However, not all of the big players in the entertainment business subscribe to this theory. During the MIPCOM conference where movie and TV moguls gather, Miramax CEO Mike Lang and Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos touched on the subject of piracy. Both appeared to have a rather positive stance towards the issue.

Lang, whose company today debuts the Blu-Ray version of the cult classic Pulp Fiction, emphasized that people don’t necessarily want to pirate, as long as they get what they want. “Innovate or die,” should be the motive of entertainment industry companies, where it’s key to listen to customers.

“Piracy has not been the bigger issue for our company,” Lang noted. “I think all consumers at some point in their life , whatever market of the world, don’t want to pirate. They really don’t.”

“Maybe not college kids, but ultimately over time they do not want to pirate, and that the way to react to that is to offer legitimate and great service for them,” he added.

Responding to a question from the audience, Miramax’s CEO talked about the lessons he learned from the music industry. Interestingly, Lang disputed that piracy is the main problem for the music industry.

“Why everyone does focus on piracy, for the music industry, what’s really interesting is that it’s not the biggest issue for the music industry,” he said. Lang explained that the change to digital music and the lower price tags that come with it shouldn’t be discounted.

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos agreed on the effect of lower prices and said that “Walmart changed the music industry more than Napster.”

Another problem, related to the pricing issue, is the emergence of digital monopolies such as the one Apple has in the digital music business. This threatens the music industry more than piracy, Miramax’s CEO suggested.

“Apple is the strongest company in the music industry because there was not enough competition, and still to this day there is not enough competition. As an industry it can’t then influence, packaging, merchandising – all the things that are vital,” Lang said.

“As an industry – the movie industry – we have to be very cognisant of that. That’s why we did our deal with Netflix, and why we also did our deal with Hulu. We want multiple players to be successful.”

Sarandos also learned his lesson from watching the music industry struggle with their digital strategy. “When consumers tell you what they want, give it to them. Figure out a way to give it to them, because they will figure out a way to get it.”

Or in other words. Don’t blame piracy for everything, but innovate – or die.

Source: Digital Monopolies A Bigger Threat Than Piracy, Says Miramax CEO

And there are the dozens of spin-offs, using the familiar “all white background” format. One of the companies that made an ad inspired by the Get a Mac campaign is BitTorrent Inc., and interestingly enough they targeted an Apple product.

The BitTorrent vs. iTunes ads, which were never officially released to the public, emphasize how people can get higher quality content on BitTorrent at much faster speeds. They were created in 2007, before the iTunes store offered the high-definition downloads that were already commonplace on BitTorrent.

To find out more about the origin of the campaign TorrentFreak got in touch with Alvir Navin, who wrote the scripts together with Nic Birondo. Alvir, brother of BitTorrent Inc. co-founder Ashwin Navin, was working as director of content services at BitTorrent at the time.

“Back in 2007, a lot of users were complaining that iTunes downloads weren’t that fast, especially during the holiday season when the iTunes servers were taxed by the popularity of the service. So we played on the ‘Mac vs PC’ ad campaign to highlight the difference between centralized and decentralized content delivery,” Alvir told us.

“This was really just a fun project for me and a few friends that allowed us to pay homage to a few of our favorite film genres, drive home a relevant point about new methods of content delivery, and throw in a few digs about closed ecosystems,” he added.

For reasons unknown the ad campaign was never released. We recently stumbled onto it at the portfolio page of director Lucas Abel but other than that the campaign had never received any exposure.

In total three clips were produced titled “Crowd Beatdown”, “Zombies vs. Ninjas” and “Director’s Chair”. All follow the same format as the ads from the original Get a Mac campaign. The full credits listing all the people who helped create the videos are available at Lucas Abel’s website.

Source: BitTorrent Crushes iTunes in Apple Inspired Ads

Nearly two decades later, Pretty Boy Gangsters’ Korvel Sutton is in the news again as he takes on Apple. Sutton claims that the Cupertino-based company is illegally distributing his music worldwide by including it in at least ten compilation albums.

This week Sutton, who hasn’t hired an attorney but is representing himself, filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court in California. In the brief complaint obtained by TorrentFreak he explains that Apple’s iTunes Store is selling several of of his tracks without permission. The works are being offered in 23 territories but according to Sutton, Apple is doing this without the necessary permission.

Attached to the complaint Sutton introduces several pieces of evidence including a copy of the U.S. copyright registration and a photocopy of the “Rollin Like a Star” cassette tape. He further provides the Court with the full list of compilation albums where his rights are being infringed, including “2 Live Crew & Posse“, “West Coast Posse 1” and “Elektro Hip Hop Party Vol. 3.”

According to information provided by Apple in an email, the disputed compilations were provided by the Dutch label Rams Horn Record. Interestingly, this not the first time this label has been involved in a copyright dispute. In 2004, Rams Horn lost a lawsuit against none other than Eminem for distributing his music without permission.

If Sutton’s claims are correct, Apple can be held liable for several copyright-related offenses for their part in illegally selling Pretty Boy Gangsters tracks. However, from the looks of it Rams Horn Record – who are not named in the lawsuit – may play an even bigger role as they provided the compilations in the first instance.

It is not an isolated incident for an artist not to get their cut when money is made from compilation albums. In Canada a group of artists won a class action lawsuit against Warner Music, Sony BMG Music, EMI Music and Universal Music for unauthorized use of their music in compilation albums. Together the labels pirated 300,000 tracks, for which they had to pay the artists $50 million in damages.

Whether Apple are found guilty or not, it is unlikely that the lawsuit will put a dent in the company’s healthy revenue streams. Unlike other copyright lawsuits we’ve seen in the past, Korvel Sutton is not asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Instead of claiming outrageous statutory damages, he simply wants complete payment of all royalties owed to date.

Source: Apple’s iTunes Sued By Artist for Pirating Music

However, one of his latest ideas for his jailbreak of Apple’s upcoming iOS 5 is causing excitement of a quite different kind.

The notion of blocking Installous, the software used by millions to install cracked apps on iPhone and iPad, is naturally a controversial one. It’s perhaps needless to say that Apple would quietly welcome such a development. Equally, those using Installous probably wouldn’t be so keen.

Hackulous, the people behind Installous, think it’s an outright bad idea.

“The entire premise behind jailbreaking is that you’re able to do whatever you want with your device. It’s your device, you own it and you should be able to manipulate the software in any way that you like,” Hackulous admin Dissident told TorrentFreak.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean everything you do with it is legal, but that the manufacturer of the software and the hardware has no place in telling you how you use the device.”

Dissident says that when jailbreaks removed Apple’s restrictions, a large and thriving community of developers came along, making plugins, themes and other “cool stuff.”

“If a jailbreak author decides to add [his own] DRM to it, they are being extremely hypocritical,” he concludes.

Dissident told us this week that he believes i0n1c is a really talented guy but the idea that he should introduce new anti-Installous DRM is a significant one since at last count an estimated 11 million iDevice owners are using it. If they are suddenly unable to use Installous resources, they won’t be happy bunnies.

But just as Apple’s DRM gets broken despite their huge coding firepower, Dissident says that any efforts by i0n1c would be neutralized in the same fashion. Not only are several high-profile members of the jailbreaking scene said to be opposed to the suggestion of any new DRM, but Dissident warns that a small army of reverse engineers would appear, all dedicated to breaking any restrictions put in place at the jailbreak level.

While this would remove any obstacles put in place by ic01c, Dissident says this type of situation would be most undesirable.

