Nevertheless, Uggla insisted that Spotify is a fantastic service with a great range of music to sample. However, he felt that the fact he wasn’t getting paid was the fault of the major labels involved in the project (Sony BMG bought 5.8% of Spotify for 2,935 Euros, Universal Music got 4.8% for 2,446 euros, Warner Music paid 1,957 Euros for 3.8% and EMI pocketed 1.9% for an investment of 980 Euros), claiming that he “earned as much in six months as a BUSKER could earn in a day.”

As the dust settled on the story, many non-Swedish readers were saying “Magnus who?” and wondering if this artist’s lack of mainstream popularity was the real reason behind him earning virtually nothing. But what about big artists? What about really, really big artists with huge international appeal. Say, an artist like Lady Gaga, who has sold more than 4 million albums and shifted in excess of 20 million paid digital downloads?

According to a report today, Lady Gaga’s track “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks during a five month period on Spotify and was played more than a million times. So how much money does she get paid by STIM (the Swedish Performing Rights Society) for this massive achievement?

SEK 1150 – that’s around $167 or roughly 113 Euros.

Commenting on the story, Douglas Léon, better known as Swedish rapper Dogge Doggelito, said he was dismayed.

“It is totally sick. We musicians have no rights, you may not charge [for music] anymore,” adding that Lady Gaga could’ve earned more driving an illegal taxi-cab.

Swedish artist, music producer and philosopher Alexander Bard, however, said that this payment was better than Lady Gaga would have achieved from her music being available via The Pirate Bay, noting that the amount was “…more than zero.”

Technically Bard is absolutely right, but let’s be honest – Lady Gaga would blow the money she earned from STIM in a 20 minute hotel mini-bar bender. Looking at the overall downloads, let’s face it, per track she earned pretty much near to nothing from both services.

While Spotify is to be commended for having the guts to try something new, for providing a truly wonderful service and for having achieved such a lot technically in a such a short space of time, one can’t help but wonder if it is ever going to bring in decent money for the artists.

After all, aren’t these the very people the music industry continually holds up as the important ones to encourage, nurture and support?

Lady Gaga’s example shows that Spotify’s business model needs some work, and the labels seem to agree on this. The US launch of the service has been delayed earlier this week, allegedly because of concerns about Spotify’s ability to upgrade free users to paid customers.

“We think Spotify is a great service but they’re going to have to convince us they can convert enough people from free to paid subscriptions to make it worth our while,” one label told the Financial Times. “As an ad-supported service the economics don’t work at all.”

Despite the startup troubles for Spotify the reviews from users, many of which were avid file-sharers, are still extremely positive. The service recently launched an iPhone app that allows users to play the tracks on the go, with or without an Internet connection, which many saw as the missing link. Now all they have to do is come up with a plan to actually make money.

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

Often public or open trackers are heavily loaded and operated on a shoestring budget, either as an ancillary project or out of someone’s pocket. This can leave them prone to unexpected downtime, requiring DHT or additional trackers to be added to torrents in order to find peers. Additionally, the sudden announcement by The Pirate Bay to kill their tracker has left people scrambling for trackers as an alternative to DHT.

Previously, the only way to check if such a tracker was down was to ask on a forum, IRC channel or news sites like TorrentFreak, hoping that someone knows the answer. Now, though, there is Trackon, a site that hopes to provide answers to these questions in a clear, concise and simple manner.

Trackon uses the Google AppEngine, just like its sister project Atrack. This means that initial costs are low and reliability of the site should be good – exactly what is needed when it’s reliability of sites being measured.

The site currently monitors 46 public trackers, including favorites such as OpenBittorrent, and DenisStalker. Even better it a offers a recent history of status checks and also shows if trackers support SSL, which is a boon to those looking for secure communications.

Uriel, the genius behind Trackon (and also Atrack) told TorrentFreak that his motivation was finding a way to make the BitTorrent infrastructure more decentralized and reliable, without actually requiring any changes to the protocol or clients.

“My conclusion was that a really easy to deploy tracker would make it possible for anyone to set-up and run their own trackers, either private or public. Combining that with Google’s AppEngine was just logical. Trackon came from there,” he explained.

Trackon is still in development and is having more features added as time goes on. Meanwhile, the number of public trackers out there is surprising, exceeding Uriel’s own expectations, “I thought at first there would only be about a dozen trackers, but it’s over fifty now,” he told us.

