After a decade-and-a-half of consumers crying out for content to be made available online in a timely fashion, only now are there truly encouraging signs that the entertainment companies are at least on the right track, with the music industry making better progress than most.

But with its emphasis on keeping theater, PPV, DVD and other revenue channels sacred and in a pretty strict sequence, Hollywood has other ideas. The studios are still years away from debuting all movies online and in theaters on the same day which inevitably leads to piracy.

This week, however, an MPA-affiliated anti-piracy group claimed that having an early online release only leads to movies being pirated more.

The debate surrounds the Lars von Trier movie Nymphomaniac [trailer:NSFW], a controversial two-part drama starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and featuring Christian Slater, Uma Thurman and Willem Dafoe. It documents the decades-long destructive sex life of its lead character, Joe.

The movie had its theatrical release in its native Denmark on Christmas Day 2013 but no copy appeared on torrent sites. Usually a movie would then get released in theaters in other countries, but instead it appeared on the U.S. version of iTunes on March 6, 2014. Shortly after the movie appeared illegally online, and quickly became a bit of a hit.

Anti-piracy group Rights Alliance said it hired US-based MarkMonitor to track downloads of the movie and discovered that in the first two weeks after airing on iTunes, the movie was illegally downloaded more than 283,600 times. By March 24 that number had increased to almost 349,000 downloads.

Commenting on the findings, lawyer and Rights Alliance chief Maria Fredenslund said that the large number of illegal downloads go towards dispelling the notion that people download less when content is made available quickly online.

“We often hear the story that if only the movies came out earlier in the legal market, then it would reduce piracy on the web,” Fredenslund told DR.dk.

“Here we see that the number of illegal downloads actually explodes while the film is being made available on the U.S. iTunes.”

But while there can be little doubt that the copies currently circulating online are from U.S. VOD sources, stating that an online release caused all this piracy isn’t really the full picture. What Rights Alliance didn’t mention was that the movie didn’t hit U.S. theaters until March 21, which left a two-week plus window in which piracy could thrive.

Also complicating matters is that distributor Magnolia Pictures only released the movie to 22 theaters on March 21, with just another 17 gaining access today. The rest will have to wait well into April, by which time part two of the movie will already be debuting.

But despite the doom and gloom coming out of Denmark, Magnolia Pictures says the movie is “doing very well.” Nymphomaniac’s budget was less than $5 million with Magnolia reportedly paying $2 million for U.S. rights.

Finally, it’s interesting that Rights Alliance admit that when they did their tracking of Nymphomaniac downloads they only came across 1,003 Danish IP addresses pirating the movie.

Did giving the movie to Denmark first contribute to that low amount? Or maybe it’s because Danes have become so familiar with obtaining foreign IP addresses to get around a 2008 blockade of The Pirate Bay and gain access to the U.S. version of Netflix, they have since disappeared into the crowd.

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

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

Merrill, who was Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Engineering at Google, left the search giant in 2008 after being poached by EMI, a key member label of the RIAA.

At EMI he took up the impressive position of Chief Operating Officer of New Music and President of Digital Business, despite admitting this week that he knew the music industry was “collapsing”.

“The RIAA said it isn’t that we are making bad music, but the ‘dirty file sharing guys’ are the problem,” he said during his speech as quoted by ComputerWorld.

“Going to sue customers for file sharing is like trying to sell soap by throwing dirt on your customers.”

But those “dirty file-sharing guys” had an even dirtier secret. During his stint at EMI, Merrill profiled the behavior of LimeWire users and discovered something rather interesting. Those same file-sharing “thieves” were also iTunes’ biggest spenders.

“That’s not theft, that’s try-before-you-buy marketing and we weren’t even paying for it… so it makes sense to sue them,” Merrill said, while undoubtedly rolling his eyes.

That same “try-before-you-buy” discovery was echoed in another study we reported on last week which found that users of pirate sites, including the recently-busted Kino.to, buy more DVDs, visit the cinema more often and on average spend more at the box office than their ‘honest’ counterparts.

