We all pay taxes and in the United States its the job of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to scoop up the cash from the public and place it in government coffers. It’s currently collecting somewhere north of $2.5 trillion and has a budget in excess of $12 billion.

But despite all the money rolling around and the IRS’s ability to suck up the last dollar from errant payers, it apparently has trouble keeping its computer department in order. According to the findings of a recent audit, the IRS is in quite a mess when it comes to paying for software it’s using and not paying for stuff that it isn’t.

“The proper management of software licenses helps to minimize risks by ensuring that licenses are used in compliance with licensing agreements and cost-effectively deployed, and that software purchasing and maintenance expenses are properly controlled. This audit was initiated to determine whether the IRS is adequately managing software licenses,” the report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration begins.

Thanks to rightsholders’ efforts to toughen up the law, the effective managing of software licenses is a serious business. Running unlicensed software can constitute a breach of federal copyright law, something a government agency such as the IRS should seek to avoid. According to the report, it seems to have failed.

“The IRS is not adequately performing software license management and is not adhering to Federal requirements and recommended industry best practices. The IRS does not have enterprisewide or local policies, procedures, and requirements for software license management,” the report states.

As a result the audit discovered that out of a total 27 products examined, proper licensing documentation could be produced for only three of them.

The Treasury Inspector General also notes that in 2011 the IRS spent $235 million on computer software and that efficient and cost-effective management of those resources is crucial to providing efficient services to taxpayers. But somehow and in addition to the under-licensing, the IRS also managed to license software that they didn’t use.

“Until the IRS implements an effective program to manage software licenses, the IRS is incurring increased risks,” the report adds.

“These risks include: 1) not complying with licensing agreements that could result in embarrassment, legal problems, and financial liability; 2) not using licenses in the most cost-effective manner; and 3) not effectively using licensing data to reduce software purchase and software maintenance costs.”

As many companies around the world will agree, not having the correct licenses for software can indeed become a financial liability. Over the years many have been targeted by the Business Software Alliance who, often acting on tips from employees, pursue companies for audits and then pressure them into settlements. Actions against under-licensed software even take place with the support of armed police.

In Belgium a company was pressured by the BSA due to under-licensed software and was told that its computers would be taken away unless it paid 30,000 euros ($40,000) in settlement fees. The CEO of the company described the event as “a robbery more than a check-up.”

It’s notable that the BSA aren’t barking at the heels of the IRS though, which is a bit of shame. Watching the BSA trying to extract money from the best money-collectors in the United States would be something to behold and probably the only battle in which the public would cheer for the IRS.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Needless to say, the spectacle of P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Macy Gray, Chris Brown, The Game and Mary J Blige all declaring their love for Megaupload was too much for the IFPI and RIAA.

As the story began to spread and the Mega Song trended on Twitter, it was suddenly blocked by YouTube, a victim of Universal Music Group (UMG) and IFPI copyright takedowns.

What followed late Friday were demands from Mega founder Kim Dotcom for YouTube to reinstate the video (full details in our earlier article), and counters from Universal to take it down again. With the weekend over, the controversy is alive again.

“Let us be clear: Nothing in our song or the video belongs to Universal Music Group. We have signed agreements with all artists endorsing Megaupload,” Megaupload CEO David Robb told TorrentFreak this morning.

“Efforts to reach out to UMG and open a dialog about this abuse of the DMCA process were answered with unfounded and baseless legal threats and demands for an apology.”

Threats against Megaupload from the mainstream entertainment industries are nothing new, yet thus far the movie and music groups have refrained from legal action. Nevertheless, the name-calling persists.

“Regrettably, we are being attacked and labeled as a ‘rogue operator’ by organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA, which represent some of the music and movie industry. They are wrong,” says Robb.

“Our record of closing accounts of repeat infringers and taking down illegal files proves we stand against piracy and care about the rights of content owners.”

But while Mega insists it always complies with legitimate takedown requests as required by law, the RIAA and their member labels want much more, as their championing of the Stop Online Piracy Act illustrates.

“UMG is currently lobbying lawmakers in Washington for legislation that would allow them to not only delete specific content from a website, but to delete entire websites from the Internet. After this demonstration of the abuse of power by UMG, we are certain that such an instrument of Internet censorship should not be put into the hands of corporations,” says Robb.

Those corporations, Robb suggests, may have already abused their existing powers to censor the Mega Song campaign on YouTube for commercial ends. Mega will shortly relaunch Megabox, a label-worrying iTunes competitor that will give artists 90% of all sales, a far bigger share than many currently enjoy.