If nothing else, Trackon proves that the hydra is alive, and spawning trackers.

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

However, despite the shunning of the multi-colored approach of the above, among those millions of Internet users for whom BitTorrent has become a way of life, or those technology reporters who have written so much about the site, the logo employed by The Pirate Bay is also very recognizable indeed. The ship emblem, with its sails featuring the outline of a cassette tape-and-crossbones, has been reproduced millions of times on countless numbers of websites and products.

The Pirate Bay, in line with their sharing ethos, has always allowed people to use the logo free of charge and even makes the artwork publicly available in usable, scalable formats to ease its reproduction, some of which were used to create fan tattoos. But that is still not enough for some greedy individuals.

Today news broke that a private Swedish company, noticing that the logo had no commercial protection, took the opportunity to hijack it. The outfit, Sandryds Handel AB, have officially registered the emblem as their own with the authorities, with the intention of commercially exploiting it.

While admitting they have absolutely nothing to do with The Pirate Bay, in a radio interview Sandryds Handel spokesman Bengt Wessborg defended his company’s action.

“The idea is to sell USB drives using this brand,” he told SR. “We saw that it was not already allocated to someone else. It was not registered,” he added.

A spokesman for Sweden’s Patent and Registration Office said that they were unable to find that any rights to the logo were held by The Pirate Bay, therefore they were able to allocate them to Sandryds.

The logo registered by the company is very slightly different in color to that of the original Pirate Bay design, with ‘The Pirate Bay’ written as “The Piratebay”.

Commenting on the news, ex-Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak: “It will be turned over quite easily, it’s a preliminary registration that is being ‘tested’,” adding that while anyone can use the logo for any purpose they like, they may not take any action which limits the way other people can use it.

Peter says he wrote to Sandryds, and they replied telling him “…that they were amazed themselves and just wanted to try.”

TorrentFreak asked if The Pirate Bay is going to try and get the logo back, and we were told that they would try to get the decision by the patent office anulled, adding that the registration wasn’t legal and is therefore prohibited by law.

“It’s a person at the registration office that has made an error – willingly or not, we’re not sure,” they added.

“It would be nice if they liked it,” said the Sandryds spokesman in a statement. “But we may perhaps enter into dialogue with them if needed,” he added.

Needless to say, certain Pirate Bay supporters will not “like” this hijacking at all, and offering discussions over the reappropriation of an emblem they already see as their own will be tantamount to waving a red rag at a bull.

History shows us what happens to outfits who take negative actions against The Pirate Bay, so on past experience, if Sandryds Handel hope to keep doing business on the web in any meaningful way, they may want to quickly reassess their position.

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

The legislation came into force on April 1st this year, and the very next day the Netnod Internet Exchange reported a significant drop of 30% in Swedish Internet traffic. This dramatic reduction in data transfers was attributed to file-sharers reigning in their activities on fears of being identified by anti-piracy companies.

In response to the news, Swedish Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that most experts believed that the initial “scare effect” would wear off in time. They were absolutely right.

Current data from Netnod reveals that traffic levels in Sweden have not only returned to normal, pre-IPRED levels, but actually seem on track to surpass them. This increase is partly natural, but the relatively steep climb in recent months seems to suggest that P2P traffic is on the rise again.

While anti-piracy and copyright groups are working hard to clock up successes in getting governments to implement increasingly tougher laws to deal with online file-sharers, they too aren’t sitting back and accepting defeat in the face of these new challenges. Many are turning to services which enable them to hide their identities.

Recently the Cyber Norms sociological research project reported that 10% of Swedes aged between 15 and 25 were taking measures to neutralize online surveillance, with as many as 500,000 of their countrymen following suit. Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimated that 6 to 7 percent of all Swedes could now be hiding themselves online.

In this cat and mouse game, the cats have to spend millions of dollars and years of effort to achieve their aims of getting new legislation to protect their interests. However, in a crushing response, the mice spend just a few minutes in thought deciding how to spend a few dollars in order to instantly neutralize the threat.

As people around the world look forward to the festive season, it must seem like Christmas every day for VPN suppliers.

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

It therefore came as a big surprise to hear that Ethan Applen, director of technology and business strategy at Warner Bros., stated at NewTeeVee’s Video Rights Roundtable that P2P technology doesn’t deserve to be blamed for the fact that some people use it to download copyright infringing content.