“Something interesting about this upcoming exploit [from i0n1c on iOS5] is that it’s based on a PDF vulnerability. We’ve seen two of these jailbreaks in the past, on a website called jailbreakme.com. You just go to it on your iDevice and the device is jailbroken using the PDF vulnerability”

Dissident explains that in layman’s terms this means that undesirables can put such an exploit on their website and get root access to a user’s Apple device, opening up the potential for malware attacks.

But the bottom line is that any additional security will be broken eventually and ultimately a jailbreak without restrictions will prove much more popular than one with DRM. Market forces would sideline a crippled jailbreak, Dissident believes.

So what does i0n1c (real name Stefan Esser) have to say on the matter? We put a list of questions to him in the hope of countering some of Dissident’s points and vice-versa, but the response we received was quite unexpected.

Esser began by pointing us towards some of the abuse he’s been getting from some people in the jailbreaking community. These “nasty idiots”, as Esser describes them, certainly overstep the mark; disagreeing with someone’s stance can be achieved perfectly well without a flame war, but some don’t care much for sugar-coating. (It’s worth pointing out that Dissident does not engage in such behavior and was unfailingly polite throughout our discussions about Esser’s work.)

Esser went on to tell us that most of the people who have abused him (the “nasty idiots”) are into jailbreaking for one reason only – they want to pirate applications. In order to deal with their abuse it seems that Esser has developed an interesting payback tool – trolling.

“When I am bored I think up tweets that will maximally annoy these people,” he told us.

So does that mean that having taken the word of Esser at face value, people like Dissident are worried over nothing? Not necessarily.

Esser told us that he is busy with “more important stuff” at the moment and that he is not planning to release any jailbreaks for a while. However, in keeping with his plan to annoy his detractors, there still might be a trick up his sleeve.

“In that line of thought, releasing a jailbreak that is only useful for people not into
piracy would be a way to maximally annoy the bad people inside the jailbreaking community,” Esser told us with a palpable air of mischievousness. Or maybe seriousness, it’s hard to tell.

But perhaps with a nod to Dissident’s earlier predictions, Esser eventually straightened his trollface and appeared to acknowledge the frailty of DRM and even the amusement to be had from it.

The ability to annoy in this way, he concedes, “..would only last for a while.”

Source: Hacker Mulls Banning Pirate Apps With iOS 5 Apple Jailbreak

Last September it was revealed, much to the delight of millions of iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users, that a version of VLC would now be available on Apple devices through the company’s App Store. Developed in the open source spirit and offered for free by mobile company Applidium, the app was given the blessing of VideoLAN. The reach of the mighty VLC had been extended and users far and wide rejoiced, but not for long.

One of the original developers of VLC, Rémi Denis-Courmont, angrily pointed out that incompatibilities exist between Apple’s DRM policies and the terms of the GNU General Public License under which VLC is offered. While the GNU license allows Apple to offer an iOS version of VLC, the layer of DRM it puts over the top of the application was a no-no.

“Today, a formal notification of copyright infringement was sent to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch,” wrote Denis-Courmont on October 26th 2010, adding that the likely outcome would be that Apple would be forced to pull the free app from the App Store.

And yesterday, that’s exactly what happened.

In a post titled “There’s no app for that (anymore),” Denis-Courmont celebrates his victory.

“At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store,” he wrote. “Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. I am not going to pity the owners of iDevices, and not even the MobileVLC developers who doubtless wasted a lot of their time. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone.”

While disclosing that i’m the fairly happy user of three iOS devices, i’m going to take the stance of the layman here and risk incurring the wrath of the hardcore supporters of the GNU public license. For the man in the street this decision sucks and this statement from Denis-Courmont is insensitive to say the least.

Look, I loathe Apple’s restrictive practices and DRM with a passion too but the vast majority of Apple users – the vast majority of regular computer users, period – couldn’t give a rat’s ass about this kind of dispute. And why should the layman care? DRM? Open source what? GNU? Isn’t that some kind of cattle?

The net result is that a perfectly good product, a free product wrapped in DRM that serves no practical use in this case, is no longer available to the masses. And understandably the man in the street won’t give a damn about the great philosophy of freedom behind the GNU license nor the evils of DRM. He will care only that VLC is not available any more and he can’t play his videos.

The great irony here is that it’s these kind of disputes, between the interests of one company and those of another, that causes all sorts of complex licensing issues in the music and movie industries. Those issues cause distribution problems and an inability to fulfil demand. The result is gaps in the market which cannot be served because of legal issues.

And what fills that void every time? Piracy.

It’s no surprise then that the free, open source VLC for iDevices is only easily available from the likes of Installous. What has the world come to?

Source: Apple Users Forced to Pirate VLC Player? Whatever Next?

To make BitTorrent downloads on one device accessible on others, all the major BitTorrent clients have developed web interfaces. These allow users to start, stop and pause downloads from wherever they are. Transmission, the favorite BitTorrent client of many Mac users, also has a web interface, albeit a limited one in the eyes of most iPhone and iPad owers.

To fill this gap, developer Luka Hlastec coded a native remote access App for the Transmission client named iControlbits. The App, which controls the Transmission client daemon via the RPC protocol, has more features than the standard web interface making it both convenient and useful.

“I’ve made it for myself, for managing transmission downloads,” Luka Hlastec told TorrentFreak when we asked him about his motivation to develop a Transmission App.

“I’m using Transmission daemon on my NAS device. With this app I can connect remotely to my NAS from everywhere and manage downloads and Transmission server settings. You can also start Transmission on your Mac and enable remote access and then connect with my app.”

Among other things the App allows users to start, stop, remove and pause current transfers. In addition, it can connect to multiple Transmission ‘servers’ with the option to set and change speed limits for the server as well as individual downloads.

iControlbits, currently sold for $1.99 in the App store, works as advertised but could benefit from some extra features. In particular the option to add new downloads would be a nice one to have. The developer is aware of this and hopes to release it soon. “I have coded a feature for adding new downloads, which I’ll probably include in next version,” Hlastec told TorrentFreak.

But user satisfaction is not the biggest worry for the App – Apple’s anti-torrent police is the more imminent threat. As many people know, Apple is notoriously known for banning all applications that have anything to do with BitTorrent. This was kindly demonstrated three months ago when a new remote control App was booted from the App Store in just a few days.

Let’s hope that for Hlastec and Transmission using Apple customers, iControlbits doesn’t share the same fate. We have a few dozen promo codes for people who want to try the App for free.

Source: Transmission BitTorrent Client Has a Native iPhone App

The Big Music (RIAA) labels make their fortunes by promoting and marketing artists who usually only pocket a few percent of album sales. Their control over the distribution channels has given them a great deal of power, but the Internet is taking this monopoly away bit by bit. Today, independent artists and labels can easily reach millions of customers, something unimaginable only a decade ago.

That said, the advancement of the Internet has also brought in new threats. Apple. for example, is taking a big chunk of the revenue music generates online and their growing power is frustrating artists more and more. Musicians are forced to cut up songs because Apple deems them too long, and track listings are shuffled by mistake without an option for the artist to restore his art.

One of the first musicians who revolted publicly against Apple was Benn Jordan aka The Flashbulb, who found his album on iTunes in early 2008 without being aware or paid for it. In a counter move Jordan decided to share all his music on BitTorrent for free, which turned out to be one of the best business decisions he has made in his career.

