There are plenty of ways to distribute those files, such as via email, public file-hosting sites, Dropbox-like operations, BitTorrent…the list goes on.

But what if all of those options – even email – are just too complicated?

Sharefest is without doubt the most simple way to share files available today. Fire up the Sharefest website and drag a file to the middle of the page. A link will appear – paste that to as many people as you like. Wait for the transfer to complete. Done.

Simplicity aside, what’s so neat about Sharefest is the technology going on behind the scenes.

Sharefest operates on a mesh network similar to BitTorrent and all transfers are executed peer-to-peer. Files can be shared with many people at once and the technology can swarm to speed up transfers, just like BitTorrent. It’s Open Source and apart from Chrome or Firefox, no additional software is required.

TorrentFreak caught up with Hadar Weiss from Peer5, the outfit behind the project, for the lowdown. Weiss says that the key is bringing file-sharing to the web.

“We are fascinated with the potential of P2P communication within the browser,” Weiss explains.

“We think that P2P is very powerful and there are great implementations such as BitTorrent. But P2P can reach its full potential only when it reaches the Web. Until then, it’s not really for the mainstream. For example, we like to ask ourselves, why can’t my mother use P2P filesharing? The answer, (we believe) is in a user friendly web technology.”

Sharefest uses WebRTC, a technology that can enable browser-to-browser communications such as file-sharing and video/chat applications without need for a plug-in. The technology is present in the latest Chrome and Firefox browsers.

“People talk a lot about the WebRTC revolution, and they mostly refer to the audiovisual world. We believe the change is bigger and that we will see many web applications that use the WebRTC Data API for things other than audio or video. Many of them would need a ‘BitTorrent-like’ many-to-many system, and that’s what we build.

“Sharefest actually started just as the canonical example for many-to-many sharing that uses our technology. We wanted to Open Source some of the stuff we developed at Peer5, and file-sharing was the coolest use-case,” Weiss says.

So, using a real-world example in which I want to share a 250MB video with half a dozen friends, how does that work behind the scenes? Presumably there’s a BitTorrent-like tracker to coordinate transfers among peers who swarm to share the data and speed up downloads?

“There’s a swarming technique, and mesh networking. Meaning that any peer can be connected to number of different peers and can send and receive data. So if there are six others, you might be connected to all of them, or just one,” says Weiss.

“The tracker decides who is connected to you, depending on many parameters (we call it the matching algorithm). The most trivial is what blocks you have. Two peers with roughly the same blocks are rarely connected. Geography, ISP, available bandwidth are also important factors of course, and we will put even more in the future. The nice part, because it is server based, is that peers discover each other very quickly.”

Interestingly, Weiss says that the Sharefest tracker doesn’t need to know the IP addresses of peers.

“To match two peers, the tracker sends the relevant peers a message through a WebSocket channel. They then start a standard WebRTC handshake – SDPs which describe the local peer capabilities are sent through the server, and they start talking with the STUN server. The STUN server help the two peers create the real P2P connection, overcoming firewalls and NATs,” Weiss adds.

Also, Sharefest peers are able to discriminate in a way similar to BitTorrent peers, taking more data from better performing peers while taking less from others.

Sharefest is a work-in-progress and will have more features added over time. One that we’d really like to see is the ability to resume partially completed uploads. Weiss told us that this feature is not only in the works, but just about to be released. Perfect.

Sharefest is available here – why not give it a spin with a few friends?

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

The paper carries the self-explanatory title “Associating Depressive Symptoms in College Students with Internet Usage Using Real Internet Data” and will be published in an upcoming issue of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine.

In brief, the researchers monitored how 216 undergraduates at Missouri S&T used the campus network. They then linked these findings to the results of a self-rated depression scale (CES-D survey).

What they found was that the use of peer-to-peer octets, packets and duration is positively correlated with depressive symptoms. In other words, people who are “depressed” are more avid file-sharers than those who don’t show depressive symptoms.

According to lead researcher Dr. Sriram Chellappan, the findings are unique among their kind.