“In terms of our own view, we think P2P gets vilified. It’s just a technology. CNN used it for Inauguration coverage. It can be used for piracy, but as a technology, I think it has a lot of advantages to it,” Applen said, adding that “P2P works really well at delivering an entire season or the entire run of a show.”

Applen’s comments are at odds with the legal strategies of the Hollywood studio, where its lawyers continue to blame the providers of technology for the activities of their users. If Warner Bros. indeed believes that P2P technology is not the villain, then they should inform their lawyers or withdraw from the court cases they are currently involved in.

Applen appeared together with Bram Cohen in the roundtable session, where worryingly some of the attendees admitted hating the BitTorrent inventor for creating his famous file transfer protocol. Aside from praising P2P for its speedy delivery of TV-shows, Applen also mentioned that it is a good marketing tool.

This is no surprise as a Warner Bros. executive previously admitted to leaking a pilot of Pushing Daisies on BitTorrent in order to “help the cause”.

Bram Cohen himself also gave several example of how ‘unauthorized sharing’ via BitTorrent may have helped content creators. He mentioned that the leak of an unfinished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine might have boosted interest in the film, and he noted that BitTorrent may have also helped the anime business to grow.

Despite all the positive comments on the use of BitTorrent and P2P in general by this Warner Bros. executive, we can’t help wondering why they are still pouring millions into ridiculous anti-P2P lawsuits that haven’t decreased piracy a single bit.

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

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.

The site’s bandwidth supplier, Black Internet, was told it would face penalties of 500,000 kronor ($70,600) if it failed to carry out the order of the court.

The company complied, but after initially deciding it would simply accept the decision, its management later changed their mind and said they would appeal. Unless they did so, they noted, the same kind of action could be taken against other sites and ISPs with possibly far-reaching implications.

“This is the first time in Sweden that an operator has been ordered to stop delivering Internet to someone. We want to know if it’s correct to do so,” said Black Internet CEO Victor Möller at the time.

The ISP has now been authorized to take the decision to the Court of Appeal, but unlike Black Internet had requested the earlier verdict remains intact until the Court of Appeal decided otherwise.

“This is such a fundamentally important issue as far as ISP responsibility goes,” said Victor Möller to SR.se. “It is not important for us if we can deliver bandwidth to The Pirate Bay or not – it is about the principle,” Möller concluded.

Although the case will set an important precedent for ISPs in Sweden, The Pirate Bay itself hardly suffered as the site simply switched to a new provider and returned within a few hours.

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

“They must capture important evidence on a computer at the scene of an investigation before it is powered down and removed for later analysis. ‘Live’ evidence, such as active system processes and network data, is volatile and may be lost in the process of turning off a computer. How does an officer on the scene effectively do this if he or she is not a trained computer forensics expert?”

Using COFEE, of course.

The Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) is a piece of software designed for the use of law enforcement agencies, and provided to the same free of charge by Microsoft. And, largely because of its mystique, has been a much sought-after piece of code.

Indeed, on the private tracker What.cd, users had offered a huge bounty (a reward for finding and sharing something) of 1.6 terabytes.

During the last day or so, a user – who had only been a member for a matter of weeks – uploaded COFEE.

However, What.cd then took the unusual step of removing the torrent. Not just an unusual step but, in my opinion, a very sensible step indeed.

“Suddenly, we were forced to take a real look at the program, its source, and the potential impact on the site and security of our users and staff,” said What.cd management in a statement.

“And when we did, we didn’t like what came of it. So, a decision was made. The torrent was removed (and it is not to be uploaded here again),” they added.

According to the site’s staff, neither them or their host was threatened by Microsoft or law enforcement. The decision was taken purely on the issue of site and member security.

Of course, the tool is now widely available from other sources and while some are saying that the tool is useless to regular Internet users, there are others who disagree. It certainly won’t take long for a detailed analysis to appear.

There will doubtless be lots of finger-wagging and complaints that this tool has become available in this way, but as with unexpected leaks of anything from software, to movies, to music, rarely is the finger pointed at the initial supplier of the material. That is usually way too embarrassing to reveal.

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

These findings are the result of the Cyber Norms sociological research project carried out by a group of Swedish researchers. The researchers conducted a survey among Swedes aged between 15 and 25 and found that 10 percent of this group is currently taking measures against increasing online surveillance.

Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law in Lund, estimates the percentage of all Swedes who are hidden on the Internet to be as high as 6 or 7 percent. If this figure is accurate, it means that there are more than half a million Swedes who already use a service to hide their identity.

The researchers note that file-sharing is not the only reason for people to anonymize their connection, but the results of the survey clearly show that avid file-sharers would rather hide their identities than stop downloading. And indeed, over the past months we’ve seen that more and more BitTorrent users are seeking ways to protect their privacy online, rendering all the newly proposed anti-piracy laws useless.

Contrary to what the anti-piracy lobby had hoped for, file-sharers are not an easy catch. Their calls for harsher copyright legislation are only driving ‘pirates’ underground. According to the Cyber Norms survey, more than half of all respondents said they would take measures to protect their identities if anti-piracy laws in Sweden are toughened, as is currently happening in the UK and France.

Currently, the most common and widely used privacy services are VPNs. These services allow a user to connect to the Internet while hiding their own IP-address. Millions of file-sharers around the world use services like this to prevent being tracked by anti-piracy companies, and this number is increasing rapidly.

The recently launched Itshidden service is one of the few that offer a free service in addition to premium subscriptions. Due to its increased popularity the owners recently had to disable new registrations in order to keep the service running smoothly. In just a few months Itshidden signed up over 100,000 members. Other VPN services report an increase in signups too.

The anti-piracy laws currently being mulled have created a flourishing multi-million dollar ‘online privacy’ industry. In recent months these services have seen a massive increase in customers, with most of them paying around $10 per month to prevent third parties from logging their download behavior.

Perhaps the entertainment industry should invest some time and money in creating legal and attractive alternatives to piracy. Apparently most file-sharers are willing to pay $120 a year for unlimited and unhindered access.

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

As anonymous investors pulled out and promises from the shareholders that they would come up with the funds themselves came to nothing, the deadline for the sale passed and the site stayed in the hands of Reservella, the Seychelles-based holding company that acquired The Pirate Bay two years ago.

But for those missing the optimistic press releases, bold statements and dramas of the attempted purchase by GGF, today brings good news.

According to a report, Reservella – with a helping hand from ex-Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde – are in fresh talks with four potential buyers.

While the identities of two of the parties remains unknown, hints have been dropped about the other pair.

The first, GamersGate, is a Swedish company specializing in online computer games. Its CEO Theodore Bergquist, however, is playing his cards close to his chest.

“We are looking at many potential deals,” Bergquist told Di. “All I can say is that The Pirate Bay is an interesting brand loaded with great potential for those who deal with it properly.”

Holding a B.A. degree from Stockholm University, Bergquist joined Paradox Entertainment in May 2001 as CEO and was responsible for overall strategy, financial performance and growth initiatives. In 2004 he acquired the Interactive division of Paradox Entertainment and in April 2006 he became CEO of GamersGate, which was initially Paradox’s digital distribution portal.

Bergquist reported earlier this year that GamersGate had achieved 100% growth in business during 2008, both in terms of revenue and in the amount of new customers and titles on the site. The company is aiming at achieving up to 200% more during 2009. Owning The Pirate Bay’s domain would certainly help them achieve that.

The second potential buyer is a rather more familiar name – the utterly resilient Hans Pandeya.

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

The main problem is that most people just don’t understand what DHT is, what it does, and how it works. Not really a surprise since the documentation and even the Wikipedia page are filled with technical jargon, and no simple explanation.  Without that basic understanding confusion is inevitable. We did explain DHT in our jargon piece back in 2006 but after 3 years, we decide to cover it again.

The easiest way to think about DHT is to imagine it as a form of ’super tracker’, in some ways a lot like WinMX and Kazaa of old. A large ad-hoc network of peers pass on information requests about torrents without a central server, meaning no control or single point of failure. No information about the contents or even the names of torrents are passed around, making this legal and hard to shut down.

Myth: You must turn off DHT when you use private trackers.

Wrong — There is an element to a torrent that is called the ‘private flag’. It’s a small flag that marks to a client that the torrent is ‘private’ and disables any method of sharing peers (including DHT), except via the tracker. This flag also changes the hash, so peers on a non-flagged torrent could not connect to a flagged torrent in any case. Most private torrent sites check for the flag, and add it if missing when the torrent is initially uploaded to their site.