On Christmas eve, where sharing is on the minds of millions of people, we sit down with Benn to talk about what has happened in the past three years. How did he fare financially? Has his opinion towards Apple or the RIAA labels changed? Where does he think the music industry is heading?

TF: You first published your music for free on BitTorrent nearly three years ago. Could you take us back to that moment and explain why you took this decision?

Jordan: I just figured that if someone was going to upload my new album to these sites, it may as well be me. I can make sure the rip is a good one and I can personalize it with a message. It wasn’t marketing or anything political at first either. Trent Reznor and some other big names released stuff in a similar fashion a few months later and the same crowd applauded, but I felt like it was more about marketing.

TF: How has this decision changed your stance toward “piracy”?

Jordan: It oddly put me in a hot seat for a bit and for a limited time, made me an pseudo expert in a field of study that doesn’t really exist yet. Again, this was all undeserved and weird. Music piracy is still a huge issue and people want answers, but they’re not sure who to ask.

I’m grateful now because it made me think, generally, file trading is just a peephole to a much larger picture. Copyright, in its current state, holds information at ransom for monetary value. While in music it can stifle culture and art, with literature and education it can be nothing more than a weapon of class warfare.

TF: How are you doing financially compared to three years ago? Have you benefited from giving away your music?

Jordan: In this particular case, yes. It expanded the amount of people who pirate my music, therefore it has expanded those who bought CDs, donated to me, or came out to shows. Another interesting thing is that it wound up in some licensing company’s hands that I’ve never worked with before, and got me additional placement in TV/film/etc, which is a good portion of my income.

TF: What are your thoughts on the big labels. Are they good or bad for the majority of artists?

Jordan: I have to be honest. Big labels that aren’t being innovative are little more than delusional laughing stocks at this point. Their numbers get worse and worse, and they push the artists to do dumber and dumber stunts to try and stay on top of things.

The shows and festivals they book are sponsored by 8 different alcoholic beverages and 10 different energy drinks, and they just punish their customers while validating their own demise. I’m not worried about them and neither should you. Its a dozen senior citizens trying to stop a stampede of fresh culture. Good luck boys.

TF: And what about Apple?

Jordan: Apple, love or hate their products, is fucking scary. On one hand, hats off. They’re business and marketing geniuses. On the other hand, they might single handedly be the worst thing that has happened to entertainment media in the last 3 years. The major record industry collapsing should also mean that artists are more free to do what they want.

For example, iTunes completely screwed up the track listing of my last album Arboreal. Their network is so influential that over half of the people who have bought the CD from my label now have botched track titles on their mp3 players. Apple doesn’t have ANY accessible artist support to deal with things like this.

They reject my cover art if I don’t have my name and the title in bold. If I want to sell a 30 minute long track (Louisiana Mourning, for example), they require me to split it up into a bunch of separate tracks. Their distribution system is so unorganized that artists have to pay business like Tunecore upwards of $40 per album (and annual fees) to do Apple’s job for them.

Again, its genius on the business side. But they’ve wedged themselves in so well that now, if I don’t have an album on iTunes (under their insane rules and lack of support), a large portion of my listeners simply won’t know how to put my music on their iPods/iPhones.

I know I sound preachy, but think about it, how is that any better than what existed 15 years ago? I still maintain that I’d rather have my stuff “illegally” downloaded than have to go down that path.

TF: What advise do you have for artists who consider giving away their music?

Jordan: That being a “consideration” is always funny to me. You either release it knowing it will be distributed for free or you keep it locked up on your hard drive. If the last decade has taught us anything, it is that no amount of bitching, threatening, lobbying, suing, or file protecting is going to stop information from being spread to those who want it.

The way I look at it is, if hundreds of thousands of people are downloading my album, I’m contributing to culture and my music will likely outlive me. Money is pretty insignificant in the face of immortality.

TF: What changes in the industry would you like to see in the coming years?

Jordan: It makes me nervous because I feel like we’re at a really big crossroad. We’re facing three big issues at the same time that are eventually going to be connected: Net-neutrality, free speech, and piracy/copyright laws. We need to make a bigger deal about it because we don’t want information to be controlled by an entity that only exists for its investors.

We don’t want a situation where if Amazon refuses to carry a book, nobody will be able to read it. Or if iTunes refuses to carry an unabridged album, nobody will be able to hear it. Most importantly, we don’t want poor people to continue being less educated than wealthy people because of the illusion created that information has a monetary value. News, history, media, and culture is made by everyone, and it is intolerable to me that we allow the messengers to hold it from us at such a high price, whether monetarily or contextually .

Now’s the time to get involved.

Source: Music Is Better Off On BitTorrent, Than With Apple or Big Music

According to Asahi.com, Apple has been offering unauthorized copies of books by prominent Japanese authors Haruki Marakami and Keigo Higashino. Other Illicit books also available from Apple include works by 1994 Nobel Literature Prize winner, Kenzaburo Oe.

The architects of the pirate copies are believed to have scanned printed Chinese translations of the works (which include Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84“) and converted them into eBooks.

The unauthorized copies of the books were accepted into the App Store by Apple and are thought to have been on sale since July this year.

The illicit version of “1Q84″ was found to be identical to a Chinese translation published in Taiwan during 2009.

“Some of the works have been deleted in response to requests from authors and publishers but a majority of them continue to be illegally distributed,” the statement from the publishers said.

The consortium added that they want to work with Apple to find more effective ways of keeping pirated books off the App Store, calling for the company to “act responsibly.” They also reject Apple’s claims that it isn’t able to check for copyrighted material during its App approval process.

In response, Apple said that determining who holds the copyright to submitted works would be a difficult and time-consuming addition to its App approval process. It added, however, that it takes copyright infringement issues seriously and will respond to the consortium’s allegations in due course.

Source: Apple Accused of Selling Pirate Books On App Store

Although the App itself is not quite revolutionary, the fact that Apple allowed a BitTorrent-based app into their iPhone store is. Previously, all BitTorrent related submissions were rejected because BitTorrent is often used to “infringe copyrights”, according to Apple.

By carefully avoiding the dirty word “torrent” or anything that could hint at unlawful use of the app, developer Derek Kepner passed Apple’s stringent approval regime. The big question was whether Apple had changed their ‘policy’ or if the approval was an oversight at the company. It turns out that the latter was the case.

Kepner informed TorrentFreak that he got a call from Apple a few hours ago, announcing that IS Drive would be booted from the App store. The Apple employee cited section 22.4 of the App Store Review Guidelines: “Apps that enable illegal file sharing will be rejected.”

“I mentioned to the person that called me that my app doesn’t do anything that can’t be done in Safari. It sounded like he wasn’t going to change his mind though,” Kepner told TorrentFreak.

“I’m very disappointed by Apple’s decision. A lot of people think BitTorrent is just for piracy, but it’s not. I wanted to help change that misconception with this app. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem to be interested,” he added.

Despite the setback, the developer is not giving up so easily. He’s currently drafting a letter to Apple where he is going to explain in detail how his App does nothing different than a web browser, and that it’s not a pirate App. Below, Kepner shared a few sentences from his writing to Apple.

I’d just like to reiterate that my app does *not* present the user with any pirated materials. Nor will it *ever*. I feel very strongly about that. If that’s why you’re rejecting my app, you’re mistaken.

It presents the user with a field to paste a link. So do all of the third party web browsers on the store, all the FTP clients, etc. If you take my app down, I demand that you take those apps down too.