But whatever Universal’s motivations for the takedowns were, according to Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom the label will now have to justify their actions in court. TorrentFreak can confirm that Mega’s legal team have already been instructed to sue Universal over the illegitimate copyright takedown of the Mega Song, an act which Kim says was an attempt to sabotage their viral campaign.

Furthermore, having previously been restrained on the issue of SOPA, it now appears the Mega Song takedown has prompted a change of course by Megaupload.

“We thank everyone for the massive support. Let’s join forces and fight for an Internet without censorship. Stand up and oppose new laws like SOPA and PIPA, which are being written this month in Washington,” says Mega CEO David Robb.

“Let your local representatives in Congress know what you think. Join organizations that are promoting free speech and innovation. Let’s not allow corporations to create an Internet dictatorship with the massive censorship firewall they are lobbying for in Washington.”

A TorrentFreak request for comment from an RIAA spokesperson remains unanswered.

Update: The lawsuit has been filed today at the United States District Court, Northern District of California.

Update: Megaupload statement

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Update January 2012: MegaUpload Taken Down, Seized by the Feds

Currently the huge cyberlocker resides on the destroy-them-all SOPA-directed “rogue site” list of the MPAA alongside The Pirate Bay. The site hasn’t gone unnoticed by the RIAA either. MegaUpload is on their list too, sandwiched between the leading torrent sites and warez forums.

So given this background, particularly when viewed through the prism of the ‘Cyber Monday’ domain seizures, it’s hardly surprising that panic set in yesterday when MegaUpload suddenly failed to load for many people all around the world, not just for a few minutes but for hours on end and into today. The site is reported to be back up for some, but Twitter and other networks are awash with complaints that the problems are continuing.

Speculation on the downtime is rife, but it appears that MegaUpload has problems with its domain registrar. At the time of writing, MegaUpload’s current DNS records as reported by Network Tools are listed as ns1.badwhoisshutdown.com and ns2.badwhoisshutdown.com. It’s unclear why the IP address listed (216.239.35.100) belongs to Google.

One of the common causes of this kind of DNS diversion is when domain registrars doubt that the provided WHOIS details for a domain are correct, so they ‘hijack’ the DNS records to prevent the domain resolving to the correct site. In 2009, MegaUpload sister site MegaVideo suffered similar problems but eventually returned after downtime.

TorrentFreak has put a request into MegaUpload for comment, but while we wait for the official response it seems clear that the problems have been massive. Right across the United States into Europe, from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, Japan, Australia, Canada, Brazil and UK, no area seems to have been unaffected.

For many the site remains down even now, providing an interesting taster of what SOPA has in store should it pass. Some reports suggest that switching to Google’s DNS provides a solution to the problem, others that using one of the site’s many IP addresses (http://174.140.154.23/ for example) is a better option.

In the meantime the conspiracy theories will continue. Did MegaUpload’s registrar hijack the DNS over a simple WHOIS detail error? Or perhaps the “trolls” warned about here laid some poison down for the site, or maybe there’s another more simple explanation?

When we get official word from MegaUpload we’ll report back – the AMA request on Reddit would be fun, but we doubt it will go answered.

Update 30th Nov: MegaUpload inform us that there was indeed a nameserver issue affecting the site but there is nothing to worry about and everything is back to normal.

In rare cases it might take a while for every DNS server around the world to be updated (rarely up to 48 hours) but normal service should have already been resumed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

However, the torrent eco-system didn’t collapse because in part TPB would rely on other BitTorrent features to facilitate transfers between peers.

Although they had been introduced years before, following this announcement the relatively obscure technologies of Magnet links, DHT and Peer Exchange would be thrust into the spotlight. From their quiet beginnings people suddenly wanted to know all about these trio of terms, which prompted us to create a user guide. The mainstream acknowledgement of the trackerless torrent had truly arrived.

While .torrent files continue to be the weapon of choice for most BitTorrent users, during the last year more and more sites have brought Magnet links on board, a development encouraged by the founders of The Pirate Bay. These days most of the major torrent clients support them.

As will become clear by the conclusion of this article, getting to grips with Magnets sooner rather than later may prove prudent. To this end, today we take a look at some addons, extensions, sites and services which make the use of Magnet links just a little bit easier.