Myth: Certain clients leak DHT data and should be avoided.

Wrong (with one exception) — There are always going to be people that want control. When it comes to torrent sites (especially the private ones) they like to express their control through lists of clients you can and can’t use (a form of DRM) and sometimes give reasons to support this. An example would be this statement from a staff member at a private tracker:

Not all torrent clients respect the private flag. But if you are using a client like Vuze, uTorrent or similar if the private flag is on (set by the tracker) the DHT, peer exchange settings etc are ignored. However, if you are using something like BitComet, BitLord or their ilk they ignore the private flag so if you have DHT etc enabled it is going to be enabled no matter what.

This statement is completely false. All torrent clients that support DHT respect the flag. The flag is set by the torrent file, not the tracker (although the tracker can add the flag to the file, it’s still set by the torrent), and BitComet does NOT ignore the flag. The one exception is a single build of BitComet (0.60) that was available for 2 weeks at the end of 2005, and even then, was a fallback only if the tracker was unable to be contacted for a 30minute period. Bitlord is unable to leak to DHT, as it doesn’t use DHT at all.

If you see staff making claims like this, it’s a good indication that the staff is clueless, which might be an idea to leave that tracker. If they can’t get the basics right who knows when else is wrong. Of course, we ask those claiming other clients leak to let us know so we can test it.

Myth: You can be tracked by DHT / AntiP2P groups use DHT to find you

Unlikely — It’s much easier and simpler to use the tracker. Blocklists, used on your client and on the trackers, are generally ineffective and easily circumvented through the use of residential connections. Last year’s University of Washington study showed that they will send letters just based on tracker info.

Myth: DHT slows your system down

Generally not true — It can slow down your connection depending mainly on network hardware. The actual data used in running DHT is low, generally less than 1kilobyte a second. Some routers and modems, however, can have problems with DHT causing lockups and restarts if they run out of ram. This mostly happens with lower spec ‘home’ equipment (such as older Belkins, Netgears and D-links), or telco-provided hardware.

Myth: You need to connect to a tracker, before you can use DHT

Wrong — When DHT is enabled (certainly in uTorrent) it connects to a bootstrap node (such as router.utorrent.com or router.bittorrent.com for mainline, or dht.aelitis.com for Vuze) and uses that to enter the DHT ’swarm’. It’s handed a set of DHT nodes and uses that to build up a small group of connected nodes. Those nodes are then used to get peers. No tracker is required at any time.

Myth: When enabled, it sends usage data back to [insert company]

Wrong — This is another case of people not knowing what they’re talking about. Generally they’re misinterpreting the bootstrap node connection for their client.

When the demonoid tracker was finally resurrected last year, many of it’s torrents were still active thanks mainly to DHT. DHT with Peer Exchange (PEX) is a very powerful addition to the torrenting world, and allows torrents to stay active, irrespective of the trackers stability or even existence. Also, Azureus/Vuze users, despite having their own DHT system, can join in using a mainline DHT plugin.

Should you use DHT? Not if you only use private trackers, but if you use public ones and your network hardware can cope, then yes. It can help reduce tracker load. If you have a question about DHT not answered here, then again, let us know.

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

For that experiment the stream was only broadcasted to a select group of people and not the entire Internet. Today, however, the lab’s researchers will launch their second BitTorrent streaming experiment on a much bigger scale, as they will broadcast a live stream of a live music performance for all the world to see.

“The setup is very simple at the cinema – we have a standard computer connected to audio and video mixers, which then feeds the P2P network,” Dr. Njål Borch, a senior researcher involved in the project told TorrentFreak.

The software they use to stream the performance is from the EU-funded P2P-Next project and several of the partners are also donating bandwidth for the experiment to make sure that everything runs smoothly.

The performance will take place at Aurora Kino in Tromsø as a part of the Insomnia electronic music festival. To spice things up, the lab is also sending a live feed to the Notch festival in Beijing, which is running in parallel with Insomnia, and to Skjervøy kulturhus in the far north of Norway.

However, since the broadcast is public this time, everyone with an Internet connection can tune in. The only thing required to watch the stream is the Swarmplayer software, or a browser plugin (Windows only). Both are linked on the project’s website.

According to Borch, this BitTorrent live streaming experiment is not just a proof of concept, it might eventually play a significant role in the future of live streaming on the Internet.

