If you’re wondering just how old these VCRs were, think “coal-powered”. The reason was a curious mechanism preventing the copying of movies, and to understand it, we need to look a little bit into how the technology worked in that era.

Images on a TV were displayed using a single electron beam racing very fast across a chemically coated screen that produced color when hit by the beam. It raced first from left to right, and in horizontal lines, from top to bottom, painting an image on the fluorescent coating. Then, the beam returned back to top-left and started painting the next image in the movie. The beam painted about 50 such images a second, and the act of returning back to top-left is called a “vertical retrace”. You still see that term in some games, as game screen updates took place during the vertical retrace to avoid flickering.

When VCRs were recording movies to tape, they would try to adapt the recording of the magnetic signal to the strength of the incoming electric signal, just like most microphones do today. Some Hollywood pundits discovered, that if they threw in insanely high signal levels in the short timespan where vertical retraces happened in the movie, the TVs would not care, but VCRs would be unable to record anything at all, thrown completely off by the disruptive decoy signals. This scheme was called “Macrovision”; whether that was the company, the name of the product, or something else is not important.

Thus, Hollywood had created a technical ecosystem where you could just play their media, but not re-record it. In this day and age, very old VCRs – those before the adaptive input arrived – were in high demand, as they wouldn’t care about the decoy signals but record everything received verbatim, just like the TV would display everything verbatim. An old VCR was required to copy movies.

It is obvious that Hollywood and their ilk is trying to repeat this trick on the general-purpose computer: attempting to put it under their control by evermore complex Digital Restriction Mechanisms. But unlike the VCR, where everything was in hardware, the owner of the general-purpose computer gets to choose how signals are interpreted on their own computer, and can instruct it to disregard anything they don’t like. Therefore, today’s version of Macrovision is a joke.

Enter so-called “trusted computing”, which is Orwellspeak for “untrustable computer owners”. There has been a gradual push for motherboards that refuse to bootstrap any operating system other than pre-approved ones, creating a chain of locking out the owner of the equipment from the ability to run any code they like. So far, this has always been hogwash and its “security” as brittle as nail clippings in an industrial shredder, showing the incompetence of Hollywood in a world alien to them – but still, the movement is there.

The most worrying push to date is that Microsoft requires computer motherboards to have that kind of lockdown to get the certification for Windows 8. They go even further on boards with ARM-based architecture: on such devices, Microsoft requires that you can’t even change what operating systems are allowed to run.

Let me say that once again: hardware is now being sold that doesn’t allow the owner to run any code they like on it. We’ve had software trying that kind of trick for a long time (and it’s ridiculously easy to circumvent in most cases), but hardware disallowing that is a new trick from the copyright industry.

I run Ubuntu on all my systems, which is a flavor of GNU/Linux. I like that. I like the principle that property rights extend to me running any code I want on my own hardware. It feels basic and natural, not to say obvious and unquestionable.

It used to be that the question “Does it run Linux?” referred to ability, as in, asking whether the hardware was physically capable of running GNU/Linux.

We may come to enter an era where the question instead refers to Digital Restriction Mechanisms, as in, is the hardware locked out from running operating systems such as GNU/Linux that actually honor property rights?

Or do we have to go the same way as we did in the Macrovision era, where old hardware had a premium value for innovation and use because it wasn’t bogged down by copyright industry bullshit?

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

“While the exact specs as well as the timing are still being developed, we expect uTorrent for Linux to be available for download later this summer,” a BitTorrent spokesperson told TorrentFreak June last year.

In September uTorrent Server for Linux was released, and the developers said that a desktop version would indeed follow soon.

“If you prefer to stick to more conventional user experience, rest assured we are working hard to build a full-featured client, coming soon,” VP of Product Management Simon Morris said at the time.

But summer passed and no Linux client came out…

Today more that a year has passed and Linux users are still waiting…

This week TorrentFreak decided to ask BitTorrent Inc. what is taking so long, and we were told that the company has other priorities at the moment.

A developer further said that a Linux desktop client will require a lot of additional work since the overall uTorrent client had evolved considerably since the original plan.

In other words, the project has been put on hold, and it may take a few years for it to be released, if at all.

