ca, Vancouver Fair Copyright, and Digitalagenda.ca provide tools to learn more about the issues and process submissions. If you already know what you want to say, simply send an email to info@copyrightconsultation.gc.ca. Once you have spoken out, tell your friends, send the submission to your local Member of Parliament, and raise awareness that the consultation deadline is Sunday, September 13th.

Many Canadians felt anger and frustration when the government introduced DMCA-style legislation in 2008. The next six days provide a great opportunity to do more than just complain. They offer the chance to help influence the next copyright bill. Don’t wait – speak out on copyright today.

—

Michael Geist holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. He can reached at mgeist@uottawa.ca or online at www.michaelgeist.ca.

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

Just a few short months ago, Ernesto and I were toiling for hours and hours every day, neglecting our regular jobs (yes, we’re only part-timers on TorrentFreak and FreakBits) to ensure that our readers had every conceivable detail of the Spectrial, every nugget of information from every source we could find.

No translation was too much trouble, no mountain of RSS too time consuming and no live feed in a foreign language too daunting to decrypt, in order for us to bring the facts of this important case to the world.

On the whole, people were happy that we did so. But things have changed.

The outcome of the Spectrial was open – the defendants could’ve walked away free men, or, as we were all soon to learn, be punished far beyond what any of us expected. Nevertheless, throughout there was hope for a victory – a triumph for the file-sharing masses, a beacon of encouragement for the millions of BitTorrent users.

Because of these hopes and optimism, no-one minded the wall to wall blanket coverage and few complained that every movement of the trial was relayed in high detail.

But now I sense that even amongst the faithful, the hope has gone. People are resigned to the likely reality that rather than the proposed purchase by Global Gaming Factory signaling a new dawn for the site, it really signals the end of The Pirate Bay. Why would anyone from the community enthusiastically read about that?

Rather than being greeted as the savior of the world’s largest tracker, GGF are increasingly seen as an irrelevance. If you believe all the hype, they will soon buy and “legalize” the site, part the oceans, turn lead into gold, feed the users and the music and movie industries, and line their shareholders’ pockets, all with the BitTorrent equivalent of five loaves and two fishes.

Unfortunately for GGF, on the whole the BitTorrent community either doesn’t believe them or in increasingly large numbers, simply couldn’t give a damn.

Whatever GGF does with The Pirate Bay is open to speculation (god, please, no more you say…) but let’s face it – it aint gonna be The Pirate Bay that we know any longer. If anything it will be a largely unrecognizable site whose owners are in bed with the entertainment industries – the very people that have been trying to kill the site for all these years. The same opposition that, on the whole, has united the masses in support for The Pirate Bay.

No longer will people be able to go to the GGF Bay to download yesterday’s TV show or the latest cam of a Hollywood movie. No more will people be able to download the frankly mind-boggling array of other media indexed by the world’s largest tracker or just about any song they fancy – i’ll stake my (ever dwindling) pension on it. Things will have to change, drastically, and that’s the last thing the current users want.

And this is why I believe people have lost interest. Whatever GGF have up their wizard’s sleeve and no matter the magic promised to spurt forth from Hans Pandeya’s wand after the 27th, we aren’t talking about The Pirate Bay any more, merely its domain name. We certainly aren’t talking about The Pirate Bay mentality and definitely not its spirit.

No Gottfrid, no Fredrik, no Peter. No fun publicity stunts.

No flipping the bird to the **AAs – everyone has to be on their best behavior now. Forget anarchy – stand in line nicely and do as you’re told, a lot of money rests on the success of this project and there must be order for the shareholders. Things have to make financial sense now, with all the fun that entails.

The only thing that will remain are the legal threats, and I can’t imagine GGF handling those in the traditional Pirate Bay way – can you?

But yesterday, when I started writing this little opinion piece, something happened. Yet another Pirate Bay story broke – the Swedish authorities had effectively shut down the site. And guess what? Interest in The Pirate Bay peaked again, many of the reader comments expressed those familiar warm feelings towards the site and indeed, towards news about the site.

Momentarily the proposed sale to GGF was forgotten, with the majority of onlookers as enthusiastic as ever. Once again there was unity. But sadly, it’s unlikely to last, because its highly probable that the next piece we write about The Pirate Bay will be about the sale and as explained, most people don’t want to know about it.

So, when the inevitable happens and, as TorrentFreak, we have little choice but to grit our teeth and cover what is happening with the sale, spare a thought for us. We read dozens of these articles every day so that you don’t have to.

Normal service will be resumed around here as soon as possible – just don’t expect anything like normality if GGF acquires The Pirate Bay.

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

There are two main areas to look at, one is within a court case, the other is outside the courtroom, and away from specific cases in general. First we’ll look at inside the courtroom, and we’ll look at more general issues in part 2 of this article.

The litigation that takes place in cases such as this, is a far cry from those typified in LA Law or Boston Legal. In those shows, the lawyers are the heroes, and to have the stars of the show using the sort of tactics used in these cases would have viewers reaching for the remotes. As was covered last summer, the actual process is riddled with abusive practices, one of the key ones being that the first most defendants hear about it, is when they’ve effectively already been sued once (as a John Doe), and lost (because of ex parte discovery), and the industry lawyers are sending threatening letters directly to people, telling them to pay up or else. Of course, it’s not just in the US this happens, it’s happened a lot in the UK with Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law.

Now, we mentioned resources, and if you have not caved in to a demand to accept guilt and pay up, then resources are essential. As a defendant in a civil case, you have to defend yourself from accusations. If you don’t show up, you lose – this is apparently what happened with Ms. Barwinska. Now, they’re under no obligation to actually file a lawsuit, but can continue to threaten to do so pretty much until any applicable statute of limitations has expired, which can be years. In all that time they can continue to threaten, and so legal counsel might have to be retained, to respond, and failure to respond can be viewed negatively in some courts.

If it actually comes to a court case, then, it can get worse. Depositions, expert witnesses and paralegals for research all cost money, again money the plaintiff has, and the defendant often doesn’t. This was why the expert witness fund was set up and one reason the defense in the two Thomas trials were light on testimony. In the Tenenbaum case, defense expert witnesses were rejected, including Dr Johan Pouwelse, who has published on Kazaa and conducted the largest (2-years!) measurement of Bittorrent. He told TorrentFreak that it was “amazing how the plaintiffs in this case where allowed to let 3 record executives complain for hours and not let any professor take the stand in favour of Joel.”

