According to a GameCrastinate report, this week thousands of BitTorrent users inadvertently became infected with Bitcoin-mining malware.

The problem apparently stemmed back to a leaked PC version of the much-anticipated game Watch Dogs from Ubisoft Montreal. While there was never any suggestion that the company had anything to do with it, the assumption has been that whoever leaked the game thought they could make a few dollars by installing the trojan on pirates’ machines.

While there appears to be very little hard proof that the trojan ever existed or indeed spread on the suggested scale, the idea that tens or even hundreds of thousands of computers could be hijacked to generate mountains of dollars for a third-party gained a lot of traction in the press.

The idea of a sneaky trojan install is likely to annoy just about everyone, but what if a similar process could be put to a more creative and authorized use? What if a developer allowed his game to be shared online for free but in return installed a Bitcoin miner on downloaders’ machines to generate revenue to pay for the software?

That question was emailed to TorrentFreak this week and while we had our doubts over the idea’s viability, it could be pretty cool if it somehow came to pass. We promised to find out whether this was a crazy idea or a flash of genius.

Last year, Ars Technica bought a dedicated miner for $274 capable of magically churning out around $20 in bitcoin every day. Sure it gobbled up $100 a year in electricity, but as a financial prospect it was a pretty safe bet.

Gamers tend not to own dedicated mining hardware, but people playing a game like Watch Dogs more often that not will have rather juicy graphics cards on board which could be coaxed into a bit of mining. Question is, would they be up to the task?

Roger Ver, an angel investor in several Bitcoin startups including Blockchain.info, BitcoinStore and BitPay, has been referred to in the press as the Bitcoin Jesus. In his opinion, could the “Watch Dog hackers” who sparked this story make much money with their illegal trojan?

“It depends a lot on the hardware of the machines, but to the hacker, it is all profit since he doesn’t have to pay for any of the hardware or electricity costs,” Ver told TF.

So with free money for the hackers established, we come back to the key question: could a Bitcoin miner installed with the permission of the downloader generate enough fractions of a single bitcoin on a single machine to keep the developer happy, in Watch Dogs’ case, to the tune of around $60? Ver was quick to disappoint.

“This isn’t viable any longer,” he told us. “There are so many people mining bitcoins using specialized ASIC hardware that a home computer isn’t very effective any more.”

So the idea of mining Bitcoin in order to generate revenue from people who can’t or won’t pay for their games is a no-go? It appears so.

“A few years ago, coinlab.com was trying to do this, but I don’t think this is practical any more due to the difficulty in mining bitcoin,” Ver concludes.

Back to the drawing board then….

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The Frostwire client, which can be used in the same way as uTorrent or Vuze for example, now includes a torrent creation feature which supports Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and PayPal donations.

Once a torrent is created and loaded into FrostWire, downloaders are given a new set of icons indicating which crypto-currency donation options are programmed into the release.

Clicking any of these takes the downloader to a custom donation page, meaning that there is a direct connection between a torrent and a monetization option, something that has been absent from torrents since their creation well over a decade ago.

Although software and a music single were used as a demo for the tipping system, no band had taken the plunge and used it for one of their albums. A month later and hip hop band Ain’t No Love have made history, becoming the first ever band to offer a full album for free on BitTorrent, using an integrated Bitcoin tipping mechanism.

“Using Bitcoin has definitely widened our reach to people who don’t necessarily listen to our type of music, but like that we get down with Bitcoin, and started listening to our music, which is a cool thing in itself,” says lead singer Saidah Conrad.

Having worked hard on a Bitcoin implementation, FrostWire say they are pleased to welcome the band on board.

“Ain’t No Love’s Tears of Joy comes to FrostWire during a very special time – as a first ever .torrent album to support crypto-currency donations such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin (as well as the more traditional PayPal),” the company said.

“So if you love the band just as much as we do, be sure to check them out on Facebook, share the video, spread the news on Twitter or simply show some support by giving a little tip, whatever you can, any way you can.”

The other neat thing is that all donations go directly to the band as there is no middleman, and FrostWire is promising to keep it that way forever.