Kepner is totally right of course. IS Drive is not enabling illegal file-sharing any more than a regular web-browser. However, somehow we doubt that Apple will be easily convinced, to them BitTorrent is synonym for piracy.

“I feel like I’m fighting for the BitTorrent community here. Wish me luck,” Kepner concluded.

Finally, although IS Drive was the first App that was linked to a web-based torrent download service, there were already Apps that allow BitTorrent downloads via the Synology Disk Station such as SynoLoad and SynoDS.

Expect these to be removed in the coming days. Right Apple?

It is just this kind of inflexibility which encourages Apple users to jailbreak their machines and head over to Cydia, which they are doing in their hundreds of thousands.

Source: Apple Boots BitTorrent App From iPhone Store

The timing of this announcement is perfect, as rumors persist that the iPhone 4/iOS 4.x jailbreak will be released today. As soon as it does, many hundreds of thousands of owners will rush to carry out the procedure which will allow them to run 3rd party software on their device completely legally.

UPDATE: Jailbreak has just been released and it is web-based – http://jailbreakme.com/

Of course, free pirate copies of material otherwise available from the App Store also become available, largely through the Installous app which is installed via Cydia, a piece of software included in the jailbreak package.

Installous is developed by the Hackulous community which is run by a guy called Dissident. TorrentFreak hands you over to him for the rest of this article.

Guest article from Dissident of Hackulo.us and apptrackr – undoubtedly the web’s largest resource for cracked iPhone Apps.

Firstly, I would like to thank TorrentFreak for giving me this opportunity to publish this article on their website. My name is Dissident, and I am an administrator of a website called Hackulous — an online community which has, for the last two years, been working to circumvent the DRM on Apple’s iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad products.

Apple has always been very stringent regarding what programs can be run on these devices. These products are distributed with a tightly locked down operating system and are forced to work only with Apple-approved software available on the iTunes App Store. Since the beginning, even before the advent of Apple’s portable iDevice product line, “jailbreaking” has been the attempt of talented reverse engineers to find ways to exploit the devices. The goal is to break out of the software jail imposed by the operating systems, so as to run any kind of software that users want on their devices.

Jailbreaking the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad is no different. Several millions of owners of Apple’s devices have used jailbreaking to push the boundaries of what is possible with their devices. Installer (now defunct), Cydia, Icy (also defunct), and Rock are well-known examples of distribution centers that jailbroken devices can access to obtain homebrew applications that really add a lot to the overall experience.

For example, Winterboard, the application that allows theming of the iDevice’s interface, is one of the most often downloaded items and is marked on every “must-have” list of homebrew applications. For iPhone users displeased with the subpar Messages app that came with the iPhone OS, there are at least two texting apps on Cydia, biteSMS and iRealSMS, that add features such as Drafts, Quick Reply, Quick Compose, and more. Before Apple introduced their backgrounding and folder features in iOS4, we already had Backgrounder and Categories. These are just a few examples of the freedom of customisation jailbreaking afforded us.

Eventually in 2008, Apple unveiled the App Store, a virtual marketplace for developers to sell their applications via an Apple-controlled channel. Since the beginning, one of the key missing features of this store has been a trial service, or even a refund policy. Considering that many competitor products have had these policies for years, some would expect them to be unquestionably employed by Apple, yet two years later in 2010 people are still being swindled by sub-quality applications.

The iPhone “cracked app scene” started from the idea of people being able to trial apps before sinking their money into them; an especially useful and welcome exercise considering that such a large number of apps on Apple’s App Store are pointless, underdeveloped, overpriced, and with deceptive descriptions to boot. In the two years that have passed, our community has enjoyed an explosion of activity resulting from the interest of many to trial iPhone apps. Many of our users appreciate the opportunity to be able to make a confident and informed decision when handing over their money for apps.

Understandably, the developers who paved the way for jailbreaking are not too eager to join our community. These are the forefathers of the iPhone jailbreaking scene, who have released tools such as Pwnage Tool, redsn0w, and Spirit, and they are collectively known as the iPhone Dev Team. The team members have shown disinterest in our community, citing that a considerable portion — perhaps a majority — of our users are pirates.

Various Dev Team members recently did an interview on TWiiPhone, and the consensus among them was that they detest anything remotely associated with piracy. They have stated that they believe piracy gives jailbreaking a bad name, and while I concede that point of view, I would like also to present three important details that demonstrate that Hackulous’ brand of activity is not causing as much damage as the Dev Team and everyone else may think.

1. Most of the pirates who use our services do so because they simply cannot afford to purchase the applications. One of the prominent members of the Dev Team, planetbeing, described the pirates who use our software as “predominantly in their early teens where money is scarce and time is abundant.”

Since these users have never had any intention or capability to purchase the applications whether or not cracked versions are available, developers of these apps are losing significantly less than what they believe they are to these people.

2. Another portion of our pirates are those who have the capability of purchasing iPhone apps, but not the desire. These pirates typically do not “need” any particular application for free, they just want whatever application that can provide a certain level of entertainment for them.

They are not so much making the choice between purchasing or pirating software A, but rather making the choice between pirating software A or B. So again, the profit lost attributed to this tribe of pirates has been overestimated; these pirates would not have forked over their money anyway, they would just move on.

3. Over three million devices are running our software, Installous, to download and install cracked iPhone apps. The people using these devices are Apple customers who are likely to purchase another device, purchase new Apple products, or refer their friends to Apple. As I have stated before, the people who use our services to trial iPhone applications actually help Apple more than they hurt it.

Why, you ask? If a majority of our three million users are pirates, the value in Apple’s devices is significantly higher: These millions of users, who would otherwise be incapable or unwilling to purchase apps, now have a rich source of entertainment that greatly enhances their experience with their devices.

Apple does not like piracy, but as long as piracy increases the value of jailbroken iPhones, they have no need to be passionate about stopping it. As music has shown Apple and Steve Jobs himself, DRM can always be defeated. Apple is in fact embracing piracy for what it can accomplish for their company.

4. Piracy also helps to expose an application to the masses, much like music piracy helps artists and bands get more publicity. Without cracked app sites like apptrackr, a lot of applications would be left languishing in the pits of the App Store among the rest of the 240,984 apps (at last count) available.

Only the top 100 free and paid apps and the top 10 free and paid apps in each of the 20 genres, summing up to 600 apps, get any considerable notice. A large number of apps only get to enjoy recognition from the people within the developers’ circle of influence. When they are placed on apptrackr, however, they are exposed to an extensive audience which make up millions of unique visitors a month.

Plenty of these visitors might have never discovered these apps if not for them being placed on apptrackr. Now that they have, developers stand to gain an arbitrary percentage of profit from those who choose to buy the app after trialing, rather than to not get any customers at all.

To sum up my points, the negative impact of piracy on the market has been overstated. Contrary to what people see on the surface, piracy is not truly as detrimental as developers claim. Even Apple is likely to be more concerned with unofficial unlocks than our DRM circumvention.

This article is not in any way an attempt to convince anyone, much less the Dev Team, to condone piracy, but more to demonstrate that the population has no need to feel that piracy is corrupting the concept of jailbreaking.

The community at Hackulous, for one, has never sought to blur the lines between jailbreaking and app trialing, and we do put in effort to educate our users about the difference. Our core community has always embraced the true spirit of jailbreaking, which is to free our devices from the grips of Apple’s closed platform, and while we parttake in circumventing Apple’s DRM, we have always disapproved of associating piracy with jailbreaking.

