Microsoft’s much sought-after COFEE law-enforcement forensic tool has leaked onto the Internet. One user uploaded it to private tracker What.cd to collect a huge 1.6tb bounty. However, in a sensible move, the admins of the site took action to remove the link and ban further sharing of the tool via the site.
A study conducted by PRS, the British music royalty collection agency, looked into the downloading habits of the average user of file-sharing networks. They found that the most downloaded tracks mimic the music charts. That is, people tend to download music that’s already popular.
2008 will be remembered as the year when BitTorrent went mainstream, with an increasing number of artists discovering that it is an excellent tool to promote music. Today, in a sign of the times, Open Your Eyes Records and the popular music tracker What.cd have announced an exclusive partnership.
The music industry is changing. While the record labels are desperately trying to protect the revenue stream from album sales, a new generation of artists is starting to realize that they are better off when they give away their music for free. By now, we’re all familiar with the industry’s view, but what drives these artists?
Some months back, Project Gazelle was launched. It was an attempt to build a new and improved BitTorrent tracker script. The ultimate goal is to produce a new framework for private torrent sites, faster than the common TB source, while being more secure from a code point of view, easier to modify, and more flexible.
A company which hosts many BitTorrent trackers has been ordered by the CRIA to close at least four major sites. Moxie Colo was issued with cease and desist notices and ordered to hand over the owners data and site logs of What.cd, SumoTracker, BTMon and FullDls. They are told to simply close many other sites they host.
After a sneak peak and trial run last month, the what.cd team has finally made a semi-public release of the Gazelle tracker and site software, by doing its first large scale roll-out on its own site.
The acceptability of P2P took another big step forward over the weekend, as accounts claiming to be ‘the official profile for NIN’ appeared on a number of torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay and the private trackers What.cd and Waffles.fm. NIN has now confirmed that these accounts indeed belong to the band.
Users of OiNK-replacement What.cd, are receiving emails from what appears to be the RIAA. In it are threats that users must either stop their ‘criminal acts of piracy’ or have charges pressed against them. But is it the RIAA? Rival Waffles.fm? No, it’s a 14 yr old script kiddie out for revenge, says What.cd
With the demise of oink, many music aficionados were left with little in the way of similar sites. However, true to the hydra phenomenon, a week later and several new sites have sprung up to replace it. We asked the admins of two of these sites for their future plans.