“If the scalability is good for live streaming, this can increase the amount of viewers without massive bandwidth bills. Another effect, which I am currently very much a fan of, is that adding more bandwidth is very easy – put up a seedbox and hand it the torrent. No administration otherwise necessary,” he told TorrentFreak.

Anyone who would like to be part of this world premiere can tune in at 5 pm CET when the broadcast will start. If all goes well you’ll be able to see a live performance of a new soundtrack to Pudovkin’s 1926 film, “Mother”.

Update: The broadcast ended and it’s replaced by a 5 minute clip of the concert so people can still test the streaming technology. It was a great success with visitors from all over the world.

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

The researchers surveyed a few hundred undergraduate students who were asked if they would buy the single “Right Round” from rapper Flo Rida for X amount of money. The price tag for the song was based on the last two digits of their social security number, ranging from 0 to 98 cents. The regular 99 cent price was excluded.

The students further had to indicate the likelihood of being faced by a lawsuit from the RIAA and what the expected settlement costs would be. On top of this, they were asked to fill out a morality questionnaire along with questions regarding their download behavior, all anonymously.

With this data in hand the researchers were able to draw some interesting conclusions.

First of all, they found that the students who were said to have pirated their latest track, were willing to pay less for the “Right Round” song. For every $0.01 students were willing to pay more, the likelihood decreased that their last song was pirated by 0.3%.

Even though the researchers claim that this means that pirates are cheapskates, it could also mean that pirates don’t like the song “Right Round” from rapper Flo Rida that much. Perhaps they have different music tastes?

Taste aside, the researchers conclude that dropping the price of a single track to $0.63 would decrease piracy by 50%.

Besides the pricing issue, the study also showed that pirates (compared to non-pirates) think the chance of getting sued by the RIAA is relatively small, and that the settlement fees are lower. The usual conclusion from this data would be that pirates are well informed since their guesses were closer to the real answer, but the researchers twist it somewhat different.

“If the goal of the RIAA was solely to deter piracy, it should not have abandoned its policy of suing the people it caught pirating digital music,” they write, referring to RIAA’s promises to stop mass-lawsuits against copyright infringers.

The latest insight from the study is that those who indicated that they had pirated their latest addition to their music library scored lower on the morality ‘proxy’ scale. However, the researchers note that the mean and modal respondents score very high on morality, which basically means that pirates are more normal (morality wise) than those who pay for music.

To summarize, the study makes it look like pirates are immoral cheapskates, but all it really suggests is that the music industry should lower the price of downloads if they want to sell more music and increase their net profit.

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

This week alone we’ve had an Early Day Motion from a member of Lord Mandelson’s own party, and more recently ISPs have talked about the futility of the suggested legislation.

Mandelson reportedly started pushing it after a meeting with Hollywood mogul David Geffen, and was apparently uninterested in the whole situation prior to the meeting, although that claim was flatly denied.

Now, the All Party Parliamentary Communications Group (apComms) has released its own findings to its more broad consultation, and it’s not good reading for 3-strikes proponents.

There were significantly fewer responses than for other similar consultations, although the scope was much wider. It was also much more open, without assumptions or leading questions. It was, in fact, fairly neutral and seemed to be concerned with gathering information, rather than trying to solicit support for a predetermined policy. Most appropriately, it was titled “Can we keep our hands off the net?”

The topics covered included dealing with ‘bad traffic’ (which includes copyright infringement, P2P and botnets), behavioral advertising (such as Phorm), online privacy and child pornography procedures. Finally it dealt with the issue of who should foot the bill for Internet traffic, and whether network neutrality should be codified. The first and last questions are of particular concern to TorrentFreak, and the conclusions make for interesting reading.

On the subject of P2P and copyright enforcement, they came to the following conclusions;

58. We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available.
59. We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we recommend that this approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing should not be further considered.
60. We think that it is inappropriate to make policy choices in the UK when policy options are still to be agreed by the EU Commission and EU Parliament in their negotiations over the “Telecoms Package”. We recommend that the Government terminate their current policy-making process, and restart it with a new consultation once the EU has made its decisions.

Network Neutrality and actual bandwidth availability was also a concern, with the following recommendations being made;

212. We recommend that Ofcom keep the issue of “network neutrality” under review and include a section in each annual report that indicates whether there are any signs of change.
214. We recommend that Ofcom regulate to require ISPs to advertise a minimum guaranteed speed for broadband connections.