Of course, at the end of the day it comes down to the jury. And often it ends up being down to how well an analogy can be made that describes the situation in a way that defines the lawyers position in the way that the jury can understand. The problem is any such analogy will be critically flawed, as it’s a technical issue, and anyone with knowledge of P2P systems, even as a user, tends to be rejected as a juror ‘for cause’. Thus the people left are generally technological novices, that believe the analogies to be accurate, or have an overestimation of the accuracy of the evidence (as seems to be a trend with ‘forensic evidence’ in cases these days). That’s how you have someone who has never used a computer saying they know someone’s lying about a technologically involved subject, as happened in the first Thomas case. Outside information (covered in part 2) only exacerbates that.

With all these things against a defendant, can there ever be a fair P2P trial?

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

A self-proclaimed Internet and digital addict, Fry claims to have owned the second ever Mac sold in the UK and has joked that he has owned every smart phone available today. Indeed, he recently wowed Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson by showing him a pretty unusual use for his iPhone. Fry even has more than 500,000 Twitter followers.

So, unlike many who speak about Internet issues, there is a good chance that Stephen Fry actually knows what he’s talking about. Yesterday, to an audience gathered for the iTunes Festival in London’s Camden Town, he was a little more honest than most would’ve expected on the issue of illicit downloading, even if just hours before he revealed that he was finding his appearance unnerving, admitting, “I haven’t the least idea what I’m going to say.”

But it came good in the end. In a speech about copyright and the future of music introduced by Stuff’s editor-in-chief Tom Dunmore, Fry poured scorn on the music industry for attacking the public in file-sharing cases. “Making an example of ordinary people is the stupidest thing the record industry can do,” he said.

Noting a problem that was earlier outlined here on TorrentFreak, Fry said the Digital Britain report did not represent the views of the public, but those of “industry insiders” instead.

While Fry is pragmatic about the piracy situation, he’s not a supporter of large-scale infringers, described by him as those who download on an “industrial scale”. When asked how he felt about his own media output being pirated, Fry said: “I’m against cynical bootlegging but I work in a very molly coddled, overpaid business.”

But unsurprisingly for a clued-up digital native in 2009, there are some kinds of piracy that Fry isn’t completely against. He told the audience at London’s Roundhouse that he is a BitTorrent user himself and has grabbed episodes of 24 using the protocol.

Interestingly, he went on to reveal that he had also downloaded the season finale of House, the hit US show which stars the comedian most known for partnering Fry, Hugh Laurie.

However – and drawing a somewhat interesting analogy – Fry said that in the end, illegal downloaders may well feel a little guilty over grabbing something without paying for it. “Most of us feel guilt when we masturbate,” he said, “even though we live in 2009.”

Appearing a little concerned that his slightly pro-piracy stance might be misinterpreted, Fry then appeared on his beloved Twitter. “Well, finished my bit. Hope I’m not misunderstood. Such a pity if I get misrepresented as a ‘help yourself and be a pirate’ advocate.”

Not at all Stephen. The fact is there could be as many as 6 million people in the UK doing exactly as you are doing, largely because there still isn’t an attractive, workable, widespread and convenient legal alternative. You set the example. You buy lots of media and download too, which proves that participating in one doesn’t exclude you from the other.

Pirates are customers too. Even famous ones.

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

Let’s start with a great fact: that, as Rasmus Fleischer of Piratbyran points out, the entire Pirate Bay could fit on a single USB stick. This got me thinking: what if someone was to simply scrape and copy all The Pirate Bay’s torrents over to a new tracker and Mininova and all the other indexes currently using the TPB tracker were to change their listings to point to that? OpenBitTorrent.com for example, an independent open tracker which started recently.

What if someone else — it could be anyone; it could be you! — decided to make a new index of these torrents. Call it ‘The Pirate Ship’, ‘Brand New Pirate’, whatever. I’m sure someone has already got a domain ready and waiting for this.

This new index would be functionally equivalent to The Pirate Bay. By the magic of copy-and-paste, TPB would have transplanted itself somewhere new. The corporate ‘buyers’ are free to run the old site into the ground with whatever specious business models they care to waste their shareholders’ money on, while The Pirate Bay’s new foundation uses it to fund interesting, new projects.

Think about it for a moment. What would be the downside of the sale here?

Privacy, possibly — a serious concern. Had The Pirate Bay been keeping logs of seeders and leechers, the acquiring company could — after flailing about for a few months trying to sell bits and bandwidth — auction this to the highest bidder. But TPB have been scrupulously failing to keep such logs. So provided people switch at the right time — as I’m sure they’ll have the intelligence to — there will simply be nothing to sell.

Let’s not be glib about it: after the shenanigans with insider trading, who knows if the deal goes through. But if it does, those behind TPB may have managed to square the circle, sliding out from behind the old, compromised identity while handing-off everything of value (tracker, torrents, users) to the community.

The very fact that this is possible should give those backing business models based on copy-restriction something serious to think about. Not only is this not a blow for P2P, it’s a signal of something very worrying for the MPAA and Co. Spend years going after the world’s most prominent pirate site, only to find that when you get it, it dematerializes and by the magic of copy-and-paste, reappears elsewhere in a different guise. It’s like Whack-A-Mole with infinite holes, infinite moles, and just one hammer. Your odds: not good.

The feelings of betrayal and being ’sold out’ by the TPB founders are natural. We believe(d) in The Pirate Bay; The Pirate Bay was ‘forever’. But in one way, an important way, this belief was right: what made The Pirate Bay possible is forever.Even if I’m wrong, and a service like OpenBittorrent doesn’t immediately get populated with all the torrents from the old database, the ‘community’ should learn some lessons from this:

(1) Big != Good

Let’s face it: The Pirate Bay itself had become a huge focus of attention for those trying to preserve the old copy-restriction model of the culture industries. By some accounts TPB’s tracker has been responsible for 50% of all Internet traffic, and its founders have been looming larger and larger, waving their pirate flags more and more visibly, for quite a few years. They are international celebrities and, love them as we might, that made them and TPB targets. It’s not a secret that quite a few peers on the TPB trackers today are ’spies’, there to gather data on legitimate peers — a real danger to Bittorrent users. And as well being feted, Brokep, Anakata and Tiamo have been followed, spied on, raided, arrested, maligned, sentenced and, now live under a real threat of imprisonment.