Mainline DHT Plugin for Vuze

When DHT was first introduced back in 2005, the first client to implement it was Vuze (then Azureus). Unfortunately it uses a system that’s incompatible with those used in almost every other client. That means that Vuze users are cut off from everyone else. Not to worry though as with this Mainline DHT plugin, BitTorrent users are one happy swarm again.

The plugin can be downloaded here or through the client’s plugin installer.

Magnet Tracker

Magnet Tracker is a handy script that scans a web page looking for torrent hashes. The script then displays a window in the bottom right of a compatible browser window which allows the user to download a Magnet link. Magnet Tracker supports many of the main torrent sites and even offers functionality on Wikileaks in response to the site’s adoption of the technology last year.

As can be seen from the configuration window below, the script also allows for the customization of the Magnet link, such as with the addition of any number of additional trackers to add that extra downloading power should it be needed.

Magnet Tracker requires Firefox and GreaseMonkey to run and can be downloaded here.

Magnet Catcher

Continuing on the theme, Magnet Catcher strips the concept of adding Magnet links to a page right back. As can be seen from the before and after screenshots below, this script adds Magnet links straight to the main searchpage of a site containing torrent hashes, with no need to click-through to the torrent details page.

Magnet Catcher requires Firefox and GreaseMonkey to run and can be downloaded here.

Magnet Link Generator

If you already know the hash value of the material you want to download from BitTorrent, this basic webpage will convert it into a Magnet link.

Don’t let the foreign text put you off – simply paste the hash into the box and click the button and a Magnet link will appear. Click this and your client will pull its peers from DHT and PEX, no torrent site needed.

Go to Link Generator

Mgnet.me – The Magnet URI shortening service

As can be seen from the example below, one of the downsides to Magnet links is that they can be very long and therefore difficult to share.

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d39ebe536d55ae4e422767f21eb997da11fe471c&dn=TorrentFreak.TV
.S02E12.HDTV.x264-TFTV.mov

Crucially they often have too many characters to be shared via Twitter, they are not clickable in IM apps like GTalk and MSN, and can be unfriendly on the eye. The Mgnet.me service changes all that.

Introduced earlier this year, Mgnet.me is a shortening service, much like Bit.ly or Tinyurl, designed specifically to convert Magnet URIs into shorter and more manageable links. As can be seen from the screenshot below, it also provides HTML code and a feature to post a newly shortened Magnet link directly to Twitter.

Go to Mgnet.me

Magnet Search Engines and Indexes

While many torrent sites are now offering Magnet links alongside the more traditional .torrent file, there are other sites which specialize in Magnet links only. The beauty for these sites is that they don’t have to carry .torrent files since they can generate Magnet links on the fly – as long as they know the hash of content in question that is.

Sailr

The first search engine in our list is the ultra-minimal Sailr. As shown in the screenshot below, this Magnet-only search engine has Mgnet.me implementation as standard.

Go to Sailr

BTDigg

BTDigg, is the first ever search engine for trackerless torrents. Rather than searching for .torrent files around the web like most engines, BTDigg scans BitTorrent’s DHT (Distributed Hash Table) to discover new files instead.

In theory, BTDigg should be able to discover any torrent sitting in a torrent client anywhere in the world, providing the torrent has DHT enabled in its settings. This means that torrents don’t even have to be uploaded to a torrent site, further decentralizing the BitTorrent ecosystem.

Go to BTDigg

Conclusion

Even though Magnet links (and their friends DHT and PEX) have been around for some time, the BitTorrent community has been relatively slow to adopt them as their primary route to content. The reason for that is a simple issue of supply and demand. While torrent sites, .torrent files and associated BitTorrent trackers remain in plentiful supply, most users will feel little need to make Magnet links their primary metadata choice.

However, that will all change when their favorite torrent site becomes censored by PROTECT IP or other blocking measures planned around the world.

In future – and armed with just a hash value – users may suddenly find themselves mysteriously attracted to Magnets.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

For almost everyone, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 didn’t disappoint, it’s become a pretty much permanent fixture in the drive of my Xbox 360 and has only been out a handful of times in the last year to make way for Forza 3 and the classic GTA IV.

And in just over two weeks the whole cycle of madness will start all over again.

Developed by the Treyarch studio, Call of Duty: Black Ops will be released worldwide on November 9th and I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy, so much so that I pre-ordered the damn thing a couple of months ago. But some people already know how awesome it is because they managed to get hold of some leaked copies a few days ago. Bastards.