“The study is believed to be the first that uses actual Internet data, collected unobtrusively and anonymously, to associate Internet usage with signs of depression,” he told Psys. “Previous research on Internet usage has relied on surveys, which are ‘a far less accurate way’ of assessing how people use the Internet.”

It is unclear what the direction of the relation between depressive symptoms and file-sharing is. The MPAA and RIAA may use the results to claim that file-sharing is bad for your mental health, but this can’t be concluded from the current findings.

Aside from heavy P2P use, people with depressive symptoms also use online chat more, and spend more time sending email. HTTP traffic and streaming were not correlated to depressive symptoms.

As a category file-sharers are in good company as previous studies have linked depressive symptoms to online shopping, excessive online video viewing, social networking, online gambling, and excessive late-night Internet use.

Where things do get scary is when Dr. Sriram Chellappan suggests that it might be a good idea to develop applications that scan people’s Internet use for these risky behaviors.

“The software would be a cost-effective and an in-home tool that could proactively prompt users to seek medical help if their Internet usage patterns indicate possible depression. The software could also be installed on campus networks to notify counselors of students whose Internet usage patterns are indicative of depressive behavior,” he explains.

This goes a bit too far, and is also uncalled for as there is absolutely no evidence that even a decent percentage of all avid P2P users show depressive symptoms.

That a researcher even suggests this is baffling. Not everything has to be monitored and checked. Most people just want their monthly invoice from their ISP, not a complete mental health report. Or perhaps i’m just being far too negative…

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

Kevin Towes, Product Manager of Adobe Flash Media Server told Beet.TV that the upcoming release of the Flash player will include new P2P technology that will “significantly change the way we think of media delivery.” According to Towes, this technology could in some cases completely eliminate bandwidth costs.

The system Adobe is offering to support P2P Flash is called Stratus. It is offered to developers free of charge and can support both live and on-demand video streaming. Besides video, Stratus can also be used for Flash based multi-player games and other forms of real time communication.

For broadcasters and video services, Stratus has the capacity to eliminate a significant amount of bandwidth costs. Instead of serving the media from a central server, users will provide the necessary bandwidth. Adobe’s Stratus system serves as an intermediary in this process, managing the communications between Flash players much like a BitTorrent tracker does for BitTorrent transfers.

Towes explained that Stratus users will first have to agree to participate in a P2P-enabled Flash swarm, similar to how they are now asked to indicate whether Flash can use their webcam. If users do not want to share bandwidth, the broadcaster has the option to offer a regular stream, a degraded stream or no stream at all.

Adobe’s Stratus project is not the first to combine P2P technology with Flash. Last year, during the inauguration of President Obama, CNN used P2P-assisted technology to send out the live stream to a million viewers worldwide. This required users to install a browser plugin called Octoshape, which then made the Flash video P2P compliant.

Other initiatives to serve on-demand and live streaming have been showcased by the Triber research team, who use a BitTorrent-based solution that does not require any central servers. Tribler is currently working with several European TV-broadcasters to test this technology in the real world.

The impact of Adobe getting seriously involved in P2P streaming could be a real game changer though. One of the main advantages Adobe’s Flash has is that nearly every computer has it installed, which should facilitate the adoption rate among content providers. One less hurdle to take, and a significant one.

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

The lawsuit was issued against Cadare Information Technology Ltd, a company which controls the iPlay.com.br site.

iPlay distributed a piece of popular P2P file-sharing software known as K-Lite Nitro, which allows users to download from several P2P networks including Gnutella, OpenFT and Ares.

In February this year a judge decided that rather than force iPlay to remove K-Lite Nitro from its site, the software should have a copyright filter implemented instead, to block sharing of unauthorized music. The anti-piracy groups promptly provided a list of 4 million tracks to be filtered.

However, the ruling fell flat since iPlay are not the developers of the software and have no control over it, so the case headed back to court.

Following a trial on August 25th, on Monday this week the 6th Civil Chamber of the Court of Paraná in southern Brazil handed down an unprecedented ruling.