The bigger we get, the more of a target we are. Mininova, isoHunt and TPB have all been under siege these last years. We need to stop thinking about ‘one stop shops’ for our media. Distribution and aggregation point the way: think ’separation of powers’. Clients like Miro can aggregate feeds from a variety of sources according to the needs of the user. TPB may have represented the needs of the community for half a decade or more, but we don’t need them. We are our own media infrastructure!

(2) We are all The Pirate Bay now…

… and this is why we have to amend our idea about what being a ‘pirate’ is. In the P2P world, as in that of Web 2.0, it’s us and our sharing that makes the value. Hopefully some of the indignation leveled at The Pirate Bay in the last few days will cause us to think not only about the weirdness of entrusting all this value to TPB, but about all those corporate behemoths — Facebook, say, or Twitter or YouTube — who play fast and loose with the value that we create for them every day. Make no mistake, we’ll wait a thousand years for the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world to start a foundation with the billions they have made from us and our interactions.

We’re all The Pirate Bay now because we all make media; we all copy media, we all redistribute media and because the ‘war against piracy’ has criminalized us. Young or old, middle or working class, any of us could expect that letter from the RIAA or MPAA at any moment. Our online activities are routinely surveilled in the attempt to preserve a paradigm that is manifestly outdated. That fits well with the totalitarian mentality of many of our governments and it isn’t to be accepted casually.

So is it really enough to throw a little bit of bandwidth into the cloud, vote Pirate Party, and then wax indignant about betrayal of a ‘community’ when its end (however temporarily) comes? Is that a sufficient resistance to the erosion of our liberties, to which the ‘war against piracy’ contributes?

What about grabbing one of the many, free ready made trackers out there and starting up our own Bays? By letting a thousand Pirate Bays bloom, we can demonstrate the futility of trying to prop up the old system, speeding the adoption of new models to help artists and ourselves make and distribute culture.

(3) Copy + Paste will never die.

Actually, as I’ve said, I suspect that none of TPB’s functionality, not a single torrent, will have been lost in this ’sell out’. I say this partly because of what I know of its founders, and partly because of my conviction that we live in a world in which the copy predominates, evading all attempts to outlaw it and rendering attempts to ‘buy it off’ futile.

Let’s just remind ourselves again: the entire code and all the torrents for TPB — information which accounts for half the traffic on the internet — fits on a single USB key. Perhaps someone will find a way to make a torrent of THAT. And then we can all sit around and wonder what it is, precisely, Global Gaming Factory have bought for all their millions.

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

However, thus far GGF’s plans for the site and tracker are rather vague and uncertain. First of all there is a huge divide between what the Pirate Bay co-founders think will happen to the site and what GGF is telling the public.

TorrentFreak has spoken with Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij who both think that the Pirate Bay will stay pretty much like it is now for the time being. The only difference in the short term, according to their knowledge, is that the site will link to torrents hosted on a third party domain tracked by a third party tracker.

Both the torrent hosting service and the tracker they are referring to are still in development, the co-founders said. They are not aware of any concrete plans to turn the site into a legal venture. In an attempt to find out we asked GGF to elaborate on their future plans and the response we got was remarkable.

GFF told us that most of their recent comments to the press were nothing more than “corporate bla bla.”

So let’s take a look at some of the bla bla that surfaced in the past day, to see if it makes any sense at all. Here are some of the key proposals.

1. The new Pirate Bay will put a halt to illegal downloading.
2. The Pirate Bay will compensate rights holders who publish their content on the site
3. The Pirate Bay will pay users for sharing files.

This sounds very impressive but, to put it mildly, it raises a few concerns.

It’s basically the same as saying that iTunes would pay its users to share music. When GGF has to pay both file-sharers and content providers they will undoubtedly have to raise huge sums money from a third party. So what is going to bring in this cash?

Ads of course! GGF is predicting to sell ads like no other website in the world has ever done. They told BusinessWeek that they hope to make as much as $672 million a year from advertisements.

GGF is also planning to raise money from ISPs. Theoretically ISPs might be willing to contribute because they could save on bandwidth costs if most of the files are served locally or directly from caching services, but it wont be enough. Also, they assume that The Pirate Bay will generate a significant portion of Internet traffic once they go ‘legal’, which is doubtful.

An even more significant problem is keeping the current users on board and cutting deals with content providers, all at the same time. This is an almost impossible task since copyright holders will only join if there is no illegal content on the site, and users will only stay if there is enough free and unrestricted DRM-free content available.

This means that GGF has to cut deals with pretty much every large music and movie studio from the start to have even a chance of survival. Even if they manage that, they also have to collect millions of dollars to compensate both the users and copyright holders.

Nevertheless, only hours after they announced they would acquire The Pirate Bay, GGF claimed that the entertainment companies they’ve spoken to are already interested in teaming up with the site they fought long and hard in court. Perhaps the Big Four are more open-minded than we expected – maybe GGF will draw on the business relationship it built with Vivendi in 2007?

No further explanation is needed to see that the bright future GGF is selling will never happen. Their plans seem to be completely delusional, at least in this world, and it’s even a mystery where they will get the $7.8 million funding to actually buy the site. If they ever will….

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

After its transformation into a pirate tracking outfit Nexicon launched its Getamnesty program which offers copyright holders a chance to turn piracy into profit. They cleverly circumvent privacy protection laws by using ISPs to forward settlement requests for various copyright holders to alleged infringers. One of their most successful partner programs is the Payartists website which is a misleading name to say the least.

The money collected through Payartists is not going to any artists at all. The only artist they collect ’settlements’ for on the site is Frank Zappa, and he passed away in 1993. All the settlement money collected now goes to The Zappa Family Trust which is headed by Zappa’s widow.