It all began earlier this week when it was reported that Xbox 360 retail versions of the game had been stolen from an Alabama pressing plant and that Treyarch’s community manager, Josh Olin, had been feverishly trying to contain the problem. The article on HookedGamers included screenshots of Olin’s Twitter discussions and also a couple of game screenshots, now removed due to a copyright complaint by publisher Activision.

Things had taken a turn for the unusual. Last week a YouTuber called 504Ghostmaker announced he had a copy of the game. He’d seen it advertised for sale on a chat forum and offered the seller $150 for it. The seller wanted $400. After striking up a deal he went to a Chili’s restaurant and met up with a guy called Ungodly to collect. So far, so good.

But later 504Ghostmaker, who also goes by the name Computer Healer, got a call from IP Cybercrime, a company hired by Activision to investigate the leak. They said they knew he had a copy of the game, apparently very politely, and gave him the chance to return it, which he did.

In a series of four videos posted to YouTube, Computer Healer tells his full story and says he had no bad intentions.

“I never made a copy of the game. I never said I was going to leak this game,” he explained. “Was I going to give a copy to my friends? Yes…. I wanted to play my game…. The best game I ever played….I wouldn’t have sold the f****** for a million dollars.”

But Healer wasn’t the only person with a copy, and IP Cybercrime’s nicely, nicely approach didn’t work first time with everyone. Apparently a young kid who had a copy of the game refused to co-operate with IP’s investigators so they contacted someone else with real authority to force compliance – his mother.

Other people with copies of the game are also confirmed to have handed them over, but now BitTorrent downloaders are hoping that the inevitable has happened. Uploaded by ‘Anonymous’, the Call.Of.Duty.Black.Ops.XBOX360-COMPLEX torrent on The Pirate Bay is getting rather a lot of attention at the moment but the big question is, is it real?

Although the release is packed up in multiple .RAR files as one might expect, the NFO file included with the release contains nonsense. While some commenters are claiming the release is real, others are stating the opposite. However, if one screenshot doing the rounds is to be believed (it’s impossible to confirm its authenticity without discovering and cross referencing all the peers currently on the torrent), not even Treyarch are convinced this is a fake torrent and are doing their own tests.

This isn’t a ‘Scene’ release either so verifying its quality via the usual channels before downloading isn’t really an option. Furthermore, unlike the Xbox 360 beta version of the game which leaked out earlier, it doesn’t appear to be on Usenet either, which would be unusual for a working copy of a game this huge. There are also sundry other pointers which shout ‘fake’ but nothing conclusive until those who have completed downloads start filing reports.

Personally I’m hoping that this torrent is a fake. When I jump into Black Ops on November 9th I really, really don’t want to be shot, tubed, knifed, claymored and otherwise killed to death every 5 seconds by people who have had more than two weeks to practice before me.

So, to all those thinking of getting in dozens of hours worth of gameplay training in before me, think again. Remember last year’s epic Xbox Live banning of all those playing Modern Warfare 2 before its retail date on modded boxes? Is it worth the risk just to get a jump on me? Thought not ;)

We’ll update this post later in the day when we find out if the release is real or not

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The DRM in question involves a certificate with a hardcoded date – January 28 2009 – as its time to expire. Now that this certificate has expired the game will not load, giving the following error message.

[installpath]\Gears of War\Binaries\wargame-g4wlive.exe: You cannot run the game with modified executable code. Please reinstall the game

Of course, reinstallation does nothing, as the certificate has still expired. Of greater interest is why there is a certificate with expiration date in the game at all, especially as it’s expired just 15 months after the games release.

After this was pointed out on Epic’s forums, joeGraf, a ‘super moderator’ (and presumably staff member of Epic) stated that they are now aware of this, and “are working with Microsoft to get it resolved.” Just what form that resolution will take is also not clear; be it an updated certificate with later date, an open ended certificate, or removing such certificates. If a new dated certificate is issued, then it can only be expected that we will have the same problems again when it too expires.

This may also raise a question mark over other ‘Games for Windows’ titles released since Gears of War – which include Crysis and Grand Theft Auto IV – over their inclusion of such certificates, but only time will tell.

In the meantime, those of you that wish to play can do so by setting your system date back to January 27 or earlier. Also, in between playing, remember you can drop the FTC a line and tell them about this experience with DRM.