Merrill’s words yesterday are not the only pragmatic file-sharing related comments he’s made in recent years. Almost immediately after his 2008 EMI appointment, he made comments which didn’t necessarily tow the company line.

“For example, there’s a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. So maybe we shouldn’t be stopping it all the time. I don’t know,” Merrill said.

“Obviously, there is piracy that is quite destructive but again I think the data shows that in some cases file sharing might be okay. What we need to do is understand when is it good, when it is not good…Suing fans doesn’t feel like a winning strategy,” he concluded.

Less than a year later, Merrill was forced out by EMI.

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

Cory Doctorow, blogger, author and columnist, is not shy of technology or the Internet. His last book, Little Brother, covered the internet, RFID, terrorism and even the Pirate Party. Doctorow also served as the European Director for the EFF and co-founded the ORG. When it comes to DRM, he knows his stuff, and he also knows that DRM doesn’t work

So, when he wanted to release an audio version of his new book ‘Makers’ without DRM, it seemed a fairly simple prospect. The publishers, Random House Audio, were amenable to it. The problem was one of distribution. There are two major players in this area, Audible and Apple. Unlike the publishers, they are not so keen on the ‘no DRM’ position.

Audible, writes Doctorow in Publishers Weekly, turned them down flat when it came to a DRM-free version of Little Brother last year. Since they’re the only retailer on the iTunes music store, that locked out an huge market. When it came time for ‘Makers,’ this time they said yes. Apple, however, said No. audiobooks have to have DRM.

Doesn’t matter what the author or publisher wants, Apple wants DRM, so it’s DRM or nothing.

The backup plan then was just to sell via Audible. The problem then, writes Doctorow, is that while the files might not contain DRM, they come with an End User Licensing Agreement (EULA), which effectively does the same thing – DRM by contract.

DRM might be be gone from music as apple proudly proclaimed early this year, but it’s still alive and kicking. Often not because of the artist or the publisher wants it, but because it’s a store requirement. Indeed, Mr Doctorow is very happy with his publisher, telling TorrentFreak “Random House Audio has been remarkably flexible and committed to letting me sell my audiobooks without DRM and I’m incredibly grateful to them and to my editor, Amy Metsch, for all their hard work.”

Now for Apple and Audible to similarly be flexible and hard working, after all, they didn’t create the work, they’re just selling it.

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

Now things are back on track as Alec has teamed up with a new designer Miles Lorry to revitalize the newly and slightly renamed ‘appDowner’. Available in beta “soon”, appDowner will be compatible with iPhone 3.0 devices, so what’s the deal?

“The concept of appDowner has changed slightly, from being a simple ‘smart’ BitTorrent application to a full on App Store replacement,” explains Alec.

“No longer will you have to remember and type in the URL to your torrent file, simply click the “Store” tab on appDowner, and you’ll be brought to a beautiful interface designed by Miles (which isn’t quite ready to be shown off yet, but he assures us that it will be very, very soon!) which will allow you to search and find the apps you’re looking for.”

Unlike the official App Store, there will no iTunes-like approval process to get your own applications onto the appDowner store, with Alec promising that submissions to the system will be accepted within a week.

While BitTorrent is employed to serve apps to the user, the appDowner torrent client can also be used for non-appDowner downloads too

When released in beta, appDowner should become available via Cydia/Icy.

Stay tuned for updates

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

The site was run by a very well known iPhone app cracker called ‘kidmoneys’ and it’s believed the message currently on the site’s homepage is his;

I won’t crack apps/games anymore

People who used the Installous application from Hackulo.us will be familiar with Appulo.us. Functioning a little like a torrent index, Appulo.us carries links to cracked iPhone applications hosted elsewhere, without carrying any of its own content. It’s believed that kidmoneys and other crackers from iTunes Card VN supplied around 60% of everything added to Appulo.us each day.

TorrentFreak spoke with most_uniQue, a cracker from Hackulo.us who explained the significance of the closure. “iTunes Card cracked about $1000-1500 worth of apps each week,” he told us. “About 50 apps a day.”

Of course, all these apps have to be purchased from the Apple App Store before they can be cracked and distributed, but we were told that some crackers use cracked iTunes gift card codes to make their purchases from Apple.