Most recently a new Nexicon franchise emerged, as the ‘Video Protection Alliance’ (VPA) has teamed up with several porn studios to track down and force settlements from alleged copyright infringers. The methods they use are very similar to Getamnesty and Payartists and are designed to get cash payments from illicit file-sharers without even having to first find out who they are.

The process is simple. Their software monitors BitTorrent swarms and other filesharing networks and records the IP-addresses of those people who share the work of their clients. It then automatically sends an email to the ISP linked to the IP-address with a request to forward it to the associated customer.

Thus far, this is very similar to the warning letters that the movie and music studios have been sending out for years. However, there is one big difference. The emails sent out by Nexicon to alleged infringers contain veiled threats of legal action if they don’t choose to settle within 10 days.

In their email they write that “it may be beneficial to settle this matter without the need of costly and time-consuming litigation.”

If you don’t settle they are “prepared to pursue every available remedy including damages, recovery of attorney’s fees, costs and any and all other claims that may be available to it in a lawsuit filed against you.” To make it even more scary, they point out that ISPs might cut your Internet connection if you don’t comply.

In the FAQ on the VPA website it is noted that consulting a lawyers is an option, but it would be a rather silly thing to do since it will cost more than the settlement itself. “It is likely that the cost incurred to retain a lawyer will exceed the settlement amount offered.”

Indeed, the settlements are rather cheap compared to the fine that was handed out to Jammie Thomas recently. The settlement offer for an adult movie is close to the retail price of a DVD and for a single Frank Zappa track you’ll pay $10. In comparison, Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $80,000 per song.

However, because of these low fees and the use of threatening language we cannot help mentioning the word ‘extortion’ once more. Even if they handle with the best intentions they should adjust their tracking software to be more accurate. We confirmed at least one case where they sent a settlement offer to the wrong person, and we’re pretty sure that this is not the only mistake they’ve made (here’s another one).

Still, even people wrongfully accused of sharing [insert obscene porn title here] may be inclined to pay a few bucks rather than risk being taken to court. The threats are worrying enough for some people to pay for an offense they didn’t commit. But there might be an even easier way out.

Unsurprisingly, very little happens when the threats are ignored. A Manhattan College employee dealing with DMCA notices wrote recently. “We have not passed the settlement info on to the students linked with the allegedly infringing IP address and have not had any follow up notices from them.”

This aside, we are not aware of any legal action taken by any of Nexicon’s partners to back up their threats. To the best of our knowledge they don’t even have a proper license to act as private investigators which is a felony in several US states and renders the ‘evidence’ they have in their spreadsheets useless.

Our advice, if you get a settlement offer from one of Nexicon’s partners please forward it to your spam folder – after forwarding it to us first of course.

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

Her task is to decide whether or not Norström’s verdict could have been biased since this issue must be resolved before they can move on to the appeal request. If it’s determined that Norström was indeed biased, the case will be resubmitted to the district court for retrial, meaning that an appeal is not needed at this stage.

Earlier this week the District Court of Stockholm handed in their statement to the Appeal Court, arguing that they don’t believe that Norström was biased. This was not really a surprise since they appointed him and admitting that he is biased would be admitting to having made a mistake before the “bias case” is reviewed.

However, many publications mistakenly concluded from this statement that a ruling was made on the bias issue, or even worse.

“The four men convicted for operating file-sharing site the Pirate Bay suffered a further setback this week when they failed to get the case thrown out because of alleged bias by the sentencing judge,” the Hollywood reporter wrote.

This was picked up and twisted even further by none other than The New York Times who reported: “A Swedish court has denied the appeal of four men convicted of violating copyright law for their involvement in the Pirate Bay.”

Several other large and smaller publications wrote similar articles this week, concluding that the court “ruled” that the Pirate Bay judge was not biased or that an appeal was off the table. The truth is that the Appeal Court still has to decide whether or not the judge is biased. The only thing that happened this week is that the District Court handed it their statement.

Appeal Court Judge Ulrika Ihrfelt, who was taken off the bias case previously, but will be involved in an eventual appeal told a local newspaper this week: “The biggest challenge will probably be the enormous amount of media attention at the trial. I haven’t been in media’s spotlights before, so this is a new experience for me.”

The biggest challenge for the media on the other hand, is to get their facts straight instead of writing up nonsense. Props to our friend David Kravets at Wired who was one of the few who got it right.

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

“Send an email as you munch a warm bagel. Read the news as you sip a latte. It’s a nice alternative to the office, isn’t it?” they write.

Well, not if you’re writing for TorrentFreak since our site is blocked, and we’re not the only site affected. The uTorrent website is also inaccessible, as well as the Wikipedia entry for BitTorrent and even Legaltorrents. Vuze.com on the other hand is not blocked. It all seems to be a bit arbitrary.

For some reason TorrentFreak is blocked by many web-filters. In the past we’ve contacted a university that decided to block us and asked the person responsible for the filter for an explanation. We were told that our site was wrongfully categorized as a hacking/warez site, and the university was kind enough to take us off their ban list. However, the issues with Panera Bread are a little different.

Panera Bread uses SonicWALL’s filtering solutions and when running a check on their database we see that (unlike others) TorrentFreak is correctly labeled as a “news and media” website. So, the people at Panera Bread either added TorrentFreak to their custom ban list, or implemented a keyword filter which is also supported by the SonicWALL system.

Could it be that they block all sites with the keyword ‘torrent’ in the url? It’s beginning to look like that is indeed the case. All Google searches with the word ‘torrent’ in it are blocked by Panera Bread and it is impossible to download any .torrent files. Linuxtracker is not blocked, however, the torrent listing on the site (with the word torrent in the url) is again inaccessible.

It turns out that every website with ‘torrent’ in the url is blocked, the “reason for restriction” always being “Administrative Custom List settings”. It gets even worse though. A quick search on Amazon for (legal) products that have “torrent” in the URL results in yet another list on accessible pages.

* The LEGO toy of the Torrent spaceship from Star Wars.
* A backpack named “High Sierra Torrent 70 Hydration Pack.”
* Book author “Ann Torrent” wont sell anything through Panera Bread.
* And a whole list of book titles that include the word “torrent.”