We know that many of our UK readers will be happy with the last recommendation, especially after a study by OFCOM earlier this year found that many subscribers were seeing an average of 40% of their connection’s advertised speed. A more appropriate advertised speed will also prevent many BitTorrent clients from being setup for speeds they can’t actually achieve.

If you thought that such open minded, clearheaded and competent recommendations couldn’t have come from elected officials, well, the good news is they’re not all luddites. ApComms’s Joint-Chairman, Derek Wyatt MP was formerly Head of Programmes at WireTV, before becoming the director of BSkyB’s Computer Channel (later ‘.tv‘), leaving when he was elected to government. Other executives of apComms include a former BT researcher (Chris Mole MP), and Dr Nick Palmer MP, who has studied AI at MIT.

An extremely well-educated and technologically literate group making these recommendations should help carry some weight. Whether or not it will be enough to convince the Peter Mandelson’s and Sion Simon’s of the government, remains to be seen.

The full report is available here.

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

But the high costs involved are not the only problem the Internet providers are worried about. In a recent blog post, Andrew Heaney, Executive Director of Strategy and Regulation of the ISP TalkTalk points out that the new legislation will not only lead to numerous wrongful accusations, but it also violates human rights.

“It would put in place a principle of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ that contradicts fundamental human rights. But moreover the proposals will be totally unworkable – and today we’ve proved why,” Heaney writes.

To show how easily people might get disconnected for ‘crimes’ they did not commit, one of their Internet security experts went out to a residential road to see how many unsecured Wi-Fi connections he could run into. It didn’t take long for him to find several unsecured connections from which he could easily download whatever files he wanted to.

Under the new law, these unsecured hotspots could earn their unsuspecting owners a temporary Internet disconnection, and that’s not a good thing according to TalkTalk. “It is absurd to make people, in effect, legally responsible for the traffic on their internet connections and require them to prevent any unauthorised traffic,” Heaney says.

“TalkTalk acknowledges that there is a problem with illegal filesharing and that solutions must be found. First and foremost the content industry must develop new business models to make content more easily available and more affordable,” he adds.

So, instead of trying to overcome the piracy problem by flawed legislation, the entertainment industries should focus on innovation and develop new business models that will convert pirates to paying customers.

Until that happens, TalkTalk will do everything in its power to prevent the current plans from being signed into law. “We will continue to strongly resist any approach that does not protect the innocent,” Heaney concludes.

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

The law is intended to make it easier for copyright holders to obtain the personal details of alleged file-sharers from ISPs, but the ISPs are not handing information over without a fight.

This April, five book publishers handed a request to a local court for information on the owner of an FTP-server that allegedly stored more than 2000 audio books. Although it was a private server and the audio books couldn’t have been made available to the general public, the court ordered the ISP Ephone to hand over the details of the person behind the IP address.

In a response to the negative decision Ephone consulted its customers, asking them whether they should appeal the case or not. Of the 20,000 customers who responded, a massive 99% were in favor of an appeal, so Ephone duly took the case to the Appeal Court.

Yesterday the Appeal Court announced its verdict, which turned out to be a win for the ISP and the alleged copyright infringer. The Appeal Court nullified the earlier decision of the District Court against the ISP, and ruled that Ephone does not have to hand over the details of the FTP owner to the book publishers.

The Appeal Court argued that, even though the FTP server contained copyrighted works, probable cause for copyright infringement had not been proven. Since the server in question required login credentials there was no distribution to the public, the Appeal Court said.

The decision of the Appeal Court was received with huge disappointment by the book publishers, but welcomed by Ephone and the majority of its customers. Still, this decision may not be the end of the first IPRED case as it may still be appealed at the Supreme Court.

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

During his time in the Cabinet Office, Watson says he spent 18 months “immersed in conversation with the UK’s digital pioneers” and is convinced that the country’s economic future depends on “developing a set of economic and regulatory arrangements (which includes copyright, the legislative mechanism at the heart of the filesharing debate) to hothouse our digital natives”.

Watson has been most vocal in his opposition to the proposals by the government to throttle, disconnect or otherwise interfere with the Internet connections of alleged file-sharers. “Not only do the sanctions ultimately risk criminalising a large proportion of UK citizens,” he said, “they also attach an unbearable regulatory burden on an emerging technology that has the power to transform society, with no guarantees at the end that our artists and our culture will get any richer.”