A physical card isn’t needed, the code from a card is enough and these are generated by crackers with the use of keygen-like software. most_uniQue told TorrentFreak that a $1000 worth of credit can be purchased for $50 and a quick search turned up offers even lower than that.

Since all requests for Apple apps were fulfilled on the iTunes Card site (kidmoneys had 23K+ ‘thanks’ from users), the speculation is that they used cracked iTunes gift cards to fund the purchase of the apps. TorrentFreak was told that many of the most expensive apps did in fact originate from the iTunes Card website.

Although it seems to be the end of the road for iTunes Card VN, some of the residents have already moved on to a new home ready to crack another day. Indeed, a brief look at Appulo.us today shows plenty of new apps.

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

In true rock and roll style, this performer wasn’t going to do as he was told. “I was telling kids – download it illegally, I don’t care,” he said. “I want you to hear my music so I can play live.”

Now, in 2008, Kid Rock is boycotting iTunes because he says that artists are not getting their fair share of the revenue generated by the Apple store. He is annoyed at this ‘old system’ “where iTunes takes the money, the record company takes the money, and they don’t give it to the artists”.

Kid Rock crucially talks about how the Internet should’ve been a “great opportunity for everyone to be treated fairly, for the consumer to get a fair price, for the artist to be paid fairly, for the record companies to make some money.”

Of course, as the singer notes, it hasn’t turned out that way but concedes that he’ll probably have to put his music on iTunes at some point but notes that he’s doing ok overall without it: “I’ve just sold a million records, I’m not really feeling that blow” he said.

With his tongue firmly in his cheek, Kid Rock also says he doesn’t agree with the one-sided argument against file-sharing: “I think we should level the playing field. I don’t mind people stealing my music, that’s fine. But I think they should steal everything. You know how much money the oil companies have? If you need some gas, just go fill your tank off and drive off, they’re not going to miss it.”

Will this rocker be taking his own advice? Probably not. “No, I don’t steal things. I’m rich” he said.

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

An established, but outraged musician has decided to shun conventional distribution methods by following other recent initiatives (such as Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’ promotion) by making his latest album available for free download. It’s available on BitTorrent on sites like The Pirate Bay, with so-called ‘OiNK replacement’ site, What.cd, providing the album on ‘free leech’ to encourage more downloads.

TorrentFreak caught up with Benn Jordan who told us he’s not just disillusioned, he’s ‘outraged’ that iTunes is selling his work without permission and seemingly keeping all the money.

TF: Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your musical journey.

Benn: I’m Benn and I’m 29 years old. I started playing classical guitar when I was about 5, and since then, all I’ve wanted to do with my life was make music. Now 20-some odd years later, I feel lucky to tell you that I make music for a living. I’ve been releasing albums for about 14 years on various indy labels, and in the last 5 years I’ve also been composing for television, film, and ads. Music has allowed me to travel the world, meet thousands of wonderful people, and express myself through my work. It seems impossible to me that I’m on this planet for any other reason than writing music.

My label, on the other hand, doesn’t have a complex or radical plan. Our goal is to simply compensate our artists as much as possible, and that includes utilizing the “digital revolution” to our advantage, instead of punishing our artists by punishing their fans.

TF: Tell us a little about your dealings with labels and ‘the industry’ and why you became disillusioned.

Benn: Luckily, my record contracts were always negotiated well. Once things started moving with small labels I was approached by some larger ones, but there was always some seedy stipulation that prevented me from ever signing.

Still, with a 50/50 contract, I’d be selling 2,000 albums and would get $250 for it somehow. Many people that i’d meet at my shows would say that they bought my music on iTunes, yet I’ve never signed any sort of agreement allowing iTunes to host my music, and I’ve certainly never seen a dime of money for my albums hosted there.
So I started investigating the numbers from the label, which led me to some shocking revelations about how little the artist and label was getting in comparison to the retailers. When I got around to asking about iTunes, the owner of Sublight Records pleaded with me to “leave it be”. Everyone else made an extraordinary effort to ignore my calls and emails.