In addition, none of the Hackulous staff are pirates and our moderators are advised not to discuss nor encourage piracy. Appulous, Installous, and eventually apptrackr, were created purely for trialing purposes. I am aware that most people think we say this to save face or for plausible deniability, but it is the honest truth. We know that a large portion of our users do not use our services as intended; this is an unavoidable fact of life. There is nothing we can do about this except to shut down our services entirely, but to be frank, our legitimate users mean a lot more to us than the pirates who use our software for unintended purposes.

I would like everyone to understand and acknowledge that we would not be operating our websites and creating the tools if we were to believe that pirates are truly harming Apple or its developers. We have our conviction that they are not, and that is why we persevere.

Source: Hackulous: iPhone Pirates Don’t Hurt Jailbreaking’s Image

“We’ve reviewed µMonitor and determined that we cannot post this version of your application to the App Store at this time because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store,” Apple wrote to the developer after a 4 month review process.

This is not the first time that Apple has excluded a BitTorrent-related product from its store. In May they also banned an application designed to remotely-control the Transmission BitTorrent client for the same reasons outlined above.

Interestingly Apple has no problem allowing Usenet related applications in their store. myNZB for example is an application that is available from the App Store although it’s similar in functionality to the BitTorrent apps that were rejected.

Despite Apple’s blockade, there is still a way to get µMonitor on your iPhone. Instead of throwing months of hard work overboard, µMonitor’s developer has recently decided to bypass the Apps Store and make the application available to ‘jailbroken’ iPhone users from the Cydia repository.

Thanks to Apple, uTorrent users who want to control their torrent via an iPhone application have no other option than to jailbreak their phone. Detailed instructions on how to get µMonitor working on your phone can be found on Claudio’s website.

Source: uTorrent iPhone App Rejected by Apple, Goes Underground

Maza Digital submitted Drivetrain to Apple for approval back in April, and resubmitted the App after he made a few small UI changes. He then received an email in return saying that the review would take longer than expected.

This was followed up by a second email in which Apple rejected the application for inclusion in the App Store, telling Maza Digital;

We’ve reviewed Drivetrain and determined that we cannot post this version of your application to the App Store at this time because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

Of course, not only are all BitTorrent clients absolutely legal (people infringe copyright, not software) but Drivetrain is just an application to control a torrent client and as such goes absolutely nowhere near any copyright infringing material.

“By now I am very disillusioned with the whole AppStore process, Maza Digital told TorrentFreak in a response, adding “I find it rather ridiculous that they have rejected an app that does not do anything that may be ‘often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights’.” However, it seems that Apple has decided that everything BitTorrent related is a no go for the AppStore.

A ridiculous move by Apple and a step too far. Quick, ban Safari so no-one can use Transmission Web Interface .

Via iLounge

Source: Apple Bans BitTorrent Software

But there are other more subtle ways for the company to benefit from copyright infringement. Who remembers our article from 2008, when we showed an aXXo release being used to sell Macs in a John Lewis store? Well, now it looks like another retailer had the same idea – why spend money on real DVDs when you can just download them?

On a visit to the Rivas H2Ocio shopping mall in Madrid, Miguel Ángel Moro walked into a Saturn store. There, in the Apple section, he saw demo machines – and they were all running pirate movies.

Miguel told TorrentFreak, “This is not the first time I’ve seen this stuff in MediaMarkt/Saturn, a big consumer electronics store in Europe. They sell from computers to washing machines, including DVD and Blu-ray discs.”

Displaying their own DVDs is illegal without clearance, so they might as well grab a copy off BitTorrent and safe a few bucks – right? Sharing copyrighted files is legal in Spain, but not for commercial use which is clearly the case here.

Below is a photograph taken by Miguel of a ‘Cars’ Blu-ray movie rip running on VLC Media Player, on a Macbook, in the store.

Source: Electronics Retailer Pirates Movies to Sell Macbooks

The BitTorrent client has added a new feature that integrates Vuze with several media devices. It allows users to automatically convert and transfer downloaded videos to iTunes, and stream the files to the Xbox 360 and PS3.

“With today’s release, we’re unlocking HD content and giving it wings to get from the computer to the other screens in our lives: TV and Mobile,” Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa told TorrentFreak. “We think this is a big deal because a large majority of our users actually have these devices at home. Also, consumers want to control and own their content, an ‘Open Home Theater’, if you will.”

Vuze currently supports Apple devices including the iPhone and the iPod. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are the two gaming consoles that integrate with Vuze as well. More devices may be added in the future but no decisions have yet been made on which ones, TorrentFreak was told. In a recent poll, most Vuze users indicated that iPhone/iPod support was most wanted.

Once device support is turned on in Vuze, users can drag and drop downloaded video onto their device of choice. Vuze will then convert the video into the appropriate format and add it to the device’s library.

For iTunes, Vuze will import the video into your iTunes library so it can be transferred to your iPhone, iPod or Apple TV. For the PS3 and Xbox 360, Vuze will stream the videos from your PC or Mac directly to your game console.

The device support is a great feature for users who want to have an easy all-in-one solution that not only downloads video, but also makes it ready to play on other devices. Although Vuze has been focusing mainly on video lately, the client can still download other content as well.

It is good to see that Vuze is using the feedback from its users to improve their client, although it is impossible to please everyone and some may still prefer a more lightweight client. That said, the Vuze all-in-one solution will especially appeal to novice BitTorrent users, but even for the most die-hard users the new features will make a great addition.

Source: Vuze Integrates with iTunes, Xbox 360 and PS3

A project started by a coder named ‘SaladFork’, Crackulous was officially only available to a limited number of individuals, but it quickly gained notoriety as it makes the process of cracking software ridiculously easy. The successor to the more fiddly xCrack script, Crackulous is now being developed by ‘Angel’ and has a full GUI. All people have to do is buy an app from Apple and click a button, it’s that easy.

Although the software package was publicly released just hours ago, the source for this version (0.9) isn’t yet available. Crackulous is set to be released as open source software so that many people can contribute to its development, with original dev SaladFork commenting, “I’ve filled the source code heavily with comments explaining exactly what it’s doing and how it’s doing it. My hope is that Crackulous can be a learning resource for all the prospective iPhone developers out there, and will be able to revolutionize the cracking scene by producing a standard for application quality and functionality that can easily be reproduced to great effect.”

Currently a few people are reporting that they are experiencing difficulty getting the release to run, while others have no problems. There are also a couple of minor acknowleged bugs, but these are expected to be fixed shortly.

There was a hint of irony during November 2008 as the future of Crackulous was put in doubt. An early version of the software leaked out and SaladFork retaliated by threatening to cancel the entire project saying, “I personally think this leak is absolutely disgusting, and downright insulting.”

The latest version of Crackulous is now officially available from the Hackulous Cydia Repo. Expect it to become one of the most downloaded iPhone apps ever and, of course, Crackulous is free of charge. Let the app-avalanche begin – it could be a difficult one to stop.

Source: One-Click iPhone App Cracker Released to the Public

Instead they engaged the cracker in dialogue, and the results have proved interesting. Not least, sales are up 100% and people are donating freely.

James told TorrentFreak that after the initial disappointment, they tracked down the cracker’s email address and surprisingly he responded. “Connie read the emails I sent and thought it was really amazing that we were having a civil conversation with the guy who was directly responsible for pirating our game,” said James. “I had decided to be really nice and accommodating in the emails to have a better shot at getting the pirate to respond.”