Taking his opposition to these proposals to the next level, Watson has now tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) on the issue. An EDM is a device used by Members of Parliament to demonstrate the level of support among other MPs for a particular point of view. Although EDMs tend not to achieve results directly, they can attract the attention of the press, which fosters further debate and discussion.

Tom Watson – EDM 1997 – ILLICIT FILE SHARING – 12.10.2009

That this House notes with concern the Government’s proposals on file sharing which would allow rights holders to request internet service providers to disconnect for a period of time, or throttle, the internet connection of people who may be accused of copyright infringement via peer to peer networks; believes that disconnecting alleged offenders will be futile given that it is relatively easy for determined file-sharers to mask their identity or their activity to avoid detection; acknowledges that illicit file-sharing only costs rights-holders money when people download infringing content in preference to buying it; further notes that identifying offenders using the Internet Protocol address of a specific machine may punish those who share a web connection; and calls on the Government to ensure that any citizen accused of illicit file-sharing is given the right to legal redress in a court of law before sanctions are imposed.

At the time of writing this EDM tabled by Tom Watson has the support of 18 other MPs, and not solely from his own Labour Party either. Support is coming in from across the political spectrum, from Labour through to their opposition in the Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats, Social Democratic and Labour Party and Plaid Cymru.

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

Now Di.se reports that music group IFPI has completed new research which it says reveals the extent of file-sharing penetration in this Scandinavian country of 9.2 million citizens.

The IFPI survey claims that some 40 percent of Swedes aged between 15 and 74 engage in illicit file-sharing every day, a statistic which IFPI chairman Louis Werner says is “a very high figure” but one which does not surprise him.

The 40 percent of this group equates to around 2.8 million people. The figure would be even higher, says IFPI, if it had also counted the under 15 year olds who regularly share files.

The higher-than-expected results are being put down to the method employed by IFPI to collect the data. It says that traditionally such surveys are carried out using the telephone, but this time the data was gathered via the web.

The results come nowhere near those revealed by the earlier research carried out by SIFO on behalf of TV operator Viasat – their conclusion was that only 11% of Swedes download copyright works using the Internet.

Currently Sweden had around 7.3 million Internet users in a population of over 9.2 million, a penetration of around 81%.

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

Filmmaker Hanna Sköld teamed up with The Pirate Bay to distribute her debut feature film “Nasty Old People.” To shoot the film Sköld took a private loan of 10,000 euros, and to save on the distribution costs she uses BitTorrent to get the film out to the public.

“Nasty Old People” tells the story of a little Nazi girl who takes care of four grumpy old people during her day job. The film is is the first Creative Commons licensed film to come out of Sweden.

The film can be downloaded for free from The Pirate Bay and everyone may remix and distribute it. If you like what you see please head over to the film’s site and make a small contribution if you can afford it.

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

Last Friday we reported that The Pirate Bay was forced to move outside of Sweden, and that the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker had found a new home in the Ukraine. Unfortunately this was a short-lived solution, with TPB now moving to Cyberbunker.

CyberBunker is located in a former military nuclear warfare bunker in The Netherlands. The facility was built by NATO in the 50s to survive a nuclear war, but after the nuclear threats were over it was sold to its current owners. The bunker is now used as a webhosting data center.

The bunker is equipped with Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) shielding and Nuclear/Biological/Chemical (NBC) air filtration to guarantee that the servers they host stay up no matter what happens. As of this week it is also the new home of The Pirate Bay.

According to Sven Kamphuis, one of the owners of CB3ROB/Cyberbunker, there were some initial troubles with setting up The Pirate Bay in its new location as several carriers refused to pass on the relay information after they received threats from the entertainment industry led by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

Despite these troubles the site is now accessible again in most locations, and Cyberbunker will continue to host the site and does not intend to cave in to the threats of the entertainment industry.

“I don’t expect BREIN to do pretty much anything at this point. The last conversation we had with them was about some mp3 site they wanted to have shut down somewhere in 2001/2002. It took around 3 hours at 2am at night and the end result was that both parties agreed not to agree,” Kamphuis told TorrentFreak.

Whether The Pirate Bay is actually located in one of the server racks at the bunker or another hideout was not confirmed.

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