The judge came to the conclusion that since the proposed K-Lite Nitro filtering mechanism was ineffective, he had no alternative than to issue a complete ban on the software instead, saying that the website offering it would be assisting the copyright infringements of its users.

He went on to suggest that any website offering the software alongside advertising (i.e, trying to profit from offering it) would be committing a crime, punishable by between two and four years in jail.

“By this logic, virtually any site in Brazil that offers P2P clients would be subject to accountability, to have their business threatened by the alleged illegality of the act of hosting certain types of software,” said Omar Kaminski, author of attorney Internet Legal, a blog specializing in IT law.

Announcing that Cadare Information Technology will appeal the decision, Nelson Cadare Luciano, owner of iPlay said: “We will defend ourselves because we always had the feeling that it [K-Lite Nitro] is not illegal since you can use it to share legal content as well.”

APCM said that the ruling is “important for the future of the digital music market in Brazil.”

Currently K-Lite Nitro has been removed from the iPlay site, but can be obtained from a number of other sources.

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

Now, thanks to intense lobbying from the music and movie industries, the government is considering giving Ofcom these powers more quickly.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, the man being touted among his Labour party voters as the successor to Prime Minister Brown, is said this morning to have been “persuaded by the argument for tough laws to curb illegal file-sharing.”

But what could’ve prompted this renewed aggressive anti-piracy stance from Mandelson? According to a report today, the Business Secretary’s intervention comes after he and David Geffen – the billionaire producer who co-founded the DreamWorks studio with Steven Spielberg – had dinner with members of the Rothschild banking dynasty at the family’s holiday villa on the Greek island of Corfu.

The consultation document on Government’s latest plans – which could be included in the Queen’s Speech later this year – could mean the criminalizing up to 7 million British citizens including Internet restrictions and fines of up to £50,000.

UK Pirate Party leader Andrew Robinson is naturally against these draconian fines. “You’re branding a huge percentage of this population criminals for doing something that doesn’t have any proven implications,” he said this week. “It’s a ridiculous state of affairs. People who copy a movie are lumped in with people who steal cars.”

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

Sure, we could make fun of these people. Or we could help them with an easy way to download torrents without having to know about the pros and cons of enabling DHT in uTorrent. Littleshoot decided to try the latter approach with a new BitTorrent browser plug-in that is being unveiled today.

Littleshoot’s BitTorrent plug-in has been in the making for quite some time now. The company behind it was founded by the former Limewire developer Adam Fisk who initially set out to develop an application for sharing data within a circle of friends. Littleshoot eventually changed directions towards general purpose, browser-based P2P and finally launched last November, albeit without BitTorrent integration.

The plug-in’s first iteration looked a little like a solution that didn’t really know which problem it wanted to solve. Littleshoot offered Gnutella downloads through your browser as well as the capability of publishing data on a separate P2P network that is based on the open source SIP protocol. Both were great in theory, but people hardly shared any data via Littleshoot, and when it comes to media sharing Gnutella isn’t exactly the first choice anymore either.

Enter BitTorrent. Fisk teamed up with Julian Cain for this release, who previously developed the Mac torrent client BitRocket as well as Kazaa’s never-released OS X client and who has also been involved in a bunch of other P2P projects over the years. Their ambitious goal is to transform Littleshoot into something like the Flash player of the BitTorrent world. Install it once, then forget about it, and it will work with any content, on any site.

I’ve had a chance to test multiple builds of the client over the last couple of weeks, and I must say Littleshoot has come a long way towards achieving this goal. Install the client, visit any torrent site, click on a torrent download link – and Littleshoot starts do download the files in question right within your browser on a Web 2.0-ish download page. The client even automatically starts a Flash-based audio player if you download an MP3 file, and files can be easily forwarded through Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

It also offers a search page that makes it possible to simultaneously search isoHunt, Youtube, Flickr, Yahoo Video and the Littleshoot P2P network, or any subset of these services. This search page may not be that useful to advanced users that prefer sites other than Isohunt, but again, it’s a great feature for beginners.