The email exchanges are detailed in our earlier story, but it’s developments since that really shows the importance of dialogue, with James telling us that the feedback has been excellent for the company. The game was originally up for purchase on the iTunes App store, but things have changed, he notes. “We decided to release a free version supported by ads to accommodate the issues that folks were reporting with the iTunes App Store, a.k.a the ‘Crapp Store’ – no try before you buy, lack of demo versions, and too expensive.”

The game hasn’t been withdrawn from the iTunes though, with James and Connie now preferring a dual-track option for the customer – a choice to either pay for it through iTunes or download the free ad-supported version. “We feel that a free app that still provides us with revenue through advertising is the best possible solution to the issue. Ads can be annoying for some people, so we’ve left the 99 cent version out there for folks who love the game but don’t like ads. Very hopefully, this will work for us and we can use the proceeds to fund future games.”

The ad revenue is being generated through AdMob, after the company approached James and Connie with their solution. AdMob is currently offering a promotion to around 200 iPhone software developers and giving them $5,000 worth of free advertising. “The folks at AdMob were awesome,” James explained. “They got us into the promotion and we’re now utilizing all of the tools they have available, such as in-game banners, click through reporting and detection to see if someone buys your game after clicking on one of your ads.”

James also took the opportunity to tell the game’s cracker, most_uniQue, about the new, free ad-supported version. He responded saying, “People love to hate me, but that just means they don’t understand. I’m glad you try to work things out properly and I hope you get good revenue from your ads. But the thing we all would like to know is this – did this adventure boost the sale of Whack ’em All?”

Good point. Before Whack ‘em All was reported pirated, the game was getting around 10 sales each day. Now, with all the extra publicity, sales are up to 20 a day, a nice 100% increase. Piracy might be viewed as a bad thing by some, but it sure beats obscurity it seems, and with extra revenue coming in from the ad-supported version, things seem to be looking up.

Additionally, a TorrentFreak reader suggested that the developer should put up a ‘donate’ button on the site so that pirates could still show their appreciation. It’s not a huge amount, but in just a few days people donated more than $75.

most_uniQue told James that he hopes that Apple learns from this situation and allows people to try before they buy, noting that he wouldn’t be surprised if Apple contacted him at some point, while hoping it’s to thank everyone for bringing the issue to their attention.

Hopefully it’s not, “most_uniQue: Wanted dead or alive’,” he joked.

Source: How Piracy Can Boost iPhone App Sales

“So I was in my local John Lewis store a week or so back, and I was checking out their new little Apple mac area, which had lots of Macs on display, with some desks setup and other accessories. They also had some wall mounted iMacs. Imagine my surprise when getting closer to one of them to see ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest’ – ripped by Axxo playing.”

Using a ripped DVD is bit odd because this is certainly not the best promotional material. Regular DVDs or free HD-content looks much better on an iMac monitor.

One thing is clear though, aXXo’s presence has now moved beyond the Internet, and for him it must be flattering to see that commercial outlets appreciate his work. Perhaps this might motivate him to return?

The last official aXXo torrent was uploaded November 11, after that it has been awfully quiet. There were rumors that he got caught, others said he had an accident. However, the official statement is that he decided to take a break.

John Lewis was not available for comment, the MPAA probably wont appreciate it that much, but they have our support.

Update: John Lewis replied to Hexus with an official statement: “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We have fully investigated the incident and the shop has removed and destroyed the clip. We have also taken the necessary steps to ensure that the replication and publication of pirate material in any form does not take place in our shops. This incident is not reflective of our policy and we take very seriously the copyright laws and would not intentionally break any of these rules or regulations.”

Source: aXXo’s Pirated Movies Used to Promote the iMac

The mistake was apparently caused by a mix up between the production number and the broadcast number of the episodes. Stargate Atlantis is not shot in a chronological order and the fourth episode, named “Doppelganger”, was the first episode that was shot for the fourth season, it therefore carried 401 as production number. The iTunes store mistakingly thought that this was the broadcast number and offered it as the season premiere.

The wrong episode was available in the iTunes store for 24 hours before it was replaced by the real season premiere episode “Adrift”

Not surprisingly, the leaked episode – which is scheduled to air two weeks from now – is already widely available on BitTorrent and other filesharing networks. It’s not known if Apple will be compensating MGM, the production company of Stargate Atlantis, but we are sure they will be more careful next time.

Source: iTunes Store Mistakingly Leaks Stargate Atlantis Episode

The technical specifications of the device certainly make it possible. It has more than enough cpu power for it, assuming a nice, tightly coded client was written. The built in WiFi (802.11b/g) and use of the EDGE 2.75G wireless network data transfer system allows a fairly widespread availability of reception.

According to one of the developers of the ‘iPhone-binutil‘ project, going by the name ‘geohot’, the only obstacle stopping it from making an application like “iTorrent” happening is their current lack of coding ability for the iPhone. The file system is open, and media players already exist, if for nothing else than playing media from iTunes.

On of the downsides it that, for many, the 3.4Gb free on a brand new phone (or 7.4Gb, if you went for the bigger one) may not be enough to hold much data, but it all depends on what you torrent. Bigger problems are that the battery will last only in the region of 6-8 hours at best (according to Apple’s figures) which isn’t the greatest. Additionally, many users have reported the wifi connections being on the slow side as far as data transfers go. Using EDGE is a lot slower, about 30k/sec max.

Of course, the benefits are that you can carry it around with you, and you have the wide range of content available, with the benefits of torrent file’s typical pricing (free). Of course, time will tell. Meanwhile, the lack of MMS on the iPhone has been a small thorn in the side of many owners. However, there is help at hand in the form of a workaround. More details here

Source: “iTorrent”: A BitTorrent Client for your iPhone?

Slyck posted an article in which they publish statistical data they received from an anonymous source. According to these statistics uTorrent is more than twice as fast as Azureus, something that I find hard to believe.

Here’s what Slyck’s source reports:

Azureus Mac
Max Rate Seen: 297 KB/s
Average Rate: 235 KB/s
Consumed RAM: 155 MB
Average CPU: 20%

µTorrent Mac
Max Rate Seen: 840KB/s
Average Rate: 698 KB/s
Consumed RAM: 14 MB
Average CPU: 6%

Slyck received these stats from an anonymous source. Probably someone working at BitTorrent Inc because these stats are a little subjective to say the least. It is hard to get differences like this without cheating the protocol, something that Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Azureus, agrees with:

“We are not aware of any such stats, and clearly would doubt their validity. BitTorrent is a standard, and clients have, by design, limited ways to optimize transfer speeds. We have implemented features to optimize “around” the protocol, such as PeerExchange, but getting such wide variations without “bastardizing” the protocol beyond recognition (and making it not compliant/compatible in the process) make these numbers look VERY suspicious, if not ridiculous.”

I’ve been in the position to test an Alpha version of the Mac version of BitTorrent and I also tested Azureus’ Mac version and I came up with figures that clearly favor uTorrent, but not as dramatically as the statistics provided by BitTorrent Inc the anonymous source.