The torrent for Ain’t No Love’s Tears of Joy can be downloaded here.

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The possibilities are intriguing, from artists being able to seed their own content to the public and getting paid directly by fans, to curators of already free content being rewarded for their distribution efforts.

In file-sharing circles there has been a traditional reliance upon PayPal transactions to show appreciation, but with the rise of alternative cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, new avenues have opened up. Many sites, The Pirate Bay included, accept donations in Bitcoin and Litecoin, and some artists have adopted the currencies for fans who want to chip-in.

Despite these developments there remains a disconnect between downloading content and a subsequent donation, meaning that split-second urges to hand over cash in appreciation often have time to cool. That, however, is about to change.

Following their teaser in December 2013, a brand new build of FrostWire’s BitTorrent client (Windows, Mac, Linux) now includes torrent creation supporting not only Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and PayPal donations, but also the selection of appropriate Creative Commons licenses for delivered content.

We’ll bring you comment from the FrostWire team in just a moment, but first let’s look at the simple process from the creator’s perspective.

After loading up FrostWire one simply goes about creating a .torrent file in the usual way, by selecting the tracking options and pointing it to the relevant content on the host computer. If the torrent creator would then like to give fans the option to donate, two extra screens appear.

The first allows the user to select an appropriate Creative Commons license under which to spread the content.

The next screen configures payment/tips/donation options, whether Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, PayPal, or a mix-and-match between all four.

Obviously the creator/distributor will now need to seed, at least until plenty of other people download and start sharing the content.

For the downloader it’s simply a case of installing the correct version of FrostWire (this is a must at the moment until other clients implement the feature) and clicking on a donation-enabled .torrent file.

FrostWire have made a couple available for testing, one of which is a track by FriCtrl labeled Bitcoin_Revolution. Downloading that reveals a box next to the torrent title labeled “Tips/Donations”, with Bitcoin’s logo highlighted. Hovering over reveals the text shown below.

Once an option is clicked, FrostWire launches a payment process which opens a web page containing the target wallet’s cryptocurrency address in QR, hyperlink, and text form.

Of course, there will be those who immediately see possibilities for monetizing piracy. But, speaking with TorrentFreak, FrostWire’s Angel Leon says their objectives actually run counter to that.

“We believe piracy is best fought by giving consumers the options of getting legal content, and we want to build solutions that use this technology to empower content creators no matter how big or small they are. We want them to try BitTorrent as an alternative, an additional channel. We think it will be easier to convince more and more artists to join us with the new possibilities,” Leon told TF.

“Putting it bluntly, Bitcoin and BitTorrent integration give us the tools to create the P2P equivalents of iTunes and Netflix, which are centralized venues which work great for big content but not so much for the little guys who have to jump through many hoops to get in.” 

Leon says that the end result could be a decentralized media store “owned by nobody and available to all,” one which allows consumers to deal directly with content creators “without the corporate interests, censorship issues and draconian rules that make it hard for the little guy to publish his work.”

The possibilities don’t always have to be commercial either.

“Just imagine a BitTorrent bundle powered by this technology in which Bono from U2 shares free songs or a free video documentary to raise awareness and collect Bitcoin donations for the (Red) foundation to further the fight against HIV worldwide,” the FrostWire team teases.

Further information, including the experimental builds and info on how to activate .torrent-enabled donations, can be found here.

^{Photo: Steve Garfield}

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The Massachusetts Pirate Party – one of the few that has managed to negotiate the US’s labyrinthine laws to become registered – is allowed to collect Bitcoin donations.

A few days ago the Pirates received a response back from the Director of the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF).

“A political committee can accept contributions in Bitcoins,” it said, marking a strong positive for the use of the cryptocurrency. However, the Bitcoin blessing is not without its share of restrictions.

As with any other donation, Bitcoins can only come from a US citizen or permanent resident and there is an annual limit of $500 per person.

In addition, within five days the Bitcoins have to be converted into US dollars “through a high-volume public Bitcoin exchange open to transactions in the US.”

Another restriction is that the Pirate Party cannot spend the Bitcoins themselves. In this, it’s considered no different from stocks and shares.