Of course we fully understand that Panera doesn’t want users of their free WiFi hotspots to download massive amounts of data with BitTorrent, and since it’s their network they can impose as many restrictions as they like. However, there must be a more sophisticated method to achieve their goals than to ban everything ‘torrent’, including the dictionary entry.

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

In their most recent writeup TechCrunch published new details which were provided by another source, and in the article they hint at the following doomsday scenario. “Their parent company [CBS] supplied user data to the RIAA, and that the data could possibly be used in civil and criminal actions against those users.” TechCrunch makes it sound really scary, but how useful is this data really in a court of law?

Let’s start with a little background. Last.fm’s data is provided by its users who report their recently listened-to songs to allow the site to track their listening habits. The data comes from the ID3 tags or similar metadata formats that MP3s and other digital music files carry. These list the artist name, title of the track, name of the album and more info related to the music file.

So what can the RIAA do with this data? Since the metadata doesn’t state that a track was pirated, only pre-release tracks that appear on Last.fm would be worth looking into. However, since the RIAA only have access to metadata reported to the site there is not much they can prove with it, even if they have access to Last.fm’s entire database.

The RIAA would only be able to check which IP addresses played a music file tagged as ‘track X’ by ‘artist Y’, but since everyone can easily edit these tags they can never really be certain that an individual was indeed in possession of the track, let alone that they shared it with others.

So, suggesting that the RIAA is going to use Last.fm’s data (if they indeed got their hands on it) to go after file-sharers is complete nonsense. As evidence, Last.fm’s data is not going to be worth much in court. In fact, there are plenty of better ways to track down copyright infringers and the RIAA is well aware of that. They are experts by now.

The only thing the RIAA has to do is hire someone to monitor various public BitTorrent trackers where the music is traded, and they can easily catch thousands of people in the act. The upside of this method is that they can verify that the person on the other end is actually sharing the data. Plus, they will know that the files are indeed the titles they are looking for.

The RIAA of course knows all of this, and if they indeed requested the data it was for purposes other than taking legal action. So, assuming that the RIAA was indeed requesting data from Last.fm, why would they want to know what music people are listening to on their computers?

Most likely the RIAA is interested in the business intelligence value of the data. For years record labels have been tailoring their music releases to the listening habits of ‘pirates’, and it is not unlikely that they are interested in Last.fm’s data for similar purposes. IP-addresses can come in handy here to spot some of the regional differences in popularity of artists or tracks.

Whatever their reasons are, dragging pirates to court is not likely to be one of them. Perhaps the TechCrunch tipster is an insider at one of the record labels who wants to scare the shit out of Last.fm’s users? Or has Michael Arrington himself been hired as one of the footsoldiers in the RIAA’s war on piracy? Who knows, but anything is more plausible than the RIAA taking people to court for reporting “copyright infringing” metadata to Last.fm.

Update: Apparently Last.fm’s official client also does fingerprinting as LANjackal points out. However, the ‘evidence’ would still be far from usable in court.

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

By sheer volume the number of downloads these lesser known bands accumulate might only be a fraction of those generated by the Britney Spears and Duffys of this world, but 10,000 downloads is pretty significant for developing artists. Artists need to be heard in order to build a steady fanbase.

Revenue wise, most artists trying to earn a living making music only have a moderate income, and every fan counts. Generally, they don’t make much from album sales – contracts where the band/artist gets less than 10% of the revenue are quite common. Merchandising and playing gigs are the largest source of income, income that is generated by fans.

If the average artist can pick up a few hundred extra fans by giving away his music for free, this can make a huge difference. This group might not be that interesting for the record labels and the royalty collectors, who tend to feed off the top 1% of artists who are generally well marketed by million dollar budgets from the music industry.

Contrary to the conclusions of the PRS study, a special brand of ‘pirates’ are particularly interested in new and unsigned bands. On the music tracker What.cd, which hosts almost 100,000 users, the most downloaded album ever is a compilation of unsigned artists. Second is an album from The Flashbulb, with 10 times as many downloads as Britney Spears’ Greatest Hits collection.

Similarly, on the music sharing website Jamendo thousands of artists are giving away their music for free. Rob Costlow, one of the early adopters of the site told TorrentFreak that thanks to this free music model, he is able to make a living off his passion. His most popular album on Jamendo was downloaded over 80,000 times while nearly half a million listened to it on the website.

So, even though the vast majority of the the users of file-sharing services download music from the top of the charts, there is undoubtedly a huge potential for new artists to market themselves through file-sharing. Perhaps less interesting for the major labels who make most money off cleverly marketed top acts, but extremely valuable for the average artist trying to make a living off music.

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

We don’t make (much) music here at the Free Software Foundation, so it’s natural for people to wonder why the FSF has been standing up for individuals targeted by lawsuits launched by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Most recently we filed an *amicus curiae* brief in the case of *Sony BMG Music Entertainment, et al. v. Joel Tenenbaum* showing the RIAA’s theory of statutory damage awards to be unconstitutional.

Some would prefer that we refrain from fighting these lawsuits, suggesting that they are a distraction from the FSF’s core charter. But opposing them is actually an important part of our mission to support free software. First, these lawsuits represent a concerted attempt to rewrite copyright law in a way that threatens to undermine the ultimate goals of the free software movement. Second, a vocal minority in the entertainment industry uses these lawsuits as warrants to justify DRM technology and other measures to monitor and control the flow of information over the internet. Third, if unopposed, these lawsuits create a culture in which people are afraid to share, presuming sharing to be theft.

In their response to our brief, the RIAA says, “The FSF is not a neutral friend of the Court. Rather, FSF is an organization dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs, classic intellectual property, much like the sound recordings at issue in this case [*sic*].” It’s unclear what legal aim the RIAA lawyers from the firms of Holme Roberts & Owen and Dwyer & Collora think they are accomplishing with this attack. Having an interest in the outcome of a case is the reason organizations file such briefs. William Rehnquist defined *amicus curiae* as, “a phrase that literally means ‘friend of the court’ — someone who is not a party to the litigation, but who believes that the court’s decision may affect its interest.”