I decided to run my own comparison test using the exact same setup for both clients. The results are based on downloading 3 .torrent files that differed in swarm size and file size. Here’s what I found :

Azureus Mac
Max Rate Seen: 1.42 MB/s
Average Rate: 769 KB/s
Consumed RAM: 130 MB
Average CPU: 18%

µTorrent Mac
Max Rate Seen: 1.28 MB/s
Average Rate: 788 KB/s
Consumed RAM: 16 MB
Average CPU: 7%

The results are quite clear. It is hard to conclude that downloads will go faster with Azureus or uTorrent. Perhaps a difference can be found in a scientific and controlled setting, but no significant difference is observed in a real-life setting. One thing is clear though, the huge difference in download speed reported by Slyck’s anonymous source doesn’t make sense.

What we can see from both comparisons is that uTorrent for Mac, just like its Windows counterpart, uses less CPU and RAM. This is definitely a reason for me, and probably a lot of other BitTorrent users with me, to try uTorrent as soon as it’s released.

Source: uTorrent Mac vs. Azureus Mac

I work at [an Apple service provider]. Today we saw [multiple] iTunes libraries completely corrupted; looks like the culprit was Limewire not playing well with the newest version of iTunes.

All had just updated to the new version of iTunes and all had Limewire set to automatically update their iTunes library with new songs. One [library] was not salvageable, though the other two were (after much pain and suffering).

It’s believed the tip is related to the Mac versions of the software. The situation on Windows versions is unclear.

TUAW points to two threads on the Apple support forum as a starting point for concerned users 1 2

LimeWire users with difficulties can find support on the Gnutella forum.

According to a recent NPD Group report, Limewire users took a 62 percent share of p2p music downloads in 2006, with the average user downloading 309 tracks.

Source: Limewire Breaks iTunes 7.1

The Quicktime servers are crippled right now, good thing we still have BitTorrent. Note that this is not the official video.

And if you just can’t get enough, check out the The Complete Apple Keynote Collection, courtesy of The Pirate Bay.

Source: Download the iPhone Introduction on BitTorrent

Why is piracy widespread in Asia?
This question has two simple answers. Firstly, there aren’t viable legal competitors. Piracy can only be overcome if the customer feels he/she is getting something better by buying content, instead of downloading it for free. There are moral issues involved as well, and each person has a different breaking point. For some it might be being able to purchase songs from the iTunes Store, for others it might be getting a better deal, like an all-you-can-download monthly subscription service.

Secondly, Asia comprises mostly of ‘third world’ countries, most of whose citizens can’t afford the exuberant rates companies like Sony ($700 for a 512MB mp3 player) charge for their products. Multi-nationals are slowly understanding this and are starting to sell their products at a cheaper rate in Asia. The XBOX 360 is one of these. Also, many countries charge extraordinary import taxes on goods. This makes an imported good purchased in the grey market almost 1/3 the price of one bought legally. For example, iPods bought in the US and sold in India are considerably cheaper than those sold by authorised dealers here. Wired News published a mostly accurate piece on the booming grey market of iPods in India.

Pirates will be pirates
Pirates will be pirates. But people who want to purchase digital content legally will only be pirates if they have no other choice. Accusing an entire continent of being law-breakers is outrageous. Everyone’s favourite example these days is the iTunes Store. If Apple would expand into more countries, I am sure we would see a noticeable drop in the amount of music shared over P2P networks. Companies like Apple need to start trusting Asia. They can only gain from this. Piracy will continue with or without them. Their presence might actually reduce it. Apple Asia’s marketing director said that they “cannot comment on the specifics but it is true that iTunes is not available in Asia” and that the continent’s attitude towards copyrighted material is “relaxed.”

In April we reported on how a leading Indian newspaper, the Hindustan Times was openly promoting BitTorrent and the downloading of copyrighted files. Do they have another good legal alternative to recommend to their tech-savvy readers? No, they do not.

Asia now has the money. We’re just not being recognised as a potential market. Don’t turn away from us. We don’t want to be forced to pirate. “Do you want more frickin’ pirates?” asked Joey Alarilla, writing for CNET Asia. My answer is no, we do not.

Source: Asia ‘pirates’ out of necessity, not choice

Navin told Jemina Kiss at the Mipcom festival:

“Apple is a phenomenal company – we’ve hired engineers from Apple and know the caliber of the talent and creativity. Fundamentally Steve Jobs has challenged an entire value chain, whether it’s publishers or the consumer electronics industry. But Apple is only as good as the weakest link because that’s all forged and locked in together. If people stopped wanting iPods because a better piece of hardware came along, the whole thing would fall apart.”

Navin continues:

“We think the second phase of iTunes and digital distribution is not about Apple, but about the best hardware, the best content and the best delivery system – and that’s BitTorrent. We’re not hamstrung by a hardware business. We care about delivery and we care about content, and as long as there is good content in the world – which is guaranteed – we’ll be successful.”

Navin admitted that he always wanted to work at Apple. He ended up at BitTorrent, but perhaps he can try to work with Apple now. Apple is not ignoring the power of BitTorrent, they have plans to include a BitTorrent powered content delivery system in OSX.

Source: BitTorrent vs. Apple

The widget is created by TyrantBuilt, he also included quick links to TorrentFreak’s latest articles, and the TorrentFreak homepage.

The widget currently supports the following sites:

* bitoogle.com
* BitTorrent.com
* fenopy.com
* btjunkie.org
* demonoid.com
* hypertorrent.com
* btmon.com
* mininova.org
* myBitTorrent.com
* newtorrents.info
* thepiratebay.org
* torrentportal.com
* torrentreactor.net
* torrentspy.com
* torrentz.com
* yotoshi.com

This is the first release of the widget, TyrantBuilt is planning to add more BitTorrent search engines in the near future. If you’re missing your favorite site, or if you want to suggest an option, please drop a comment and we will pass it through to him.

For now, enjoy.

Source: Multi BitTorrent Site Search Widget for OSX

Fenopy is constantly looking for features that may enhance the “user experience”, and usability of the site. Last month they implemented their “share on your blog” feature, a visually attractive way for bloggers to share torrents, without running a tracker.

TyrantBuilt, the developer of the widget told TorrentFreak that he will release updated versions on a weekly basis. He even offered to make a TorrentFreak widget for the latest articles, pretty cool.

Fenopy Widget (Macupdate)

Source: BitTorrent Search / Spy Widget for Mac OSX

The interview:

TorrentFreak: What made you decide to develop BitRocket?

Julian: I wanted to develop a BitTorrent client for Mac OS for a while now. Just before I went to WWDC I had some spare time and started researching my options. Initially I thought using the libTransmission core would be a good base. I worked with that for a week or 2 and realized that it just wasn’t powerful enough for my needs. I have since scrapped all of that and rebuilt the client from scratch based around Rasterbar’s libtorrent core. That is what we see today as BitRocket.

TorrentFreak: Many people criticise libTransmission for being not up to the mark. What didn’t you find good/powerful enough about it?

Julian: It’s a very unfinished and unpolished library. There are some major tracker announce issues which are frowned upon by quite a few tracker site administrators. There is no UDP tracker support, no .torrent creation support, no multi-tracker support, no Kademlia DHT, no Selective Downloading, the list goes on.

TorrentFreak: Even as a beta release BitRocket is being praised for its intuitive user-interface and its many features. What do you think makes BitRocket different and better than any of other clients out there?

Julian: I don’t like to use the term “better”, it’s different that is for sure. BitRocket is not being built to be a slim client such as Mainline or Transmission. It’s out to be an alternative to advanced clients such as Azureus, that is the route I am headed.

TorrentFreak: A few bloggers have written about BitRocket and suggested features like searching without leaving the application. What new features do you plan to implement in upcoming releases?