Perhaps less favored by potential Bitcoin donors is the requirement to have an accurate name and residential address for every donation. This is somewhat of a blow for its advocates, but standard procedure for political contributions.

Now that the approval is in, the Massachusetts Pirate Party aim to be ready to accept donations in Bitcoin within the next two weeks.

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

Dozens of prominent sites and trackers, including The Pirate Bay, have added support for Bitcoin donations in recent months. Perhaps more excitingly, several BitTorrent developers are exploring options to integrate the currency more closely into BitTorrent software.

The people behind FrostWire are working hard to add Bitcoin address support to torrent meta-data, so users can send donations to content creators and tracker owners, directly from the client.

“The idea is to let users enter an optional Bitcoin address and suggested donation amount along with the torrent they’re about to create on FrostWire,” FrostWire‘s Angel Leon tells TorrentFreak.

“When FrostWire encounters a .torrent with the Bitcoin address field set, FrostWire will be able to display a Bitcoin icon on the transfer row in the GUI. When clicked, FrostWire could try to open a Bitcoin client, or take the user to a website which will enable them to copy the address, or scan a QR code,” Leon adds.

According to the FrostWire team this Bitcoin integration will encourage content creators to share, and let the fans show some love and support to their favorite artists. In addition to showing donation buttons in BitTorrent clients, torrent sites can also show this information in their search results.

The FrostWire team has pitched the idea to other developers who responded positively. The next step is to submit an official “BitTorrent Enhancement Proposal” (BEP) where Bitcoin metadata will become part of the core BitTorrent protocol.

The proposal will enable developers to integrate Bitcoin even further, making it possible for clients to talk to the Bitcoin network and come up with new business models for content creators.

FrostWire, for example, plans to add a Bitcoin wallet to their client so users can easily send donations to tracker operators or content creators.

“Our implementation plan includes adding a simplified Bitcoin wallet to FrostWire, users can send Bitcoins to their FrostWire Bitcoin wallet which can then be used to support their favorite content creators,” Leon says.

However, these direct donations are just one of the many possibilities Bitcoin integration will offer. Another option would be to allow creators to set an amount people will have to pay before the torrent can be shared. While this paywall idea is definitely not the main motivation behind bringing Bitcoin to BitTorrent, it does open up endless possibilities to monetize content within the BitTorrent ecosystem.

“I think it’d be a great evolutionary step for BitTorrent as a whole, deep Bitcoin integration could be what the Movie Rental industry was to VCRs, for BitTorrent and the big media industry. They will have to see that it’s a pretty darn attractive proposition being able to collect all that revenue without paying for merchant fees and not even pay for the bandwidth to distribute the content.”

For now, the FrostWire’s team first step is to discuss the BEP proposal with other developers in the BitTorrent community forums. When there is agreement on the finer details they will submit an official proposal.

But whether it’s through an official protocol extension or not, FrostWire is moving full stream ahead with their plans to integrate Bitcoin.

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The Pirate Bay also made it onto the list and the RIAA points out that despite the criminal convictions of its founders, the site continues to operate. The identities of the current administrators of the site remain a mystery to the music industry group.

“The true operators of the site remain unknown,” the RIAA writes. “The convicted individuals claimed the site is owned by a company based in the Seychelles, although no evidence has been provided.”

Interestingly, the RIAA also brings up the fact that The Pirate Bay is now accepting donations through the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Litecoin. This apparently complicates law enforcement efforts to track and seize funds of the torrent site.

“In April 2013, the site started accepting donations from the public by Bitcoin, a digital currency, which operates using peer-to-peer technology,” RIAA notes.

“There are no central authority or banks involved which makes it very difficult to seize or trace Bitcoin funds. In May 2013, the site also started accepting Litecoin, another peer-to-peer based internet currency.”

Bitcoin does indeed make it harder to seize funds, as law enforcement would need access to the computer where the wallet is kept. However, tracing where the Pirate Bay donations go isn’t all that hard. In fact, all transactions are visible to the public and we can today reveal where some of the Pirate Bay donations went.