DRM only usually punishes legitimate purchasers, so this screw up with Gears of War is quite unique. We’ve just discovered that the pirated ‘razor1911′ release is also affected, meaning that it’s taken down every copy available. Great work. It must be well hidden if the usually alert crackers didn’t spot it, begging the question “how many more games have an expiration date?”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sony’s PSP Product Manager John Koller told Multiplayer recently “[There] certainly has been some piracy on the PSP. We’ve seen that as a significant issue — it’s trending down right now, we’ve seen the piracy not be as such prevalent in the last month to two months”

According to Koller, more and more PSP users are joining the “good side” and standing up for the intellectual property rights of the company. “We’ve noticed there’s kind of a ‘good vs. evil’ battle that we track on many of the forums and many of the pirated web sites,” he said. “There are certainly people that are standing up and fighting for what we consider the good side, the rights of developers and publishers to make money on their IP.”

To verify this assesment, we decided to take a look at the piracy rate of PSP games. This data, based on direct monitoring of BitTorrent trackers seems to contradict Sony’s statements. From our statistics, there seems to be an increase instead of a decrease in the past months, which is true for all content. There is a steady increase in downloads for PSP games throughout 2008, and an even steeper one over the last three months.

To give an example of the piracy rate of PSP games, Dissidia: Final Fantasy was downloaded 200,000 times via BitTorrent over the past 5 days, which is pretty significant for a PSP game. The two most pirated games for the PSP in 2008 were Final Fantasy VII and GTA Vice City Stories, with an estimated 650,000 and 550,000 downloads. As a comparison, the average PSP game sells 133,000 copies. We’re curious where Sony got their statistics, perhaps it was just a PR stunt, to give pirates a guilty conscience.

Despite the increase in pirated downloads, for other types of games, more units were sold November this year compared to the same month in 2007, adding up to an impressive $4 billion in sales.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Only 10 days after the game’s launch date, already half a million people had downloaded the game. During the months after that, another million people obtained a copy of the game via BitTorrent. According to our estimates, Spore was downloaded 1.7 million times since early September, a record breaking figure for a game.

When we posted about the impressive download rate on Spore – inflated due to the DRM that was put into the game – EA doubted our statistics. EA’s Mariam Sughayer said that every BitTorrent download was not a successful copy, and that several downloads didn’t work, were buggy, or contained viruses. We wont deny that on badly moderated torrent sites, malicious torrents probably can be found. However, this constitutes less than 1% of the available torrents, and they are not added to our statistics.

Below is the list of the 10 most downloaded (PC) games on BitTorrent in 2008, with an estimated download count for each. In second place we see The Sims 2, also from the hands of Spore creator Will Wright. Assassins Creed completes the top 3 with just over a million downloads.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

I wouldn’t recommend BitTorrent over SSH as a permanent solution since it will cripple the servers of the SSH providers. If you’re looking for a long term solution check out a VPN service such as BTGuard.

1. Get an SSH account.

You need an SSH account in order to get this working. You can try one of these free shell providers from this list.

2. Download, Install and Configure Putty

Download Putty, store it somewhere on your computer and run it. In the session screen enter the host name, the port number (22), and tick the connection type box (SSH).

Next, go to SSH –> Tunnels, enter a source port and tick the dynamic box. I’m using port 23456, but you are free to choose any post you like as long as it’s available.

When you’re done, it might be a good idea to save the session so you don’t have to enter the info next time you run Putty. If you’re ready, hit the “open” button in the session screen. A command-line interface will pop-up so enter your username and password that you received from your shell-provider, and you’re done.

3. Configure your BitTorrent client.

The last step is to configure your BitTorrent client. I will show you how it’s done in uTorrent and Azureus but other BitTorrent clients use a similar setup.

uTorrent: go to Options > Preferences > Connection. Enter your port number (I use 23456), socks 4 or 5 as type, and localhost in the proxy field.

Azureus: go to Tools > Options > Connection > Proxy Options. Tick the “Enable proxying of tracker communications” and “I have a SOCKS proxy” box. Next, enter your port number in the port field (I use 23456) and localhost in the host field.

When you’re done, restart your BitTorrent client and you’re ready to go. BitTorrent over SSH tends to be a bit slower than your normal connection, but it’s a great solution when BitTorrent connections are blocked or throttled.

For those on a Mac OSX, please check out this great tutorial (which in part inspired this article) for more details. It includes instructions on how to do this on a Mac, using Azureus.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Here’s what you need to do:

That’s it, you’re done. Now whenever you send your IM account that’s logged in at home a torrent file, it’ll automatically start downloading it! A simple, yet effective solution.

Have you already tried this, and has it worked for you?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.