Julian: I like the idea of searching within-side the application, however the thing that worries me is that it would rely on basically screen-scrapping torrent sites. This is bad because the BitRocket developers would always have to make sure that was working and if it failed because of a simple change to a torrent site then that would require an immediate “patch and release”. Personally I would like to see a DHT layer that allows for distributed horizonless torrent searching, however we have seen this fail with applications such as eXeem, but I believe it can be done effectively. Beyond this at some point most of the Azureus features should be implemented, it’s my role model.

TorrentFreak: Where are you from? Is BitRocket a side-project or are you working full-time on it?

Julian: I currently reside in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. BitRocket is a side project, I work full time on the Mac OS version of Gizmo Project.

TorrentFreak: What’s your standpoint on file-sharing and the BitTorrent protocol?

Julian: Heh, it’s funny especially with Open Source software. Developers are all concerned about their licensing schemes and enforcing them, and on the flip side your building an application that in retrospect goes against licensing all together, for the most part. I fully support file-sharing and the BitTorrent protocol whether it is downloading the latest Ubuntu iso or the hot movie of the summer. Don’t get me wrong I have purchased and and currently own over 200 DVD’s, most of which were bought because I first downloaded the torrent. I think the mpaa needs to rethink their tactics, they still “do not get it”.

Stay tuned for our upcoming review of BitRocket.

Source: Interview With the Developer of BitRocket

Based on the feature list it looks like Bitrocket could give the existing BitTorrent clients some tough competition.

Bitrocket supports essential features like:

DHT: Support for “trackerless” torrents. DHT keeps the torrent alive if the tracker goes offline.
Torrent Creator: Create and share torrents.
RSS: Bitrocket has RSS support. With RSS you can automatically download your favorite torrents.
UPnP Port Mapping: If your router supports UPnP, you don’t need to forward any ports.

Other features like selective downloading, http-seeding, and multi tracker support are supported by the library Bitrocket uses might be implemented in the near future.

Stay tuned for a Bitrocket review.

Bitrocket Homepage

Source: Bitrocket: New OSX BitTorrent Client

In this article we will highlight the most popular Mac BitTorrent applications and compare their features.

Let’s start with the granddaddy of them all, Bram Cohen’s self-titled BitTorrent application. It’s gotten kind of confusing since he named the protocol, his company and his application all BitTorrent. BitTorrent OSX is a very (and I mean very) basic application. It’s as feature-full as Safari’s download box and that’s not saying much. Now some people wouldn’t mind something like that, but if you’re looking for simplicity Transmission is a much better choice. BitTorrent OSX also takes an age to start up on my MacBook Pro.

Transmission is my current Mac B.T. client of choice. It’s an Open Source project, maintained by the developer of the popular Mac DVD ripping application, HandBrake. Transmission does its job well. A neat feature it offers is the ability to view download and upload rates in the dock, so I don’t even have to open up the program to check how my downloads are going. Another great thing Transmission does is copy the .torrent file to its support folder, then trash the original file from my desktop thereby leaving no mess of files behind for me to clean up. Now just like everything Transmission has its flaws, the biggest of which is that Demonoid, a leading BitTorrent directory has banned it on ocassion! They say it doesn’t adhere to set standards.

Azureus is a cross-platfrom BitTorrent client written in Java. It’s slightly slower than all the other native Mac B.T. applications, but has features none of the others can boast of. Therefore it remains one of the most popular clients, even on the Mac. The one reason I have both Azureus and Transmission installed at any given time is because Transmission doesn’t allow me to select which files I want from a particular torrent. We call the feature ‘Selective Downloading’ and Azureus is sadly the only popular Mac B.T. client that lets me do that! There are also a number of great plug-ins for Azureus that let you do all sorts of things like subscribe to RSS feeds with .torrent enclosures.

Tomato Torrent is a very plain alternative, seriously lacking in eye-candy and begging for a new icon (and maybe a new name too). It’s based on the official BitTorrent client. I think it desrves a mention because I know a few people who swear by it. It comes with an AppleScript file that you can place in folders you want to download to. When you want to download a torrent to a specific folder, you just drag the .torrent file onto the piece of AppleScript to initiate the transfer. One pro is that it’s an extremely light client that hogs very little RAM. It’s the closet thing to uTorrent on the Mac.

Bits on Wheels is a slightly out-dated (last updated Sep. ’05), yet popular Mac BitTorrent client. It claims to be “the first 100% native BitTorrent client for the Macintosh” as it is written in Objective-C and Cocoa.

Bits on Wheels is freeware but not Open Source. One of its main features is a visual 3D Swarm with which you can observe what’s actually going on under the hood, how many seeders and leechers you’re connected to and the bits transferring between everyone. Bits on Wheels is very OSeXy (heh!), it’s how I’d imagine the default OS X BitTorrent downloader to look if there was one. If not to use the first native OS X B.T. client, I’d download it just to fly around in 3D chasing bits.

Conclusion
Clearly, feature-wise Azureus is the winner. Bits on Wheels and Transmission are both great alternatives to BitTorrent OSX. If only Bits on Wheels would be updated more often and Transmission become standards-compliant and both of them allow Selective Downloading, they might start taking back some market share. And lets not forget the light weighted tomato. Tomato Torrent could use a few more features and better interface, but it too is a great BitTorrent client.

Worthy Mentions
Acquisition is a Mac p2p program like Limewire that accesses popular file-sharing networks like Gnutella to search for files. It also doubles as a BitTorrent client. Although I have never been able to achieve superior download speeds that I do with Transmission or Azureus, it’s iTunes-integration is sweet.

From version 9 Opera the popular cross-platform browser has implemented a simple, built-in BitTorrent client. It’s supposedly “targeted at novice users.”

Windows Clients Comparison
BitTorrent Client Features (wiki)

Source: Mac BitTorrent Clients Reviewed

But it looks like things changed for the better. Gary from Isohunt.com came to the rescue…. At Podtropolis we read:

Well, I just hate good community and nice design going to waste, so here I am, rescuing sites again. I’m Gary, aka. IH at isoHunt.com. As Andrew have said, the site was having financial trouble with keeping up hosting costs, and I happen to have servers for it. So Podtropolis will be joining brethens at isoHunt.com and TorrentBox.com. We are working out the kinks in getting the site back up to its former glory, so stay tuned.

By the way, you can see a CBC interview with gary over here

Source: Isohunt Adopts Podtropolis

According to an article in Variety Apple CEO Steve Jobs wants the movies to be $9.99, but the Studio’s are giving him a hard time:

Studios have resisted Jobs’ initial insistence that feature films be priced at the easy-to-remember $9.99. After all, library titles are typically sold to Wal-Mart and Best Buy significantly cheaper than new releases. Studios now are trying to convince Apple to sell similar content at multiple price points, something the company has never done.

the article continues:

Also complicating the deals: The studios are working out terms with a host of other distributors, including Amazon, Movielink and BitTorrent, in part to make sure that one company does not dominate. It seems that none of the studios wants to be first in making a deal with Apple. Disney would be the logical leader, but even they are cautious, fearing it will look like in-house synergy rather than a business decision.

And the rumors go on, there are “insiders” suggesting that the movie store wil be “BitTorrent powered, and that people can earn credits if they share bandwidth. This could go through the torrent client that will be included in OS X 10.5 “Leopard”.

Last month it was announced that BitTorrent users could save for free goodies from the Itunes store, if they help to distribute software updates.

Source: Apple’s Movie Download Store