But here, it is the public’s interest that we are defending, not our own. While we don’t agree — as the RIAA claims — that we are more “virulent” than an organization that intimidates everyone from the elderly to college students to the severely disabled into either paying “settlement” money or facing the crushing expenses of defending against unwarranted prosecution in faraway jurisdictions, the RIAA is correct that the FSF does have a position on copyright. Although we are primarily concerned not with music, but with how software can be made and shared so as to benefit and empower everyone, neither are the impacts of the RIAA’s actions restricted to the distribution of music. Their lawsuits are a deliberate campaign to rewrite copyright law through the courts. They are attempting to set precedents which will affect all works governed by copyright law, including software.

The RIAA, which in its litigation campaign represents exclusively EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and their affiliates, would like to change copyright to be an ordinary physical property right. Through these lawsuits, they seek to establish near exclusive permanent control over each and every use of the recordings their members distribute, expanding the power of copyright owners to include things which are not part of the existing body of law, and extracting financial penalties from the largely defenseless individuals accused of disobeying them.

But copyright is not and was not intended to be a right like this. In fact, copyright requires that the public give up some of its rights, such as to free speech and free association, in order to promote another of its fundamental interests — progress in the sciences and useful arts. In “Misinterpreting Copyright,” FSF president Richard Stallman draws an analogy between this tradeoff and government procurement. When doing any kind of purchasing necessary to do the public’s work, the government seeks (if imperfectly) to minimize the amount of taxpayer money spent to obtain the needed goods. This means paying a price that suppliers will find acceptable, while avoiding being gouged by those suppliers who may claim that the goods are worth a lot more than they really are. When the U.S. Navy was accused of paying Lockheed $640 per toilet seat for some of its aircraft, people were understandably outraged, because the government had squandered the public’s money.

In the case of copyright, it’s the public’s freedom that the government is spending, to obtain in return for the public scientific and cultural goods. Right now, governments are squandering this freedom. They are spending far too much and getting far too little in return. Plenty of authors and artists are telling the government that works can and will be made without such expenditure. The international free software movement has been proving this for many years now, having successfully produced a fully functional operating system in GNU/Linux that can be freely used, shared and improved upon by anyone who wants to do so; and more recently there have been people doing similar things in encyclopedias, textbooks, and the world of the arts (including music).

Previously, because the required equipment was large and expensive, normal readers and listeners did not have the means to easily make copies. Restrictive copyright did not negatively affect them. But now, because so many more people do have the ability to easily exercise this freedom, the burden imposed by copyright restrictions on our society has become unacceptably heavy. Even while these restrictions have become more burdensome, they have become less necessary — with the cost of publishing so much lower now, less incentive is required. Instead of acknowledging this, the government has been taking the side of those who, out of greed akin to selling us $640 toilet seats, see an opportunity to freeze what should be a contingent and evolving bargain into a permanent and natural right for themselves, expanding ownership powers under copyright law far beyond its current and historical borders.

In the U.S., the new administration continues to side against the public. Vice President Joe Biden recently spoke at a MPAA luncheon. He adopted the entertainment industry’s loaded “piracy” language, saying, “It’s pure theft.” Biden also assured the MPAA that President Obama would find the “right” copyright czar. His attitude is not surprising, given his past eagerness as a senator to sponsor and support RIAA-backed legislation. He was, after all, one of four U.S. senators invited to a champagne celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) hosted by the MPAA, RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. Obama himself has already appointed Tom Perrelli and Donald Verrilli, both former lead attorneys for the RIAA, to be associate and deputy associate attorney general.

If we are going to achieve sane copyright law, we have to avoid confusing this institutionalization of corporate greed with “art.” In fact, it seems most artists disagree with the RIAA. Sony artists reportedly earn a tiny $0.045 for each song sold on iTunes, and most of them will never receive even that much from Sony. As one example among many, singer Courtney Love answers the charge of piracy by saying: “What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software. I’m talking about major label recording contracts.”

The RIAA doesn’t stop at manipulating copyright law to gouge artists and the public. They also use their lawsuits as leverage to argue for control over any technology that could be used to distribute music. For example, they have pushed to require all wireless access points to be encrypted and closed, to restrict technologies like BitTorrent and other forms of peer-to-peer distribution, to impose bandwidth caps on home internet users, and to monitor traffic through service providers. Such efforts directly hurt free software. Because free software authors around the world work by collaboration, they rely on open distribution networks to move software, data, and conversation around. In particular, peer-to-peer technologies make this easier and cheaper for people with less bandwidth, and so are a powerful means of boosting grassroots free software distribution and development efforts.

The RIAA further attacks free software when they use these filesharing cases as ammunition to advocate DRM under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It was the RIAA that attacked Princeton scientist Ed Felten for wanting to publish useful mathematical information, because this generally useful information might possibly be used to decrypt their specific DRM scheme. Sony saw no problem with secretly installing a rootkit on users’ computers, to facilitate spying on them and blocking certain activities. These efforts to turn computers against their users and to restrict technical information are on-face incompatible with free software. If we allow the RIAA to win outrageous damages in these lawsuits, then we are letting them manufacture evidence of losses due to illegal copying, which they will then use to demand from Congress more control over our technology.

Among both the government and the public, the RIAA lawsuits create a culture which frames these issues in terms that make it harder for free software to succeed, by creating a culture that fears sharing. This leads to confusion like the recent case of a schoolteacher who assumed that a student handing out GNU/Linux discs in class was breaking the law. One can hardly blame her for having this impression when the RIAA lawsuits and propaganda thoroughly permeate the news media, encouraging everyone to assume that sharing is wrong unless they are told otherwise.

The RIAA’s framing of the issue as “intellectual property” is another key way they foster this fear. They cite our opposition to this concept in their reply to our brief, and they are correct. The use of “intellectual property” language threatens to undermine the free software movement. The term lumps together disparate concepts like copyright, patents, and trademarks, which are legally distinct. The RIAA would like to lump them together because doing so increases the size of the gouge they can extract. By drawing an analogy with physical property, they erase the actual histories behind these specific areas of law and rationalize the obscene damages they are demanding. It skews discussion of the issues involved so that good solutions can’t be found, and if it is used in place of a clear discussion about copyright in the arena of music then people will accept it when discussing software as well.