Littleshoot doesn’t come with any configurable options at this time. All data is saved in a default download directory, and the client seeds files indefinitely. However, Fisk told me that future versions of Littleshoot will offer the option to shut down the client after a certain ratio is reached. The current download page already offers details about your ratio as well as your up-and download rates. Speaking of future changes: Littleshoot is still clearly in beta stage. The Windows version seemed especially rocky in earlier builds that I got to test, but most things seem to be working when it comes to the final version that has been made available today.

So what’s the final verdict? Littleshoot may still have some room for improvement, but it’s definitely promising. Not only because this is the first BitTorrent client your mom will be able to use, but also because the Littleshoot team definitely has its eyes set on bigger goals.

One of the plans for future releases is an SDK that will make it possible for website owners to offload the distribution of any file to Littleshoot. Just drop a few lines of Javascript in your blog, and your MP3 file will be available as a P2P download. Says Fisk: “If a site relies on P2P services, they’ll display an “install plugin” window, just like the user sees when they don’t have Flash on sites that require it.” Kinda makes you wonder how long it will take for a torrent site to integrate something like this for all of its files.

The new version of Littleshoot is currently available on this beta page and will launch on the Littleshoot home page later today.

—

Guest author Janko Roettgers is a Los Angeles-based journalist. He is also the editor of P2P Blog.

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

This cuts to the crux of public consultations. Conclusions can only be as good as the data these consultations receive. We have seen many times how companies are willing to lie repeatedly when it comes to P2P, in order to maintain their positions. From Comcast and their ‘Sandvining’, the incorrect accusations of lawyers, MediaDefender and their entire business model, to anti-piracy agencies pushing their unique version of events to get the police to conduct raids. In an area where the people with the money and influence are well known for avoiding the truth on occasion, will the BERR release all documents to allow public scrutiny and thus ensure accuracy?

The answer, in a nutshell, is no. TorrentFreak contacted the BERR and pointed out that confidential submissions are as likely to be marked as such to cover lies and diversions from the truth as confidential business practices, and wondered how this was going to be handled. Also, as the BERR likely doesn’t contain experts that have the depth in knowledge of this subject as our readers, will they be able to spot errors without the public assistance that publishing would bring? Clare Keen at the BERR press office responded saying:

On the issue of standards of evidence, all responses received are considered on their merit. We expect there to be differences in opinions and in information respondents choose to submit in support of their position. However we do not rely solely on such submissions or a single information source when deciding policy. We use a range of sources to enable us to cross check and investigate claims to develop our own understanding and arrive at our own conclusions.

On your second point, in our experience the main reason why a company requests that their response be kept confidential is because their submission has included details of their own commercial business/contracts or operations – information they do not wish their rivals and competitors to have access to.

We would always seek to collaborate or cross-check key points of information. Additionally if a party deliberately provided false information they would risk losing all credibility within Government on future consultations or discussions.

However, it may be a moot point. The Guardian newspaper reported on the consultation saying that a proposal by Ingenious Media was getting serious consideration. The company, a London based consulting and venture capital firm, has reportedly proposed making broadband providers legally liable for copyright infringement by their customers. In return they get a small sum every time a legal download of a song or film happens. Where the money for this will come from, or what will qualify (such as Jamendo or other CC music tracks) for the payment isn’t mentioned. Also not mentioned is how an ISP is supposed to be able to regulate the actions of their customers, without using highly invasive methods, worse than the DPI methods that have already been protested.

The BERR finally published the non-confidential recommendations today, and the BERR has told TorrentFreak that the number of confidential and partially confidential responses were ‘a small number’. In a nutshell, though, the only respondents that wanted a co-regulatory approach, were rights holders. Everyone else expressed no desire for it, and significant concerns were raised over transparency and privacy issues. We’ll have a more detailed look at responses later.

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

The big advantage NiN and Radiohead have, of course, is that they already have a huge fanbase. From a standing start it would be difficult for relatively unknown bands to give their music away, and it would be much harder to get people to donate. To see if this would indeed be the case, and to get an impression of how much revenue an artist can generate from the donation model, we decided to crunch the numbers from Jamendo.