In total, TPB has raised close to 100 Bitcoins spread over two addresses, which is roughly $20,000 at the current exchange rate. A quick look at the current wallet shows that The Pirate Bay received 64 Bitcoins which were all spent elsewhere.

As can be seen below, most recently 8.97 Bitcoins were spent on a fundraiser for a public audit of the open source encryption software TrueCrypt. Before that, part of the donations were spent on a charity rally from Dover to Mongolia. Of course, Bitcoin addresses can also be used anonymously so it’s not always possible to identify or trace the recipients.

TorrentFreak talked to The Pirate Bay team who told us that they don’t manage the Bitcoin donations themselves. They are grouped into one fund with donations to other projects, such as the PublicBitTorrent tracker, and end up in a central fund that’s managed by someone from the Pirate Party.

Considering the above, RIAA’s comments regarding the Bitcoin donations make it look much more suspicious than reality shows. But perhaps that’s exactly what the labels want to achieve?

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

While all of these mechanisms still exist today, there has been a tightening of restrictions.

Pressure is being applied to advertisers like never before and outfits such as PayPal are clamping down on payment processing for file-sharing sites. Unless they successfully pass through PayPal’s pre-approval system, facilities can be withdrawn in an instant.

File-hosting sites have suffered a great deal from this new regime too, and the signs are that private torrent sites – who rely heavily on donations – are also feeling the pain. Both are generally unwelcome to do business with PayPal and the signs are that companies such as Mastercard and Visa are also hardening their stances too.

However, as these forces come into play, sites are looking to augment their income by other means and as we’ve seen recently the crypto-currency BitCoin is appearing more regularly on file-sharing sites and services.

More and more VPN and seedbox companies are accepting BitCoin payments and last week The Pirate Bay added their BitCoin link to the site’s main page.

The site has never accepted donations from its users but the decision to add this anonymous chip-in option has turned out well. In just seven days the site has received a total of 174 Bitcoin donation transactions with a value today of around $2,000, a decent amount that could stretch out to more than $100,000 over the next 12 months.

While BitCoin (BTC) is definitely the number one player in the crypto-currency market, there are other options, some of which claim technical improvements over BTC making them more usable on a day to day basis. The Pirate Bay has just added donation support for one such currency – LiteCoin.

LiteCoin is a peer-to-peer currency based on the BitCoin protocol and is the number two player in the market. One LTC is currently worth just over $3.70, a far cry from a single BTC’s value of around $140 at the time of writing.

Nevertheless, according to its creators LiteCoin (LTC) boasts a couple of advantages. Unlike BitCoin, LiteCoin can still be mined on consumer hardware, and where BitCoin transaction times can sit between ten minutes and an hour, LTC takes a couple of minutes.

At the time of writing The Pirate Bay had received 50.6 LTC so getting rich by this mechanism will take a considerable time yet. Still, it’s money they would’ve never had and when added to the BitCoins already coming in it helps to pay the bills.

The question now is that considering the building pressure from authorities and payment processing companies, how long will it take for currencies such as BitCoin and LiteCoin to become a viable means of keeping file-sharing sites alive. Adaption and evolution in response to aggressive market forces isn’t only something that entertainment industry companies have to think about.

Know a torrent or file-sharing related site that accepts BitCoin, LiteCoin or similar currency? Please let us know.

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

All this time the BitTorrent site has relied on banner advertisements and has never accepted money from the public.

There was the Sealand money drive, and occasionally The Pirate Bay encouraged users to spend money on pirate swag or their affiliated VPN service, but direct donations were never an option.

This changed today. The Pirate Bay is now listing a Bitcoin address in the footer of all its webpages. While there are no instructions attached to the string of alphanumeric characters, it is assumed that the torrent site is inviting the public to share some wealth.

Using Bitcoin makes sense for the mysterious and privacy concerned Pirate Bay operators. After all, the crypto-currency can’t be seized by the authorities, nor is it easy to find out who is keeping the bounty.

All Bitcoin transactions go from one anonymous peer to another and don’t require a middleman, much like BitTorrent.

