To users of Cydia, Icy and Appulous, alternatives to Apple’s App Store are nothing new, but soon there will be a new and unqiue player in the market. Promising to become “the most beautiful application repository on the market” appDowner will be the first App Store competitor to use BitTorrent technology.
A site thought to be the source of up to 60% of cracked iPhone apps added to the Appulous app database has ceased its operations. The site, home to well known cracker ‘kidmoneys’, is believed to have made use of hacked iTunes gift cards to maintain the supply of apps, but now says it will stop its operations.
With his tongue firmly in his cheek, Kid Rock has been commenting on file-sharing again but says he doesn’t need to steal himself, because he’s rich – but not rich enough, as it turns out. Kid Rock announced that he’s boycotting iTunes because he says between Apple and the labels, they’re keeping all the money.
The Flashbulb, aka Benn Jordan, became so outraged when he discovered that iTunes was effectively pirating his music, that he uploaded copies of his latest album to BitTorrent. TorrentFreak caught up with Benn to learn more about the decision to stop distributors and ‘coked-up label reps’ from getting all the cash.
Apple has made a huge mistake by offering the fourth episode of the popular science fiction TV-show “Stargate Atlantis” instead of the season premiere via its iTunes store. Soon after the episode leaked it spread to BitTorrent and other P2P networks.
It’s normal these days for anti-piracy companies to target P2P protocols and applications such as BitTorrent, LimeWire and eDonkey. Targeting the newsgroups or Usenet is fairly unusual but add that to the fact that one particular company isn’t going after pirates but the original content purchaser, this approach seems relatively unique.
An anonymous Apple insider has tipped off the Unofficial Apple Weblog that he believes the corrupted iTunes libraries they have been seeing recently are caused by a conflict between iTunes 7.1 and LimeWire.
A CBS poll shows that people who download TV shows actually watch more TV. People miss less shows because they can watch their favorite shows whenever they want, and this results in more fans.
The content industries, specifically those in the US, accuse Asia of being the polestar of all piracy. Is this really the case? Or do otherwise law-abiding Asians have no other choice, no other legal alternatives?
The “Tape it off the Internet” project is currently in the final stages of the closed Beta program. TIOTI might very well be a realistic representation of what the future of TV will look like.
Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent predicts a backlash against Apple’s ‘locked-in’ ecosystem in the next three years.
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, [...]