Jamendo is one of the largest music sharing sites where users have the option to donate to artists they would like to support. Since the site launched in June 2005, close to half a million users have signed up. In three years, the site has turned into one of the largest music sharing communities. However, it seems like the donate buttons are gathering dust.

Before we go into detail, we want to make it clear that Jamendo is one of the best free music services on the Internet, as it brings together artists and fans. This post is not an attempt to write about how Jamendo failed, because the site is much more than a ‘download and donate’ platform. What we want to show, however, is that donation based music models are not money magnets for the average artist.

We decided to examine the total number of donations up until October 25, 2008, and the results are quite revealing. Of the 423968 users, 1650 have donated something, little under 0.5%. In total, these users were good for 2712 donations adding up to just over $36,000. This translates into an average of little over $10 per donation. The largest donation on Jamendo thus far was 200 Euros ($250), impressive, but not as impressive as the $5000 NiN’s Trent Reznor donated when he downloaded his ‘free copy’ of Radiohead’s album.

The top grossing artist on Jamendo is Rob Costlow, with just over $1000 in donations over three years. On Jamendo, his two albums were downloaded more than 50,000 times, and over half a million people have streamed his music on the site. Jamendo currently has close to 10,000 artists (not all of them accept donations), and 648 of those received at least one donation. To some this all sounds quite disappointing, but does this mean that artists shouldn’t use donation based services such as Jamendo?

The answer to this question is simple. If their goal is to make thousands of dollars from it, probably not. However, that is not what most artists intend to do. They want their music to be heard, create an audience and pick up some fans here and there. The people who download their music for free, and like it, are potentially the people who visit their gigs, buy merchandising, and tell their friends about this great band they discovered. Lesser known artists will never be able to generate a decent income from donations, but making their music available for free sure is part of a viable business model.

Update: In the title of the article we used “NiN’s Donation Model”, this is not completely accurate. Radiohead had more of a donation model than NiN.

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

Since then, we’ve seen a couple of dozen reports, all with a totally different outcome. Some estimate that P2P traffic represents approximately 50% of the total traffic, while others go as high as 85%, or as low as 20%. The overall consensus seems to be that there is little consensus, or is there?

We think we might have spotted a trend, not so much in the data, but in the companies that publish these reports. Most Internet traffic research is conducted by companies that offer traffic shaping and broadband management solutions. Cachelogic, Ipoque, Sandvine, they all sell (or sold) products that help ISPs to manage their traffic.

Consequently, it is not a big surprise that their presentation of the results is often a little biased. After all, it is in their best interests to overestimate the devastating effects P2P traffic has, and convince ISPs that they need to throttle these awful bandwidth hogs.

Or as Sandvine co-founder Dave Caputo puts it: “Bulk bandwidth applications like P2P are on all day, everyday and are unaffected by changes to network utilization. This reinforces the importance of protecting real-time applications that are sensitive to jitter and latency during times of peak usage.”

In Sandvine’s report we see that P2P represents less than a quarter of all downstream traffic, and even less during peak times. Web traffic is most dominant and online media streaming sites take up nearly 16%.

On the upstream side, P2P traffic takes up 61% of all traffic (the black makes it even more scary), followed by web-browsing, tunneling and VoIP traffic.

Interestingly, the amount of bandwidth that is transferred on the Internet has more than quadrupled since the first reports came out a few years ago, and it is likely to quadruple again in only a few years. Unlike Sandvine suggests, throttling is not the solution. Investing in the network is.

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

It must have felt like an attack from behind when the RIAA heard that they lost its only major court victory, with a mistrial being declared in Capitol V Thomas. Making things worse, the Department of Justice, viewed by some to be the bully’s trusted lieutenant, turned on the content industries by soundly criticizing a bill aiming to increase copyright and patent enforcement powers.

The Thomas case is now a proverbial millstone around the neck of the RIAA. At first it looks impressive, and gives a frightening impression to anyone that thinks to challenge them, but now it’s starting to drag them down. Not only was the decision in the case thrown out, the statement by the judge in support of the mistrial reads like a critique of the legal arguments put forward by the RIAA over the last 5 years.