The bottom line is that for art and software alike, sane copyright law should facilitate and promote sharing so that everyone can benefit from what is produced, and participate meaningfully in making it. For software, the easiest way to share is to put source code in the public domain, and not require any End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) or patent licenses. Anyone can then study and use the software, make changes to it, and redistribute changed versions to anyone they want. However, this leaves the door open for other people to use copyright law to make some changes to that software and strip away the freedom, redistributing their version without the freedoms that were originally there. Copyright law allows people to play middleman like this, intercepting works that are intended to be free and turning them into proprietary programs to control users.

To ensure that software written to be free remains free, the FSF uses a copyright license called the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL says that anyone is free to use, copy, change, and distribute modified versions of the software to which it is attached — as long as they pass on those same freedoms to whomever else they give the software. The GPL can do this because copyright law gives copyright holders the authority to outline those terms. Instead of using that authority to make copying illegal, the FSF uses that authority to make it illegal to make copying illegal.

Despite this, the FSF will continue working to reduce the power of copyright restrictions by fighting these lawsuits, filing briefs in specific cases, and collecting contributions to the RIAA Expert Witness Fund. We do not intend to shoot ourselves in the foot by supporting proposals to reduce the scope of copyright that would weaken the way the GPL protects freedom without simultaneously weakening the way companies like Microsoft and Apple use it as a weapon to take away freedom. But neither will we support the RIAA’s expansive approach to empowering copyright owners at the public’s expense on the grounds that it would make the GPL “stronger.” We will not accept losing the GPL as an effective shield unless as part of a plan that we could be confident would make software generally free. But neither will we confuse it with the end goal, which is a world where people are not called criminals when they want to see what the software on their computer is actually doing, or to share a copy with their neighbors, or to improve it and share their improvements.

Executives like Rolf Schmidt-Holtz of Sony Music Entertainment should get the message and back off. Although they claimed in December that they would stop filing lawsuits against individuals, the RIAA filed 62 more in the month of April alone. Citizens are tired of watching their governments squander their freedom to enrich this handful of corporations, and they are tired of being intimidated. We will continue our work to support this opposition to the War on Sharing, and to restore or replace copyright law for its intended purpose — progress in science and the arts, for everyone.

CC-BY-ND

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

So why do pirates buy more music? The simplest explanation for this finding might be that people who are not interested in music don’t have the need to pirate or buy it. I have to agree that it’s not the the sexiest, most controversial or inspiring answer, but it does tell us something about the core of the piracy ‘problem’.

The real reason is in fact very simple. The true music enthusiasts simply want to consume, sample and discover as much new music as they possibly can, and the most straightforward and convenient way to do this is through file-sharing networks. Music pirates are just regular consumers really, and they love music just as much as anyone else.

Although I personally believe that the ability to sample music through file-sharing has a positive effect on music sales, much of the correlation between piracy and sales is simply caused by a third factor – a passion for music. This is one of the main reasons why most users of music oriented BitTorrent sites love an initiative such as Spotify where they have access to one of the largest music libraries online.

Although piracy can breed consumers, it’s generally happens the other way around. The Internet has freed music and the music labels’ greed and abuse of copyright is the only barrier that stands between the artists and millions of potential fans. Creative business models where consumers have instant access to unprotected and high quality music are the future.

The labels of course fail to see this all too obvious connection and continue to exploit their acquired (copy)rights.They would rather pump yet more millions into overpaid pro-copyright lobbyists and expensive lawyers trying to keep their outdated business model alive – the model where the artist gets 1 to 10% of the total music sales while the labels are filling their pockets. No wonder the passionate music fans flee to BitTorrent.

What we can learn from the studies is that true music fans buy and pirate more music. The labels are fighting against those who generate a large chunk – perhaps even the largest – of their yearly revenue. The labels should understand that piracy is merely a signal that they are on the wrong track.

The Internet makes it possible to offer unlimited access to music cheaply with virtually no production and distribution costs. Unlimited access is exactly what most consumers want. It’s an opportunity not a threat.

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

That the market has not come up with alternatives to file-sharing good enough to make piracy moot is the real problem, and the companies and individuals that have stood in the way of this are the ones who owe content creators an explanation. Extremists on both sides are hailing this as a win, but it’s the majority of us in the middle who continue to lose out.

This was a show trial about money and politics, but most of all it was a sideshow. This argument is over and the entertainment industries should be focusing on the licensing schemes, royalty agreements and the new business models content creators desperately need. Thankfully many more of them are. But this verdict will encourage the ones who are not to continue pretending there is some other way around this problem that involves suing people.

No one should have to accept people “stealing” their work, just as no one should have to accept a company demanding that its business model works when it doesn’t. But we all have to adapt to new market realities. The way we communicate and distribute all kinds of information will continue to change at an alarming pace. Taking hard-line measures against file-sharing in the interests of a handful of large organizations sets a dangerous precedent for the future of privacy, net neutrality and freedom of speech. Intellectual property laws are about striking a balance between the interests of individual IP creators and society as a whole. If the law tips too far in either direction, the whole system will fall. Bad legal decisions on piracy may actually end up doing more damage than the piracy itself.

The Pirate Bay verdict gives lawyers everywhere a mandate to continue chasing shadows. It won’t stop the Pirate Bay, let alone online piracy. The enormous surge in the Pirate Party’s membership that was reported after the trial is just the beginning. Most of the commentary that followed rightly talked of cutting heads off hydras and hitting hornet’s nests, etc. What that really means is anonymity features and non-accountability measures being baked into BitTorrent software, probably in the next six months to a year.

Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde said after the trial that “there’s no difference between us and Google.” The judge thought there was a difference – intent. The Pirate Bay was all about file-sharing and Google is not. But thanks to this trial the next generation of file-sharing sites will be much more secretive. The next mutation of The Pirate Bay will have no subversive rhetoric and won’t mock the labels and studios chasing it. It will be silent. It won’t respond. It wont be nearly as fun as TPB, but there will be no real differences between it and Google. No one will be able to prove intent, making it even more of a threat. Doesn’t exactly sound like a win for anybody in the business of creating content.