When I finally got a hold of the digital distributor (I must note that “digital distributor” is the most pathetic job title I’ve ever heard), I was told that once the files are in the iTunes system, it literally couldn’t be removed or taken down for a year. So, either Apple has created a self-aware doomsday machine that cannot be stopped or reasoned with, or everyone involved is just enjoying the gravy train of ripping off artists like myself and using Apple’s backbone of attorneys as an intimidation factor.

Even after having a lawyer working for me on this matter, this is the one and only response we’ve EVER been able to get from Apple:

Dear Benn,
I understand that you are writing to the iTunes Store because you are upset about finding your own album “The Flashlight” and some of your other album as well on the iTunes Store, and that you feel that you are owned
royalties for this music that his being purchased. I am sorry that you have to found this upsetting. My name is Wendy, and I would be happy to link you to right people to talk to about this issue

So, who’s the pirate I should go after? A kid who downloads my album because it isn’t available in non-DRM format and costs $30 on Amazon? Or a huge multi-billion dollar corporation that has been selling thousands of dollars worth of my music and not even acknowledging it?

I’m not disillusioned, I’m outraged, and anyone who ever spent a dime on buying music through these distribution methods should be outraged too. Here we are pleading with people to not steal music, and then we hand them dog shit when they go out of their way to buy it.

TF: You were a member of OiNK. Could you tell us a bit about your time there and how you used the site?

Benn: OiNK was an amazing network. As an avid-collector of ultra-rare old jazz records, I’ll tell you right now that it was the most complete and diverse library of music the world has ever seen. I filled some requests by uploading some of my rarer albums there. Eventually I started being harassed by someone on the network who was sending screen grabs of my seed lists to record labels. Upon complaining, a moderator simply removed my ability to communicate with anyone on the network or post comments on torrents. I can understand the paranoia and strictness.

I guess I just sort of laughed it off and stopped using it. When Oink went down, the only thing that surprised me was that the servers weren’t hidden in some weird country.

TF: Could you tell us more about the support you’re getting from one of the so-called ‘OiNK replacement’ sites, ‘What.cd’ ?

Benn: It was really a fresh breath of air for What.cd to promote the idea of artists having involvement with their own torrents. Not only does it benefit the artist to no end, but I can’t imagine that any court in the world would be able to pin someone on copyright infringement for a torrent the copyright holder created.

TF: Aside from uploading your own albums, at times you took an anti-piracy stance at OiNK, why the big change of heart?

Benn: I don’t think my stance has changed all that much. It’d be a great PR move to say that I’m pro-piracy, but I’d be lying. I keep seeing these internet news stories saying things like “The Flashbulb Promotes Piracy”. It is totally out of control. How could I be promoting piracy if I’m uploading my own material with a “buy it if you like it” message in the torrent?

What I’m promoting is the artist’s freedom to choose what can and can’t be done with his/her music, and more importantly, the listener’s freedom to do what he/she wants with their own computer, MP3 player, or internet connection.

After a journey through miles and miles of bullshit in this industry, you learn one thing: If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. Whether you’re downloading my music to check it out, to accompany the CD, or even pirating it…I want you to have a version/rip of it that I’ve listened to and approved of.

TF: You say you’re not pro-piracy yet you downloaded stuff from OiNK and also What.cd. One position seems to conflict the other. How do you explain this?

Benn: In my case I think that visible list of downloads strengthens my point. Most of those downloads are actually albums I already own (much easier to download than to record an entire vinyl album), albums I previewed but didn’t like, or albums I simply cannot find available in a suitable DRM-free format (including CD). Some of the software, like the TomTom DVD on my list, is actually impossible to technically “pirate” because you can’t buy a US TomTom GPS unit without the software. The thing is, when a tracker gets busted, the companies count these towards their losses.

So, my new album currently has 6381 downloads at the time of this interview on what.cd alone. Using that deceitful equation, my losses are over $100,000. If I wanted to, I could subtract those losses from my profit and completely get out of paying any income taxes. It makes sense from an evil, corporate, criminal-minded standpoint, right?

Beyond that, iTunes and other services simply are not acceptable to me. No company will have any control over a product that I legally own after I buy it, period.