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

Fast forward another two years and a Linux version was announced. Voted as one of the top suggestions for uTorrent in the client’s ‘Idea Bank‘, the massive demand from users for a Linux client was impossible to ignore. In June of this year BitTorrent Inc. officially stated that it was working on Linux programs, and today the first one was released.

BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management Simon Morris realizes that the company pretty much owed this release to the community that played such a vital role in popularizing the protocol.

“If any group has embraced the possibilities and power of BitTorrent for distribution, it is the Linux community. Virtually every distribution is available via torrent download and many even ship with a BitTorrent client in the default configuration,” he says today.

“This morning, we are announcing a preview release of the first of two new products for Linux users,” Morris added. “uTorrent Server, an alpha version available immediately for download, is intended for users seeking a fast, powerful and lightweight BitTorrent client without the need of the full features and complexity of the native GUI.”

Labeled as an Alpha release, uTorrent Linux Server precedes a client with a full featured UI which is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Today’s release is aimed at more Linux users, who are encouraged to leave feedback so the development team can prepare releases for specific Linux distros in the future. The server can be managed through an HTTP API or the uTorrent Web UI pictured below, which is included in the release.

“Today’s version is only the first step, and we will continue to support the Linux user community with new versions in the near future. If you prefer to stick to more conventional user experience, rest assured we are working hard to build a full-featured client, coming soon,” Morris announced. There is currently no update on whether the company will make the “summer” deadline they set earlier.

With uTorrent Server, BitTorrent Inc’s main brand is now supported on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms in common with its main competitor, Vuze. Whether it will reach the massive marketshare it has on Windows with the two latter platforms has still to be seen though. Considering the late entrance, uTorrent has a lot of ground to make up.

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

Ever since uTorrent was released, Mac and Linux users have begged the developers to release a version of the client designed to work on their computers. In 2006, when uTorrent was sold to BitTorrent Inc., the company announced that a Mac version was coming. In 2008, nearly two years after the announcement, it was finally released to the public.

With the the release of the Mac version, Linux users were the only ones left out in the cold, but this is about to change. The uTorrent development team has just announced that they are working on a Linux version of the client. Further details on the time line and an eventual release date are not available at the moment.

The Linux version is the most backed idea on uTorrent’s recently introduced Idea Bank. The Idea Bank is prominently featured on uTorrent’s website and allows users to submit and vote for ideas they want to see implemented. In just a few weeks the idea of a Linux version has been supported by 3254 people. This huge demand from users is one of the main reasons why the Linux version is now in progress.

“Since launching our Idea Bank on uTorrent.com there has been significant demand for a native client for Linux,” BitTorrent Inc. spokesperson Jenna Broughton told TorrentFreak. “We obviously want to do our best to deliver whenever we see a good fit between our goals and capabilities and what our users say they want.”

“We are committed to bringing a lightweight uTorrent client that embraces the usability and features of our Windows and Mac clients to Linux users,” Broughton said. The exact feature-set of the Linux client will remain a secret for now, but in common with other versions of uTorrent it wont be Open Source.

The release date for the client is unknown at this point but unlike the Mac version it should come out relatively quickly. “While the exact specs as well as the timing are still being developed, we expect uTorrent for Linux to be available for download later this summer,” we were informed.

Whether or not the uTorrent Linux release will ever reach the massive market share it has on Windows remains to be seen. The Mac version has been well received but it is by no means the most used BitTorrent client on the platform. Whatever happens, it’s definitely good to see that uTorrent will soon be available on all three major platforms.

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

We thought it would be interesting to compare the users of different operating systems on their sharing behavior. Therefore we decided to take a closer look at the share ratios of Windows, Mac and Linux software on The Pirate Bay. The results are quite interesting and indicate that Windows users share twice as much as their Mac counterparts.

In order to calculate the share ratio we simply looked at all the seeders (completed downloads) and leechers (still downloading) on the torrents in the software category on The Pirate Bay. The share ratio is the number of seeders divided by the number of leechers. So, the higher the ratio, the more users share.

In the table below you can see that there are much more torrents for Windows software, 49345 compared to 2952 for Mac software and 1271 for Linux. Nevertheless, those downloading Windows software tend to share the files for longer, even compared to the Linux users.