Thus far the silent donation drive appears to be a great success. In just over a day 73 transactions were transferred into Pirate Bay’s purse, adding up to a healthy 5.56 BTC. At the current exchange rate this is good for $700 but this can vary quite a bit from hour to hour.

The fact that all donations are visible for the rest of the world is perhaps also one of the major drawbacks. The Pirate Bay appears to be using just one address for now, which makes it very easy for the public to track the billions of dollars that may come in.

For now, however, this doesn’t seem to bother The Pirate Bay too much.

Update: EZTV (and ezRSS) has also added Bitcoin donations. A trend is emerging.

Update: Standalone trackers OpenBittorrent, PublicBitTorrent and istole have added a Bitcoin address as well. Torrent storage caches Zoink and Torrage have joined in as well.

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

As a result, more and more solutions are coming to market that aim to give freedom back to file-sharers while increasing performance and anonymity.

With their own unique skill sets the popularity of seedboxes and VPNs has grown tremendously in recent years, but for those with slightly different needs there are alternatives. Today we take a look at a new service which aims to offer performance, security and convenience, backed up by the anonymity of BitCoin.

BitFetch is a remote BitTorrent downloading service operating entirely within any browser with no torrent client needed. Since it also has its own search engine there is no need to visit a torrent site either, meaning that blocked sites are a thing of the past.

“I created BitFetch as an alternative to BitcoinTorrentz, since its owner went MIA since October and the site was down most of the time,” the owner of BitFetch told TorrentFreak.

The BitFetch interface is clean with a single box requesting one of three types of input.

The first option is simply to enter a search term. We chose TPB AFK and were greeted with 13 short pages of results, conveniently ordered by number of seeds.

Users who already have a magnet link in their clipboard can simply paste it into BitFetch. Equally, those who have a torrent file on their computer can upload it using the same tools.

When ‘fetch’ is clicked BitFetch joins the torrent swarm in question and grabs the files requested by the user and stores them on its own servers. Since users of BitFetch never enter the BitTorrent swarm, privacy is never comprised. This part of the process was so quick on the 974MB file we chose that we had no time to take a screenshot.

Once the files are stored by BitFetch it’s simply a case of transferring them to the host PC. Clicking download brings up a box which allows the user to have all files compressed into a convenient single ZIP file download. Alternatively any of the files from the original torrent can be selected to avoid downloading files that aren’t needed.

We opted to ZIP which took a few seconds and after choosing a hard drive location the subsequent download was on its way. The beauty here is that downloads take place over HTTPs which unlike BitTorrent is not regularly throttled by ISPs and is encrypted by default.

Just like any decent seedbox or VPN service, BitFetch costs money to use. Don’t let that put you off though. All TorrentFreak readers can test the service out for free – we’ll tell you how to access that in a moment. Second, BitFetch wants its users to stay as anonymous as possible and to this end only accepts payment in BitCoins.

“I always thought it was a great idea to take advantage of the instant nature, non-existent fees and pseudoanonymity of Bitcoin for services like this, especially in this day and age where governments and ISPs are the puppets of copyright groups,” BitFetch explains.

“I think that in the coming years BitCoin is going to become absolutely huge. People are slowly waking up to the fact that fiat currencies are a joke and Bitcoin actually puts the power back into their hands.”

Since we’re on the subject of privacy it makes sense to outline what information BitFetch stores on its users. The information is limited to an account token, total bytes downloaded, total BitCoin deposited and last date using the service. Torrent hashes are tied to account tokens only while transfers take place and are deleted once complete. No IP addresses, browser headers, BitCoin sending addresses or other data is saved.

TorrentFreak readers can test the BitFetch service completely free of charge by following this link. It’s limited to 2GB per person for the 24 hours following the publication of this article with no limits on the number of torrents fetched.

After this period users will have to top up with BitCoins. It’s a pay-as-you-go system which means that no credits are wasted at the end of a month as is the case with subscription packages.

Update: For those who are concerned about BitTorrent etiquette, BitFetch’s owner clarifies that all files are properly seeded. “Bitfetch tries to keep a ratio above 1. In fact, in the last 2 months the average ratio has been 1.62 (total BT bytes out / total BT bytes in),” he writes.

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