Oink was the biggest music library in the world. People didn’t use it because they were criminals, people used it because it was literally better than any service you could pay for. It was the stubborn behavior of the record labels, artists, and government that wouldn’t allow that music library to have a cash register at the front door.

The thing RIAA is scared of is that their billion dollar backbone can no longer shelter people from exploring music themselves. Their business plan had evolved into telling the world what they will want to listen to and buy, and now they’ll have to actually compete with talented artists again. As the people regain control of the market, music will be judged by it’s content again and will be subjected to it’s own Darwinism. It is a very interesting time for the music industry…and since my entire life is devoted to making music, bring it on. I hope that this situation with my new record proves to other labels and artists that giving people exactly what they want is the smartest way to conduct any business.

TF: How do you feel about people being heavily punished for sharing music?

Benn: Obviously, the last thing I would want is anyone to be fined or imprisoned for listening to my music. Another feature of uploading my own torrent is that it creates a little legal nesting area on a network otherwise deemed illegal by most governments and RIAA. When someone else uploads a torrent of my music, it is without my approval…on the other end of things, and more importantly, when someone raids an admin’s apartment…no police officer is asking me if I want to press charges.

TF: What happens when people donate?

Benn: If you decide that you like the album, you’ll have the option of donating directly to the artist. If you decide that you’d like a CD, you’ll be able to order it directly from my label. I’ve even hired my mother to run our shipping department since she’s the most obsessive-compulsive-perfectionist office worker that I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Finally, every detail of my album’s content, release, and business is done exactly the way I want it to be done. I hope other artists realize how liberating and profitable it is compared to the distribution system we’ve all become so accustomed to.

TF: Radiohead did really quite well after they offered ‘In Rainbows’ online for free. You’re a few days into this experiment – how is it going for you?

Benn: My donations have a way to go before they match the numbers from CD pre-orders, but I’m still crossing my fingers. In a week or so I plan to release a detailed statistical report. For some reason I really like making pie charts.

TF: I’ve listened to the album – Soundtrack To A Vacant Life – and I really enjoyed it. Could you tell us some more about it?

Benn: It was 2 years in the making, and is conceptually me attempting to write the soundtrack to my own life. Of course this means that it is much more cinematic than electronic, and the songs all connect chronologically. Those who have heard my previous albums can expect this one to be a lot more melodic, tame, and instrumental. Suggested listening is with a decent pair of headphones from start to finish.

TF: I have some, I’ll try that later. Thanks for your time.

Benn Jordan’s blog can be found here.

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

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

However, a ‘new’ anti-piracy technology is claimed to have arrived in town, one which will not focus on traditional file-sharing networks but will target Usenet. The makers of the system acknowledge that trying to shut down Usenet in the way that BitTorrent and eDonkey sites have been shut down in the past, is totally not an option. There are thousands of newsgroups with millions of people sharing content with others almost anonymously and even the anti-piracy company says that Usenet is virtually impossible to regulate. Not a good environment for anti-piracy enforcement. So how does it work?

Apparently, TriMark is a “state-of-the-art one of a kind encryption technology” which will be used to track content made available on Usenet. It’s believed it’s a type of digital fingerprint embedded in files which can uniquely identify the original purchaser of the content, usually audio tracks. The claim is that the identification code maintains it’s integrity, despite copying or ripping. TriMark will then scan newsgroups for content that contains these embedded security codes. It will then supposedly identify the original purchaser of the material who will be pursued for damages relating to the claimed lost sales from every illegal copy spawned from his officially purchased copy.

Just this week it was revealed that some iTunes tracks contain the personal details of the person who downloaded the track, prompting privacy concerns. Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, “At a minimum, many would have appreciated it if Apple had notified them in some conspicuous way. Even after the recent media attention, it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of iTunes customers still have no idea that their names and email addresses are embedded in these files.” It’s unclear if people purchasing TriMark ‘protected’ tracks will be informed that their details are included in material they purchase.

The system is destined to roll out in 2008 when it is expected to make zero impact on the amount or type of material shared on Usenet.

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