Yet, the millstone around the neck is not just in the refuting of legal arguments. It also extends to the excessive damages that were awarded in the first trial. The $9250 per infringement has been argued to be so far past constitutional restrictions on excessive punishments, that it has brought it into public attention. Because of this, it may end up reducing the maximum amount of damages and fines that can be awarded, which may also undermine the settlement encouragement (or ‘pay instead of fight’) strategy. The end of the judge’s order says it all:

While the Court does not discount Plaintiffs’ claim that, cumulatively, illegal downloading has far-reaching effects on their businesses, the damages awarded in this case are wholly disproportionate to the damages suffered by Plaintiffs. Thomas allegedly infringed on the copyrights of 24 songs – the equivalent of approximately three CDs, costing less than $54, and yet the total damages awarded is $222,000 – more than five hundred times the cost of buying 24 separate CDs and more than four thousand times the cost of three CDs. While the Copyright Act was intended to permit statutory damages that are larger than the simple cost of the infringed works in order to make infringing a far less attractive alternative than legitimately purchasing the songs, surely damages that are more than one hundred times the cost of the works would serve as a sufficient deterrent.

While 24 songs is more like two CDs (than the three the court states), that damages should go from 4000x losses (assuming 3CDs) to 100x, means that the $222,000 would be more like $5,550. That’s quite a difference. The same could be applied to amounts demanded in pre-trial settlements, where the RIAA has often asked too much. The court’s math is far more reasonable, despite being calculated using retail CD prices, which have all manner of mark-ups and distribution costs that are not relevant to digital music included. A digital download doesn’t have to pay for the CD blank and doesn’t have to pay for transportation to the store. There are no printing costs or middlemen profit. The court gives an estimated cost of $2.25 per track, the actual cost for a download is more than seven times less than that.

Of course, other arguments, ranging from definition semantics, to trying to use criminal law as precedent, were denied as well. Some of these arguments were novel, others seemed like desperation.

The other news from Wednesday didn’t help either, especially in the muddling of civil and criminal enforcement of copyright. The Department of Justice sent a letter to Senators Leahy and Specter over the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act (EIPRA) of 2008, which passed through the Senate judiciary committee last week. It stated that the Departments of Justice and Commerce had ‘strong and significant concerns’ with portions of the act. In short, they said they didn’t want to be used as free lawyers for the entertainment industry, and also felt that the position of an ‘Anti-Piracy Czar’ would be, surprisingly, unconstitutional. When even the US Justice department, which has seemed indifferent to the US Constitution in recent years, uses it as an excuse to oppose new powers, it could be likened to rats leaving a sinking ship.

Of course, the past week hasn’t been only bad news for the RIAA and its members, it’s been bad press for them too. On Monday, they elected to proceed to a jury trial in Maverick V Harper, with a date set for November. The RIAA were unwilling to accept a $200/infringement settlement offered by the judge. In taking the offer, they would have had a win, but at a lower amount, and left the potential for innocent infringement defenses. However, with the Thomas mistrial ruling two days later, negating any precedent they hoped to point to, and undermining some of the possible defenses, it may seem they have gambled on a treble-or-nothing bet.

The case in question centers around 38 songs, although only 6 were downloaded by MediaSentry. What can make this case interesting is that MediaSentry may be in violation of the law, regarding Texas based investigators, and that the age of the defendant – Whitney Harper was 16 when the infringements allegedly occurred – make an innocent infringement defence possible. Attacking a young girl for actions in her teens may not play well with a jury.

All in all, a bad week for the RIAA, and it may only be the first of many. We may never know if the article written by New York based attorney Ray Backerman did anything to to bring about a closer examination of the RIAA’s cases. Nor can it be overlooked that Wednesdays are not the RIAA’s best days – exactly a week before the Thomas and DOJ setbacks, they set themselves up as targets of ridicule by suing Beckerman. They accused him of allegedly doing what they have been repeatedly accused of doing – irony indeed. Many people are doubtless wondering what excitement October 1st will bring.

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