Not listed in the table, but worthy of note, are the average number of downloaders per torrent. Mac software is in the lead here with 22 downloaders, followed by Windows with 9 and Linux with a measly average of 4 peers per torrent. Although we can conclude that those who download Windows software share more compared to others, the ratios for Mac and Linux software aren’t bad either. It can get a lot worse – Xbox 360 downloaders don’t even make a 0.3 share ratio.

Of course, the term ‘pirate’ obviously doesn’t apply to all downloaders either, especially not for the Linux group. It is interesting to see the huge differences in share ratios between the different categories though; perhaps Microsoft should consider building their next campaign around these stats. Sharing is caring, right?

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

Among the early adopters of the BitTorrent protocol were several Linux projects, saving thousands of dollars in bandwidth costs. In 2005, Linuxtracker started to aggregate these Linux distributions, and it has been growing steadily over the years, racking up more than 130,000 unique visitors each month.

The site’s server currently tracks more than 40,000 peers and in the past 12 months it coordinated the distribution of 180 terabytes worth of Linux software. TorrentFreak caught up with Mark Angeli, the founder of the site, and we asked him what motivated him to create Linuxtracker.

“I was getting into the BitTorrent ‘movement’ downloading the shows I missed at night while at work. At this time I was also trying out new Linux distributions on a fairly regular basis and while I had decent download speeds, I wanted to find a better way to download and share Linux,” Mark told us.

“Some of the bigger distributions were beginning to use BitTorrent as a means of distribution, but the smaller ones were having a hard time. I wanted to make it easy for them, so I put up a site and a tracker,” he added.

The first Linux torrent Mark uploaded was for Slax 4.2.0. but it was only the beginning. Soon dozen of torrents followed, and with it their community of Linux enthusiasts started to expand. Mark told us that they have some exciting plans for the future, but these remain between him and the other admins of the site for now. One thing he did reveal is that they are looking to add a “lighter” version of the site for those on smaller devices like netbooks and smartphones.

One of the great advantages of the Linuxtracker community is that the seed/leech ratios are extremely good, even though the site doesn’t require users to register. The site is currently celebrating the month of February with some giveaways from their sponsors, so for all the Linux fans who haven’t discovered the site already, it’s well worth checking out.

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

After his release from prison Scott was told by his Probation Officer that he has to install Windows so that the government can monitor his online activities. A cruel punishment for someone who’s used to Ubuntu GNU/Linux, and Scott has now decided to fight this decision in court.

“My lawyer is filing a motion to go back in front of the judge and find out what is next to happen,” Scott writes on his blog “It will either end in one of two ways: First, he could tell me to just suck it up and install windows, or he could say that no where in the Computer Monitoring Guidelines does it say that I have to use Windows, and it is the Probation Offices responsibility to be the Cyber Police and support all possible options.”

The court will now have to decide whether he can be forced by the US Government to use Windows. In the meantime, he is allowed to keep Ubuntu installed which means his online activities won’t be monitored.

Scott told TorrentFreak earlier: “I think that this whole situation is just one more way that they can impose their will onto me. It isn’t the fact that I have to be monitored that bothers me, it is the fact that I have restructure my life (different OS, different software on that OS) and that they would require (force) me to purchase software while I a currently unemployed and relatively unemployable with the 2 felonies that they gave me.”

Not all convicts like to use Windows, let’s hope this case will motivate the US government to develop multi-platform monitoring software. It can’t be that hard can it?

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

p2p-blog did an early review and reports that the extension still has some issues. It causes major memory leaks and it doesn’t work with SSL-secured servers like those from BitTorrent.com.

I’ve quickly tested the audio and video streaming capabilities of the extension, and found that it worked surprisingly well. However, the problem with streaming is that the chunks can’t be downloaded at random, which slows down the speed of the download. Moreover, streaming only works if the download speeds are high enough, which is often a problem.

One thing’s for sure, Bram Cohen is not going to shit his pants (yet).

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

Using BitTorrent to download the latest copy of your favorite distro is not only faster than a http or ftp mirror, it also saves the distributors some bandwidth.

Currently listed are: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, SUSE Linux, Fedora Core, Gentoo Linux, Slackware, and KNOPPIX.

linux.etorrents.info

Can’t find what you need? There’s always Linuxtracker.

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