The real winners won’t be the ones that come out on top of this long, bitter trial process, appeals and all, which could take five years. It will be the side that develops the new technologies that will render that court decision meaningless before it is even issued. They may be Scandinavian pirates or Hollywood privateers, or some combination of thereof. The file-sharing community is working ten times harder because of this trial. The entertainment industries would be wise to do the same, and wiser to find ways to work with the pirates they continue to fight. The fact that they didn’t do so ten years ago cost a generation of artists billions.

No-one is ever going to trial for that.

–
Matt Mason
Author, The Pirate’s Dilemma
e: matt@thepiratesdilemma.com
w: thepiratesdilemma.com

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

The prosecution claimed that the four defendants were ‘assisting in making copyright content available’ and demanded millions of dollars in damages. The defense did not agree, and all pleaded not guilty – backed up by the inimitable King Kong defense.

In an earlier post we summarized some of the key arguments in the case, but much will depend on the judge’s interpretation of the word ‘assisting’. The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde still predicts an EPIC WIN, he told us so, and the IFPI and MPAA fancy their chances too.

Of course, if we ran a poll asking you if you believe the defendants are innocent or guilty, it’s likely the response would be overwhelmingly in favor of the former. So what we would like to know in this poll is not whether you think the four are innocent or not, but purely what you believe the court’s verdict will be. Your personal opinion of The Pirate Bay doesn’t really matter, only what you believe the court will decide – good or bad.

The court’s decision may not be straightforward. It’s possible that one, two or more people walk, or equally be found guilty, or any other combination incorporating the four defendants. So we ask for your feeling overall, when all things are considered.

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

A recent post by isoHunt founder Gary Fung inspired us to run a poll. We know that TorrentFreak readers might not be representative of the average file sharer, but we would love to find out why you use BitTorrent. The following poll has four answer options, based on the four types file-sharer, as described by Lawrence Lessig in his book Free Culture.

The options are as follows.

1. Because it’s free

Some use BitTorrent to download music, movies and software so they don’t have to pay for them. Instead of purchasing a CD or buying a DVD, they prefer to download it for free on BitTorrent.

2. To ‘try before I buy

The second type uses BitTorrent mainly to sample content and try before they buy. They download music to discover new artists and might end up buying the album if they like it. Similarly, they try software or download movies but buy them when they live up to their expectations.

3. Because I can’t get it elsewhere

The third group mainly downloads content they can’t get elsewhere. The TV-show that it not on TV in your country yet, or that song you can’t buy easily online without having to deal with all kinds of digital restrictions.

4. To download ‘legal’ torrents

The last type of file-sharer mainly downloads content that the creator wants to share for free, often indicated by the misleading term ‘legal torrents’. Music from Jamendo for example, or films that are ok to share.

So where do you fit in? Let us know.

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

Zabriskie, himself an avid BitTorrent user, said he has leaked all of his albums on torrent sites ahead of their official release date. And he’s not the only one doing this. “I can tell you from numerous conversations and firsthand experience that there are few artists left, even in the big leagues, that do not. You wonder where the early leaks come from? Don’t be so surprised.” he writes.

People are not going to buy any albums before they’ve had a chance to listen to them, or before they’ve seen the artist perform live, Zabriskie reasons. Indeed, the top 1% of all artists might still be able to sell an album based on their previous performances, but the average artist has to be heard first. Much to the dislike of the RIAA, file-sharing networks are the preferred way for many people to sample music.

Zabriskie doesn’t see file-sharing networks as a threat to musicians though, quite the opposite in fact. “No one should ever be upset that people are downloading their record for free. They’re listening to it. And chances are they will buy it someday if they like it. Someone who doesn’t buy it still wouldn’t have bought it if they didn’t download it, so what’s the worry?”

In fact, much like radio, file-sharing networks are a great way to promote music. Zabriskie discovered this himself, as one of his tracks appeared on the famous Indie/Rock Playlist torrent in February 2008. Many artists have seen an increase in their fanbase after one of their tracks appeared in these playlists, since they were downloaded by tens of thousands of people.

“It’s really cool, just one person’s mixtape, but a great way for people all around the world to see what’s going on in music that month. So, very suddenly, tens of thousands of people from around Portland to Poland had that song on their computer. How did Criznittle find it? I don’t know, exactly. But he did, and he liked it, and he shared it, and I found a lot of fans because of it’,” Chris points out.

So what does this mean for the music industry, one might ask. It is hard to predict the future of course, but it’s clear that consumer to consumer promotion will be much more important than the marketing budgets of the major record labels. Music is being freed from the corporate stranglehold, and although it’s a challenge to find the right distribution method for the future, the artists and fans will come out as the winners.

Zabriskie’s final words sum it up nicely.

“Bottom line: if you like something you listen to, support the artist however you can. If that means buying something, great. If that means going to a live show, great. If that means sharing it with a friend, great. If that means blogging about it, great. If that means requesting it on your local college radio station, great. If that means just scrobbling it to Last.fm so people can see that you’re enjoying it, great.”

“That’s the future of music. It’s completely in your hands, not mine, not anyone else’s who makes music. Yours. Don’t let anyone judge you for how you choose to find and experience music. The soundtrack to your life is up to you. All music is free, everywhere. Don’t take that for granted. Share it, disappear into it. It’s yours.”

Amen.

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

The larger the demand and the greater numbers of people active on a torrent, the faster a file can potentially be distributed with BitTorrent, saving Microsoft money too.

This is not the first time that Microsoft has failed to see the benefits of BitTorrent though. This is merely a replay of what happened two years ago when the Vista Beta was posted, but obviously they haven’t learned from that earlier failure. At the time Microsoft said that “legal and privacy issues,” had prevented them from posting a torrent, but they didn’t explain why this was the case.

BitTorrent would have been the wise choice though. During recent years BitTorrent has proved itself as the ideal tool to get large files from A to B (C, D…) on the Internet. Linux distros all use BitTorrent, EA used BitTorrent to distribute the Warhammer Online Beta earlier this year, and even NASA embraced BitTorrent.

Although there is no official Microsoft torrent published, Windows 7 Beta is widely available on BitTorrent sites. And since people generally don’t like to wait for something that is already available elsewhere, many have turned to BitTorrent for this Beta, whether Microsoft likes it or not.

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